Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

present commissioner chapman here commissioner carpenter and i'm present we have a quorum of all five members we're without our auditor today so bear with me i'm just taking notes on her behalf so uh at this time is there anyone that submitted a public comment form If not, let's jump right into our consideration of possible action regarding session five of the FY2027 budget workshops with our volunteer fire departments. I guess we'll go around the room. Vandalia, is there anything that, well, overall, I'll just tell you right now that what's in the budget is a straight 5% increase to what your budgets were last year. So if you can today focus on what additional requests that are not covered by that 5% so we can kind of streamline things today because we only have a short window. Is that fair to you all to approach it that way? Okay. So we'll start with Candelia.

Just in case you have any questions or there's anything I can help with.

David Moore of Candelia Fire Chief. Let's see. Budget's pretty much the same as last year. We did increase the training by $3,000, a 10% increase for insurance, and then we were planning on purchasing six new sets of Bill certified extrication and wildland gear.

I think all that was put in or, you know, that should be accounted for. So what was the overall increase that you were requesting? It was like 3%, wasn't it? Something like that?

More around there.

Yeah. So you'll have a little extra. So if there's no other bigger requests, is there any questions for Candelia? Yeah. We're going to be short and sweet with some of y'all. So we appreciate everything you do. So thank you.

Thank you very much.

Joe P. Okay, so. Everyone knows it's in the back.

Don't you want to give it to us before?

Well, no, he's going to deliver the really good news first.

So we actually asked for less than last year, so a 5% increase is going to make us very happy. One thing I do want to bring to your attention is there is now a competing insurance carrier for what we've been paying VFIS for, and I'm waiting to see and They're preparing a quote for us in January, and if we can save some money, we'll be going with them. I don't know if this is true for everybody, but once we went on our own contracts with the FIS, they started coming up with a lot more requirements and things they wanted us to document.

To me, it was a lot more onerous.

If I can get this alternative, we'll be happy to.

Yeah, and just be careful when you look at the plans. Make sure you're getting apples to apples because they may save you money by cutting certain coverages that you may come to regret later when a vehicle gets in. We're going to be very careful. You know what I'm saying? So I know you're smart enough to be aware of that, but just keep that in mind. So that's it. Yes, sir. You want to do a little candy?

Also, I wanted to say. ma'am i think we need to make sure that the increase is correct in the from what i see in the budget thank you i don't know if that number reflects five percent sixty it's i will i will i guess i will double check with karina because it's supposed to be a five percent across the board right so that one's it's just a typo yeah it could have just not been increased Oh, even Sheriff gets one. And Melissa. All right.

How about Sisterdale next?

This guy. I'm trying to pull the thing up. I'm trying to look and see what we had last year so that I can do, so I know what 5% looks like.

107.623.

The auditors, I'm sorry, I don't have those concrete, but picture last year's budget plus 5%.

Yeah, I have it from last year. 107.623. 107.

six, two, three. Oh yeah.

And that's, yeah, because I had this extra 5,300 and something bucks.

Yeah. So we, um, I think the biggest thing is that we were looking to do about 30 in capital to try to, um, update an existing truck rather than buying another truck. So we have a, we have a pickup based truck that is, um, I think it's an 09 or a 2010. It's a good truck, but it doesn't quite suit the needs that we have now with the ALS license and all the stuff we have to carry for ALS first response with the monitor and all that kind of stuff. So we were looking to... We've talked to a couple of companies about... Upfitter companies about reconfiguring the truck a little bit, slide outs and that kind of stuff so that we can access the equipment more easily. And I think we had... I think it's in the request there, but... I think that added 30 to a baseline, but I think the baseline was different. I apologize. I should have already had that with me. Just a second.

And with respect, the insurance, like Joe said, has been an issue. They estimate 10% increase every year. I don't quite know how you can justify that, but that's what they estimate. And it has come in that way the last two years, an extra 10% with the same coverage. Yes, exactly.

Yeah, exactly the same stuff.

Brian, could you repeat what Lynn said since he wasn't on the mic?

Yes. He was saying that one of the biggest, like Joe mentioned, one of the biggest cost drivers we have right now is insurance. When we went to our own separate policies from the county as part of the contractual arrangement, BFIS kept the premiums the same for the first year. And they have consistently increased it 10% a year since then, which is 10% compounding is a lot of increase. So it's happening with insurance across the board.

Is that on property and liability or both?

I'm seeing head shaking yes from others. Yeah, I think it's the whole.

Yes, it is.

Len says yes.

Come on, Len.

Hey. All right.

Come on. It covers buildings, vehicles, and liability for people on the facility and on calls.

Was one premium, did you see more of an increase than the other? Was property higher?

I cannot go into that detail. I do not know the answer to that.

So you said, sorry, 107 plus 5% is 112, basically, right? 113 and $4, right? Okay. And I think our actual request had come in at like, it was at $155,000, but that's with $33,000 in modifications to one of our trucks. So it's just a capital expense. But that's also something that if it's an outlier, I don't really want to, it's not a hill I want to die on, right?

What's the cost of the truck? $30,000?

Well, the total cost to reconfigure the truck was about $45,000, and we were going to pay for... at least a third of that ourselves.

Okay. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to get all the information of these additional items. I want to get through y'all and then release you. And then we can hash out which, if there's going to be additional things to spend. So that's the only other thing that you're requesting above the 5%.

Right.

Okay. There's 30.

So it's what would have been in capital outlay in previous years versus our sort of normal.

You would have been fine with the 5%, notwithstanding the truck.

Yes. Oh yeah. I mean, if that's, That's the way the cookie crumbles, and, yeah, we'll work with it. Okay. All right. Thank you. Alamo Springs.

How are you all today? Good. Thank you.

Hi.

I think if you're going to do the 5%, that would make us a little bit light on what I had requested. I believe I had requested 37.8 in our budget. And 5%, if I'm not mistaken, would leave that about $2,000 short.

What are you looking at? What is the item that you need?

Well, it's the insurance. I mean, primarily with our insurance costs are going up. You know, we added another truck last year, which made our insurances go up. You know, fuel costs. You had requested how much, Kevin?

$37,800, I believe, is what our... So we've got you down for $38,894. So almost $39,000. Okay.

So I think that should cover you. Yeah, we should be good then. Okay.

I will put it on everybody's board that we are looking probably not this year, obviously, not next fiscal year, but maybe a couple years. We will be replacing one of our vehicles, one of our rescue trucks, and we're probably looking somewhere in the budget of $300,000 to $400,000 to do that. So, obviously, we're going to do a lot of fundraising, and I'm just putting on the county's board notice, too, that that probably will be coming in the next two to three years, I'm sure.

Thank you. All right.

Appreciate it.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Our new chief is on shift, so I'm the treasurer, so I kind of know a little bit about the money. We were very, very fortunate last year to receive, you know, a lot of donations due to the flood last year. we were able to upgrade some of our, our buildings, upgrade a lot of our equipment. So we're in very, very good shape as far as being able to respond in many different capacities. Um, uh, the 5% is right in the window. I think of what I requested in the email. Um, that's great. We do have a, our main thing is, um, We have a huge influx of volunteers and comfort. We had 23, 24 members at our meeting last. I mean, we have a lot of people that have come in. So there's gear to, you know, purchase for them. So, you know, 5%, I think would be, you know, is fair since you gave us 11, I believe it was last year when we came in and asked. So, you know, we're in fairly good shape. So everything's looking good. We do have to reprogram some radios for the Kerr County that we're looking at. That came in almost $19,000 to reprogram those. But other than that, everything seems to be going just fine. No other additional requests from you? No, well, we did get smacked in the butt in one of our rescue trucks, but I think we're kind of handling that in-house on what we want to do. Okay, so you're... Yeah, we're in good shape. Okay. All right.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, Berghain?

Well, good afternoon, everybody. We do appreciate all the support the county gave us last year with the paid staffing. It's been a huge blessing to the Bergheim area. It's made a notable difference in our response capabilities. Our request is significantly more than 5%, but if you don't ask for it, you won't ever have the opportunity to get it. So if you want to take over and...

Yeah, John Long, I'm the treasurer for the Berghain Volunteer Fire Department. And the board's worked really diligently to put together the budget request for 2027. I will say we recognize this is a significant increase over what the funding for fiscal year 2026 was.

So it's basically going to be more than what your request was last year? Yes, and much more than the 5%. When we look at...

We've got it basically in two cost centers. Number one, we have the operating expenses and the capital expenditures, which has always been requested. And so we have that as one cost center. Another cost center we have is for the part-time paid firefighter staff, where we track what we're paying for the paid staff. So if you add those two numbers together for fiscal year 2026, the funding from Kendall County was $554,413. What we are asking for for fiscal 2027 is a total of $1,120,480. Can you repeat that number one more time? Yes. It's a total of $1,120,480. Okay. So that's an increase of 102% over the prior year. Okay. So that, again, is the request. And if you'll allow me, I'll kind of walk you through that stuff.

Do you have handouts? I've seen your proposals.

Yes, I do have handouts. Well, while he does that, I hope everybody understands the goal is to provide the level of service that we think is needed in our area. We have done a few things over the year that was recommended to us by ISO, and that was to start automatic aid agreements with Bernie Fire Department. Both Bernie Fire Department and Berghain Fire Department were going to get negative reflections towards our ISO rating when being re-rated because we didn't have automatic aid agreements for possible structure fires. In doing that, we've had a significant increase on our mutual aid responses to this year. This year so far, we've responded to 101 mutual aid requests between Bernie and Kindalia. But in doing that, we did see a significant reduction in our ISO rating, and I spoke with the Bernie Fire Department's person rating them, and they said it's going to significantly help the Bernie area as well for their rating. Yes, ma'am.

Could you give us that new rating?

So Berghain, we're a 4 across the board for our entire 58 square miles. We're a 4 and a 4X, depending on Cordiera around the clubs area has hydrogen systems, so they get an extra credit for that because they have a water system in place. Outside of that area, it's a 4X. Before, we were a 410. A split. We're a 4 and a 4X. 4 and a 4X. And before you were at? 4 and a 10. Anything outside of 5 road miles was a 10 of our main station. We've added a station, which is a metal building with a truck in it, but it counts as a fire station. And the back area towards Kreitzberg gets credit for that now since we've done that.

Well, that's good to know because I get asked a lot on what homeowners can do for their property insurance and you know, that's strictly controlled by the ISO and which reports to the insurance companies.

Staffing plays into that as well. The number of people that are responding to these incidents for mutual aid for Bernie or what we're getting from Bernie also count towards your ISO rating and make a significant difference on your rating itself.

So the first page of the handout is the non-numbers part of it, but it's what drove the board's discussions in terms of the budget request for fiscal year 2027. Our mission value statement is short and sweet. It says provide maximum fire and rescue services at the minimum effective cost for the BVFD service area in Kendall County. We came up with four what we call key performance indicators. Number one, achieve zero lost time injuries. So be a safe, safe employer. Number two, to achieve a three and a half minute alarm to depart the station metric. Okay. And I will say that that is a significant improvement over what we had had when we were just purely volunteers. Because when we were purely volunteers, the call would come in. there was typically no volunteers at the station itself. Sometimes there were, but most of the time there was not. So they would have to depart from their house or wherever they were, go to the station, gear up, and then depart. So by having the two full-time equivalents that Kendall County helped fund for fiscal 2026, our response rate has significantly improved. And so we thought it was important to put a metric to that. And so it's three and a half minutes to depart the station. The third one is to manage our personnel and equipment to always be available to provide initial response to two concurrent incidences. And that is something that is We struggled to do that if there were two calls that came in, and so we had to rely on mutual aid a lot, and we still do, and we participate in mutual aid outside of our service area. But in order to get to two concurrent instances at the same time, we need a minimum of four people to go out, so two on a truck for one and two on another truck.

It also plays in to meet the two-in, two-out rule by NFPA 1500, which for anybody in the fire service, when you make a possible structure fire, ideally, unless life safety is an issue, you don't make entry into the house unless you have two people to go inside and two people outside to be able to do something if something happened to those two inside. And so that's our goal is we're trying to meet the two-in, two-out rule, which is pretty much a minimum staffing by paid departments across the board, across the nation, and we're trying to get to that point.

I don't want to interrupt your presentation. Are you going to touch on some anecdotal evidence about structure fires in Cordillera? Okay.

And our fourth metric is to be a good steward of our financial resources, both the funding we get from the county and our donors and the people who give us grants.

When was the last time you were audited by an outside entity since you receive half a million dollars a year? Yeah, we have not been audited so far. And why is that? Because it seems like a department of this magnitude that that would almost be mandated to make sure that you're using such significant funds for the purposes. So any explanation of that?

Number one, an audit is not required of a volunteer fire department of our size. But what the board has done is we've discussed that for to work towards getting an audit for calendar year 2026. Okay. Now, when you do that, you have to have a lot of your ducks in a row. You got to have everything done. So a couple of things that we've done to help us do that. is number one, we engaged an accounting firm for bookkeeping services. So they're doing all the reconciliations of the bank accounts, et cetera, and coding the invoices and preparing financial statements. The other thing that I've done, I came on in February as the treasurer. And I worked with Bob Fry, who many of you know, who transitioned me in. He was very good about working with me to get up and running on things. But I've really taken a fine-tooth comb trying to make sure that we've got everything in line and to streamline things. And one of the things that I took upon myself was to, in QuickBooks, you can attach invoices to the disbursement, okay? So we've got a high-speed scanner and have scanned the invoices and have attached those into the QuickBooks disbursements. So we're trying to make steps to where we will be in an auditable position, and that's our goal is for calendar 2026 to get an audit.

Will you be able to share that audit with the county?

Absolutely.

Thank you. We'll open it up for questions, Commissioner Regents.

Did you have more in your presentation?

Yeah, if I could just step you through the items. The first one is the paid firefighter model. What the county funded for fiscal 2026 was $384,873. And the projected annualized expenses for fiscal 2026, we're projecting to come in about $480,000. So that means that the fire department has funded a portion of the paid staff. For fiscal 2027, what we're coming to ask for is to increase it from two full-time equivalents to three. And then also have a $1 per hour pay increase from $19 an hour to $20 an hour. So when you look at the total, you can see it's broken out between employee compensation, payroll taxes, stipend pay. We've got $36,000 in this budget to help support the two-in, Chief Hawkins talked about. So that's a new item. And then we've got workers' comp insurance. We are allocating $500 a month for Chief Hawkins and Assistant Chief Myers' time, their contract pay. into the paid firefighter model to administer the staffing to get us to the two FTEs. Because what we're doing is we're utilizing firefighters from other departments in the area. That's their full-time job. And it's just a lot of work to get that scheduled. And so the other things that we're including in here is the accounting firm is charging us $250 to prepare the payroll for that staff, so that's $3,000 there. And we'll use QuickBooks payroll, and we're projecting that to be going from $5,300, and it's based on a per-employee model, so that's why you see an increase to $9,300. And then also getting uniforms for... 50 part-time employees at the 3FTE model at $290 per person. That's $14,500.

And that does include the stipend volunteers that would be trying to fill that fourth man so that they're compliant by the state standards of EMT.

It does include it?

Correct, yes.

Yeah, so all in, you're saying that the budget request is, For the paid three FTEs and the paid staff model is $806,803.

And so some of the benefits you talked about, two in the truck, structure fire, two in, two out. Tell us what that gets the citizens when they call 911.

So it's a multifold situation. So really it's not just for structure fires. The structure fires is where that NFPA comes into mind of the two in, two out. But what it does for us is right now we have two people on staff. They're making, you know, we're on track this year to make over 700 calls this year. If you look at five years ago, we were half of that. And so we're counting on a significant increase, you know, just because the areas are booming. What that does is it gives us the ability to handle smaller nature calls like EMS calls or something of that nature with two people and still leave two people back to be able to take an engine or to a second out call. We've had multiple calls where we've had second out calls at the same time, and we've had to do some maneuvering around. Luckily, we have Ron and Lucy Hudson that live in the area or myself that can usually jump on that second call, but it's to give that consistency of being able to cover two calls at once. The other thing that, I mean, it does is to give a more appropriate response to a possible structure fire. Since we have started with the paid staffing, we have had two working structure fires in our area, and both of them we have had made significant stops on the fires, whereas before we would normally see a total loss. Our response time... to Arroyo was 13 minutes and that was at midnight. Um, that was for a lightning strike where our first volunteer didn't show up for 26 minutes. So it made a significant change in the response capability and the response time. Our second fire on clubs drive, um, we were on scene in eight minutes. And so having the paid staffing has significantly increased our capability of being able to stop certain types of calls from getting worse. We're just trying to have the appropriate crew to be on scene at that time when these situations happen. The Arroyo call was a lightning strike that struck the garage and traveled through the wiring underground and started the house on fire as well. So we had two fires. We had a detached garage I was there and actually had to make entry into the fire with one of the part-timers, and we had one person on a crew, and we had a volunteer that showed up as well. So that was a reason we were being able to make entry into that fire. If I wouldn't have been there, we would have been spraying water from the outside and had to wait a significant amount of time for another person to get there.

Was that the house where the belongings were all pretty much saved?

Correct. Yes, ma'am. So it was a significant save for us. I mean, it was a multimillion-dollar house with a lot of artwork and those kind of things inside that we were able to salvage. The second fire, we luckily had two volunteers at the station, and so we had a crew of four that rolled out, and we made a very quick stop on a lightning strike. The product works. We're just trying to make sure that we're staffing adequately for a department that's growing rapidly. Um, and being able to assist Bernie, I understand the idea that it's not, it doesn't look good to go to Bernie all the time, but it's a, it's a neighborly thing and it's still providing a service to the county. Um, and the same, whether it's Candelia, Sisterdale or any Comfort, anywhere else we have to go, we're trying to cover the calls within our county that are becoming larger and more innate, you know, more often. that we're having to see multi-departments respond to these types of calls. So we're doing our best to provide the best service we can and the adequate service for our area.

So Bernie, of course, covers the county as well.

Correct.

So it's mutual. So you're not just covering Berghain. You're supporting Comfort, Sisterdale.

Anybody that calls. And trust me, we call everybody when we need them. But it's a package deal that everybody's trying to provide, and so we're just trying to provide the best service we can.

Okay.

Okay. I'll also point out that the budget request would be to start day one, so October 1st. That's something that the commissioners could consider.

That's the only consideration before you today because there's no money to start this any day before October 1st.

No, what he's saying is – Correct, because of where we are in the budget. This model says October 1st, the three FTEs model starts. Now, if there's not money in the budget to get us all the way there, we could look at a phased-in approach, delay it three months, delay it four or five, whatever. But we wanted to throw out everything you're seeing today is kind of the max wish list to get to the three FTEs in this scenario.

So rather than trying to cut a person in half, which would be hard, you're saying you could reduce the ask by delaying the start of it and getting by with what you have for a bit longer.

Berghain, and I mean, all of Kendall County is changing, but Berghain has turned into a a department or an area that is needing full-time staffing and a department of this size and with the call volume that we have it's not unheard of to have four or five staffed individuals for that area so our goal was to try to get to that point where we're providing the proper protection for the area it's just we know it's a stepping stone this was just um We know this is a huge ask, but we're trying to give you the idea of what it costs to run a fully funded operating fire department out in that area.

And compared with the ESD, which was a plan that had not quite come to fruition yet, and I think you all have put that on the back burner, and I really appreciate you all keeping us up to date on that so we can have real honest and straightforward conversations. But what did that budget look like?

So unfortunately with an ESD, you can't plan – and say, hey, if we had six cents approved by the ESD, this is what we'd be able to do. That's not the way the law allows you to go for an ESD. When you run for an ESD, it is a one to 10 cent up to, it's up to a 10 cent tax. So unfortunately, when we go and talk to people about a possible ESD, we have to warn them that it could be a 10 cent evaluation. So when we were looking, and again, it's been what, three years-ish? since the last time we really looked at running, our budget would have been, if we had $0.10, we would have been a little over $3.5 million is what would be potentially possible just on an avalorum tax for the Berghain area.

$3.5 annually?

Yes, ma'am. With that, obviously, we would have a lot of capability in funding staffing because it's not four employees, right? It's 12 if you have four on shift and then admin and anything else that goes along with that. So we took the response by the court. We took the response by the public and tried to come up with a different means for staffing our station. Unfortunately, Berghain, we don't have a talent. Around our area, we have very high-end housing, and you just don't pull many volunteers from that area. They can't afford to live in that area. I think we're up to maybe eight that live within our 58 square miles. And out of those eight, four are probably not making entry on a house. So, I mean, we're trying to come up with a solution to a problem that we're trying to protect our area.

The solution doesn't add another layer of government. It doesn't add another tax. It uses existing county tax, and I think it's pretty efficient. It's a third of what you just said, and ESD would be mindful that you wouldn't have.

Yeah, it's not guaranteed we'd get 10 cents or that we would need 10 cents. We just can't promise anything less without, I mean, that's just the way the law.

The ISO rating is huge, and I think we need to get the word out about that so that Homeowners can be very proactive and go into their carrier and saying, you know, we've changed now. So that's all I have for just right this minute. Mr. McCall.

I was just wondering if you had an idea of if you had four paid firefighters, paid firefighters, how many do you think of your eight volunteers would you potentially lose to taking down that?

So it's kind of been a strange effect. We've had some volunteers that have since been certified thanks to the wonderful class that Bernie put on that we ended up with six volunteers that went and got certified out of that academy. Out of our volunteers, we have had probably 10 maybe transition into part-time employees. They already had their EMT. They went out and got their paid certification. They're not necessarily working anywhere else they're doing whatever job that they were doing before and they've transitioned to also being a part-timer with us. We actually, we have a waiting list of volunteers to join. And I know that sounds crazy because we're sitting here asking for all this. Our issue is that most of our volunteers that are wanting to join live in San Antonio or they live in areas where they're not going to be directly accessible to us at a quick time. And we have a limitation on gear lockers and bunker gear and all that kind of stuff. So we're trying to, give the people that we have a chance to volunteer. If they're not meeting the expectations as a volunteer, we might kindly ask them to leave and bring in somebody else that's, you know, gung-ho and ready to serve. We're not going to lose some of those volunteers because they don't have any plans to go and get their paid certifications. Ron and Lucy Hussons are a perfect example of that. They're both officers in the department. They're extremely active, but they don't have plans. They've got their EMT, but they don't have plans to go into the fire service as a career. So it's not going to change that a whole lot, if any, to be honest with you. We hit our area pretty hard for volunteers, and we take what we can get, but they don't come very often.

So the two that you hired, were they volunteers?

They were, and they've since got their certification. One is in the process of trying to get a job at another department in full time. The other one is at a point in her life where she's not going to. seek out going to a career department, but she wants to continue to work for Bergheim and full shifts. The stipend that we have in there, the idea is that we could schedule a volunteer that meets certain qualifications, has gone through and become certified on our department level of being able to make entry into a house, wear the proper gear, and be on shift as a fourth person. And give up their entire day to do that. And it's just a little stipend to be able to keep them up there. It's the cheaper version of them asking for two additional paid firefighters per day.

Thank you.

All right. Help me understand. I'm struggling. And I know if you don't come in and don't ask, you don't get it. So I get that. But how is this request fair to the other folks sitting behind you, including Comfort, when Comfort just went through multiple floods and are making it work with what they got, when you have Bernie right down the street from you, don't you have an ESD coming right across the Comel line? So you have two full-time sets of assets within a very short time period to get to you, versus Comfort, they got Waring and Sisterdale. Volunteers, great volunteers nonetheless, but not to the same abilities as folks around you. So there were to be any such investment, wouldn't it make sense to be on the other side of the county versus on your side right now? Not saying that down the road, it may be better on yours, like an investment over some years on your side, but it seems like we're focusing on your side when. The real need based on the past two years is on the opposite side of the county. Help me reconcile this.

I'm not going to speak on Comfort's behalf or anybody else's behalf because what works for them works for them. It's not my say to come in here and say they should be doing things a certain way. I know the Berghain Fire Department. That's what I specialize in. If they have a program that's working for them, that's fantastic. If they are happy with what they're getting, that's fantastic. My job is to provide the highest level for our area that we can, and I'm telling you what we need to get to that point. As far as Bernie Fire Department, Wolverine Spring Branch, Leon Springs Fire Department, they're all extremely busy fire departments, extremely busy. There's been multiple times today where Bernie Fire Department alone has had every ambulance in the county in their district making calls. they're not any good to me if I need help, if they're all on calls, right? And most likely in that situation, we're then going to get pulled in that area to help backfill them or help them out because of the need in that area. Same with Wolverine Spring Branch. They're building a station across the county line from us, but it's not going to be equipped with four personnel or anything. They're going to have two people in an ambulance that can also jump in a brush truck if their ambulance is not on a call. Leon Springs ESD, um, Four with Station 132 that's down the road from us, same thing. They're running thousands of runs a year. You can't depend on those agencies to be available when you need it. I need to be able to take care of the calls for as long as I can by ourself until we are able to get some of those assets in our area. If you want to ask my opinion, you should be funding Comfort More Money. You should be giving every one of these departments more money to do these jobs. That would be great if money grew on trees. I get it. I understand. And I'm not saying that you have the capability of doing it. We're requesting what we requested because the need is there. Whether you give it, that's your job. But I want you to understand, I am not trying to race comfort. I'm not trying to beat comfort. We're not trying to do anything we don't have to do. But we are trying to provide the service that's needed in our area. And the need is there. I don't have a clue what Comfort's call volume is, but we have seen a significant jump through Bergheim. And I understand some of those are mutual aid calls, but it's a give and take relationship, right? We call when we need and we help them when we can. Yes, we made 18 calls the day of the flood on Wednesday in Bernie, but the need was there. We had 100 calls pending. We're not going to ignore that and go, oh, hey, nothing's happening in Bergheim, so we're just We're going to stay back here just in case and not go help Bernie. The need's there. So, again, it's a significant request. We understand that. We're a very expensive insurance policy for the county.

That's what fire departments are.

They don't generate revenue. It is something that the counties need, and they cost money. So we're doing the best we can to be prudent in our requests. I appreciate your response.

Thank you. Commissioner Chapman.

Bottom line for me is the way it's always been. My house is no less important than anybody's house in the Berkham District or the Sisterdale District or Comforts or Warrings or Alamo Springs. To me, they're all equal. My house is just as important to me as your house is to you. And unfortunately, we can't provide this level of protection throughout the county. we have turned down our county clerk for an employee who runs one of the most efficient departments, in my opinion, in this county. And yet, for me to sit here and justify, when we've increased the level of spending, we have doubled the level of spending since 2021 on fire departments only. So, Nobody can come to me and say, you're not supporting fire departments because we have doubled that amount. And that doesn't include the things that we cover that are not even included in that figure. So we do support the fire departments, but I think this request is over the top and I can't even fathom this request. So mine is for the 5%.

With Corinna not being here, I don't even know where we stand on our budget yet.

She'll be here tomorrow.

And so I definitely want to see y'all get an increase over last year. I don't know where we stand just yet. And so tomorrow is supposed to be our last day to budget.

and so so can you give me just so i can make the note properly what is the exact increase like the difference between last year's figure and this year's figure can you give me that figure so i can write down what the additional amount to present the current is is 566 000 was 67. no change 566 067 okay and that's That's the multiple line items, or is it just, I forget, do we do an allotment to you? Like quarterly? Is that what the setup is?

That's correct.

Okay, so that would be added to the allotment, divided out over the quarters? Correct.

Okay. But to clarify, you would use the allotment based on this? Yes. Because I would like to think that, you know, what you say you're going to use the money for, you... Oh, absolutely.

We're not hiding anything. I mean, our books are open to anybody that wants to come and see them. We've always been an open door. And again, we understand it's a big request. We're just trying to provide the service that we feel is needed in the area.

I just do have one question just to clarify. So if Bernie couldn't come to a house in Precinct 3 or in Bernie for some reason, you backfill Bernie. Absolutely. Again, you're not just covering Bernheim. You're supporting the entire county.

I mean, that is if we're available, right? But yes, if the idea is that if Bernie is overwhelmed and they ask us to come back, Phil, it's not just us sending a truck there. We're also doing our part to try to get people to the station to still protect our area. We're not just saying, oh. our area is not as important. The goal is always to try to move people around or get people to the station. We use our Active 911 or we use our Slack app to message out, hey, we're backfilling, Bernie, please respond to the station if you're able. So we do a lot of coordinating to try to make sure that our area is still protected. And obviously, even if we're going to Bernie, if we're not assigned to a call and something happens, we're going to start heading that way as well so sometimes we don't go all the way into bernie sometimes we go to her french and and stage there at the bolero so that we're kind of between the two districts and still close to both um but most of the time when we when we go to bernie we have people back filling the station that are still available so everyone's house is important this isn't like a battle we have never said that the fire districts no we've never i mean i i mr chapman i hope you don't you don't think for a second that we think bergheim is more important than anywhere else in the county that we've never Once thought that, but it's just the need is growing in our area and we're trying to protect it adequately. If Comfort feels that they're adequately doing their department the way they need to do it, that's for them to say, not for me.

I'd love to have a fully paid, fully staffed department in Sisterdale, in Waring, in all of these locations. But the bottom line is the county physically needs cannot afford that.

And that's why we looked at an ESD process. And those are the ways, I mean, that's why we've done the things that we've done to try to help fund that. We understand that there's only so much in the pot to pull from and that it has to go out in certain areas, but we still have a job to do at the end of the day. And so we, this has been a big blessing for us and it has kept us from having to go for an ESD. And if, if we can continue working with the County and continue to build a department to serve our area, then that's, I don't need that extra headache of going to an ESD.

I would suggest that you investigate. There's multiple different financial methods by which you can actually take an area such as a county improvement district. I'm going to use that as one of them. That's only one of them. You can draw out a specific polygon around a specific area and you can collect money only in that area it's not an esd it's a county improvement district there are other financial methods by which you can have the local people in in that area they want to support this then they can or bottom line you can incorporate At the lowest level of the incorporation...

If you could help me figure out how to do that, that'd be great.

I mean, just as if the case of the legislature ever changes and people are able to forcefully annex again, y'all are going to get annexed into Bulverde or San Antonio, one or the other. So if y'all don't do something, then somebody else is going to do it for you. That's just a fact. And if the legislature ever eases off on it, y'all are going to be the first ones they're going to go after for the reason you said. You've got a lot of high-dollar houses there, and they're going to go after that tax base.

For sure. Judge, could I touch on one thing real quick? Sure. As all the fire departments have come up and done their budgets and when y'all have taken that consideration, All the different fire departments in this county have been all over this county the last two years. We had a huge influx in fires because of fireworks. New Year's last year, or yeah, because we didn't do Fourth of July last year. I called Adam personally on the radio and said, are you available? And he said, I am. What do you need? I said, is your station still staffed? He said, yes. I said, I need you. I had him helping me chase calls across the county because we couldn't keep up with the calls to make sure that people were getting answered. We brought a Bergheim truck up to the 1621 bridge on I-10 when we tapped out the whole north side of the county. For the most part. So they could help cover the I-10 corridor while we worked a big structure fire in Comfort. And they helped backfill for that area in the I-10 corridor to help bridge that gap with Bernie. Because as these calls are happening... Bernie's call volume is, yes, they're kind of a backbone with the amount of people they have and resources, but their call volume is still continuing while we're all focusing on one single incident. 911 is not stopping. So the more people we add, whether it's a phased-in approach or it's all at once, it's going to help no matter how we do that. And as y'all are going through this, I want to touch on Sisterdale. They have improved their drone program and ran with it. We're using it. It's helping the law enforcement aspect tremendously. It's helping the medical aspect, the people search. um the stuff on the river with the flooding it was it was a tremendous help so they're doing stuff with their budget across the entire county they actually did some pictures and videos for mary ellen and development the other day on areas that we couldn't get to and it was very helpful so anyways and even chief pay lily has come out to comfort with his drone for me to fly over a gated uh The LCRA, we had a fire out there we can talk about later. But anyways, I just want to touch on all the fire departments are going all over the county helping as needed and graciously doing so. They've never questioned or asked why I'm asking for their specific specialties and needs. So anyways, that's all I got.

No, and there's no question about that. We know. I've seen you out. everywhere. It's just a matter of how do we make the pie stretch when there's needs internally, needs externally, and is there a way to do a phased-in approach to your request? I'm asking.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is the best of the best. That's your A-plus, cherry on top, give me everything I want. There's other requests, you know, like John said, we could go into a phased approach where we add in, you know, that third person in the last quarter of next year. Even if that's as long as we have to wait to get to that, that's fine. We're adding to our system. Whether it's not going to a third firefighter on duty every day and going to, hey, maybe we hire somebody that's going to help a full-time salary and let them work throughout the week in peak times, and they're not on shift work. They're on a 10-hour day or something like that, and a salary, we could do something like that. There's different approaches. You're open to options. Absolutely, yes. All right. Absolutely.

I've got one more comment. Yes, sir. Just having seen this, it's a slap in my face to look down here and see that we have provided a medical director.

Yes, sir.

At no charge to any and all the fire departments, and yet you don't like ours for whatever reason. And you want to charge us for $18,000 for medical director that we were already providing one for free.

And yeah, I understand what you're saying. You're right. We did choose to go to a new medical director. Part of the reason is we did not have a contract individually with the medical director. The county had a contract with the medical director through EMS. the fire departments, and correct me if I'm wrong, we were under an umbrella of EMS, and we were having a hard time even having contact or interactions with our medical director. So, yes, we chose to go with a more aggressive, a more assertive medical director that more is catering to the needs of our department, that helps us authorize our employees. Yeah, and you're right. We chose to do that, and We did put it in our budget because that's what it's an operating cost. Whether the county chooses to do that, that's up to the court. But it's a pretty important and vital thing that we did not have a contract with.

So just to clarify, I was in that meeting and according to general counsel, the county cannot contract on the behalf of the RFO. You have to have your own contract with whatever medical director. And I believe I asked you specifically, we'll make sure you look at Dr. Siskel to see if he could continue to provide for all of the first responder organizations and see what that would look like. And I don't know whether you pursued that or not. I know that I would describe the medical director that you chose as a true 24-7 medical director. That's about five deep people who can respond when you need them. And so the model that we were using was actually not legal under statute.

We did have conversations with Dr. Siskel. And I mean, I can never say anything negative. I can't say anything bad about Dr. Siskel as a person. He's the nicest guy in the world. And when you do get to talk to him, he's a great guy. But the way we were set up, we had to go through EMS to kind of have anything done or authorized. And that was proven to be difficult. And so we chose an avenue that is more receptive to our department and our needs and It's been fantastic so far. So it's an operating expense that we include in our budget. Whether the court decides to pay for that or not, that's up to you guys.

All right.

Well, thank you all for your time. Appreciate it. We're going to hopefully wrap up budget tomorrow, so you guys may have some guidance here over the next few days of where we've headed financially. Okay.

So the plan is that tomorrow we'll just finalize a number that we want.

Yeah, because we've got an eight-hour day scheduled. Corinna will be back. And so we've got to make all the hard decisions tomorrow. So you'll know. I'm sure Commissioner Weasley will let you know. And whoever your commissioner is, they will let you know what the final results are. Well, thank you.

Just from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for all you do for the community. Appreciate you. Thank you.

All right. Thank you all.

So we're all out of here?

No, I think you're up. Yeah, I'm next. Thanks, Joe.

Always appreciate the candy.

Good to see you. Hope to talk to you about that other matter, too, a little bit more.

Good to see you. Have a good one.

You need a break?

You've not had a chance to go over your budget yet. With the group. Oh. So that's why you're here is because this is your opportunity because you were out of town when we did it. So a lot of your basic requests are already included in the budget. So focus on any big ticket items that you're looking at.

What are we starting with? I have three of them. Is this 545 for fire marshal?

Pick your choice. All right.

I'll start with 545. I did make a change here from what originally I had put through. I don't know if it made it this far. On 545, I will say I asked for an inspector investigator. I don't know if that's made it this far or not. If it hasn't, I'm going to withdraw that request because I know that we're trying to make it in different areas to you know, meet the needs of all the different departments, so.

Give me one second. I'm taking notes for current, so just bear with me on that.

Just where that would have been. Okay.

As just as Kevin Marquardt was just giving you all a heads up, I will say next year I'll end up asking again. And if I don't ask, I don't know. But as the county is growing, the commercialization, the population with adopted fire code and the call volume going up at some point, Juan and I are going to need more help. Also along the lines of 545, that is where we have the paid firefighters for the county that are staffing firefighters. in the comfort fire station, but they are our county employees. We were able to do 12 part-timers for $385,863, I believe is what it was. That has been a tremendous help. We have used them so that the firemen can take off and use their sick time, their vacation and such without there being a void up there in comfort. The part-timers also helped up staff during the flooding event to ensure that people were able to go home and sleep and such. What we're asking for with that $40,000 allows us to continue another year with those same part-timers without adding any additional positions.

That's the only growth. So that's already in your budget?

We were doing a... This last year, we got to split with Berkheim and match what they did with theirs. So we were trying to continue that as if that was only supposed to go until October.

So is the figure for the full-timers we have $40,000 less than what Berkheim's getting?

No, the figure for the full-timers, that's already been.

I'm just trying to think of where. I don't have that on my sheet.

I was asking her. The $40,000 is for the part-timer.

Where did we get that money from? Do you remember?

Oh, where it came from?

Okay. I'm just going to make a note of it.

There was a budgeted amount, that $40,000 we came up with. That $40,000 is to continue at $20 an hour up to seven days a month if needed for 12 months. to utilize the part-timers. That's where we came up with 40,000. It's actually 38 and some change that gives us a little bit of wiggle room.

I'm just trying to figure out what line item it is and where it came, like where we budgeted that money from. So that's all. I'll talk to Corinne on that.

We had the full-timers and then we had one that was in the military that went to the military. So they went to a vacant spot. Berghain originally, we had two spots that were vacant for the longest time while we worked out logistics. So there were several months of not having any full timers in that spot. The remaining amount was split down the middle. Berghain used for a pilot program for what they had proposed before. And so we had asked to do the same thing twice. several months ago, and we did that, but it was going to get us to October. And so we're asking to continue that, and it would only cost $40,000 because we're not asking for any additional firefighters or anything else, just for that. That's where that number came from originally.

And the gentleman that was away on military leave is back?

No, he left permanently. He quit. He went to work. He was full-time with us, but he's now in the Navy. Okay.

So what's your next request? I got that noted.

As far as the 545, we asked about the certification pay for the full-time fireman.

That's already been handled.

Okay. Going down my line here, I don't have any other significant changes under 545.

Does anyone have any questions for Brady on 545? Gentlemen, anything from you?

Okay. I have one. One thing that's been floating around. I had a meeting with Comfort Fire Department. I could have brought this up while everyone was here. So comfort fire trucks have been hit in Washington the past several years. One of their requests was We want to get our asset off the interstate as quickly as possible. And that's obviously the goal for anyone. The last one, I think, that fire truck sitting there probably saved eight different lives that are at that scene. And so we had a meeting in Comfort. The sheriff was there, Comfort Fire, Adam, Brady. I don't know who else. TxDOT was also there. And it was brought up that we might consider using one of the attenuators or the scorpion trucks at some of these interstate accidents. I don't know if y'all have seen those. I'm sure you have. The fire truck that was hit, if it went through the insurance, it would probably get totaled. I'm not saying you can't use it, but it would be a total truck, which means one of their two main trucks for all their responses is wrecked. That's a million-dollar truck. And so one of these apparatus machines or trucks would... protect the fire truck at a scene it would have flashing lights i don't know where we are on our budget but this is something i just wanted to bring to the court's attention as a possible i'm adding that to the list to discuss with corinna tomorrow okay if i can just add in on this for years i've always wondered why we used a million dollar truck to block a highway uh

I like this idea. I would rather try to look for a used one to start with and I like the concept, and I think it's a no-brainer is to use a brand-new $200,000 truck as opposed to a million-dollar truck. It's a lot better. I'm fine with that.

How come we're not using it across the board with all the departments? It seems like a smarter move than putting a million-dollar piece of equipment on the line every time and using blockers. It's people, time.

This is our own department that we have to worry about. They're the only ones that have interstate coverage aside from the city of Bernie. Berghain, 46. But, I mean, as far as I-10.

I-10 is the main thing. What about all the crashes on 46? Those are rollovers. Those are different.

All right.

If we put one on in comfort, I would ask that – you know, comfort, be able to respond to down to this area. If it was in the Bernie area, I'd want to bring that down. I would think that we could also talk to the city and maybe make this a dual conversation.

I'm really glad to hear you say that. That was the first thing that I brought up is it's going to be between Comfort and Bernie, but an automatic aid agreement for interstate coverage. Right. Because the last thing I do want to see, to be 100 percent honest, as the operational person with the paid fireman, is them rolling out the door to something with no equipment to actually do the job of a fireman and sitting in a crash truck the entire time. and something else happened, they have no tools to do anything then at that point. There needs to be a back and forth, and that's a very common thing anywhere else that you go to have that reciprocity, just as Adam was talking about earlier.

Is there any, I know this is probably a big ask, could you do a little research tonight, see what the value of a used one would be so we have it tomorrow? Because that way we could budget, if we're going to do this, budget for the full value, but with the intent on hopefully finding a cheaper one? I don't know. You want a copy?

Just so everyone knows. But you know what I'm saying? Yes, the going rate on a truck, they gave us three different quotes. And this is one company, but they are the Byboard or whatever government.

So it's about $200K we're looking at.

It's about $187K.

I'm fine with used as long as it's… Well, yeah, if we can't find a used one that meets everyone's standards. But if you could just do a quick search, so we'll see if that's even an option tomorrow when we come to vote. Because if it's not an option, then we know… this could be your only choice.

Can I ask that if, as this goes down the process, if it becomes a viable reality solution, is this something that a comfort volunteer firefighter can drive? Can drive? Can drive and operate it. Well, if they can drive a big fire truck. Physically, do they have the ability to? Is it a county vehicle? And do we run into that issue? Because we just had this conversation the other day about

As long as we're insured.

County employees driving volunteer vehicles, volunteers driving county vehicles. I'm just. That's a current issue.

And so Corinna will be here tomorrow and we can work out those logistics later. The main thing is just for tomorrow's purposes, we got to be done with what we're putting, what we're planning on buying for the county.

Tomorrow, down, down the road, six later years down the road as as this all develops. We want to work more with Ampo on extending the hero program to the loves truck stop and comfort to give that extra layer of protection of dedicating hero trucks to this corridor. Because with us being part of Ampo, they actually cut off here at the 46 bridge. Guadalupe County, they extend this again. Comal, they go through New Braunfels. I don't do that here yet.

And tell us, well, we had a little meeting about it. So do you remember what the cost that they were?

I don't remember those numbers. And then the flood happened.

It was quite a bit more than the Scorpion truck.

Yeah.

All right. What's your next? Extend service. Next department.

That's 545 Fund 43. We're not asking for anything different. That's the fire inspection fund. I don't believe there was any increase or changes. Juan's doing just fine, loving all of it. I told you we're going to scrap the inspector position and let that rest. The other one is emergency management. The only increase, notable increase that I found on here, well, I didn't find that I added, was asking for an administrative assistant. us being over in the 400 building. I know this has been a hot topic. Everybody kind of knows where we're at with this, but I utilize Becky for all of my needs as an elections employee. And I would really like to stop doing that. I love Becky. We have a great relationship. I just, I think we could be more efficient if I had this person around the clock or year round versus just during a natural disaster for pre-planning the communication aspects with everybody. In a disaster, it is so hard to stay so communicative with everybody that I need to and be efficient with everything that is being asked for this one position. I think this person can duel and help tremendously with the graphing issue and the statistics that y'all are wanting on the fire side, helping with our call volume as far as where's Brady, where's Juan at, our scheduling. This one person, I think, can serve multiple purposes as well as some of those needs for the development office.

Okay. You want to touch on that because he wasn't privy to the admin three position that we created?

So, Mary Ellen, do you want to come up? We talked about being some sort of, I don't know if it's 50-50 split with the admin for the engineering office. I know that Mary Ellen has a lot of clerk tasks that needs to be done and general support looking for a very versatile kind of higher level person.

Yes. Brady and I have had a lot of conversations about this once we realized that we both were asking for someone to help serve the building and serve our department's individual needs. I think a lot of the, we actually this morning went over the draft job description that he had, as well as the list that I provided you all. I think a lot of the functions are the same in the job description he had. They were a little more detailed out, like I want reports on calls. Okay, that's not that different than reports on permit numbers. So if we make the job description a little bit more broad, that can be something that still serves both of our needs. There will be times if this person is serving in an emergency role, they will be at an emergency and not in the department available to help. But that's cross-training. Everyone else will then answer the phones and handle the PO requests and handle the reports that need to come to court. but it does take that load off when they're not swamped with emergencies and things like that to be able to assist the building as a whole. We also talked about we probably would need to do sort of a biweekly, I'm sorry, bimonthly meeting to say, how much time do you need over these next two weeks for this individual dedicated to emergency management? Okay, that leaves me this much time And that's how we can dedicate to this person and make sure they understand their priorities. So they're not running around saying, I don't know who I'm supposed to answer to. I don't know how to make this work. Who's my boss? What do I do? That way we can have those. It'll be under, you know, whichever department it's under is the, I guess, the supervisor. But we would make sure we had that coordination to make sure that both roles could be served.

So in a nutshell, you wouldn't be getting your own personal one, but you'd be getting a mutual one to share with Mary Ellen. That's what we can. I'm completely fine with that.

And I have one. I think we're going to fill this person's time up and not overwhelm them. But I think between what we need to be doing with the emergency management for the preparation level and it being able to help with the fire marshal stuff also. And then the few things that she has, I mean, they're doubling up. We're asking for the exact same thing.

So I think so. I think we're on the same page there. But the one additional request I'm going to make of the court is Brady mentioned Becky. After talking to Jen, since she does work in elections, I've been working with her on a job description because she got a background in communications. She's been vital to Brady and I during both floods. So her elections pay should not be paying her during the flood or during a disaster event. And so my proposal is to put $6,000 into a part-time light item for Brady under emergency management to dedicate for activating her so you can rely on her during the true events. Since she has all the certifications and this does not take away from pay that should be going to elections versus elsewhere. So I think that is a way to solve your need during a disaster event for assistance. And that way this person, your admin three, and say focused on 400 Blanco, and then you have someone that can go out in the field.

Can I give you just what I'm thinking right now? I don't know if this is the right time to say that or not. I... I don't know where I stand on that. I understand what you're saying. And I love Becky. And absolutely, she needs to stay involved in what we're doing and get paid for it. Right. I don't want this to turn into a that's my job. That's my job. And this person's over this person, because I think what we're asking for in this admin assistant. is to be our full-time person doing that. And I would hate for us to have a natural disaster and they have somebody from the elections office coming over and telling them what to do and how to do what they trained throughout the year and went to certifications and stuff for. Does that make sense? No.

I'm saying Becky takes her same role that she's always had during disaster. Okay, I see what you're saying. I just don't want them to... The way she's compensated has to come out of emergency management and not elections. And so I'm trying to set up a way where we are legal in the way we're paying her.

How have we done it up to this point?

Not the right way. How? Because we didn't... We paid all employees for their activation last year. Remember, we did court orders to make sure everyone who participated in the flood was paid. I'm just making sure that Becky has part of her job responsibilities, emergency management, and same with Juan because they didn't have it officially listed under their job descriptions, and they play vital roles. And so technically we could activate anyone we wanted, but they are part of the core team when we activate the EOC. And so I'm just trying to make sure long-term we have our I's dotted and our T's crossed.

As we go through and do the job description stuff, however that works out, can we look at how we can insert a line in anybody that, I mean, I'm not talking about Susan Jackson coming out and helping out the command post in knee-deep water. I don't mean that. But in certain departments that we may need, if a natural tornado rips through our entire county, how we're covered moving forward to activate people that are saying, I know I work in this department, but I am so available, I can be doing paperwork over here. You see what I'm saying? To meet this need.

That's a Jen question.

Okay. Okay. I just don't know what the answer is.

If you want to talk to her, but at least I'm making sure Juan and...

I know we used a couple last year from development, Yvette and Norma.

And I know we have documents that are now being given out when they get the policy manual about what they do in a natural disaster. They might have to stay. I mean, some of that is addressed in when they sign things. But I would think that Brady needs to be part of that job description information just to make sure that it's covered properly, the wording or, you know. He is.

At least the ones that I'm working on.

Okay. I just want to make sure he's part of that first.

Two questions. Two questions.

So is Becky willing to train the new person?

She told me absolutely that, yeah, this is not bad blood with her at all. it turns into a lot for her, but she's more than willing to help work with somebody, teach them, train them. It may take two floods to really instill how this happens, but she's not going anywhere. It's just going to be somebody more day-to-day all the time. And if we have to activate the EOC, you can bet Becky and this person will both be there. And it's going to take Becky telling her, you need to do this, you need to do that.

That's important for her to impart that institutional knowledge and And then the other question, just because this has come up, this person is not to answer the phone. Not that he or she won't answer the phone. We want to see more streamlining on the website so that people can find things easier. But sometimes when J.A. and Joy are in the throes of trying to enter data, it's nice to not be interrupted. But let's put this myth aside that this is a fancy phone answerer person.

The answering of phones is not the core function. This person will get our septic reports redacted and available on the website or through the portal for public information requests so that people don't have to request them each and every time. They can just go pull them down. They'll help process our public information requests. They'll modify the, you know, keep the website updated for emergency management, for fire, for our office, you know, maintain or preparing reports, SOPs, charts, graphs, presentations for commissioners court on data of permits or data of call logs and call outs. So answering the phones is a very small piece of that position. Okay, thanks. Thank you.

Gentlemen, anything from you before we let Brady go?

Yeah, I want to talk about Brady's pay. I tried to do an increase in his pay in the middle of several months ago, and I respected the idea that we handle changes of pay scales during the budget process, so that's what I want to do. When you compare what he's getting compared to – other departments that do a blended fire marshal and an emergency management coordinator, they're significantly higher, generally $20,000 to $30,000 more than what he's getting paid right now.

I disagree. I've got numbers. Guadalupe County is the fire marshal, emergency management, and fire chief for a full fire department. The assistant fire marshal. And he might just, I think, slightly more than Brady.

The assistant's at 105 and the fire marshal emergency management coordinator's at 124. And that's as of the census last year and they got a COLA and they went up from there. Comal County is up there as well. Bexar County is up there.

Well, before we get into just based on what we have projected right now, Brady's salary is going to go up 40 from you were getting 1,200 as your basic peace officer certification pay. Yeah, 1,200. He's now getting 4,800 because we had created that. He's getting a 4% raise based on his COLA, plus he's moving up the chart 2% because of his years in service. So that equates to, I'm just trying to find you on the chart here. I think that's about a $10,000 raise just in those three things.

I was trying to find the chart myself.

I can't find. I don't have the chart with me.

I got it. I'm trying to. What category are you in? Do you remember off the top of your head? 18. 18.

I knew that. I just don't have the.

Okay. You're an 18. Step. Step four. Or no. Step. You're two going on three. So he's going to make nine. His base is. Without the 4% COLAs is $94,839. I think that's... Let me double check that.

That includes the two positions.

Bear with me. Hold on one sec. Which page are you looking for? I'm looking for to make sure I have the... Because Clint gave us a chart like this that has COLA.

If you look at... It's got a date on it, too.

I've got it. Oh, effective October 1st. Okay, so yeah. Brady's base pay... With the 4% COLA next year, it's going to be $94,839. And that's with the 4% and 2% step raise. And then you add $4,800 to that. That's where he's at just based off of what we've approved in the budget so far.

And you'd add $4,800 to the $94,839? Yes, sir.

So he's just shy of $100,000. That's where we're at based on what we've done so far. All right. And now you can go from there, whatever you want.

Okay.

Sorry, I didn't bring any of that paperwork. You wouldn't have this. This was given out to the court. I got you.

I also saw in the original documents splitting his department.

That was a salary committee. We discussed it. And no surprise, I talked to Brady about this, of what options look like as we grow that we're eventually going to have to split it. And so the salary committee was like, well, depending on how much certain counties pay a just a sole emergency manager. I think we saw a figure of around 80,000. And then you could have someone running that. And I know Brady does a lot of extra duties and things like that, that gives him more time with his kid if he were to split it now or we split it in the future. But this is just, we had that talk of eventually Kendall County is going to be split as we grow because it's going to be more than one person can handle in two jobs.

Is that a fair statement? Yes, I do feel down the road, but to be honest with you right now, I've got my feet planted. I'm learning so much, made connections across the state and across the country. And we're being patted on the back for we're writing the book. I mean, we're helping lessons learned across the country and I'm not ready to give it up yet.

Well, my goal initially was 120. I wanted to see Brady at.

So you want to move them to the step 15? on his pay level? Because that's what you'd put him at the top of his chart. I don't have the time.

I got it right here. I'm just going to say we can't do that. I mean, we can, but We can do that, but what's that going to do to road and bridge, to the sheriff's department, to engineering?

A few years ago, we significantly raised our engineer's office significantly. When we brought our general counsel in last year, we bumped her way above what she was originally going to get paid on the idea that that's what it would cost to hire an attorney. So he's a category 18. I don't know. Maybe that's part of the problem. But without Corinna here, I don't have... Well, I can add this to the list to discuss tomorrow.

So I added that on there. Okay. So we don't have to... Because again, Corinna is going to be more valuable with this discussion.

What step did we say... Did you say a step?

No, he's in a step 18 and move him to a step 15.

You mean grade 18? Grade 18, step 15.

Can I add just a little bit of information from what you said? Yes, several years ago, the engineer's office was reclassified. And I believe that that was, you know, done so correctly based off of what salaries were in the market, considering public service. But that was a change to the grade, not the step. And so obviously, this is a question, like you said, Corinna needs to be here with numbers and information for you guys. But i just wanted to clarify for when that happened in our office in our department that was a grade change to correct what those um job descriptions really um really reflect on the chart okay all right is there anything else that we need to address with brady i completely missed something that because i got nervous sitting here in front of you don't be nervous

Can I bring up one more thing? I believe it's going to be under the Emergency Management 406. It has to do with weather, something that I have learned. Is that okay?

Yes.

Okay. There's so many different companies that are out there now as technology is increasing. And I recently had the opportunity to go and speak at Iowa State University about where I'm at in my career path, my professional growth, and have learned that there's so many people out there that study the weather and getting information out a lot sooner now with technology, apps, the different equipment that they use, the different softwares on measuring what and where something is going to hit. and how significant that's going to be. And then the impact that's going to have based on the topography, geography and such. Us being here in the Texas Hill Country, that is huge. And we've seen that firsthand with the flooding. as well as sitting in Sisterdale. If you have a grass fire up off Platten Creek, the weather can change in an instant without realizing that that is going to happen at that moment in time, and it changes the entire fire pattern, the direction, the homes that it's going to affect. So one of the things with emergency management I'd like to see is that we We did a request for information. We're able to get several several people to send us what their capabilities are. And we can get it to the minute of when we're going to see that wind shift and the wind speed change. And that is drastic. This last flood, it was we knew when we did the preparation meeting, it's going to rain. We're going to get a lot of rain. We don't know where it's going to rain or when it's going to rain. I do believe that we could have known a little bit more precise, and I don't want to go too far in depth in the setting that we're in on that. I think a little bit more of that could have helped us prepare just a little bit more on where exactly in the county we need to prepare and what those effects are going to be.

I added that. Emergency management, 20K request for weather support services. We'll discuss that tomorrow with Brenna here.

Okay. Thank you.

All right.

Thanks, Brady.

Let's see. Looking for my list that Corinna gave me. Yeah, you're all set.

We're done.

Thank you.

I don't know how productive we're going to be without Corinna. She's very vital. I have 10 notes I'm just going to go over to summarize to make sure I have everything encapsulated of what we're going to discuss tomorrow. Number one, confirm whether 5% increases to all VFW budgets are included in the budget. Two, $30,000 truck upgrade for sister Dale. Uh, our time, an additional $566,067 as being requested as an additional allotment. Uh, number five, Brady's withdrawing his investigator request. Six, uh, Comfort is requesting 40 K additional for part-time funding or full time for the part-timers. Uh, Comfort, fire blocker of $200,000, Rebecca Fink adding $6,000 to the part-time emergency management line, Brady's salary moved to a step 15, and lastly, emergency management, a $20,000 request for weather support services. Did I miss anything that you ladies wanted on there to discuss tomorrow? One second, sir.

And we said increase pay for VM emergency coordinator.

That is Brady's move to step 715. Mr. Chapman, did I miss anything that you want to discuss?

No.

Oh, and then we did do, I think we're leaning toward funding the position, the admin between emergency. That's already added to the budget. Okay.

Chad, anything that I missed? Sure.

Can I maybe add to the list of

Just ask your question first, and I'll tell you if it's already on there or not.

Well, I'd say it's not on there because I think you probably eliminated it.

Sure, could you come to the microphone?

It's about my IT position. Oh, okay. Yeah, okay, thank you. You can have a seat.

So I've learned a lot about what this might look like. And when I came to the court initially, it was, and having conversations with Brian Stegall, it was, I need help. I need help in my office to assist with all the issues that we deal with pretty much on a daily basis. So I got to having a detailed conversation with Brian and with Roger Baker and talking about what that might look like and what that potentially is. I misunderstood and had a misunderstanding conception of what that needed to be. I came asking for an additional IT person. That came from the suggestion also from council that said based on the security apparatus and the surveillance cameras and the key access system, that that should be a law enforcement only operated system. meaning that only law enforcement should have access to that. I don't think that's going to be possible. And it's probably a best practice to do that. But in reality, nobody really does that.

I've asked around, just got back from conference.

And I apologize for not being here on Monday. I would have discussed this on Monday. I received the email the day I left for conference and I didn't go back. So my bad. um so what does this look like it doesn't need to be a quote-unquote it person in the sense of i have confidence in brian's ability and and trustworthiness that that they can handle what what they do for us um and i think i think maybe with some in talking with nicole maybe a a written understanding of exactly what the parameters might look like, just to make sure that might be some of that separation. But they are all compliant with all the things that they need as far as CJIS and all that. So I think we're good with everything. So we don't necessarily need a quote unquote IT person that, as I've learned and discovered, is more of a hardware person versus a software person. That was my misunderstanding. What I need is someone that's going to be able to help and assist with the software side. And I'm telling you that I need help. Roger needs help. To the point where things get backlogged, to the point where he's taking girls away from their desks to go shift cars around to the dealerships or take it to San Antonio to go get outfit and whatever. That's where we're at. I need somebody that he can rely on every day that he knows can assist him with all the issues that we have. What does that look like? I'll come tomorrow, and I'll bring a job description. I'll talk with Brian about that, specifically something in the area of a law enforcement electronic technician of some kind, whatever we want to call it. Other areas, other agencies have that. I don't know if you understand the amount of equipment that we have. at my office alone. And, and it's every day that, that we're trying to keep up and keep these things up and running and they have to run. I can't, you know, having a car down for an extended period of time is a problem. Having a camera down is a problem. And sometimes it takes hours to get those things up and running. And one person doing that and relying on one person only is, it's become overwhelming for Roger. So we need help. And the good news is it doesn't need to be a quote, paid at the level of an IT person, we can bring that down. And, you know, obviously I haven't had a chance to talk to salary committee or anything like that, but I do have a proposal and I'm asking the court to consider, you know, getting me some help in that area that we need help with. If you ask me what others do, I just got back from conference. It's all over the place. There's no standard method of doing this. I can just tell you that I need help, and Roger Baker needs help.

All right. So please come prepared. We'll give you a short time to make your little pitch with Brian because tomorrow is the wrapping up. So we'll give you a chance to speak. I appreciate you letting me come forward now. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Sheriff. Thank you. All right. So I've added that to the list.

Start at 5 in the morning?

No. I think we're starting at 9. Yeah, we're at 9 a.m. And if you look at the schedule we got – We're going to go over county engineer briefly, commissioner's court, we're on our capital projects, open spaces. James Hudson's coming in at two with figures. I just got a packet from Nearly it's a day. So he's going to come and give us some more breakdown. But we got a lot to do tomorrow.

So we still need to do county engineer since we did county engineer.

I don't know. Corinna put this together. So I'm just going based on what she tentatively has. We're just going to be be flexible. We're just going to kind of go through everything that needs to be finalized and knock this out. So sound good to y'all?

You're going to be here so many. Thank you. Take the whole time.

It is 3.46 p.m. on this Wednesday, July 29th, and the special call meeting of the Kendall County Commission Court is now adjourned.