Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. It is June 23rd of 2026, and it is 9 a.m. The regularly called session of the Kendall County Commissioner's Court is now called to order. We're going to begin the calling roll. Commissioner McCall, Commissioner Lesion, Commissioner Chapman, and Commissioner Carpenter. We have a full quorum consisting of all five members of the court. Now I'm going to hand it over to my colleagues, Commissioner McCall and Commissioner Weijan, for announcements regarding our prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Good morning, everyone. I'm going to start us out with prayer this morning.

We'll all stand.

Eternal God, our creator and sovereign Lord, we come before you today with humble hearts, acknowledging you as the ultimate authority over all nations, states, and counties. We thank you for the great blessings of liberty for the founders who established our Republic and for the foundational principles of freedom that allow us to gather here today. We ask for your divine wisdom to guide the Commissioner's Court into our deliberations. Grant us the discernment to make decisions that promote justice, protect the innocent, and support the traditional family values that strengthen our communities. Give us the courage to stand firm on the side of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and the protection of private property rights. Help us to be steadfast stewards of the taxpayers' resources and faithful to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the laws of the state. We pray for our first responders, law enforcement, our military members, and the hardworking citizens of this county. Bless their labors and keep our neighborhoods safe. May everything accomplished in this courtroom today honor your holy name and serve the best lasting interests of the people we are privileged to serve. In your holy name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome Dylan Stumberg, who will be a sophomore at Bernie High School, and she's going to lead us in the pledge.

I pledge allegiance. Thank you, Dylan.

Next up is declarations of conflict of interest. Anything from you ladies today? Yes. Gentlemen? And none from me. Next up, we got our comments from the bench. Commissioner McCall, would you mind starting us off today?

Sure. I would like to publicly thank Senator Donna Campbell and Representative Ellen Troxclare for their joint effort in addressing the safety of all who travel Highway 46 West. They sent a joint letter, and they're asking TxDOT to expedite their timeline for improvements today. plans to this roadway for Highway 46 West. I'd like to read a little portion of it. In their letter, they say that given the corridor's documented safety risks and recent fatalities, we write to encourage continued efforts to advance the timeline of planned improvements, including intersections, turn lanes, centerline buffer, and barrier at Webster's Curve. Also, the road work did start on Highway 46 West last week. It will continue this week between 9 and 4 through Friday. And if there's any changes, I will put that on my social media.

I think Commissioner McCall or Regent, sorry.

Thank you, Judge. Good morning again, everyone. Just a shout out to all the organizers of DOS Festival. I understand that it was a very successful weekend, and I think that they raised some money that they'll donate to charity. So just a shout out to all the people who worked real hard. And then just a little bit of news on the screwworm. Governor Abbott has launched a new website. It's a comprehensive website about Cochlemia hominiborax, which is the scientific name for the new world screwworm. It's kind of a one-stop shop of information and resources from state agencies and other partners engaged in eradicating this kind of critical virus. So I know you're going to have more about the declaration in a bit. That's all I have right now.

Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Judge. Just as we go forward here, just remember, we were fixing to celebrate our 250th birthday here in the United States. And so as you go out, celebrate, but be careful as you travel and be careful as you do celebrate. but enjoy this time of 250 years here in the United States. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Carpenter?

Thank you. I'll cover it. Thank you.

Okay. Just I'm going to piggyback on a couple of comments from Commissioner Call and Wieschen. First, just plan accordingly when you're traveling on 46 where the construction is going on. It's time consuming. They're shutting down the one road because it looks like they're manually putting rumble strips down the center of the lane. So... Just plan accordingly when you're out there time-wise. Screwworms. I signed a disaster declaration based on conversations with T-DOM, a bunch of other folks from surrounding counties. We had a joint meeting with about 25 folks that came to Kendall County, and the advice that we got is to enter the disaster declaration because screwworms are in our area. There's been confirmed cases in Gillespie. There's, I think, Commissioner Weijan's newsletter. She mentioned several counties around here have quarantine zones, including Kerr. So it's not a matter of if, but when we start getting reported cases here. And that's where it becomes incumbent upon us as agricultural producers and animal raisers be vigilant. Look for open wounds on your animals. Look for live maggots. They're not going to feed on what I understand on dead animals. Those are typically the regular kind of flies and maggots. It's going to be living animals. So if you have pets, they're vulnerable too. So check them for open sores. And then if you find larvae, call in and report it to, you can call charity with our animal control or Steven Zeller for the next steps. But this is just a matter of us being vigilant because we don't want our livestock as well as our deer and excess being decimated by this. So this is more of something that the community has to be aware of. So educate yourself in front of some of these websites and then be prepared to take action. So on a positive note, one with a recognition, our treasurer of Cheryl Despain received her 15-year recognition in the County Investment Academy at her recent treasurer's conference. So I want to congratulate her on her efforts there.

She's way in the back if you can't see her.

So Cheryl's done a lot of hard work for the county and is just one of those employees that you can count on to step up and just get things done, even if it's not for her treasurer duty. So I want to thank you for that. So moving on, accounts payable claims, consideration and possible action on the approval of accounts payable claims for purchase services and vendors. Do we have Clint here today? All right. All right, so... All right. At this time, does anyone have any questions about any of these items that we need to discuss personally? If not, I'll entertain a motion.

Can I ask a question?

Normally, if you want to ask questions, you can do it during public comments, but usually during particular agenda items. we leave it to the court for engagement with whoever's there. And we can't answer. And we can't answer, but we can possibly respond in the future. So sorry, that's just how the procedures are. So I encourage you, I'll let you come up during public comments and ask your question just so we're aware of it. Fair enough?

Judge, I did see Corinna just before the meeting. If you wouldn't mind maybe tabling for a few minutes to give... Oh, there we go. Thank you.

I thought she was out of town, so that's why I was asking for Clint.

Corinna would not come.

Sure thing. Okay.

If you want to come sit over here, that way you don't get.

That'd probably be better.

So I'll re-ask. Does anyone have any individual questions for Corinna on any particular item? 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 $1,689,033.11.

Motion obeyed by Commissioner Weijan to approve the accounts payable claims. Do I have a second?

Second.

Seconded by Commissioner McCall. Any further discussion? If not, please call the vote, Teresa.

Commissioner McCall?

Aye.

Commissioner Weijan?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter?

Aye.

Judge Kormazic?

Aye. Motion carries 5-0.

Thank you.

Do you want to sign a motion?

Sure.

Next up, we're going to recognize Kendall County Historical Commission for its outstanding work in 2025 and present members of the Commission Distinguished Service Award from the Texas Historical Commission. Who do we got here from the Historical Commission today? Would you all mind coming on up and letting the community know what great things you've done? What do we have to look forward to in the future? And if you wouldn't mind introducing yourselves as well to the community. Good morning.

Hello.

You're going to be the next person. Are you taking charge?

Yeah, I guess.

I'm just, I'm just a liaison.

Go for it, Richard. Don't be shy, Paul.

Jump right in. I'd like to thank Mr. Chapman, Commissioner Chapman. He is a liaison between our group and the court. He's always got our back and always helping us out. The state, every year you have to fill out an annual report to the state of what the organization does. We do a lot of different things between cemetery and county and different things. A lot of your historical markers. We've got a few other things. The historical markers, the recognitions of businesses that have been here for more than 100 years or longer historically. And then different people who come into town who want to know about properties and what historical value it has or anything like that. We help them with that. We have a lot of different members that are on the board that do a lot of things and that are in the public, and we go and meet at different organizations and talk about it. If you're interested in ever joining, be sure to contact us. The county is setting up a website for us on their site to drive the traffic to that if you're interested in joining. But other than that, we thank you, we appreciate you, and well done, everybody.

Thank you. And you can recognize. I'll let you. So the Texas Historical Commission presents this 2015 Service Award to the Kendall County Historical Commission in recognition of its active and well-balanced preservation program. So I know we couldn't preserve all the history here without volunteers like you. So from the community, we thank you. It means a lot. Thank you.

You want to say anything, Richard? No, you're all good. I am very proud to be a part of this group. They do a lot more than what Sandy just said. You have no idea how many people come into this county just to view the historic courthouse, the different historic monuments that we have, and all of that is thanks to this group of people right up here. All I do is represent the in-between them and the court, and I'm proud to do that.

Let's give them a round of applause. All right, thank you all. We're going to do our monthly service awards. Do we have Judge Van Stavern with us today?

So Judge Van Stavern's been with us five years. I know you don't have to speak, so.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. All right. Next up, Felice Prado, five years of service.

Thank you.

Now moving up to our 10-year awards, do we have Constable Vaughn with us today? Yes, we do. Yes. And would you like to say thank you to Felice?

It's been a great past 10 years. You can imagine that. I can't believe it's already 10 years here. I hope I can have a couple more before y'all run me out. But thank you so much for everything that the people here in this county do.

It's great to be a part of it all. And Brian not only protects us, he also provides his musical talents for many events when we have prayer day or there's something going on at the law enforcement center. We can always count on you to step up and do that. So thank you.

Annette Bourgeois, 10 years of service.

Annette's our go-to when it comes to anything ag in the county. She deals with a lot of our 4-H students and just pleasure to work with you. I know things get done in what it comes to where there's a lot of moving parts, a lot of families, and you always smile and pleasant, pleasant attitude.

So thank you.

All right, now we're moving up to some of the more longer serving employees. Rachel Garcia.

Has it all been in the clerk's office?

It has. Okay, so anything you'd like to talk about?

I just want to thank the ladies for putting up with me for 20 years.

You're always part of that. And my family keeps supporting me.

And would you all like to get a picture with her in a minute? Sure. And there's your 20 minutes.

And then you also get an extra bonus. Why don't you hold this in the middle.

One for me.

You look so pretty in your dress.

Thank you.

And lastly, Maria Valderas. Every time you see Maria, she's always hard at work. And again, with that, The attitude that we appreciate being around, always with a smile and very pleasant. So thank you for everything you've done for the county. Thank you very much. Would you like to say anything? Okay. Uh, now we're going to do a presentation, a presentation of a conceptual plan for the verdict County annex building located at one one nine old San Antonio road in Bernie by the project. Oh, one. Okay. Um, scratch it. I thought they weren't here. Uh, and take any necessary action to prove the overall space planning concept presented for the Justice of Peace Precinct 2 and staff in the Kennel County Elections Offices. Are you going to take point on this?

Yes, I'll keep it. Thank you, Judge. So in 2024, we purchased what you know as the Burdick Center from the Roy Moss Meadowlands. And through our purchasing agent, we contracted with an architect called ArcaTexas. And we've had a committee working with the architect on a space plan. So today we're going to take a look at that. Very exciting to get to see how that all works out. We also have an action item, Judge, so that we can approve conceptually moving ahead with these two departments moving there. We had considered moving veteran services and indigent health care, and realistically, we're only going to have room for those two departments. So today, we'll be looking at that overall concept, and we don't want to keep coming back to court to move a toilet or a door or anything like that. So it's just kind of an overall space plan. Commissioner Chapman, do you have anything to add?

No, we went at this. Yes, I do have something again. We went after this with the, to me at least, the concept of this plan has to work for a minimum of 10 years. And I think it will. And so I don't think it would be worth spending the money and the effort if we are not at least projecting these two departments out 10 years. They are, and I believe we have that plan here. Like Commissioner said, there will be some minor changes. But this concept has been approved by both the JP's office and the elections as something that they both think will work. And so I'm excited to move forward with it.

And with that, we'll introduce John Allender with architects. Do we have him on the Zoom, Justin?

Good morning.

Good morning, John. How are you?

Well, thank you.

So with that, we'll give it to you. And I think that you're going to share your screen with us so that we can see the plan.

Yes, ma'am. your honor commissioners appreciate the opportunity good morning everybody i'm sorry i couldn't be there in person this morning but thanks for the opportunity to join virtually as the commissioner said we've been working together now for some time through a conditions assessment of the existing building where my team visited this site including architectural assessment as well as structural engineers and our nep engineers we did field measurements we scanned the building uh three-dimensionally and we've done an assessment um just to get the baseline condition of the building so we understand the parameters we're working within um just to as a preview of that go ahead and share my screen so this was the the assessment um document that we prepared again um At a high level, the Burdick Center is approximately 10,500 square feet, just under. The building itself is in good condition from a building envelope standpoint. It is what we call a pre-engineered metal building. So structural frame was pre-engineered and manufactured with the interior finish out. As you know it, the existing plan, if you're familiar, the entrance off the front basically serves as a community center. And there was a commercial kitchen to one side and office use to the other around a central bathroom core. So the goal really was to find out the best approach for interior renovation of this building without really considering additions to the exterior to meet the program requirements of initially the four departments that we were looking at, as Commissioner Waysha had mentioned, the JP2 program, the elections, then originally Veterans Affairs and Indigent Health. So we, after the assessment and documentation of the conditions, which I believe the county has a full copy of this, the building committee reviewed and returned comments on this as well. I will get to them later. After the assessment from my engineering team and the architectural team, we conducted programming interviews with the four departments where we sat with Judge Nehmer, with the election department, and Veterans Services and Indian Health, documented their existing facilities, and then asked questions about their projected growth. So Effectively, we took all of that information and put that into a programming document, where what you see here is actually the culmination of the work that we've been doing to date. So this document does not have indigent health or veteran services since we removed those early on, but what you see are the program requirements, what we initially had projected as a space need after working with the building committee and the different departments, tallied the negotiated, as we say, negotiated square footages. And then the last column here is the culmination of after we've taken this information and done test fits in the building, what the total square footages actually are. So we'll come back to this total here. So the... One second. I'm sorry. The Zoom tab is covering my tabs on my space plan. So the results of all that work is what we call a space plan. And really, this is a test fit to see how best those program needs could fit. Early on, we determined that we were about Well, we were several thousand square feet over if we were trying to fit indigent health and veteran services in. So there was a decision after discussion with the building committee and the JP elections that we would focus on trying to fit JP2 and elections within the building. So the way that the space plan is working, we've positioned the JP functions to the front of the building. and elections primarily in the rear with the finish out of the existing office space to serve their needs. And there was a strong desire to have secure separation between these functions. We explored some ideas of shared space early on and some flexibility, but ultimately we've landed on a plan that has dedicated space for each of the two departments. with the exception of a common break room and restrooms effectively. So, The courts will enter off the main front entrance to a small lobby and then transition into court rate, the waiting room. The county clerks will sit or the clerks will have an office here with a transaction window for their day-to-day activities. Then the waiting room will serve into the courtroom with the judge's bench positions at the rear end. the clerks will also have access to that courtroom as well. And then off of the court, and the next phase of this will be furniture arrangements and really putting all this in here. This is just about size and how, and adjacencies between the buildings. So between the departments, I should say. So we provided access to a jury room. which then would have a small coffee bar on this side of the building to serve the jury as well as some of the court functions. And then a shared restroom. would have access to it. So there's a private secured entrance for the courts off of this existing door. There's an opportunity to have daylight into the courtroom. We certainly will address security issues with those existing windows if they have to be reglazed. This creates a kind of contained space You know, use for the JP's office. I will note that in order to fit county records, what we're proposing is constructing in this area here. So it'd be from the restroom wall to the exterior wall. area would be a mezzanine for storage so record storage would have a stair to it as well as a lift effectively a glorified dumbwaiter that would help move documents from the mezzanine level down to the clerk's office So for elections, the election side entrance would be at the rear of the building, and the election main offices would flank this periphery. There would be a window for visibility to that entry, and then entry into the just shy of 1800 square feet for that voting room. There's an existing set of doors that serves that community room. So we can get circulation through these doors, through voting and then out to this way for primary small elections. And then there's an opportunity for larger elections where the public could actually enter through the JP lobby, have queuing through this hallway. So longer indoor queuing and then entry into the elections and out. The ballot board and central count room is one combined space. So this is going to be a combination of tables for counting as well as a lot of storage that will be in here. And then additional voting storage in this room with, again, the proposal of constructing a mezzanine over this space for another 1,500 square feet. Same idea, stair up, and that would be accessed with a lift or a dumb layer. So there's secured entry for the voting storage, so voting machines can be moved in and out. we'll address the need for curbside voting in the next phase. And I will note that a lot of the sidewalks along the north side of the building need to be replaced anyway because of settlement. So we'll be addressing sites needs and access to the curbside voting in that next phase. But all in all, we've come very close to We've maximized the space. We've actually gained about 3,000 square feet in the building of extra storage by constructing those mezzanines. And from our conversations, it seems like we've got the best use of the building. And I look forward to fleshing this out. So if anybody has any questions about the space plan or renovation, I'd be happy to take that.

I have a question. What was the original request or projected space for elections versus the justice of the peace needs? And then what did we finally end at for each department? I can't see it. It's so small. I'm sorry. So that's why I'm asking.

Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Yeah. We, based on our interviews, had projected about 2,500 square feet for elections. And because the courtroom was requested... You mean JP? I'm sorry, JP. Forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm dealing with a little bit of a head cold this morning. You're fine. Yeah, the JP was about 2,500 square feet. And because we actually were able to create a lot more storage with that mezzanine, as well as some requests for... And then we were able to create a waiting area. So the total square footage that we've dedicated for elections is about 4,800 square feet. That includes that mezzanine level, which is 1,500 square feet.

So that's the, again, are you speaking about the JP or elections with this? I'm getting confused. JP. JP. A functional usable space is 2,500?

The functional usable space on the ground floor is about 3,000 square feet. The actual is what we were able to come up with.

Okay. Now, can you give me a comparison to what elections was proposed at and what they actually got?

Yes, so elections had, we had programmed initially about 5,700 square feet. They, after, that was our first assessment. After negotiating with them, they had requested about 6,500 square feet. And we ended up with, on the ground floor, not counting the mezzanine, about 6,000 square feet plus then the extra 1,500.

And what was the rationale for eliminating other departments and just limiting this to two? Because we just recently bought a building and put about five departments over there, but this one is only two. What was the logic behind that change?

Based on the area requirements or requests, the other departments simply didn't fit.

And also, Judge, that this building not be a one, two, three-year project, but a

something that would be last season department for a minimum of 10 years conceptually everything looks great i only have a little concern about of the two departments elections is the one that's going to grow the most our population is going to is estimated by 2035 to move up to 65 to 68 000 people and so of the two departments I think elections seems a little disproportionate here compared to JP because the JP is maxed out. They're not going to grow. And so that's just my only concern is that probably a little more space should be dedicated to elections since they are the department that will grow over the next 10 years. But that's just my two cents on this. But overall, it looks beautiful. It looks functional. It's just that's my personal concerns about those elections.

Judge, if I may, I'd like to have Stacey Decker come up. I asked Stacey and Judge Naber to come and just comment on what you think of the space needs, which all just come up. And I know, Stacey, the legislature has given us some mandates with jobs and tasks that you must do in elections. And so I'd like you to address that because that was some of the driving force in planning the space. And then, Judge Naber, you can talk about your space as well, please.

Certainly. So we do have a Senate Bill 2753 that was passed. It's got a lot of pieces to the puzzle, but essentially what it does is it squishes early voting and election day into like one voting period. So early voting starts later in the week, but goes all the way up to election day. So there's no three days in between early voting and election day anymore. Part of that bill also required every early voting site that the county decides to open to also be an election day site. And right now, our voting room and the spaces that we use at the annex are utilized for our ballot board and for central count, which is why we needed a designated separate space for those, which is what's on the diagram. We Our space right now, I think, overall is about 3,000 square feet in the building of what we use. That includes our lobby, our storage room. Most everybody in this room is probably early voted, so you know that we've kind of made space of spaces that aren't conventional spaces you would use to open up to the public. But we've been in this building that we're in for about 16 years, and we probably outgrew it about five years into it. But that's just the growth, and that's something that's just going to constantly happen with this county. We're going to keep growing and growing, and we're going to do our best to keep up with it from our side.

Thank you.

Judge Naber?

Yeah, from the justice of the peace vantage point, the court's aware, but probably other folks listening in are not. Not long after getting into office back in 2023, we ran a survey of our facility, our current facility that we've been in for 30 years. And off the record, the gentleman who conducted that said it was the worst courtroom you'd seen in the state of Texas from a safety viewpoint, a hygiene viewpoint, as well as from a court security viewpoint. Since then, some sort of add-on things have happened to try and ameliorate some of those difficulties. But what we're doing right now is we're thinking as we look to move and get out of rented spaces and reduce that expense to the county, what we're looking to do is basically create a courtroom environment to the best of the ability of the resources of the county that will satisfy the requirements over the next 10 years. I would say a lion's share of the chunk of growth that's going to happen in Kendall County over the next 10 years is going to be primarily in Precinct 2 as it stands right now. Of course, at the next census, precinct lines will adjust for that growth. But with the growth in the county overall, we are anticipating very likely possibility, and this is not under my auspices, but under Constable Noll's that we're going to have to have possibly a deputy constable somewhere down the road. Simply on truancies, we've been told by Champion High School alone that we're looking at next year, there's been a vast underreporting of truancy. Well, they're looking at possibly 150 truants. If we have 150 truants, just talking about the constable side of it, there's four summons on each truancy. So you're talking about roughly 500 to 600 summons that have to be issued by one guy in an office. It's going to be overwhelming. So we don't know where that's going to go until it happens. But those are the kind of growth issues that we're seeing. We're seeing growth in other cases, deaths, lawsuits. Jail is steadily growing, but all four precincts are in that. But that doesn't really impact on a facility so much as it does work time. The biggest thing for us right now, besides having space to not only accommodate new people, but to safely conduct our business, is instituting in there the JP lobby, or waiting room, rather. The JP waiting room is a requirement by court mandate that... Witnesses can't be in the courtroom when the subject at hand before their testimony, so that they're not influenced by earlier witnesses. The fact that the clerk's office has some ballistic protection. We occasionally have very angry people coming in paying fines, and they have virtually no protection right now. And that's a standard across the state to do this, particularly in recent years where there's been courthouse shootings. So that has to be upgraded. We've got two clerks that are climbing over trash cans and working their way around a printer in order to get out of their space to go use the restroom. Our electric circuitry, if you flip on the coffee pot, it blows the fuses and all the computers go down. So this will fix a lot of that. But space is also involved with this, not just new circuitry and that sort of thing. The courtroom, I asked the architects, I said a maximum capacity for us in a courtroom, which is not every day, but can be up to 50 to 60 people. What do we need for that? And they said, roughly, I was thinking around 1,200 square feet. I think the quote that was given to me was somewhere in the range of 1,500 to 1,600 square feet. There's not 1,600 square feet for us to take in this equation here. So the compromise is I think we're somewhere, I can't really see that right now, but I think it's somewhere around 1,000, 1,100, something like that. Yeah, $1,059. So we'll just make do. It's not ideal, but it's not bad. It's much better than what we've got right now. Sure.

And the other thing we talked about is using that courtroom as a training room because right now we have a training room at the Sheriff's Department. We have EMS and this whole thing.

And also Grand Jury.

And Grand Jury.

Yeah. And this will be set up in a way, the only tech we had in our courtroom was Our current courtroom, which can accommodate about 12 people, the only tech we had in there was a plug, 110 plug. That was it. So we can't really conduct a trial in there, because particularly class C misdemeanors, a lot of them are traffic fines, and they involve showing video. And our courtroom's not big enough to accommodate all those people that come in, because we get roughly about two to three pages on the docket of people. What actually goes to trial will Frequently it is down in the single digits because people will plea out with the DA's office in the interim. So if we have to have a jury trial or the monthly bench trials, I can't do it in my current courtroom. I have to go over to Precinct 1. Precinct 1 has the same disadvantage that we do. There's no jury room. So if we have a jury trial and they have to meet, everybody has to vacate the courtroom and go stand outside. There's nowhere to put the jury. The same thing in my current situation. This allows them to go there. Similar issue is with the bench trials or in civil lawsuits. Frequently, attorneys, when people get the trial, they want to sit down and arbitrate between themselves. I cannot be present in the room when they do that. So we have to vacate the courtroom. Either that or switched in my current situation, switch back to my office, which is also the office kitchen. So it's, you know, these are necessities. We need a separate room for the jury. So that's why this thing conforms to those basic needs. And I think we'll aptly satisfy our needs in the coming 10 years.

So, John, would you address Judge's question? Because we started off wanting to move indigent health care and veteran services. And when you did a very good job, very thorough interviews of all the programming needs, and there simply wasn't enough room without really having the other two departments sacrifice room that they have to have to function. And to Commissioner Chapman's point, to grow for 10 years.

And I'm fine with it. It sounds like you're both satisfied with the, if you are both satisfied with the result, I'm good with it. We'll make it work.

From everything that I've been told, we're looking at 10 years projection. So if we can make this work for 10 years, we can do that. I do want to And it may not be the same court in 10 years. I know some of y'all are, you know, this might be your last time that you're going to run for commissioner, but I know we'll have a new court in 10 years and we'll have to address that with them. I just want that on everybody's radar is this is significantly less than what we originally talked with architects about. But I feel like we've gotten it to a pretty good point of being functional for the next 10 years. And If anything, my staff, we've made much smaller spaces work much longer. I just want that to kind of be on everybody's head moving forward. In 10 years, this building isn't going to be working for us. I know that's a 10 years court problem, but I do want to at least get that out there that we can make it work for right now.

And we appreciate that. And, you know, just like as Judge Cahoon has said, we're going to have to look at space for our Justice Center as well. We're in a, a very fast-growing county, one of the fastest in the United States, and then that's just what we have to deal with. So I really appreciate you all working together and compromising. And, again, John Allender and the committee did a great job, and I'm very pleased with the final result. Other than you want to tweak some workspace, I think we're done. So with that, Judge, I would like to move to approve the overall space planning concept presented by the project architect, ArcaTexas. For the Burdick Annex building located at 119 Old San Antonio Road for the Justice of the Peace Precinct II Court and Staff and the Kendall County Elections Office.

We have a motion made by Commissioner Weijian. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Commissioner Chapman. But before we go for further discussion, Judge Cahoon, would you mind coming up? She has a public comment that she would like to make, so I'm going to turn it over to her.

I remember and understand and I've had lots of discussions with Judge Naber. And so please understand that I know your constraints of your building. So when I say this, it's not that I don't think that this is a wonderful idea, but I continue to reiterate the problems that your district courts have with spacing as well. The same problems that that Judge Naber is talking about in his courtroom, we suffer in the district courts. We don't have enough space in that smaller courtroom for the 498th. We don't have enough space for the jury room. We don't have the ballistic protections for our district clerks either. We don't have the things as well that Judge Naber talks about. My concern is, is that when we go and we do this and you all approve this, that takes one more building that when we do the discussion that we've had about doing an entire space needs analysis, that's one building that we've already spent our spending the money to retrofit that won't even last to 10 years. So I urge you all to try to get quickly to look at all of the spaces within the county to figure out how we can get Judge Naber the space that he needs, but also Judge McDaniel the space that she needs to do the business. How can we get from here to there and maybe have something with more than 10 years? We're out of space in your district courts. We're out of space in your district clerks and in your county clerks. We don't have room for a 498th jury to have a jury room. We are having to combine. as well in this building. So with due respect, Judge Nabors, I know that you have been suffering through that as well, but I do urge us to think about a global of all the building space that we have. It's a wonderful rendition, but what kind of space could we have in this building in addition there too? What does everything look like and how can we get the most bodies where we need them to be? And when we do this, we take that building out of the equation.

Thank you. And just, I'm not going to comment too direct, but your request is being addressed in the upcoming budget in multiple ways. So I just want to let you know that I've heard you and I'm taking action.

And Judge, I appreciate that, but that is my concern with this.

Roger that. Thank you. Okay. With that, any further discussion?

I have one other question.

I'd just like to thank the court for stepping out on this.

We do appreciate it. Thank you.

I have one other question. You mentioned having a grand jury in that space.

They need a space to meet. Right now, they're meeting in the training room at the sheriff's office, which they would like to change that venue.

So that would open up that space.

This is a discussion back when Judge Daniel was the first deputy. She talked about possibly moving the grand jury, which meets every other week for half day, full day.

And in our discussions, we have talked about the because the jury room for the J.P. is not an everyday used. space. We talked about it being a shared space. The way this is laid out, elections could come around from either direction and use the jury room when it's not in use. Somebody else could use the jury room when it's not in use. That's simply a matter of scheduling.

And we, Commissioner, if I may add on to that, during election times when there's a high volume of people coming in and out, just as you do in the current courthouse annex, you know, when we know in advance where these dates are, we're going to limit or eliminate our docket and push those to before and after those election periods, which would free up some space. You know, the courtroom, if we don't use the courtroom, there's no reason why you can't use it if you want to. Use it for counting room or for people to come in and vote. We have no dog in that fight. Okay.

Thank you.

With that. Thank you. Teresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall.

Aye.

Commissioner Reason.

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman.

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter.

Aye.

Commissioner Larson.

Aye. Motion carries five to zero. Thank you all. Have a great day. Next up, we're getting a presentation from our engineer's office.

Good morning. Good morning.

Well, I wanted to start with a bit of good news. The engineering department is fully staffed. And I have with me today two new hires that I wanted to introduce to the court. If you guys want to come up. The first person I'll introduce is Shane Carl. He is our new construction inspector and has been right about one month.

Welcome. Do we have two Shanes in the courthouse now?

Yes. Welcome, Shane. Good to see you.

And the second person I'd like to introduce is Dominic Romo. He is our new GIS specialist.

Welcome. Thank you. Happy to serve you guys.

We're glad to have you.

Glad to be here. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, guys.

Thank you. I also wanted to take a little bit of time to update you on a few.

Before we roll into the years, we have one other new employee introduction. Commissioner Chatham, I don't want to forget.

Since we're introducing, and I apologize, Stephen, would you stand up or come up front here? Stephen Casatos is our newest health department head, and he started on the 15th, and he and Arturo are doing a Wonderful job. I've not fielded any phone calls. I've not fielded any, written out any permits. They're doing a great job. So I would like everybody just to know, as you see, both Stephen and Arturo, that was at the last commissioner's court. They are working, of course, with Juan in the fire marshal's office, and they will be out and about in the county. In fact, they already are. And I won't take your thunder from you, but Stephen has already presented a health department goals for June of 26 through June of 27. And so they're on top of things and getting that department up and running quickly. Thank you, Stephen. Long-term planning.

It's great to hear.

Wonderful. Welcome.

Anything you'd like to say?

Yes, I'm looking forward to working with all of you, the board. and modernizing the department into our current century and making things efficient and spending the taxpayers' dollars

Thank you, Steve. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Marilyn. Back to you.

Sure. So I'd like to update you all on a few of our bigger county projects that are going on. The first project that I wanted to talk about was flood control structure number four. As you know, it has been under construction for almost two years now. The main construction on the project is done. Really, they're working on final vegetation of the site. Some areas have come in very nicely with the vegetation. Some of the other areas, it just, the seed wouldn't take and get established in certain areas. They've done some soil testing and identified new seed mix to be able to get vegetation established and close out the project. We did do a site inspection after the last large rain event. The site still looked pretty good, but there was definitely some erosion areas that the contractor will need to clean up before they close out the site. But hopefully that will be here in the next month or two that that project gets completely finalized The second project is wearing welfare road bridge over Joshua Creek TxDOT is finalizing the design of the bridge replacement and it is expecting to let the job in September with construction expected to begin November of this year and last through April of next year During this time the road will be closed and And it will be a detour situation, so we'll start working, getting more information out to the public. And so it's not a surprise to everybody, but I wanted to bring that up now, first time to get that out to the public in this setting. The bridge is being replaced at no cost to the county. It is funded entirely by TxDOT. The county provided in-kind services several years ago. as our match for the project, which was completion, replacement of the Sisterdale-Lindendale culverts. And that was covered through an advanced funding agreement specifically for TxDOT to cover the cost of this bridge replacement. And then the next final project I wanted to talk to and give a little update on was the Ammon Road curve design with the interlocal design with City of Fair Oaks Ranch. They've provided us 95% design to soften the curve. With construction expected early in 2027, we do need to work on an amendment to the contract to cover construction costs for the project, and that will be coming to Commissioner's Court for consideration here in the near future.

Any questions for Mariel? Gentlemen? Ladies? All right. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Next up, we're getting to our orders and resolutions. We're going to talk about the burn ban. Currently, the burn ban is off, and based on the numbers, Juan, it looks like it should remain off. Is that a fair assessment?

Yes, that's our recommendation, seeing that all the storm systems we had several weeks that have saturated our county with the KBDI being so low, we didn't pull the fire chief, so our recommendation is no action taken.

And it looks like temperatures are going to start warming up a little bit, no rain in the foreseeable future. So it's like cross our fingers and we'll be available for the next couple of months. Yes, sir. All right. So is there any opposition to keeping the burn ban off at this time?

No.

Okay. Thanks. Thank you, Warren. Thank you, Warren. Thank you. Next consideration possible action regarding order number O-20260623-2, an order of the Kendall County Commissioner's Corps entitled Declaration of Local Disaster Regarding the Threat of the New World Screw Worm in Kendall County for a Period of 30 Days, which order shall activate the emergency management measures, address coordination with state and federal agencies, and authorize the use of Kendall County resources. So as I mentioned during my opening comments that Brady and I have been in regular contact with the state, our ag office, the ag folks from our neighboring counties, commissioners from Gillespie, Kerr. We've really engaged a lot of the important players in the local communities. And we're working cooperatively to stay ahead of this. So the disaster declaration is pretty lengthy. By declaring a disaster, it opens us to possible funding for the future if there are negative ramifications from the screwworm. And I know Governor Abbott's declared certain areas, and so now we're on the radar. So this is twofold, educates our citizens about what's going on. but also protects us long-term to make sure that we get any financial resources that we may need to combat this growing issue. So at this time, I move to adopt order number 0-2026-0623-2 to accept the Kendall County order entitled Declaration of Local Disaster Regarding the Threat of New World Squirrel Room in Kendall County, Texas for a period of 30 days. which shall activate our emergency management measures, address coordination with state and federal agencies, and authorize the use of Kendall County resources. Do I have a second? Second. Motion by the judge, seconded by Commissioner Wieschen. Any further discussion? If not, Teresa, please call the vote.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Motion carries 5-0. And before I move to the next item, would you all mind signing? This order requires all of our signatures.

Ladies, good. No, I think we're good. Restroom break, are you good? Sure.

Okay. So we're going to take a five-minute restroom break. So we'll resume with our open session at 10.06 a.m. And with that, we're in brief recess.

Thank you.

It's 10.06 and we're resuming with our public comments. We're going to begin with Mark Russo. And sir, I know this is your first time. So if you turn to your right, there's a timer up there that says three minutes. It begins once you start speaking. And if the timer goes off, Just try to wrap up your last comment succinctly. I just have a quick statement to read, and then that's it. Do you just mind introducing who you are and where do you live in the county?

My name is Mark Caruso, and I live in Kendall County Precinct 2. Is that enough? Yes, sir.

That's good enough.

Hello. I am a resident of Kendall County Precinct 2, writing to express my concerns regarding the lack of noise restrictions in our counties. While I appreciate the time you dedicate to our community, the current reliance on Texas State noise ordinance of 85 dBs is insufficient for protecting the quality of life and property values of local residents. Living on Pleasant Valley Drive Next to Timberline, I frequently experience noise levels around 55 to 60 dB from heavy machinery and high-pitched saws operating at all hours of the night and in open enclosures. While I have no personal quarrel with my neighbors, the current ordinance allows for industrial activities to occur 24-7 without any mitigation such as noise barriers or fencing. This lack of regulation makes Kendall County target for destructive industries like data centers or heavy machinery shops that can overnight diminish property values, arm livestock, and cause significant health issues for residents. I urge you to consider good neighbor ordinances that require companies operating at night or on weekends to implicate noise mitigation strategies such as eight-foot sound barriers, or that stationary heavy machinery operating at night be enclosed. Our community members invest significantly in this county through taxes and long-term residency. We deserve protections that ensure our homes remain peaceful places to live. I'm calling on our local leadership to find creative solutions to help solve issues before the situation worsens. with further population growth and industrial expansion. I would also like to ask the Commissioner of the Court to stay abreast of the situation in San Marcos, where I think they became the first city to not allow data centers in there, to ban data centers due to the health concerns. I would ask that the court at least stay abreast of that, maybe read the minutes, maybe take a look at why they rejected them,

keep that in mind as we go further along that's really all I have to say thank you for your time thank you thank you judge I'm just going to offer a comment in response because it's a legal fact that the counties do not have authority to regulate noise so you might want to address your comments to your state representatives because if the legislature decides to change that maybe someday we would have the authority to regulate noise just as a right just to let you know we

Our hands are kind of tied. That's the state's. That's the state, and that's close to the subway station.

Yeah, and that's the state's minimum. That's all we can enforce. But just please do pass your comments on to your state representative and senator.

I will. I will. Thank you. Thank you.

And there were several other public comments. I'm going to put you all at that specific agenda item. Does that work with you all? That submitted them? Okay. Next up, planning and budget. Consideration possible action for Kendall County to continue paying the full cost of health insurance premiums for eligible county plan year beginning on October 1, 2026 and ending on September 30, 2027 with the health insurance premiums consisting of medical, dental, vision, and life insurance premiums for coverage provided through TAC, Employee Benefits Pool. Corinna? I know I may have, there may be questions for you, so that's why I'm like, would you mind coming up? And then do we have HR here?

No. Okay. I know that Juanita is here. Is she online?

Juanita, are you online?

She is.

Okay, Juanita. How about this? Melissa, would you call Juanita? We're going to skip 14 and 15 for a minute and circle back. Can we move to your item? Jen, discussion of the Texas Open Meetings Act, including possible note. Oh, no, no, no apologies needed. You're critical to this one, so that's why I didn't feel like winging it.

I am so sorry. You're good.

All right, so back to agenda item 14 about the insurance premiums. Can you remind the Corps and the community what we are currently paying, what happened with the insurance companies to increase the premiums, and what... what the plan is moving forward?

Currently, we have two plans, the HMO, the permedical HMO and PPO. Kendall County has provided its employees the option of an HMO and PPO. I think it was FY2024. It's been good for a lot of families to select the HMO. And besides the medical, the county has paid the dental, vision, and life insurance. And life insurance benefit is based on salary.

And that's for the employee only?

For the employee only. We're talking only employee. Currently, the monthly rate for the PPO is $776.56. It's received a 9% increase. Texas Association of Counties held employee benefit pool in else is that their average is 9.9. They tell us in the market it's anywhere between 12, 14 percent increase.

And originally they projected, they gave us the heads up, we were going to look at a 12 to 15 percent increase, but it came in significantly lower.

And then the HMO currently is 674.10. It's going up to the $734.77. The dental had a 4.8% increase. Of course, that is a lot lower. So 3306 is the current $34.65 is a new one. Division had no change, and the rate for the calculation of life insurance had no change. We currently have 284 employees in the PPO plan and 24 in the HMO plan. So it is about a $21,302 a month increase based on these numbers, the last invoice that Monty and I were working on. That's not across the board every employee. I kind of returned to her for her estimate of... the whole picture of the benefit. And Clint told me that right now we have a $3.5 million for group health for employees.

So, yes, Clint and I did do a very quick calculation this morning. And I can't tell you how much we're going to spend, but I can tell you what you have budgeted today in FY26. Currently budgeted, you have $3,521,244. $2,521,244 for group insurance. And that line item in the budget encompasses health, dental, and vision. And that's not just general fund. That's all funds. So some of this is grant paid. Some of these are special and dedicated funds, which are not tax dollars. But that is that GL. Okay. Based on a 9% on what you have budgeted, you would need about $317,000 additional dollars for that. And currently, there's $526,578 budgeted to... in the line item that's for employee insurance benefit, and that is what assists employees paying dependent coverage. And if you make no changes today, just budget to budget, you would need additional $47,000 based on that, based on the increase. So if you make no no changes to what the county is doing today, paying 100% of employee insurance and covering the same percentage of dependents, it would be around $360,000 increase to your overall budget, not just general fund. I didn't have time to calculate just general fund. But just to give you an idea, the bulk of that would be in general fund. I can tell you that.

And so when it comes to the Health Vision Dental program, We cover it fully for the employee, just to make sure I'm understanding. But when it comes to family members, we pay a portion. Is that correct for all three? Dental, vision, or is it just the health? Just the medical. Okay. So employees are responsible fully for their family members for dental, vision, but when it comes to health, what percentage are we paying?

Well, it's not. It's not really a percentage. We started as a.

It's just a figure we pay.

It is a figure. So last year, I believe, and Juanita probably has this. I don't have these documents, but just based on memory, I believe last year the court picked up the increase. Correct. The court didn't pick up the increase. So this is not correct. But if it was $5 a month for your children, the court picked that $5 up. And in some years, the court has fluctuated. picking up the increase, keeping it the same, which then the employees pay a bigger percentage. It's just based on funds availability and what the court chooses to do at the time. But currently, you pay a set amount towards if you have spouse coverage. The county pays a set amount for children coverage and then a different amount for the family coverage because those are three different rates based on the insurance premiums that Juanita has.

Before I open it for discussion, I'm going to make a motion. I move to continue paying the full cost of health insurance premiums for eligible county employees for the plan year beginning October 1, 2026 and ending September 30, 2027. With the health insurance premiums consisting of medical, dental, vision, and life insurance premiums for coverage provided through TAC employee benefits pool. Do I have a second? Second. Motion by the judge. Seconded by Commissioner Weijand. Now I'll open it up for comments from my colleagues. You ladies, anything from you?

Juanita, can you tell us again why this item is coming to us before the budget process and our revenue forecast? Why we're having it now?

Texas Association has a deadline of June 26 and they're not all that different than previous of vendors that we've had in the past. Sometimes it has put the court and our benefit coordinator years back in a real pickle trying to meet that because of the budget timing and the vendor that we had at the time. In fact, sometimes Judge Lux had to call a special court because we're trying to get all those numbers. And then have an idea of what the court could do for the employees based on the little bit of information they had before they got to the budget dollars and figures.

And to piggyback off her comment, in the budget that I'm proposing to y'all tomorrow, I've built in this, and I know that we can cover daily operations for the county. without using reserve funds, even if this is included. So this would not require us to dig in the reserve balance just to cover this kind of financial debt.

So I just wanted to finish and say that I think that we have a choice to make. We can pay the increased cost of benefits for our current employees, but I think that will affect the number of new hires and their salary and the cost of benefits going forward as we go into budget.

To kind of follow up to her question and why we're doing this now, don't we pay everything a month ahead of time, too?

Yes. So the reason that we renew in August, like in June, what's coming out of paychecks is to pay for July premiums because in insurance you have to pay ahead to be covered. So all the renewals that Juanita's office does with whatever insurance carrier Kendall County has happens in August because in September we are paying for October. And I can't really – I can't really say too much about the budget because that's not this item, but the entire budget is really before revenue forecasting. That's why you have to adopt a budget before you adopt a tax rate state law. So I know it doesn't make sense, but that's why sometimes these timelines don't make sense. And it is easier if we start budget earlier, but you still don't have good numbers. So it's just this is the timing of insurance always.

Could you explain a little bit more about what you said that traditionally the court has sometimes paid it, sometimes not, sometimes increased or increased. There was any methodology to that?

On the employee side, they always paid it.

No, no, on the family. There's never really been a true methodology on what they did in one year. They just decided to pay a, I think it's when insurance really increased, it jumped a lot one year. And so the court decided to they set an actual dollar amount. And I don't know what that dollar amount is or actually when that year was. It's been a long, a long time ago. they said we're going to pay, you know, $5, $10, $15 or something. I don't know what it was. Yes, ma'am. And then they just kind of moved forward. And if it increased 2% one year, they said, well, we can cover that 2%. So they increased that amount. But if it went up 10%, some years they said, well, we're only going to cover this much. And then the employees had to pay more. And so there's never really been an exact percentage of Because it is a lot more expensive to cover your family and your spouse than it is your children. That's just the nature of insurance. And I will say one of the things that the court did when you went into the pool, the health benefit pool, is that we're in a pool with every other entity that's in that pool. And that is, I think, while your premiums are driven by your insurance, your health of your employees, the cost gets spread out amongst the pool. When you have traditional insurance, it doesn't. It is based on just your facts and you're paying to cover you. Our cost is spread out on the pool. And I think that's why when they first projected the total increase, they thought we would be a lot higher. And it came back that, you know, maybe some of our big ticket claims, Juanita could speak to this. I see total dollars. I don't know individual anything. But some of those big ticket items are, We're coming off, which then helped our premium come in at a nine when I fully expected it to be at least a double digit for sure. So 9% is still nothing to sneeze at. It's still a 9% increase, certainly. And so that's why the court has to decide what you want to do. But there's never really been a set percentage or any consistency in how the court decided to do that. It's been based on just total dollar figures each year.

Thank you. And then one final question. We had talked a little bit about it yesterday, Juanita, and whenever you can get it. I just kind of like to see trend, you know, over the past five years and, you know, how much it's increased. And then maybe we can do some projections with inflation right now and everything just so crazy. I don't know how we can project, but needless to say, I think everything's going to continue to go up.

Yes.

Thank you. That's all I had. Thank you. Norman, anything from you?

How often would it be a good idea for us to do some competitive bids? Because the private sector, pretty much every couple of years, you're smart to change carriers or at least have it bid out again so that you can start over from a lower number.

I think there always can be an advantage. to doing that. One year, Kendall County did it one year, and we switched insurances to save $70,000. And the next year, it increased that carry because they didn't have any history. So it can backfire sometimes. But I think the bidding process and things have changed so much in the state and the threshold and just requirements of how you have to do things. I think things are a lot better. And You know, TAC wanted us to join the health pool for a long time and this county didn't. And we actually went to that in fiscal year 2024 was the first time that we had this coverage and they didn't have any history. So really right now they only have two years of history on us because we left who we had for a long time. So I think there can be an advantage, especially now that you've had this company. You would be going into your third year with this company. Is that correct, Juanita? Correct. Third year. They would have good data history and sometimes just going out for a, you know, a proposal or a bid helps any vendor re-look at what they're offering and the cost associated with that. Yeah. probably be a good idea maybe to put that in your budget or request that for next year.

One thing that TAC talked about, they are aware of the increasing prices. And so then internally, they are going out for bids of people other than Blue Cross Blue Shield to do exactly what you're saying to make sure we're getting the best. And then for us as an individual county, there are some concerns because we do have a couple of high claims that have skewered our data. And so going out may, again, backfire, I don't know, but it's just, that's a little more background information that 9% was lower than the average of how many counties are dealing with tax. So that's a positive that we're trending in the right direction. And so But that's a question for next year.

I still think it's a good idea to look at it, certainly. I think it would be smart.

And encouraging is that their medical board, their insurance board, consists of elected officials.

You can also mess with deductibles, too, and raise those numbers, which significantly drops the premium.

I don't want to speak for Sharon, but we've talked a bit about this during our procurement policy discussions. And I personally would recommend that you look at doing a solicitation at least every five years, just to remind vendors that we're always looking for getting the best deal for the taxpayers and for the employees as well, of course.

And you spoke about this, Judge. Yes, we actually have Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance because that is who TAC uses. If TAC were to change, and they said it would be a multi-year thing because it takes them a long time to do that. whoever's in the pool would change to whatever insurance that they have done their bidding because they are required to also to do that because like she said their board is made up of you know elected officials or county auditors at TAC that's the only people that can be on board and so they are looking at that too because they're on the board they're in the pool they're paying the premiums and they know the challenges of the county government so all right with that Arisa

The next item is the dependent.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Motion carries 5-0. Next up, consideration of possible acts for Kendall County to continue contributing a portion of the premiums for medical health insurance for dependent medical coverage for the Texas Association of Counties Health Employee Benefits Pool plan for October 1, 2026 through September 30th.

I'll just go ahead.

Thank you. Because they're very busy, but the bottom, the last column will show you what the employee pays and what the employee will pay if we increase it. Or if we don't increase the contribution. And I believe it was like... Could you just give us a quick synopsis? Like, for instance, if an employee has... spouse coverage, they're currently paying $306.99. If with the increased cost, they would then pay $352.78, and this is twice a month. So we're looking at $40.

You're in the last column.

So she's on the very top. If you see If you see on line four where it says ES, that means employee and spouse. So if you go all the way across to where it says per pay period employee portion, currently if someone just has their spouse covered, the employee is paying $306.99. If the court chooses to just continue the $306.99 and not pay the increase, the employee then pays $352.78. Okay. which is about a $46 increase per pay period. The contribution is $403.32.

It's tab F. That's the employer portion county benefit. To help with the spouse premium.

And again, total budgeted for all funds for the employee benefit towards dependents is $526,578. That's all funds currently in FY26. And it would be approximately a $47,000. thousand dollar increase that was just based on rough math that's going to change because we don't know until august who is going to take which insurance and if they're going to add dependents take dependents off take spouses off add spouses add their whole family take their family off so you don't really know until i don't really know till september what we're going to need for October through August next year in the budget, technically, because people have to sign up for insurance. And that's just how it is every year. So we have to kind of budget the max that I think. So if y'all add new employees in any fiscal year, we just add the max that they could take. They may come in and already have insurance. They may be retired somewhere else and not need it. But I've still budgeted it. So that way, that's why that $3.5 million that we have budgeted may be slightly overstated, but It's really hard to come up with, you know, about $10,000 a year per employees if we're not adding that in because we don't know. And people leave and then come in and the insurance changes.

And some drop dependent coverage below the year. Children turn 26 or, you know, spouse gets insurance at their work. So they drop to, you know, maybe just children. It is a constant change. Every single month we are adding and changing. Or Monday is.

What was the amount?

You said $40,000? About $47,000. Just based on what you have budgeted.

Do we have any idea how many people this affects as far as how many people are employee-only coverage and how many people are employee plus any member of the family?

No color sheets have them. We have employee-only 192 under the EPO, 11 spouse, children, 55, and family, 26. Under the HMO, we only have one employee that takes HMO. One employee that takes HMO spouse, 17 children, and five family.

So if you look at the very bottom, I'm just seeing this, but this right here at the bottom, These two columns. This is the HMO increase. I'm sorry, the PPO increase per month. This is the HMO increase per month. Whether the county picks it up or the employee picks it up, that would be up to you guys.

Before we have any further discussion, I'll move to continue contributing a portion of premiums for medical health insurance costs for dependent medical coverage from TAC employee benefit pool plan for October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2027. Do I have a second? Second. Motion by the judge. Seconded by Commissioner Weijian. Now I'll open it up to any additional discussion.

Would the contribution include the increase or remain the same?

You didn't say that in your motion. You just said to continue coverage.

Continuing coverage as... What if I want us to continue to pick it up? What's the language? To include the increase. I amend my motion to include the increase. So do you second? So amended by the judge, seconded by Commissioner Weishut. Now, any additional questions or discussions?

You asked for how many employees would be impacted by this. Just my rough math is 120 employees have some form of dependent coverage that would be impacted by an increase.

There's no additional questions. Teresa, please call the vote.

I did want to say, I'm sorry, that we were going to go down. I just wanted to say again, even for this agenda item, I think we have a choice. If we're going to pick up the cost, then I do think it will affect the number of new hires because we are covering more benefits.

So just a comment. County government is in the service industry, and in order to serve the public, we have to have people. And I think our people are a very important resource, especially to keep good people and not have turnover. So I think that's something that, I mean, I would rather take care of who's here than looking at a bunch of new hires this year, so.

Anything else?

All right. Please call the vote.

Aye.

Aye.

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

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Appreciate you. Thank you.

I think TAC can provide that, too, because TAC is the one who does the projections. We're going to have a discussion on the Texas Open Meetings Act, including possible notification procedures to be used when members of the court attend conferences, seminars, training events, or other public gatherings to ensure compliance with TOMA. General Counsel Jen, the floor is yours.

Could I tee it up since it was my item? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see you on there. No, no problem. And Jen's obviously been very important in this. So as the public knows, Commissioner's Court attends workshops and conferences where we receive information. We get to ask questions about statute, best practices, innovations, and so forth. And to my mind, I've had a question about how all of us go to a conference or a workshop. And we're all very busy and getting together and trying to plan who's going to a conference and who's not going to conferences that make any sense. And we all need to have access to this very valuable information that is available to us. So I've been talking to general counsel about how we could post the meeting. And I just had a kind of a simple idea, maybe have a point person, maybe it was Jen's idea, who can be told when we're going to go to a conference. And I've even talked to Sonia, who's actually under the court, and she's looking for more things to do. So, you know, Sonia, I'm going to Waco in October to the judges and commissioners conference. And When she gets three people that have said they're going, she can get with general counsel and we can post. But that was just one idea and it looks like you've got a whole primer for us.

Well, sort of. This is a brief overview of TOMA just to make sure that members of the public are familiar with the basic definitions and purposes of the act so we can have a meaningful discussion about what you were talking about, which is making sure that we post a notice of quorum when we have a reasonable belief that we will have a quorum present at a certain type of meeting. At the very end of this, I will list a whole bunch of things I didn't talk about. This is just a brief overview. Again, I don't want to keep you guys here longer than necessary. So first of all, what is the Texas Open Meeting Act? I did give a presentation file to IT this morning, and I'm hoping you can pull it up for us so the people at home and in the room can see it.

Yes, it was.

But in the meantime, the purpose behind the act is to make general Pardon me. The general purpose is to make governmental decision-making accessible to the public. It's important for the public to know what the government's doing. I think we can all agree on that. It does require meetings of governmental bodies to be open to the public unless there is an expressly authorized exception to that requirement. And it does require that public meetings be preceded by public notice of the date, time, location, and subject matter of that meeting. All of these provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act, which I will lazily refer to as TOMA, are mandatory, and they aren't subject to us just deciding not to follow it. They are mandatory, and we could be subject to penalties for not meeting the requirements of the Act. TOMA was first introduced in 1967, and since then, it's been revised many, many times. I would venture to guess probably every session of the state legislature, we get some kind of a revision in the TOMA. It applies to all governmental bodies when they engage in regular, special, or called meetings. TOMA and the Public Information Act go hand in hand, so I do want to mention that briefly here. I would consider them sister statutes, and this presentation today will not talk about the Public Information Act except for this very short comment I'm making. PIA, the Public Information Act, is the state of Texas' version of the Freedom of Information Act. That's the federal statute that most people are aware of. And oftentimes citizens will refer to the state act as FOIA, but it in fact is very different. FOIA applies to federal agencies and the state act applies to state of Texas entities. And the PIA does deserve a presentation of its own. So someday when we have a short agenda, unlike this one, I'd be happy to give a brief overview of that act as well. So what does TOMA apply to? It applies to all governmental bodies. And you might ask, what is a governmental body? Plainly put, it's school boards, city councils, county commissioners, courts, and other entities that are required by law to comply with TOMA, like an economic development corporation. It can also apply, oddly, to private property owners associations sometimes. If they're in a county with a population of over 2.8 million or in a county adjacent to a county with that type of high population. Next, I'm going to talk about deliberation, pardon me, key definitions. Deliberation is a big one. What is a deliberation? It's a verbal or written exchange between a quorum of governmental body or between a quorum of a governmental body and another person. concerning an issue within the jurisdiction of the governmental body. So there are a lot of definitions. We're only going to go over a few key ones. Deliberation is important. And for purposes of talking about TOMA, deliberation and discussion are synonymous. So if you hear me say discussion, just know that also means deliberation. What is a quorum? It is a majority of the governing body. Here with our governing body, it's a number of three. Any three members of this court and you have a quorum. What is a meeting? That's an even better question to ask because under the statute, under TOMA, there's more than one definition. Under 551.001.4a, it is a deliberation. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I might have to because that's actually very small. So one, between a quorum of a governmental body or between a quorum and another person or Pardon me. And during which public business or public policy over which the governmental body has supervision or control is either discussed or considered, or during which the governmental body takes formal formal action. I'm going too fast because I'm trying not to keep you here. I can see Commissioner Chapman. I always hear him in my head. Don't make this an 18-page document.

So I'm trying to hurry. So I'm sorry. I'm speaking quickly. So General Counsel, we get paid to be here, so we'll sit through anything.

Just know that the quorum is a key part of what a meeting is. You can't have a public meeting without a quorum being present. In fact, even if you posted a notice and you declare you're going to have a meeting, If at least three don't show up, you don't get to have a meeting. So that's an important key to note is the quorum is required for there to be a meeting. And you also have to be talking about public business or public policy over which the governmental body has supervision or control. So just talking about the city you live in is not enough necessarily to mean that you're having a public meeting that involves public business or public policy. The second definition in 551.0014 is in Section B, and it's a gathering, which is slightly different than just the requirement of a deliberation. This is a gathering that's conducted by the governmental entity or an entity for which it's responsible. Sometimes an advisory commission is a good example of that. And this is a gathering where a quorum of the body is present. It's been called by the governmental body, and the members receive information from, give information to, ask questions of, or receive questions from any third person, including an employee of the body, about the public business or public policy over which the governmental body has supervision and control. My favorite part of all is what isn't a meeting. Because I just gave you some fun definitions of what is a meeting. So what isn't a meeting? It does not include the gathering of a quorum at a social function unrelated to public business that is conducted by the body, An unfortunate example I've often used is a funeral. Even if there is a social event like a funeral and we had all members of the court there, that does not mean there's a violation of the law necessarily. That is not someplace you would normally conduct county business. It also isn't the attendance of a quorum at a regional, state, national convention or workshop, ceremonial event, press conference, or the attendance of a quorum at a candidate forum, appearance, or debate to inform the electorate, as long as no formal action is taken and any discussion of public business is purely incidental to the social function, convention, workshop, ceremonial event, press conference, forum, appearance, or debate. So when we have those meetings, I'll use AMPO as an example. That's a meeting that our commissioners often participate in, and normally we have two members of the court go. Public business is the core purpose of AMPO. So I would say that more than likely, depending on the specific facts, we would consider that not a social event that public business is purely incidental because the purpose of that entity is to discuss public business. Whereas if you went to a PAC training event for commissioners and judges, we would consider that to be probably not a meeting under most circumstances. I told the sheriff earlier today that my favorite answer is a lawyer, and all of us can probably agree, every lawyer in the room. It depends is our favorite answer. And so when people ask me a hypothetical question about whether a certain event or set of facts means a meeting took place, my favorite answer is it depends. Because if any of the facts change even slightly from what you tell me as part of your hypothetical, the answer could be completely different. Very, very fact-specific inquiry. I want to remind everyone that a meeting is a deliberation among a quorum. We talked about that. That doesn't require a gathering. That definition does not. It could mean that the words don't have to be spoken out loud and members do not have to actually be in the physical presence of one another for there to be a deliberation. So that brings us to the scariest part of the Toma for most public officials, and that's the walking quorum. I'm pretty sure everybody in this room has heard that phrase before. I can see some nods. I wish kind of that we would call it a walking meeting because the quorum itself isn't the problem. It's what the quorum is discussing and how it's being discussed that creates the meeting that creates the problem. Sometimes it's referred to as a daisy chain. It's section 551.143 of TOMA, and it prohibits the discussion about an item of public business among a quorum of members through a series of communications. This can include email, it can include text messages, telephone calls, handwritten notes, in-person discussions, and any of the above, a combination thereof. There are penalties for having a walking quorum, and there are very specific requirements in order for there to be a criminal penalty. I'm not going to go through all of them. I'm going to tell you that the most important thing to know is that a member of a governmental body to be held criminally responsible for a violation related to walking quorum must have engaged in the activity knowingly so an accidental violation should not subject someone to criminal prosecution so that knowingly element is important what i do try to do every day is make sure that everybody has the information to make the most cautious decision on how to proceed and serve their community and their constituents without putting themselves in a greater risk of having an inadvertent violation because even if an inadvertent violation doesn't subject you to criminal penalties We all know that the appearance of impropriety alone is dangerous to public trust. So our goal is to always act with transparency and in accordance with the law. The public meeting notice requirements recently were revised just in the last few years. And this is one that's messed up a lot of us. It used to be 72 hours that notice had to be posted prior to meeting. Now it's three full business days. And that's a big distinction. It might not seem like it at first glance, but it is. We're posting our agendas a day earlier than we used to because of this change in the statute. I think a lot of other entities are doing the same. When is three days not required? Well, when you have an emergency, you don't have to have three days notice. But the statute is pretty clear about what an emergency is, and it's very limited. It's when there's an imminent threat to public health and safety, or there's a reasonably unforeseeable situation, which essentially is defined as an act of God. Think of a hurricane, a tornado, a flood. an epidemic or maybe even riot or other public disturbance. I'm almost finished, I swear. This next little section is about closed portions of a meeting. Again, the general rule under open meetings is that the public be made part of what our government is doing and that all of our meetings be accessible and the public get notice ahead of time of what we're going to talk about, where we're going to be, et cetera. The exception to that is that governments is allowed to go into a closed session when specific requirements are met. The statute has defined what those exceptions are, and it's usually up to somebody in my role or the role of whoever's preparing the agenda to try to determine whether we meet one of those exceptions. To enter into a closed session, the governmental body must have a quorum present. Again, we can't have a meeting without a quorum. Must be properly convened in an open meeting. Announce that a closed session will be held. Identify which statutory exceptions allow for the body to discuss that particular topic in a closed session and keep a certified agenda that contains a statement of the subject of each topic of deliberation and a record of any further action taken. The certified agenda is generally confidential but can at times be ordered to be released. Common topics for closed session, you see them on our agenda pretty frequently, consultation with an attorney under 551.071, real property deliberation under 551.072, personnel matters under 551.074, and recently security devices or audits under 551.0761. What I didn't talk about today, there's a big list because the TOMA is actually pretty thorough and extensive. I didn't talk about what the contents of an agenda must be, how we must keep records associated with our public meetings, the restrictions that courts may place on public comment and rules of procedure for operating meetings, penalties for other violations of the law. And then I haven't also gone over the case law and attorney general's opinions that help guide us on how we should be interpreting the rules under the statutes. So that was very quick. In my estimation, you may not agree. But I'm happy to answer any questions you might have or if you want to talk about what we were discussing, which is a possible procedure for court members to kind of keep track of how many people will be attending an event so we can give the public a notice of a potential quorum, even when we don't intend that public business will be conducted. So questions or if you want to talk about a possible procedure.

So I have a question because yesterday we did have a workshop at AMPO before we had our regular transportation event. policy board meeting and the judge is appointed to that board and I'm the alternate, I went to the workshop. So that was a workshop. Would that be open to anyone coming? Because what is in a meeting, attendance by a quorum of a governmental body at a regional state or national convention or workshop?

Well, that's a workshop of a particular governmental entity that exists to conduct and discuss public business. So to me, that's different than what the exception under the act is regarding a workshop. I would say if you're attending a workshop regarding planning, you're deciding how you're going to plan for the future and development in a county, for example, and it's just a general workshop that anyone can go to on planning. To me, that would not. be something we would worry about. But because that's a workshop at AMPO, I would think that we would want to follow the most cautious rules, and that's to have two attend and not more than two. Because to me, it's likely that public business would be discussed and perhaps deliberated, even specific to Kendall County.

What about zooming in because all of those meetings are virtual as well?

It's the same thing. The problem with TOMA, I talked about the knowingly requirement to be criminally responsible. But the violation occurs when it occurs. So even if commissioners know that three of them are going to attend and we all agree that it looks like it's a social event or where public business would be purely incidental, that can change in a moment. If one member of the court is present and has a microphone and all of a sudden it turns into something that could be construed as conducting public business of Kendall County with three people present, then you have a problem. The biggest issue though, is you don't know you have a problem until you have a problem. And that's why I talk to you guys a lot about being cautious. So if it looks like something that's purely social, for example, the funeral example, which I hate to use, but it's the best one I can explain where five of you might be there at any given time. And there's no intent on anyone's part that we talk about County business at all. But then you have the other events like the state of the city. That's a good example. When you go to the state of the city, maybe all five of you would want to attend. And all five of you know you're not going to take the microphone and say, well, in Kendall County, we decided to do this because of this. Hey, Commissioner, do you want to tell them why you decided that would be a problem? So as long as the commissioners know the rules and follow the rules, then we don't have an issue. Just don't. If you're in that situation where we posted a notice of quorum, just be on the lookout for anything that might open the door to creating a potential problem of discussing and conducting county business for Kendall County. That's my best advice.

And so that's why we post for our fire chief quarterly meetings because we all go and it's county business.

Anybody, do you want to talk about a procedure or Commissioner Chapman?

I have a question. So you mentioned AMPO, which you have Commissioner Wieschen and the judge on the EDC, which Commissioner Carpenter and myself are on, and then the salary committee, which the judge and Commissioner McCuller, upon. So in the event one of them cannot attend the meeting, can you substitute another commissioner or judge?

Boy, that's an it depends answer. I'm going to say, assuming only what you gave me is facts are facts and there are no other extraneous circumstances at all, I'm going to say each one of those entities solely exists to conduct public business, and some of that public business is specific to Kendall County. And what would be the problem of having alternate step in? We'll use AMPO again, because that's the one on the top of my mind. Let's say that Commissioner Wieschen attended, but Judge Stavarsik wasn't able to, and he asked Commissioner Chapman to attend in his absence. Well, who's going to fill him in? Somebody's going to have to tell him what happened in his absence, and then you probably have what I'm going to call now a walking meeting because three of you have discussed that conducting of a county business that occurred at that meeting for which we only have two people going to avoid a problem. So I think having an alternate attend on your behalf when there's one person in one alternate is the safest course of action, which is how we have it set up for that particular entity is one plus an alternate. Generally, if they if If the commissioner or the county judge wanted somebody to go in their place, it should be a member of staff and not another member of court to prevent there being an issue. That's an option. Did that answer your question?

Yes, ma'am. Does anyone else have any questions for general counsel?

I think it's really important just to remind everyone, if you see three commissioners standing together, that doesn't mean there's a violation of the law. And I think members of the public were ever vigilant to try to make sure people are doing what they're supposed to do and That's exactly what we're supposed to do as the public, is keep the government in line and make them follow their own rules. So just know, though, that having three people together alone does not mean that a violation has occurred. Even if you see three members of court talking to each other, that doesn't mean a violation has occurred. They could be talking about the football game last night. So as a member of the public, before you assume that there's been a violation, You kind of need to ask some more questions about what the situation was and try to determine whether there's a problem. If a member of the public thinks there is a violation, those are items of interest to the district attorney's office. In most counties, that's where you would go with any questions or concerns you have about meeting violations. But generally, I think this commissioner's court has shown pretty good practices when it comes to making sure only two people are attending meetings or three if it's a social function. we would post that quorum. So we've been doing pretty well with posting quorums, and I'm sure we'll continue to do so. We did talk about having Sonia keep a calendar, where if one of you decides you're going to attend, for example, a TAC training, the annual conference, that you would call and give her the dates and let her know you'll be present. And then if two more commissioners do that, or a judge and a commissioner, then she would say, okay, well, there's three or more that are planning to attend, so we need to make sure we post a notice of quorum that we don't intend a meeting will take place, but that a quorum might be present.

And that's what the other counties, as we go to these conferences and I talk to other commissioners, they do that and it just seems simple and then there's no question. So that's why I brought that up. One other thing that I want the public to understand is that when I get a call from somebody and say, well, I want to talk to you about a new tax or something or hotel tax or whatever, just using that, and I ask, well, who have you talked to on the court? Well, I've talked to Commissioner X and Y. It's like, then I'm not going to talk to you. And people get upset about that. But the fact of the matter is they may carry what I say to those other two commissioners. And then that's kind of a vector that's carrying information among the court. And I would consider that. That's a daisy chain.

It can be the walking quorum, walking meeting, daisy chain problem can involve Someone who's not a member of the court. It could be one member of the public coming to each of you and not saying up front that they've spoken with two or more people already. And during the course of the conversation, say, oh, well, you know, I talked to Commissioner Carpenter, Commissioner Chapman, and they said X, Y, Z. Well, all of a sudden, we have a big old problem. The good news is it's not a criminal violation because the person talking to the member of the public had no way to know that that type of communication was going to take place. But again, the most cautious course of action is what Commissioner Blesian just described, which is asking the member of the public at the very beginning, who have you spoken with already? And the public needs to be aware that if they want to talk to you, any member of the public wants to address an issue with the court, the way to do that is to come during public comment or to request of your commissioner or the county judge to see if an item can be placed on the agenda to come and discuss it publicly in the open or in closed session if it's appropriate. But that's the only way that we're allowed to talk to all members of the court about the same topic is at a publicly held meeting that's been properly noticed.

Not to be a devil's advocate, but I find that to be denying our citizens the ability to communicate with court members effectively. I think, like Kernkoski, they're going to be asking for funding coming up, just like every other nonprofit. They should be able to talk to each one of us without disclosing their conversation with the previous court member as the right that they have under their taxpayer rights to address each of the court members.

There's a way for them to provide information to all of you without inviting a potential violation of the act. And that is for any of those entities to provide information one direction. And that's to email all the information to each of you on individually or as blind carbon copied each other and just offer, here's the information I'm hoping to discuss with you at the public meeting where I will be presenting. But there can't be a back and forth discourse between the members of the court and that person until the public meeting. So you can at least give that information one direction to the court prior to the public meeting but just know there can't be a question and answer period going back and forth with each of them. Two of them could do that, but how are they going to know who the two are that have already done that? So just keep that in mind. We don't want to, and I know Commissioner Carpenter, I don't disagree with you, but it's what the legislature says. It's not what I say. Yeah. So I wish the legislature could look at the rules. Texas open meeting rules are pretty strict and more strict than other states that I'm personally aware of. but that is up to the legislature to make changes, and anybody who wants to see changes should be speaking with their state representative and state senator.

What I'm comfortable with my precinct and people that want to come and approach me is come to me with any questions you have. It doesn't matter what it is. You don't need to share with me what you discuss with other commissioners or other members of the court. Because that would be where I could get myself into a walking quorum or you could get me into a walking quorum. But I believe you have a right to petition the court members of anything that you're wanting to get through this court as long as you carefully handle on your end. And so I think we're taking this to a degree that we've never taken it before in Kendall County right now.

I'm giving you advice on how to move forward cautiously. Ultimately, all I do is provide advice, and it's up to each member of the court to determine how to conduct business that you feel you're taking on a reasonable amount of risk in your opinion. So I would just caution and say that if members of the public, it's just like if the commissioners know the rules and don't raise their hand in one of those meetings that we were talking about, it's just like we're trusting the public to know what the limitations are. So if I'm going to come talk to Commissioner Carpenter, I better not during the course of that conversation say what the rest of them told me. because then I've created a problem for everybody. So as long as members of the public know what the rules are too, then perhaps that is something that isn't overly risky. But that's not something I can decide for you guys. I just give cautious advice, and how you proceed is up to each of you.

Any other questions?

Do you want to start doing the procedure where you're letting Sonia know?

So I actually have a motion. Move to establish a notification procedure when members of the Commissioner's Court plan to attend conferences, seminars, training events, or other public gatherings to ensure compliance with TOMA by notifying Sonia Cordero of the plans for said gatherings so that General Counsel can post appropriate notice.

Second.

So a motion be by Commissioner Weijan, second by McCall. General Counsel, are you satisfied that the possible notification procedures language is sufficient to be an action item?

I think that... We could say possible notification procedures, but we're still going to have to bring the proposed procedure to the court. So if you want to move forward just saying that the direction is to bring that procedure to you, I would hope to have that to you next court.

So would that need to actually be based on motion, or can we just give you general advice to move forward?

General advice is fine, and we can bring the procedure to you next court. And Commissioner Wieschen and I, I'm sure, will be able to get something together for you pretty quickly.

So I withdraw my motion.

All right. So could you give Commissioner... or General Counsel, your request, exactly what you want? Yes, sir. Are you going to mention it now, or would it? Oh, you're going to work offline. Okay. Fair enough. All right. So we're going to move to a public hearing that was scheduled at 10 out of convenience for Mr. Busby. I'd like to hold the hearing and then move right into the vote to get you out of here. Okay. So it is officially. Yes, sir. 1102 AM on this Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026. And we're commencing with a public hearing for the purpose of determining whether The Kendall County Commissioner's Court should accept, alter, amend, or reject the Proposition 8 Committee's recommendation for the county to purchase a conservation easement on the following property. 123 Cravey Road, Bernie, Texas 78006. It's 10 acres owned by Shirley and Dean Harmison. If approved, the county's purchase of the recommended conservation easement will use Proposition 8 funds. Mr. Busby, I'll start with you and then I'll open up to public comments.

Conservation easement was originally approved on March the 10th, 2026, when the court approved this easement for 24 acres and agreed to pay $1,000 per acre plus transaction costs not to exceed $75,000. The Harmesons have additionally purchased 10 acres which adjoins this 24 acres, and they're asking that it be included in that same conservation easement. They're asking for $1,000 per acre with no additional transaction costs. It should cover in the original amount. So that's the committee, Prop 8 committee approved that recommendation to you unanimously.

Before I open it up for questions from the court, Is there anyone in the public that would like to make a comment? This does not go against your public comments. If you have another item, is there any comments from the public? Anyone online? No. Okay. Court members, I'll open it up to Mr. Busby for questions for y'all. Ladies? Gentlemen? All right. It is officially 11.04 a.m. on this Tuesday, June 23, 2026, and we are concluding our public hearing. We are going to move, skip ahead to agenda item 23, consideration of possible action to determine whether the Kendall County Commission Court should accept, alter, amend, or reject the Proposition A Committee's recommendation for the county to purchase a conservation easement on 123 Cravey Road, Bernie, Texas, 78006, with the owner being Shirley and Dean Harmison at 10 acres. And for this agenda and further requests, the Expedition or expenditure of Proposition 8 funds to pay $1,000 per acre with no transaction costs. I move to accept the Proposition 8 Committee's recommendation for the county to purchase 123 Cravey Road, Bernie, Texas, 7806, owned by Shirley and Dean Harmison, with a total of 10 acres, and authorize the expenditure of Proposition 8 funds to pay $1,000 per acre with no transaction costs. Do I have a second?

Did you say purchase a conservation easement?

Yes, I did. And if I didn't, I include the language purchase a conservation easement to be safe. Motion made by the judge, seconded by Commissioner Carpenter. Any further discussion? If not, Teresa, please call the vote.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. We're going to move Thank you, Mr. Busby. Thank you. You're not on executive session today, so you're good to go. All right. We're going to have just consent agenda items right now. We have agenda items A through M, but due to a mistake, agenda item A is an actual standalone agenda item, so I'm going to pull that. We'll do consent agenda items A through L first. and then we will consider M separately. Oh, M. Okay.

I think you said A. Did I?

I'm sorry. We're going to pull M. We're going to pull M. Okay. M. And address A through L as consent agenda items. M will be discussed separately right after the consent agenda. Sorry for the confusion. Is all the court members familiar with agenda items A through L so I don't have to read them all? Yes, gentlemen. Okay. So at this time, I'll consider a consent agenda motion.

agenda items A through L. Judge, I move that we approve consent agenda items A through L. Okay.

Second. A motion be by Commissioner Carpenter, seconded by Commissioner Chapman to approve consent agenda items A through L. Any further discussion? If not, Teresa, please call the vote. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Now we will consider agenda item M, that is 18M, consideration of possible action to authorize the purchasing agent to release a request for proposals for consulting services to assess and enhance Kendall County's employee performance management systems, including job descriptions, employee evaluations, supervisor training, performance standards, workforce development, and related organizational effectiveness practices. This agenda item is... requested by Commissioner Carpenter McCall, so I'll turn it over to whoever's going to take point.

So this is an agenda item. As the county grows, I think it's important that we bring in some outside help to evaluate our processes. We just spent $1.6 million on Blanco Road and moved our development office over there along with... My office, Commissioner Newton's office, and several others. We purchased the Burdick building on Old San Antonio Road at the cost of 2. What was that? Burdick? 3.9. 3.9. It's a big number. And if you listen to our county employees, we're needing more space. And I feel like it is our responsibility to make sure that we have the right counsel for us. None of us are experts in this area. I know we're doing an assessment of space needs, but I also want to do an assessment of our overall county growth needs when it comes to adding employees, adding more expenses to our current taxpayers. And so...

Mr. McCall, do you have anything to add?

I think he covered it all.

Commissioner Chapman, you first. I'll go. I mean, first of all, I think this is the, I don't know, I still don't understand exactly what we're trying to prove here. But what I do understand is that we, as a court, oversee the engineer. We oversee the EMS. We oversee maintenance, fire marshal, health department, HR, indigent health, IT, parks, pretrial veterans, and then independently our Earlene, Sonia, and Christina. So 14 people that technically the court oversees. The court does not oversee the employee's under these 14 people. The court oversees these people here. We have say-so for these people right here. We do not have say-so for any elected officials with their departments, their employees. And so what are we going to spend money on when, and have we gone to the elected officials and have a buy-in for all of the elected officials to participate in this because we cannot tell them this is what you're going to do in your office. We can ask them, but if they say no, that ends the discussion. So what are we going to do for 14 people? I guess that's my question.

Well, Commissioner Chapman, Your job as a commissioner is also to oversee the overall spending of our entire County. Which our budget has grown. A lot over the past 3 years since I've been on the court we purchased a lot of buildings we do have oversight if a department head when's the last time you did an evaluation on the department head. An actual evaluation that was documented. done professionally, giving that department head an opportunity to show how important they are because they are important. We have no procedures and there never has been a procedure. We did start a procedure. We've never implemented anything.

We actually have because we spent money on a course to specifically have an instructor come in, teach us how to do performance evaluations. And we as a group delegated that task to Commissioner McCall to start the procedure, form a committee to start evaluating this, and it's gone nowhere. I think this request is putting the cart before the horse. How can we tell employees they're not being efficient, they're not doing their job when we don't have accurate job descriptions? And it looks like this request is handing that job of forming job reviews, performance evaluation frameworks to another company. This court consistently starts projects and never follows through until we follow through with what we hired an instructor to come and teach us, which not all members of this court attended. I think the only two that attended were Commissioner Chapman, Commissioner McCall, and I. And so we as a court have a duty to show up to work, find out what our employees do, and manage them. And none of that's been happening. And so before we go to delegate this to a third party, we need to look at this court in our own actions. So I'm not supportive of this consulting to our employees to tell them they're not doing their jobs when they've gotten no instruction from this court.

I'd like to follow up. You are correct in that we cannot start an evaluation process without proper job descriptions, which is what I went through with HR and had us bring in TAC to teach how to do job descriptions. And we are in the process of making sure that all the departments do actually have that because you can't do an evaluation without a proper job description. And it took us, first of all, the training that we went through for the performance reviews was we didn't pay for. We got that. Also, TAC came in and did the job description class. So we are in the process of trying to get those job descriptions together. And I do think that even though we have elected officials, those elected officials have county employees under them. So there is some discretion, I believe, to have the job descriptions and the evaluations take place at some point because they we're paying these employees and they should be, and I'm not saying they're not, but again, we need some type of a process. So part of what this request is, is to put a procedure in place because we don't have, we don't have a procedure with our departments in how to do this. So it's, we've been trying to get it together, but again, there's, there's really not a procedure to fall back on to enact this. So.

Commissioner Chabot first and then Commissioner Regent. I mean, just in plain English, what are we trying to accomplish here? I mean, do you want every department head to be able to do evaluations? Do you want all the elected officials to do evaluations? Do we want to exactly what are we trying to accomplish? Because to me, HR's job is to go out there. If the job descriptions are not up to date, then we need to facilitate with HR and go, we need to take one department a month or quarter or whatever and get these things updated. I mean, that doesn't take a committee. It doesn't take somebody from an outside that we're going to pay $100,000 or whatever to come in and do. These job descriptions are available at multiple locations. TAC has them. I mean, it's a matter of sitting down with a job description, somebody. And again, that's our job, in my opinion. One of us should take this then and work with HR, if that's what we need to get done, and work with HR to go through the job descriptions and get them updated. But why do we need to spend $100,000 or a half million dollars? I don't know. We don't know when that's our job.

So I just have some questions. Where are we in the process of sitting down with department heads to make sure their job description is what they're doing and vice versa, and then their employees under them? Weren't we in the process of doing that?

Once the job description training was done, it has not been followed up on by HR to my knowledge.

I recall the next step was for you to form a committee to start looking at all the evaluation or all the description for the whole county that this committee was going to take the lead. That's the way I understood this. If that's changed, I think the court needs to be advised that there's been a change.

Well, I mean, that is definitely what I'm proposing to do, especially during budget as we talk to different department heads, we can be addressing that. We still need those in place before we do anything going forward. I mean, that needs to be part of the process because the only person who knows what those employees do is the employee and the supervisor and or department head. So that definitely is a start right there that we need.

So I guess we're not forming a committee now?

No, we are. We are.

There's no reason to be upset about this. This is a deal where I've been talking to our general counsel about this. And in certain instances, not counties our size, they bring in someone that's considered a county administrator. I'm not proposing we bring in someone to tell everybody what to do. What I am proposed is. In the real world, people bring in a consultant to make sure that they're doing a great job and they're efficient in everything they're doing and that they have the right number of staff in each department. And what if we didn't need to buy the Burdick Center? What if we would have saved ourselves $3.9 million on that and maybe $2 more million on renovations or whatever it might be? What if we have streamlined computer systems to make things more efficient for our county and for our citizens to work with us as a county government? None of us here... have ever had that role of a county administrator or a city manager that sees the different departments and how everyone works and how they work together as a common good for the community.

Usually that's the form, the role of the county judge and the role of this court is to get to know your employees, spend the time you're getting to know every department. And if you do that, you'd be able to tell which departments are not efficient, which have upgraded their system.

So I think the failure is on our court. And also, increase in pay used to depend on proficiency and being able to prove how you're doing in your department. And now we have everyone on the same level where your certain time limit or time that you've been with the county equals the rate of pay that you get and automatically moves you up over time. And department heads can't even give people that are star employees the ability to be paid even more than what neighbor is that works right next to them that's been there for the same amount of time. So there's a lot of different reasons that I'd like to go out for proposals and explore this.

And I agree with that. There should be a form of merit pay, but the old merit pay, if you talk to all the employees that worked here, including some that have been here 40 years, the way it was done didn't work. That's why we moved to a scale. If we want to implement a merit-based system to actually reward Even the consultant that spoke to us said you can't do merit pay unless you do a performance evaluation system. So it all starts at the performance evaluation system. So I'm not saying an efficiency audit down the road is not a bad idea. It'd actually be a good idea. But we have to do it in a logical way. Start with creating a performance evaluation system and then move to the efficiency audits. But I think we're getting things out of order. So I'm not criticizing this as being a good tool. It's just premature based on the conversations we've had as a court and what we're supposed to be doing.

So who is advising on how to do the performance evaluation? I think that's the missing piece. And that's where she was going.

Commissioner McCall was forming committee. They were going to look at job descriptions and then a performance evaluation template because that. individual that came. So there's multiple templates out there that could be adapted for us. And so we don't need to reinvent the wheel. It's just getting a group together like the compensation committee. This is not the compensation committee's job, but a light group to focus just on performance reports and job descriptions. You do that, I think we're in the right direction, but it's going to take time. This is not going to happen overnight. Our committee has worked for three years now and has moved us into the direction the county has. I think it's going to be the same with this committee, but that's just my two cents.

So commissioner, you're looking for that professional piece to speed up the process since we don't seem to be getting it done. Do we have the leadership? Do we have the expertise that that would come with that person? They would help us implement. And so who, who threw out a hundred thousand, where did that come from? A hundred thousand dollars. Cause I'm not for spending a hundred thousand dollars on that.

I just don't see you getting much of anything for less than $100,000. Not when you call in a professional company of this magnitude to encompass the entire county. I don't think you'll get it done for $100,000.

And they're not going to do the work, everything that's asked here, job. They're not going to sit down with it and do job description. That's why we got to do it internally because our department heads, our elected officials know their people better than anyone and what their jobs are. You trust your boots on the ground. You trust them to help with the job descriptions. And then this committee takes that, works with them, and informs the performance evaluation that is standardized across the county. You standardize it. That way you can pay everyone the right merit pay equally because you're not comparing apples to oranges based on one department using one template, another one using another. It's all about standardization and procedures and policies. That's it.

So the action item is just to go out for the request for qualifications?

No, proposals.

Proposals.

Have you guys ever heard the phrase, you don't know what you don't know? Absolutely. We've all heard it. And I'm not, I normally wouldn't speak up, but I have to because this has been a topic that I've been talking to people about since I got here. And no disrespect to staff or the commissioners or any other elected officials, this county's grown tremendously over a short period. And there are things the county's done really, really well always. And then there are things that are needs now that maybe weren't needs before. Well, how do we know what those needs are? This would be an opportunity to bring companies in in a proposal setting for them to propose to us what they think we need in the way of services. It doesn't mean that we're going to hire them or that you're agreeing to pay for anything or that you even know what they should offer to us. It gives them an opportunity to look at our organization, how we function, and then propose to us what they think we need. And I think that could be a valuable experience, even if you don't choose to move forward after you receive the proposals. But just to have somebody's outside viewpoint on maybe what we need. Just my thought. I apologize for butting in. But having been part of the conversation, I want to make sure that everybody knows that this is not an attempt on my part or the commissioners that I've talked to to push anything down anyone's throat or make elected officials do things a certain way. The idea is to look at it entity-wide and figure out what can we do better that makes our organization work better and makes our employees feel more valued and that we can all be more efficient in the way that we conduct business. It's not to be offensive to any person that works here, ever worked here, or will work here in the future. It's just a team-building exercise almost to have somebody come in and say, okay, these things look good. Here are some things that we think we could help you with. So it's just getting that feedback, and I really hope you'll consider letting us look forward to finding people who can give us a proposal on what they could do for us.

Thank you. Well, as I stated earlier, the county is a service organization. And to be able to provide that service, we have to have good people. And I feel like we do need a structure that would really make employees feel valued and be compensated and have a path forward if they go over and above. And if they're holding their own and that's where they want to be, that's fine too. But also the people that would need some help, you know, some correcting. Because it's not fair to leave someone in a position, perhaps they're not doing their job or they've got the wrong job description and they don't know where they are. So I see the value in it. And so what you're saying is we would go out for this proposal and we're not obligated to do anything at that point. And we don't know what it's going to cost. That's the whole point of getting the proposal. Okay.

Again, what proposal, because if you read the agenda item, you've encompassed such a huge area, you are not going to get an accurate proposal. Well, we'll see about that.

Maybe Sharon can, Sharon, have you written a proposal yet?

No, I did not. I did not know this was going to be on the agenda, so I don't have anything. But what you can do, I can just look around at what other counties have put out, because I know this has probably been done before. And you can just, you can narrow your scope of what you actually want to see a vendor come in and do. But again, like They'll said if y'all get the proposals back, the court is allowed to reject any and all proposals.

And you can actually put out an RFP that has a pretty wide scope and the people responding can choose what parts of that that they can do.

The point of a proposal is they give us their methodology, kind of like we did with the inmates.

It's not like a bid where they have to apply and tell us what they can do for every single item. A proposal gives them an opportunity to say, well, these are the things we are the experts on. So these are the things we would propose that we could do for you. And somebody else might say, well, we don't do all of those things, but we can hire a sub consultant to help come and do the things we personally don't do. So it'd be interesting to see what we get back. And Sharon and I work together on scope. We do that a lot.

Judge, I move to authorize the purchasing agent to release a request for proposals for consulting services to assess and enhance Kendall County's employees' performance management systems, including job descriptions, employee evaluations, supervisor training, performance standards, workforce development, and related organizational effectiveness practices. We have a motion made by Commissioner Carpenter.

Do I have a second? Second. Second by Commissioner McCall. Any further discussion?

I just have another question. So will the actual request for proposal or qualifications, whatever, y'all decided to come back to court for approval before it goes out? Or it's just going to go?

I don't normally bring those back to look at the proposal for approval, but I can if y'all want me to. I mean, it's just going to be the scope of work. And like we said, when they come back and they have it on there, then we bring the bid tabulation to y'all to show y'all.

I think it would be important to get human resources in on creating whatever you're going to create.

End user, whoever, always has to be in on the scope. And then would Commissioner McClellan and Carpenter then just work with them on that?

I think that would be our normal way of doing it. And then Sharon and I would look at the scope. And then once, if the court does authorize a contract, just like we're going to go into a couple of items coming up, where even after the vendor is chosen, we still... hone down on what that scope is during the contract negotiation.

Because I always bring to y'all first, this was the bid, this is what happened, this is how it came out, and y'all approve to go forward with the contract, and then we bring the contract to court.

Okay, thank you. With that, Teresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCullough?

Aye.

Commissioner Reason?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman?

Nay.

Commissioner Carpenter?

Aye.

Jed Stolarski?

Nay. Motion carries 3-2 with commissioners from 1, 2, and 4 in favor. and the judge and commissioner from Precinct 3 opposed. Next, consideration of possible action to approve the proposal submitted by Summit Food Service to authorize the county judge to execute the negotiated contract for services between Kendall County and Summit Food Service LLC to provide inmate food services. Sharon?

Okay, yes. So this is just the last part to this discussion. proposal that we did. This is to bring the contract for Summit Food Services back for y'all's approval. I did send it out to y'all, I think, end of last week. And so we got the negotiated amount back. And as you can see, they estimate a yearly total of $180,000 to $195,000, depending on the menu that the jail decides to go with. And their services would include helping them create the menu, do portion control, do menu ordering so that they can try to help contain the budget cost. And that is part of their pricing along with registered dietitians and such. So this would just be a one-year contract with option to renew up to five years. So if after a year it's not working out, we can go back to the drawing table.

I'll entertain a motion as to agenda item 19.

Judge, I'd like to make a motion to approve the proposal submitted by Summit Food Service LLC and authorize the county judge to execute the negotiated contract for the services between Kendall County and Summit Food Service LLC to provide inmate food services.

Motion made, Commissioner Chapman, seconded by the judge. Any further discussion? There being none, Teresa, you're up.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Sharon? Do you have it? I don't know if I mentioned this. Agenda item 20 is being pulled from the agenda to address at a later court. So we're going to skip ahead to agenda item 21. Consideration of possible action assisting Visit Comfort Texas by providing $5,000 to help pay for its $15,000 contract with Placer AI. The data gathered from Placer will assist VCTX with its marketing strategy. Before I hand it over to Commissioner Carpenter, we have several public comments. First from Kent Bensley.

I've been asked to briefly speak, and I believe I may just be able to do that. I don't wish to get into it.

Before you start, could you announce who you are, where you live, and then we'll reset you.

My name is Kent Densley, 705 Fifth Street Comfort. I was introduced to Placer earlier in the year when Amy's story had downtown Texas come. And if you've been in business, you're really interested in data. And then you have the opportunity to dissect that data. PlayServer, to me, was an amazing enterprise. And from the original introduction, we had some sidebar meetings with Sherry Reynolds, and we had a presentation put on by Placer, which would obviously be to your advantage, but they'll give it to you. But it will generate for $15,000 what we have spent in $20,000, $25,000 of gathering data about comfort, particularly in senior living. Independent senior living assisted the whole gamut. So I would just say from a strictly database that you could get, it's an amazing. And it seems as though it's centric to comfort. It really isn't. It could be used by the county. If I were sitting in your positions and looking at your balance sheet, you could probably identify some, not necessarily unperforming assets, but assets that might need a little bit of attention to tune up The parks, maybe you've got some great volunteers that are pushing that. But it would tell you who's coming to the park, how long they're staying, where they're going afterwards. So, for example, you could track all of that instead of having a little tube run across the entrance and the exit. which is pretty antiquated. I don't know. And you don't need to use it. So it's not just centric to comfort. It is for the county. And I'm sure Sherry will be able to give you some very detailed on that about. But from a risk-reward standpoint, if you're sitting there where it is, okay, $5,000, what does it get me? It gets you a lot that you could run out and spend your $100,000 for. So I would say from a risk-reward standpoint, from a balance sheet standpoint of looking at some underperforming assets, you've got a pretty good shot to get your money back in a relatively short period of time. And there are going to be good stewards over this money as well. It's not just going to be Visit Comfort Texas looking at it. It's going to be the Chamber. It's going to be the Area Foundation. We're all stakeholders in this. So thanks for your time. Thank you.

Next up, Ernest Slotinski. Did I pronounce that close enough? Sorry, sir. It's a little bit challenging, kind of like mine.

It's all terrible. It only took me six or seven years to learn how to spell it.

And if you can announce yourself, and then your clock will start to your right.

My name is Ernest Slotinski. I live in Comfort, Texas. I am one of the proprietors of Hotel Giles. I'm also the chair of the Chamber of Commerce. And I'm really here speaking more as the chair than I am as a business owner, but I will address that as well. As a hotel owner, If you're familiar with my location, I see lots of foot traffic, but I don't know where everybody's going. I don't know where I can advise my guests to go. I believe this would help in that area. If you know anything about my business, we're very big on working with our neighbors. And if I have this kind of information that I can share with my neighbors or I've got the information to go, hey, you should go over here and see this business. This would obviously help my business just to kind of get a better grasp on who I am attracting, who's just coming in and doing tours of my property as opposed to people who are actually coming in and renting rooms. If I put on the chamber hat and Contrary to rumors I've heard, all the organizations in Chamber, we work, or in Comfort, we work pretty well together. Some of us have overlapping needs. Chamber, we've chosen to narrow our focus to just our specific business member needs, which is really what a Chamber should do, and we kind of gave up that visitor bureau position. And Visit Comfort Texas has really picked that up. We've worked together. They've used my conference room at the chamber. They've used my property hotel for meetings and planning meetings. And that's all gratis. And that's just us helping each other. So I don't know where people get the idea that we're not working together. Because we are. A lot of us are overlapping. Anywhere. The information provided by this would be extremely beneficial to the Chamber members to be able to focus them and go, okay, Mondays, we're seeing an uptick in people coming in, but there's only two businesses open on High Street. And I don't know that that's the case. I do know that the businesses that are open on High Street on Monday are doing pretty well. They're pretty happy with it. But being able to provide to our members, here's some analytical data on how you might be able to change your marketing strategy or your focus would be extremely beneficial. And I would consider a $5,000 expense to y'all and the reward you can get with it as we're going to, they're willing to share with y'all as well and everybody else in comfort, tremendous value for your dollar. Thank you, sir.

I'll hand it over to Commissioner Carpenter. I believe this is your item. So when Visit Comfort Texas was started, they started working with a group that was called Downtown, Texas Downtown. And they had a contract with Laser AI. It was going to be a $2,500 total contract. And since then, that company abandoned that contract. Yes, please come up, please. They abandoned that contract, and now it jumped up to 15,000. And the data that they were planning on using was coming from Placer AI, and so 15,000 would pretty much wipe them out. They've been doing their own fundraising. Now, I want to back up for a second. During the flood... The restaurants and comforts, they suffered heavily. We had tents all over the place. You could stop by, have a breakfast taco, stop back by, have a steak for lunch, stop back by and have prime rib for dinner. I mean, it was absolutely incredible what the volunteer force came out all the way up to hunt. You could do this all the way up to hunt. And so the businesses literally had almost no patrons coming through And since then, the tourism is way down. People are avoiding the Guadalupe River. They're avoiding the area. They're still avoiding it to this day. And so what Visit Comfort Texas is asking for is assistance in helping pay for the data so they can know exactly where they need to be spending their money to get tourism back in comfort for our business community. Anything to add? Do we need to speak?

If you have a comment.

Absolutely. We just wanted to add to what Commissioner Carpenter was saying, that our focus really is about coming back together after the floods in a grassroots way to say we need help, we need to work together collaboratively, and we need to reestablish develop our economic strategy, specifically around tourism. So much of our businesses are dependent on tourism. So I know the Chamber, they have over, I don't want to speak for you, but over 60 businesses in the Chamber. We've identified over 40 businesses that are dependent on hospitality for their income and for longstanding being in the community. So when we got involved with Downtown Texas, that y'all did the study, and we were presented on that two weeks ago, our understanding was at the time that Downtown Comfort had a deal with Placer.ai, and we were going to get a one-seat license for $2,500 if we became a member of Downtown Texas. So we followed that path. And that contract between downtown Texas and Placer.ai had canceled out the month before. So we were not able to get that seat and they would not honor it. So we sort of backtracked. This web tool is so critical. It is the backbone of Visit Bernie. They use it all day, every day to tell them who they need to be marketing to. They know exactly what zip codes to go to. They know how to do targeted marketing. campaigns on Meta and Google because they know who comes and hits Bernie. They are not allowed to share that under their license with us. Kerrville also uses it. Fredericksburg uses it. All of our surrounding neighbors use it. But once they enter a license, they cannot share that data outside of the city limits. And so what this would do would allow us to have a license for the entire Kendall County area. outside of city of Bernie limits. So that would also include Waring, Welfare, Sisterdale. All of those businesses would also have access to all of this information.

So that's interesting because I hadn't heard a lot about this and did a little research. I think this has an application for the county for roads, for facilities management, that kind of thing.

A thousand percent.

But having said that, how can the license be structured so that the county can truly use it, that I can get on the dashboard if I want to look for information or the judge's office? Is there a way to do that? General counsel? I haven't.

I have not seen a contract, but I'd be happy to take a look at it if somebody would like to send it over.

We asked that question. So basically we can have as many users as we want, but we need to have them all be at the same email address. So we were thinking visitcomforttx.com is the unified email address, and then it might be kendallcounty at visitcomforttx.com becomes a user of the license. So we've spoken. Do you want to speak more about this? Do you have more info? Sure.

We have a really great sales rep. She has done at least six demos. I've invited people from many different civic organizations because I wanted them to be as excited as I am about Placer. So within the contract, for example, Kerr County, we're a participant in the Come Back to the Hill Country campaign. Kerr County can run tourism reports for everyone up and down the river. And even though comfort is included, they can't give us tourism reports because we're outside of their county. So we've had this discussion from day one with our sales rep that our chamber needs to be able to use it. We want to be able to measure park data. They've already outlined the park. So I saw a demo the other day with park data. So this is something that we feel is really important. I'm going to give you some really specific examples. We talked to the folks from Tapatio Springs. When they do their marketing, they know exactly which zip codes to market to in Houston, Texas. They're going to bring people back. I don't have that zip code data. So what I have to do is I have to spend half of my budget doing a warming campaign. I show North Houston, Sugar Land, where I think we're probably going to have some people out into Katy. I'm guessing. I'm doing my best guess. I show them a warming campaign and I spend half half my money showing them a video. Then out of the 35,000 people that watched part of that video, I can come back to the 5,000 that watched it for a grand total of 75% of the video. I can reach them for $40. That's a pretty significant way to reach people, but I'm wasting a lot of money with this broad campaign with a video that's showing. With Placer, I have specific people. I know specific zip codes that have been coming over a seven-year period to comfort. Another really good example is our 4th of July event. It's one of the major fundraisers for the chamber. We have no idea how many people attend every year. We don't have a way to count. We don't sell tickets. We guess, oh, it's been a good event because it seemed pretty busy and there were people in the streets. Our businesses on high street do the same thing about guessing. We all have a, it feels like it was a good weekend because high street was full. Wouldn't it be nice to know that we had 10,000 people that passed through comfort. One third of them were locals. One third of them came from the region and one third came from out of town. 10% came from Corpus. 25% of the visitors came from North Houston. For me as a marketer, it's invaluable data. But I'll give you another example of how we can use Placer really well. We had someone that was looking for a location for a barbecue restaurant in Comfort. That would be amazing if we had an anchor barbecue restaurant. The realtor, people at the chamber couldn't tell this prospective buyer how many people stop at Comfort Pizza every day, how many people eat at Both Hands Burgers. That would be valuable information for anybody that wants to invest in our town. And that brings in more tax money for you guys. When we look at the parks, it gets even better. We know that 35,000 people ran over that cable. We measured the cars, but Placer lets us measure every cell phone in the car. So you've got four people in the car. You know where they came from. Maybe you've got friends that met up from different parts of Texas. Well, we know where everybody in that car came from. We know when they leave Joshua Springs, maybe they're going to Comfort and they're eating at Comfort Pizza. Maybe they're stopping at a few stores. They're probably going to spend some money along the way. And then they stay at a hotel in Comfort. We know that Comfort is doing a really good job of getting the people from Joshua Springs here staying within our county. The worst thing that can happen is that we're bleeding to Gillespie or we're bleeding money to Kerrville because there are they're staying in Kerrville or they're staying in Fredericksburg. If we see that we've got a number of people that are not turning to go to Comfort but are turning to go back to Burney or maybe going in a different direction out of the park, it tells us that we need a wayfinding sign that says, hey, you're leaving the park. Do you want something to eat? Turn left and go to Comfort. There's a very direct route to get them to coffee shops, restaurants, places to stay right there. Without this kind of data, We really are at a competitive disadvantage to all of the other tourist destinations in the area. Wimberley has it. New Braunfels has it. Fredericksburg, Kerrville, we're the only ones without it. So we've also been able to raise some money. We have the Kendall County EDC who's going to pitch in part of the $15,000. We're going to pitch in out of the money that we've raised, and we're asking you for one-third of the annual fee.

I have a couple questions. So is this a recurring fee every year?

It is. Okay.

Is this in addition to the requests that you'll be making during budget for support for Visit Comfort? Yes, it is. Okay. For my, this could be useful. I don't doubt that. But as I advise y'all, because you were in our meetings, I don't think I can support any requests today because I advise you, I thought the better time to request this is during our budget. So we can plan for next year because we're hearing about multiple reoccurring costs. So this is going to have a lasting impact on our budget if we do it today. So all I'm asking for to get my vote is wait till budget, but I'm not disagreeing that there's useful information. My second question is for general counsel. Are you a 501 6C company? Yes. So that is the same as what the chambers are. We can't give money to chambers. Does that impact that analogy apply to this group as well? I know that's a legal question, but.

It's a 501 C6 is what the organization would be, right? Correct. We also. It's C6. C6, sorry. Yes.

So you're not a 12 like the EDC?

No, but we also are working in collaboration with the Comfort Area Foundation, which is 501C3. And they have, in several cases, they're going before us in grant requests, and they're receiving the money under a C3 with the knowledge and understanding that it's been landing with us.

Are they contributing to the 15th?

Not specific to this one. There's certainly a way we can figure out how the county can contribute if the court desires to do so. I can visit with them. We can look at what different entities are involved and what the contract solution might be to make it work if that's what the court desires.

Can we speak to the timing issue as well? We also did not bring this to your attention two weeks ago, A, because we thought it was covered under the $2,500, but B, the reason that it's an issue for us in terms you know, immediately is because of the July 4th coming up, because we have the large, one of the largest events in comfort coming up in less than two weeks, we are not going to have access to the data from that, which then also contributes to how we market the events coming up at Christmas time. So, you know, we can't do Christmas in comfort as well as we could do it. If we could get $5,000 now, it makes a huge difference for comfort in a way that, um, waiting, we just lose six months.

And General Counsel, can we reimburse them later on after they've already paid for it?

That depends. It depends. Nothing if consistency, right? I would love to talk to them and see if I can get some more information to be able to come up with a couple of ideas of how the court could help them with this. But I need more information from them.

If the county then can also use the data and have direct access, and I don't know about using somebody else's email, that to me seems... odd, but maybe we can figure that out. I'm open to it.

It could also be just reports. Maybe you're requesting certain reports on a regular basis and we're putting that out in a... Then it becomes almost a service.

That's really the way we see it. We see it as a service to business members of the I'll give you another example.

And to the county as well. To the county, that's right.

Just to know how many people drive past your business every day. In a demo, we looked at RA Nursery. They had no idea how many people drove past them on Highway 27. Well, I saw in one demo that one-third of the people coming through were commuters. One-third of the people were actually visitors that came on the weekends. So for a business like this, it means there's an opportunity for them to stay open a little bit later because they currently close half a day on Saturday. They're not open on Sunday. That gives them business intelligence to earn more money, to make their business more successful, and it opens doors to new business that they really didn't even know was out there.

So is Corinna here? No.

Where are we pulling this out of? That's the question, because I know, I'm just talking from my budget perspective, is that I have a lot of requests from department heads for things to possibly move up from next year's budget to buy them now, because if we have funds, and so there's a lot of fund shuffling going on, and that's why my concern is, doing this when we can plan it right to get address everything that you have at once your request not piecemeal so that's my only concern so i'm just coming at this from budget not saying anything negative about the quality of what you're trying to do trust me if we had any other way i didn't want to come back and sit in front of you again two weeks two weeks later but we're really kind of desperate for the data corinna said this could come out of commissioner's contingencies and we have the funds for it Would you entertain a question from Mr. Ernie? You had a little time left, but what's your question? I was just wondering if it is.

Possible. I know ongoing budget concerns are a legitimate issue. Is it possible to do a one-time expense and then make them come and suffer back through another budget? That's a general counsel question.

Thank you for bringing that up. I can give the answer to that. No.

Okay.

The answer makes sense. With a 501c6, the county can enter into certain contracts with an organization that's designated for economic development. but it's very specific on what the contract would require. There's a way we can make this work if the court wants to, but it would be for the entity to be providing certain services on an ongoing basis. So a one-time thing is actually worse.

We would be happy to provide reporting on a regular basis. We planned on it in our last presentation. You saw that we were planning to give you reports every six months. We could do it even more frequently if that would be helpful.

I think we've addressed this pretty thoroughly, so I'm going to call the vote.

One more question for General Counsel. If we were to approve this today, how soon would they receive a check? That is a current question. Because I believe the checks are not cut.

It would go on the claims list for the next meeting.

Until July 4th. It'll be after the next support date because we approved those expenses earlier.

I think knowing that that was coming, we could put forth other donations that we have in holding for other expenses, and we would just reallocate our expenses to make it work because this is of utmost priority.

If I make a motion, do you have a way of helping me figure out how to help them get funded if we pass it?

If the court today approves the funding of $5,000 to go to Visit Comfort Texas, for the purposes of economic development subject to the contract that will later be negotiated and approved between the parties and that we would bring back to court for approval. I think that's the way to do it, sir.

I wish I could remember.

Would you like me to say what the motion would be? One addition, if I may, because I do see it as a service they could provide the county. Okay, so I think that's key. Would you like me to say what I think the motion would be?

Judge, I move that we move forward and approve The request for Visit Comfort Texas by providing $5,000 to help pay for its $15,000 contract with Pacer.ai.

To enable it to provide economic development services to the contract, pursuant to the contract that will be negotiated between the parties and will be brought back to the court for final review.

You adopt what the general counsel said. All right, motion be by Commissioner Carpenter. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Commissioner Chapman. Any further? Further discussion?

Yes, I had a few questions. So how long would this, once you make an agreement or a contract with PACER, how long would the process take to set it up? And then what would be your target start date?

Two days. We would have access within two days. So we could start pulling data. On our own, and then we would go through a formal training program. It takes about two hours.

And then you said it's $15,000 a year for this. And there's no way to work with the city of Bernie for, I mean, sometimes there's a user agreement or, you know, that's just, they don't do that.

They're really, really strict on who can use their tools. For instance, I mean,

It's probably geographic, too. It is. They don't care about comfort.

And so we said countywide, but you continue to go back to comfort. So would this be completely countywide for those businesses, as you mentioned in Sisterdale, Candalia? That's right.

Any of the rural areas that are not within the city limits of Bernie, because Visit Bernie has a specific license for Bernie, but it's geographic to the City land incorporated areas of Kendall County.

There you go.

So, okay. And so that would be the footprint that you would set up if you set this up. Okay.

With that, Teresa.

Commissioner McCall.

Nay.

Commissioner Regents.

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman.

Aye.

Commissioner Parkins.

Aye.

Mr. Lysak.

Nay. Motion carries three to two with commissioners from precincts two, three, four in favor and Commissioner, Precinct 1 and the judge opposed. So motion carries.

Thank you very much.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Let's try to knock this next one out. Consideration of possible action to approve an agreement with Charleston Properties of Bernie LLC to provide perpetual right of easement for the purpose of constructing, reconstructing, installing, testing, repairing, replacing, upgrading, expanding, adding to, diminishing, operation, and or maintaining an underground telecommution system Telecommunication systems related to Kendall County operations. I just want to remind everyone this is kind of some confidential information related to this item. So if we speak a little cryptically on location and purpose, that would be great.

I'll tell you what the purpose is, but I'm not going to give you the pinpoint location. This is an agreement for an easement that we've been working on for some time between the county and a property owner for part of our fiber optic network expansion project. So we don't like to give the exact information on where our infrastructure will be located, but just know that this property owner was great to work with. It did take some time working with somebody out of state and then working with multiple members of the county staff and officials. It did take some time, but we're very pleased with the outcome and hope that the court will approve our easement agreement today.

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

I'll make it.

Judge, I move that we approve an agreement with Charleston Properties of Bernie LLC to provide perpetual right of easement for the purpose of constructing, reconstructing, installing, testing, repairing, replacing, upgrading, expanding, adding to, diminishing, operation, and or maintaining an underground telecommunication system related to Kendall County operations.

We have a motion to be made by Commissioner Carpenter, seconded by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion? There being none, Teresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall?

Aye.

Commissioner Wheaton?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter?

Aye.

Commissioner Sparza?

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. And the last thing on our open portion today is discussion regarding a possible child facility tax exemption being offered by Kendall County pursuant to Texas Tax Code 11.37. Commissioner Wheaton?

Thank you, Judge. So over the past year, I had a constituent ask Commissioner Carpenter and I about this exemption. He lives in Precinct 2. His property is in Precinct 4. He leases it to a child care. And he was wondering about this exemption. And he was under the misunderstanding that we had somehow denied the exemption. And I had never heard of it until I looked into it. And I said, no, sir, we did not deny it. We have to adopt it. So in 2023, the legislature and the voters approved this law allowing counties or any jurisdiction to offer a property tax exemption to to certain qualifying child care facilities. So that's why it's here today, because I believe that's my job when a citizen asks me about something like this to look into it. The exemption is intended for child care providers that not only meet just regular credentialing, but very, very high standards, something called the Texas Rising Star Certification that provides for certain education and curriculum and all kinds of very specific things. It's a tiered program. level program two three four star and this serves families in need of assistance so today i just wanted to look into which facilities might qualify and then what the impact would be to the counties if indeed this were adopted looking into it with the appraisal district i've been told there's seven properties and if they were to apply and if they were qualified and got the exemption the entire impact to the county would be $35,000 that the county would not collect. And I was talking to someone this morning about that, and he misunderstood, thinking that that was one property's exemption. No, the $35,000 impact would be what the county would not collect if all the seven properties were to do this. So I reached out to, I tried to reach out to all seven properties. I only talked to two, the gentleman that came to us originally. And then another gentleman, a lot of these daycare centers are owned by conglomerates. And I think my messaging probably went into a black hole and, or they have a tax agent. So whoever's listed on the tax record is company XYZ that collects, that pays their taxes and argues with the ARB and does all of that. So, um, I don't see a great interest in this, but as I said, it was my responsibility to bring it forward. We have got the appraisal district's attorney on Zoom, Ryan James. Justin, do you see him? He's from Cyprus, and I thought it would be fine for him to attend virtually. Mr. James, are you there? I'm here, yes. Okay, great. I kind of cued and teed you up, so would you take it from there? And then our general counsel as well may want to have some remarks.

Absolutely. I think Commissioner Wiesen did a great job of explaining kind of the basics of the exemption. The appraisal district has no position on this. Obviously, we will apply it however you decide. There doesn't appear to be a lot of property owners that this would apply to. But, you know, there are some strict requirements and we did look into this and the tax savings is passed on to the daycare. So the property owner is the one that would technically receive the exemption. But the the taxpayer will have or the property owner will have to. along with their application, include an affidavit that says that they are informing the daycare that they're passing it on to them if they lease it, if they aren't the owner, and that there has to be a provision that they do pass it along, at least with their initial application.

Okay, and Mr. James, let me just ask you, because I had talked to somebody at the district, would this require more employees and more work? for the district to implement this?

Yeah, a little bit. We're talking about possibly eight applications. So it's not a substantial amount of work. The way that this application works is once it's granted, it will, in subsequent years, automatically qualify unless the appraisal district asks for a new application or to verify that they still qualify. The most difficult part of applying this is that Not necessarily all of the property is going to qualify. If a portion of the property is used for purposes other than the daycare, that portion wouldn't qualify. So the district's going to have to look at that. But they do that type of stuff all the time. It's not anything that is uncommon for applying applications. It's additional work, but not a lot.

Okay. I think that's important because if this was going to be a big or for the appraisal district and you needed extra staff, that's, you know, we're kind of shooting ourselves in the foot on increasing expenses. I'm glad you did point out that the exemption is for the daycare and not the property owner. So the property owner that came to me and Commissioner Carpenter is not going to realize the savings. I know everybody's trying to have some relief in property tax, and I think the legislature is working on that, but he's not going to realize that. And I think what you said is key, that this is solely for the daycare community. proprietor. General Counsel, do you have anything to add to Mr. James?

I do just want to add one thing, and that is we gave you a proposed order to look at, and you'll note that if the Commissioner's Court determines that it's desire to put this exemption into place in Kendall County, one more issue to be discussed is the amount of the exemption. When you said it was $35,000 for the seven entities, I'm assuming that's if it was a 100% exemption? I believe so. I got that from the Chief Appraiser Right. And the court would be required by statute to adopt an exemption of at least 50%. So you would have the option to go between 50% and 100% on the value of that exemption.

So this is a discussion item today. So no action. So is there any other discussion? Yes.

I've got number one concerns that were going to give any one individual a tax break, whether it be a daycare or whoever. I ran an automotive business for 36 years. I think that they've got to have a car to be able to take kids to the daycare. I can't automotive businesses be exempt. I mean, and then how much is it going to, is that person paying Is this only going to benefit these seven people? Are these seven people, they willing to actually give a reduced amount? And if so, how much would that be? There's just, I see more questions than answers.

Well, to address a couple of those. So I believe the legislature put this in place yesterday. realizing that schools and churches are nonprofits and they have daycare facilities and they don't pay property tax. So from the legislature's spirit of the bill, it was the intent to be able to facilitate parents going to work to be able to take their children to daycare. The reduced amount is only going to be on the county property tax. And as you know, that's other than Cal Creek, that's the lowest on your bill. It's the school district. So it's like I said, it's a lot to implement. for one property owner so far who's interested who will not even realize the savings on his own property. The other person I talked to said, Andrew, thank you for letting me know, and I'm not interested at all. So I kind of see this as a call for, you know, the other six or five property owners to come back. And I think I would see eye to eye with you, Commissioner Chapman, on just, you know, providing an exemption just for one sector. But again, that's why the legislature did it. They left out automotive shops.

All right. Any other discussion? Otherwise, we're going to wrap up the open portion at 1210.

Mr. James, thank you.

And we're going to take a five-minute recess before we come back and knock out closed session. There's discussion of two employees and a couple pending lawsuits. With that, we're in recess for five minutes. It is closed. We're going to close session in five minutes. If we're going to. All right, so we concluded executive session at 1230. We are opening our open portion of following executive at 1231 p.m. Any motions, ladies, from you coming out of executive? Gentlemen, any from you? And with that, that concludes today's regularly called session of the Kendall County Commissioner's Court at 1231 p.m. this Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026. And with that, court is adjourned.