Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone.

It is 9 a.m. on this Thursday, July 30, 2026. And this last day of budget workshops is called Order. A couple of things. We're going to run this morning session from 9 to 1130 and then resume from 1 to as long as necessary to wrap up budget today. Mr. Hudson will be in this afternoon at about 2 o'clock to give us a briefing. But the rest is just knocking out the final decisions we need to make. We have that list of 10 items from yesterday. We have a couple items on the agenda that Brenna has prepared. And then Brenna, I'm sure, has got some other issues that we need to go through. So, Brenna, you want to kick us off with your regularly scheduled items, and then we'll move on to the special projects and other whatnot that we intend to cover.

The first thing we have is Mary Ellen coming back. She and I did meet yesterday. after the court made the decision to split the department. So we did meet to take the current engineer's budget, which is Department 402 on page 11, and create the development management budget, which in our fund used to be Department 590, which will then again be Department 590. And so I think she has taken the numbers that we have – that she and I spoke about and created something for y'all to review.

And then, you know, no disrespect, but we're going to try to keep things moving today. So give us the nuts and bolts in a short and concise manner, and then we'll open up for questions.

Okay, not a problem. So what I have handed out to you is the budget that you all have normally seen. I've added in the two columns on the right-hand side of the page in red. development engineer budget, county engineer budget. I've only included the things that are the normal requests, not the property liability or the things that the auditor's office looks at. It is the total budget is the same that was presented to you earlier. It is just shown here in red is split out for what part goes to development, what part goes to county engineer from vehicle maintenance and fuel. It was just a percentage of the number of vehicles. There's a little bit in operating. There's a little bit in office supplies, but almost the bulk of what's there I left over in the development area. or would be transferred to development because that's where most of those costs are coming from.

Does anyone have any objections to anything that's been proposed by Mary Ellen?

I have a question. Are we going to give it another number then?

Yes, development management in our budget is Department 590. 590, okay. And so that's what it was before it was consolidated. So I will go back and use that same GL structure for that department. So when the proposed budget comes out, 402 will be drastically decreased. And right here where it says development engineer, that department will be the new 590 department in the proposed budget. But with the same, other than the salaries and benefits because of the scale that y'all increased, all the operating would stay the same as Mary Ellen presented.

The only change that was not in what you saw before was bidding and notices. When that came in round one, that was zero for the department in general. Okay. That had been zeroed out when purchasing started because they're responsible for all the RFQ bidding and things like that. But we do a few notices, especially related to posting in the paper for rule amendments or for traffic signage. So I put a little bit in both budgets. I think I did $500 in each budget just for both departments just to make sure if we needed to run signs or amendments for rules that those funds were there.

Does development have more vehicles than the road and bridge side? Yes.

Commissioner Chapman? Well, notice, I mean, the engineer's part is drastically cut, which I'm questioning is, did you give yourself enough space, number one? Number two, under contract services, you went from $250,000 to $225,000. With the flood event that we just... Should we not keep that at 250 and put 50,000 in yours?

So what the red is, I actually would like to talk about contract services because of the flood, but what's presented here was showing that there was no increase to the budget with the split of the departments, that 25,000 would stay under the engineers, the other 200,000 would stay contract services. And the stuff that I am going to be doing myself under the new role versus having to contract out would be what would cover the salary of the development engineer. So that's what's reflected in the exempt personnel line has the plus 25,000. That's an approximation. When you guys approve that position and salary, she would plug in the correct number for that. That's just a placeholder. That included, we ran some numbers. That's the cap of a step six with benefits. But, you know, what the salary is would have to be adjusted once you guys set that. And the other 200,000 states. So I was just trying to show that we accounted for no increase to the budget.

Well, what I'm saying is your members don't add.

No, they do because she took the 25,000 out of contract services. And because y'all will need to hire a development engineer, you can't currently, with your rules, hire at a step six.

She was trying to keep a net neutral budget, but I think that's what... Okay. I think that's a mistake though. And here's why, because of the damage that we're starting to see and having to make some bandaid fixes till we find out a long-term fix. I think we need to put some contingency somewhere into your budget.

I have some, yes, that was, so I wanted to present just before you move on.

So just to clarify, you were going to you had $50,000 for contracting out some work that you said you could do yourself and you're still willing to do that. Yes. Okay, perfect.

And so that's what this is. It's showing that the split is just as I presented to you all that there's no impact to the budget. There are some other things we need to talk about the budget because of the flood. And I want to get into that. And I think it does affect contract services or somewhere else in the budget. But this was presented just as the breakout of the departments.

I think we're all good with that breakout now. Let's talk about what we need to supplement.

Okay. I would like to start with the CDBG MITMOD grant that we have. That grant has an enormous amount of reports, monthly meetings, general hoops, not just from an engineering and grant standpoint, but the grant management, the auditing standpoint. With the change that's happening to the position, we need to make sure that we are covered so that that grant can continue. The CDBG does allow, this particular one allows for 8 percent of the grant amount to be grant administration services. Our contract currently does not include that because we were planning to do it in-house with the grant coordinator. At this point, we don't know when the new person would be and how they would be trained. we need to have in place a way to continue that grant without a step backwards. That 8% of a $1.5 million contract is about $115,000. That has to be put somewhere. I am meeting with the GLO next week to determine if we can amend our contract, that that could be reimbursed to us. I don't know that at this point, but even if it is reimbursed, we still have to pay that out to get reimbursed. So, The $115,000 is on the high side because we have started the grant, but I don't have a good number for you on what, you know, is it $100,000 that's left? I don't know what that level of effort is left at this point because we're still very much at the beginning of that grant.

But we don't know for sure that they will even allow us to take the grant money and pay somebody else. So we have to be prepared to pay for this out of pocket.

We have to be prepared for that. Now, if the GLO says, no, you can't amend your contract for reimbursement and you have to pay out of pocket, it's probably not going to be $115 if you hire the grant manager, but we need something in between until that person is up to speed and can take it 100%. But when that person is hired, how quickly they'll be up to speed, I don't know. So I just put the 8% that the contract allowed. I don't know what the correct number there is, but if we are allowed to amend the contract to get it reimbursed, I wouldn't want to then amend the contract for the new person. It's going to stay as part of the contract as reimbursed, which means you need the full $115,000.

So it sounds like we need to budget $115,000, just assuming the worst right now?

I think so.

Okay.

And I was going to suggest that that was in contract services, but I don't know if that needs to go in a FEMA line or not a FEMA line, a grant line or somewhere else. Since we don't know yet if it's being reimbursed.

It would have to go in the grant line once we, if that actually happens.

Can you make a note to add another $115 to the budget?

Yeah, that's what y'all want to do.

Well, it sounds like we have to because we don't know.

For a placeholder right now, I would suggest putting it in the county engineer which is only going to have 25 000 i would suggest putting it in there because it it is it would be that side it's not it's not a development yeah she's going to be she's going to be heavily involved in it so it's it's the engineering side um that works and then if it is able to be reimbursed it could be moved to the general fund or whatever okay all right what's next

There were, I guess I'll do the FEMA disasters next. The 2025 disaster, I know we still have the guardrail outstanding since we are going to have to rebid that work with the damage that we received this year. The bid that we had was a little under, I want to say it was 75 or 76,000 that you guys had approved the amount. So today, I didn't get that number specifically from Christina this morning. I know it was a little shy of $80,000. That's from 2025. I would assume that would still go in the grant line then, or wherever, disaster line, wherever you have the reimbursement. And that would be reimbursed, but we haven't paid that yet. But FEMA has only reimbursed up to 75% if they agree.

You have to use fund balance for your grants, and then you... But when it comes to FEMA, FEMA will reimburse you at some point, but it is really only a percentage of the cost.

How much do we need to allocate to address this item? Mary Ellen?

The bid we had, I mean, $80,000, but you're going to get some of that reimbursed because we had that.

So if we do $60,000 with that, is that 75%? That's 80%, right?

We have to budget the full amount.

Oh, right. You have to budget the full amount.

We have to budget the full amount.

We're kind of getting ahead. Like, I have spreadsheets when y'all are ready to talk about grants.

Okay.

Or the documents that I got from. Okay. Okay, well. And then, but as far as the expenditures or stuff, that's not anything that the grant coordinators gave me yet, or the expenditures. I just, I had to know. what grants they've come to court to apply for and all that.

We'll address that during grants. What else do you got that we need to add?

There are two different grant coordinators. Christina may know some because she's been involved in that, but if she's not here for that discussion, none of us are going to know what that figure is when we get to that discussion.

We at least know this one. It's going to be $80,000.

And this is for what specifically, Miriam?

That was the 2025 DR4875 disaster declaration. And what's the $80,000 for? Guardrails.

Guardrails, thank you.

And I can try to come back or stay and discuss on the capital and the grants if we need. For the 2026 disaster, we don't have enough information yet to know what all of those numbers are. but I do know we've turned in on our P-STAT the bridge at Zeller Lane. We are going to have to bid that work out for design and bid that out to be constructed. Our estimate and TxDOT field guys kind of said around the same, it's probably going to be $500,000. Now, assuming you have a FEMA declaration, you're going to have 70 or 75 percent of that reimbursed, but you still have to do that work. Little Joshua Creek, I think we estimated around 200,000, I think is what we said when we were out in the field, but that is stabbed in the dark. It's the same thing. We're going to design it and have it constructed. We, this last week, found additional damage on Mountain View Trail. Roden Bridge will do that work, but material-wise, that's about 200,000. That, 300,000.

So do we need to put that $300,000 into the budget?

Would that come out of the Rotem? On that one, because they're doing the work, would that come out of Rotem Bridge?

Are y'all going to request the work be reimbursed by FEMA? Yes.

But Rotem Bridge would be doing the work on...

Right, but part of that is all those... All those grant documents you have to do that says they're doing the work, the hours, the equipment. Yes. You have to apply all this stuff from the disaster 101 finance. Somebody's got to do those.

Yes.

In order to get that money.

Another $300.

What did you say on little Joshua?

Are you bidding that out or are we doing that? That one we would. You're using FEMA and you're doing this. You have to pretty much bid everything out when it gets to a certain cost because FEMA requires you to follow your state's procurement law.

All right, so $300,000. I think that Little Joshua, that's a little on the low side.

I'm trying to remember if we said $200,000 or $300,000.

Well, no, y'all told me $500,000 for Zeller, $200,000 for Little Joshua, $300,000 for Mountain View is what I wrote down so far.

I think it was $300,000 that we talked about in the field for Little Joshua.

On Little Joshua, I think $300,000 would be closer.

Yeah, I agree.

All right, what else you got?

So is Zeller a bridge? Yes. And is Little Joshua a bridge? Little Water Crossing, yes. And then Mountain View Trail is a large culvert? Okay.

I'm just trying to get... Yeah, good notes.

All right, what do you got? Upper Cibolo can be done in-house. There's not stuff that we're going to have to bid out. So I was trying to grab the things that we needed to have the dollars marked for, but we will be fixing that, and we can do that one in-house. I have a meeting this afternoon with somebody to talk about costs to help us with the substantial damage that would be out of this fiscal year out of contract services and helping the residents get through their permitting because for the number of permits we have, we simply don't have enough staff to be able to get those done efficiently that people can get back to their work as quickly as possible. That would be reimbursed through FEMA with a declaration. That work would be. I don't expect that to be very much, but I'm going to have a little bit more information on that. And for this 2026, all of the other documentation that we're going to have to do for FEMA, just like we did in 25, The grant coordinator had done a lot of that work in bringing things to court, getting the things through FEMA, all of that documentation. Do we need somebody to help us through that process right now until there is a grant manager? I don't know the timing of this grant manager position.

I think Nicole's coming to next court. There's already an agenda item to go ahead and get the job description out and

I would just like to say this about FEMA. If you've never taken TETM's Disaster Finance 101, you're not going to understand the FEMA required reports. I've been involved in grants for probably 27 of my 28 years or at least 26 of my 28 years. I hosted a disaster, or I had Tiedem do it last year, and I had three deep in Road and Bridge. I had the whole treasurer's office, my entire office, Juanita's office, Sharon's office, Melissa came, the grant coordinator, Christina came. I was there. You were there, engineering, anybody that at the time I thought my, at any point, this was like March or April, and then we had July. And the only people that had ever done that before, I think Cheryl had done it once before. Sharon and I had in my office, that was it. And Max from Road and Bridge had done that before.

Would you recommend us bringing a specific FEMA professional that handles this to get through this process?

They will. Somebody that, whoever that the county is working with for the FEMA will probably be through TETM. That's typically, a lot of times it just depends on what the governor does and how FEMA decides to funnel that money. So we'll work with the professional, but on our end, on the county's end, it's it is, it's very detailed documentation. So if Corinna Speer makes this hourly rate, here's what her benefits cost per hour. Even though you can't break mine down by hour, you have to do that. You can't break y'all's down by hour, but if we're going to record it, you have to break it down as if you worked 40 hours a week. And then you got on this piece of equipment, you have to know where to go look on FEMA's and the the most accurate thing. And you have to know which category there's a, like a through I category, you have to understand all that. And I'm going to tell you, I've taken the class twice and I, I know enough to know where to go look to find all the information, but I couldn't sit down and do it because I'm not a grant specialist. Um, it is just, it's just a different It's just so different. It's different than any other thing that we do, any other type of grant.

Is that the disaster accounting 101? Yes.

And it's virtual? Well, no, I had it in-house. You had someone come? Yeah, we had someone come, and it was two and a half days. Two eight-hour days, one four-hour day, and you take kind of a little test at the end just to see if you kind of retain the knowledge and you work in groups to do the spreadsheets and to do the reporting. And it's really, I mean, I recommend it'd probably be great for all of you guys to take it at some point, even though you wouldn't be the people, the boots on the ground doing these reports. But whoever you get to do this needs to have some of that background. It's just so specialized. It's not like any other grant we do. And you hope you never have to have a FEMA grant. But I think that's why it is so specialized.

Did Jennifer Forbes go to the training? No.

There's another component to this. Even if we get, let's just say GrantWorks, because that's the first name that comes to mind. We get GrantWorks to come in here on a temporary basis. GrantWorks is not going to do everything that we need done, correct me if I'm wrong, and hand us a check going, here's your money.

No, GrantWorks. gets you organized and tells you what you need to do. And when we did grant works for radium testing, we used them for several things. We haven't used them in years because I came to the court one time and I said, I have 246 emails for one grant and I'm your county auditor. I don't have time to do this, but the court hired grant works and grant works said, we need this. And guess what? I had to go gather the information to get it. We need to have a public hearing at 5 p.m. in the center circle. Guess what? I had to have a host of public hearing with somebody from GrantWorks at 5 p.m. We need all these on the agenda. Here's the exact wording. Somebody still has to do all the work when you hire outside company. They make sure you get it done, and they make sure you do your timeline. They act as your grant specialist. And they're great. I can't say enough great about them. You still have to have somebody in place to do the county's portion to make what they're telling you to do function. So y'all just need to understand that if you want to do that.

It wouldn't replace a grant manager. No, no, no, no.

It's like T-DOM helps you through the T-DOM stuff and FEMA helps you through the FEMA stuff, but somebody here still has to do the work.

So for the time being, real quick, we got the grants last year and our grant coordinator handled those. So can we not continue that way until your current grant coordinator doesn't have a job after September 30th. Right.

But for now, for now, months from now, yeah, this FEMA stuff, you'll start the process, but you won't start doing what they call work orders. Okay. And, and like PR reports and stuff, which is all the detailed stuff. Now you're, So this is just why it's important when y'all get ready to hire your grant manager, that whoever that is.

Yeah, I'm letting Nicole know, I'm making some notes, that we can put that in preferred experience. I mean, if either the person has it or not. But then, I'm sorry, what did you say?

Well, you can go online and take the class and get a basic understanding of it. But you will want somebody that understands. Do that for the court.

Millions of dollars.

Oh, you're saying you'd rather have it.

I would rather hire someone specifically to do the FEMA claims for us. There's so much money riding on this, not just our own county damage, but... If y'all go all the way up to the north and south fork of the river right now, there is more damage to roads, bridges, personal property, business property than we have ever seen from any recent flood in the past 30, 40 years. And if this person can come in as a specialist, help us with public assistance and our county, at least making sure that we're not missing out on any it might be the best funds that we've ever spent. But that's why I say they have to have experience.

And you need to push this out now.

But not our new hire. This is someone separate. Are you talking about a different person? Different person, yeah.

Okay, so just back to the job description, because Nicole's coming on the 11th, and so do we then want that required experience? And, I mean, if not, then how soon can that person get the training? So...

You can do TETM training, a lot of it online, or they're always hosting these. I just talked to them and said, it's been a long time. I need everybody that works here, you know, to kind of have this again. And we had a new grant coordinator position, which was why I was like, I need this position to happen for this training to happen for the county. and so we were able to get that done. But you can go online, and they host them all in this area, and they will come back to Kendall County. It costs us nothing. They'll come back and do it, and if it's something the court wants, you know, I'll reach back out to TETM and to our current reps there and say, hey, I think we need to do this again.

So then should we be also advertising and budgeting money for the specialists? I mean, if the grant... The grant manager comes on soon enough and he or she has experience and we would need the person, but it's going to take a while to get the job description and post it.

I'm talking about just a FEMA specific. Yeah. Like we're not learning how to ride a bike. We need to know how to fly a jet right now.

I mean, where do you want to get this person from? I think it's a good idea, but what are you saying?

There's companies out there. I sent a message to one of my friends in North Carolina that went through This whole process, and they hired special outside FEMA specialists to help them. Because then you submit your grant information and they deny it.

Yeah.

Most of the time.

Then you have to keep. Do you have a budget in mind?

In FEMA stuff, there are certain deadlines you have to meet, but you're also uploading stuff all the time. It can be daily for weeks and weeks and weeks. Somebody's got to upload. And do information and the payroll. So it can be quite a bit. But if the court hired, my recommendation, if the court did this, you would have that person for the life of this FEMA grant.

You wouldn't want to turn it over later. Probably a year. You're going to bring in somebody about a year.

But they wouldn't be in-house for a year. But you would want to have a contract so that they could assist you. initially to get everything done. And if they're going to be the ones doing the reporting on behalf of the county, then, you know, FEMA can last 18 to 24 months. But, you know, we had the disaster a year ago and we were having to kind of go back and we're still reporting on now the one that we were about to finish up the guardrails. Now, We have to split that because part of that's going to be the last year's disaster. Part of that would be this year's disaster, I'm assuming.

Would this be an RFQ?

Yes, I would say it would have to be.

Because even when we hire GrantWorks, when you hire GrantWorks, a lot of times your grants will pay for your administrator, but you do have to follow the procurement law.

So how much do we need to set aside so we can wrap this issue up on budget-wise? Do we say $150,000? Or is that too low?

I don't know.

Let's say $200,000.

If you have a number in there and we can get reimbursed even on that admin, you're saying that's a possibility?

Yeah, a lot of times you can, depending on what the grant is. As long as you did all the proper channels and can prove all your proper channels.

At the end of this, it may not actually cost us a penny.

Right, but it's just we need to budget a figure. Are you cool with 150? That gives us a little buffer? Because I really don't know what we're looking at here without an RFQ.

And so remember, you are going to budget. Those three figures you gave me earlier are 1.1 million. So we're going to budget 1.1 million. We're going to budget a max of $875,000 reimbursement. So that means the net expense is $275,000. for the FEMA. If we do not get 75% dollar per dollar expenditure, then that's where your fund balance not budgeted comes into play to cover it, which is why you always need that little bit of reserve there for disasters, because that's the part that's the unknown. Y'all can know what you're budgeting, but we never know a disaster. So you have to have that. So it would be budgeting, if you budgeted $150,000, I would include that into that $1.1 million of those three figures you gave me, and I would include 75% of that $1 million to come back. Perfect. If it doesn't come back, it doesn't come back. You still, I believe you need the service.

Let's do that.

Okay.

We're going to budget $115,000 for GrantWorks or somebody, $150,000 for a interim service, person and the grant manager yes that's what it sounds like and uh the and i want to get across the fact that we if grant works portion is covered by the grant it's not free it still cost us 115 000 that we could have been using as repairs as what as repairs on a bridge or whatever out of the CDBG out of the grant.

Yeah. We're still paying for it, but just in a different, through a different source and pot of money. All right. What else do you got?

Um, two quick things. Um, one, um, there are a couple of abandoned low water crossing bridges in the Guadalupe river, um, that are causing hazards for kayakers and people enjoying the water. One of them on this last storm actually got, uh, broken up and damaged a little bit more off of 1376. Meeting with Commissioner Carpenter, we want to look at possibly getting those removed. We did that at James Kiel Park. When we did the bridge at James Kiel Park several years ago, that was about $30,000 to have it removed. And we have two that we're aware of right now in the Guadalupe River that are causing a hazard to kayakers and the public.

Are they on private property?

It's within the bed and banks of the Guadalupe River, so access would be through private property, but it is in state-owned portion of the river.

Do we get reimbursed for that?

That's what I'm asked, if we could file a star. Well, so on the one off 1376 that was damaged, we talked with Brady yesterday about filing a star to see if that could get removed now that it's chunks of hazards and not just the crossing. We don't know that answer yet. Just to haul it out.

It's a fine line because if it's any way connected to private property, you can't use a star request for that typically.

They were public roads at one time.

I think the landowner would like to have it removed. And so I think the landowner would cooperate with us. I don't think that'll be a problem. I just think that, yeah, where are we going to get the money from?

Right. And the bridge or, you know, abandoned, they're not connected to anything. It's just a concrete structure sitting in the river. They They are not on private property. They are within the bed and banks of the Guadalupe River. And seeing as it's a danger to the public that uses that portion of the river, you do have a public benefit, but we would need to coordinate with that landowner for access.

Do we have authority to go into a state? Isn't that a state waterway?

It is.

So how do we have authority to do work in there? Without the consent of the state?

The same way we repair our bridges when we need to work on any of the other bridges along the river.

A couple years ago, the county went in and removed two bridges. Same situation. And both landowners are wanting assistance.

So how much total is this?

I'm guessing the two of them would be about $30,000. Each or collectively?

$30,000 each.

And that's based off of the, that was the cost several years ago to remove the one at James Kiel. So, I mean, I don't have quotes for this. It's a guess at this point. An educated guess.

60,000 contract services. Would that be contract services? Yes.

Yes. But is that something you need to get done sooner rather than later? Because are you going to let it sit there until October?

As long as it's not a safety issue right now where they continue to crumble, if it's just an obstruction of a waterway, I think we can wait until October 1st.

Is that a fair assessment? This constitutes an emergency if the court ever had to do an emergency declaration. I'm going to use the term bad budgeting does not constitute an emergency. This is because of an emergency. There is still a little bit of money this current fiscal year in the money that I budget in 409 for me to use at the end of the year for anything necessary. So if you needed it to get done this year, you certainly could. You also... could do an emergency declaration. It's going to use fund balance if you do it this fiscal year or next fiscal year. It doesn't really matter. If it's a matter of when you need to budget it and if it is for safety, can you do it this year is all I'm saying.

I would suggest working with the landowners and if there is protruding rebar, that type of stuff, that we, as a bare minimum, we go in there and if that's the only hazard, we remove that immediate hazard and then try to

schedule it and budget it properly so let's budget it and then if you can send someone out there to assess and just make sure there's no obvious hazard that needs to be remedied now we can neutralize that risk and then address this in october and i would still like to see if we can get teetum to include that in one of the but for budgeting purposes it's just way default we got it covered county side and in the meantime those talks can continue is that

The bridge at James Keel had a problem with it, like an undertow, and a dog got caught under it and drowned, and we were afraid children were going to get caught under that. So is that the situation?

The one off 1376, I think, is probably broken apart based off those photos enough that that wouldn't be a concern.

It all depends on the water level. If that water level drops, the bridge has become a major death trap.

The second one... I inspected it before, probably late June, sometime in June, and it has that same concern. The complaint came that somebody kayaking was concerned about getting pulled under the bridge.

Yeah, I would say sooner than later. Okay. What's your last item?

Last item is something we've talked about with Commissioner Region about Joshua Springs Park. The Youth Ag and Equestrian Center from time to time uses a lot of water um so much so that the current storage does not always keep up and the pumps kick off um this happened um about a month ago and they had their june steer show um that the pump cut off because they they had drained the wells at the youth ag and down below at the pavilion so looking at additional storage for um for those for both locations i think increasing to three 10,000-gallon tanks is, I think, what we talked about, and doing the plumbing and adding a new backflow prevention device to set the system up for long-term success, we have some approximate costs that that would be about $75,000. $75,000 for additional storage?

$30,000. Right.

You can do $130,000 for $30,000.

There's options here to add it or to modify it or come up with various versions of storage.

I think we put 30,000 gallons on Ranger Creek Road.

I think so.

It was right at 30.

Let's allocate 35,000 towards this and try to work on a bigger one. I just think that we've got to be budget conscious here towards the end here, and doing three separate would be – luxury. Let's just at least throw something out there to start because obviously going rainwater catchment throughout the county would be an ideal situation. But based on some of the numbers I'm seeing from some other things we're discussing today, I have concerns about how this budget's going to end up. So Corinna, could you just put $35,000 aside for rainwater catchment out there?

It's not rainwater.

It's just additional water tanks. Yeah, water storage.

Was there a reason? Didn't we have like one? We're going to plan for one 10 up top and two 10s down. I think that was. Was there a reason for that?

I don't remember.

The flood has erased some memory of all. We want to ask them for some sort of a match.

A match. I'll leave that up to you because if they can. We're at least putting 35 in, and whatever they throw in, the more capacity you can get. Okay. All right. Is that it for you?

That was – oh, one more. Sorry. Rules. Do you want to budget anything to have somebody work on the rules? When we did the 2022 rules, the company that did it, it was about 60,000. They helped compile and organize and get it together, but it was not – they weren't really – writing and coming up with what the rules are, that we pretty much consolidated all of the court orders into the rules and then did cleanup on some of the rules in-house.

I think Jen has the capacity, depending on her schedule and what her support staff needs are, that she's best suited to handle that, in my opinion. Since she knows this county, she knows what we've been working on versus an outside entity, I think we're going to get more bang for the buck doing it. Well, internally.

And I wouldn't expect that an outside entity would, you would go to them and say, hey, please rewrite our rules. Let us know when you're done.

You're talking about the formatting and the compilation.

Right.

And that may be premature. Maybe that's something to look at next year because it's going to take a good amount of time.

I just wanted to bring that question up because I know we've been talking about the rules a lot. And so I just wanted to make sure you guys had the opportunity. I would want to hold off on that one.

All right. Okay.

Okay.

It goes back to the very top of the first sheet, and that's exempt personnel paid. We're taking a county engineer position and dividing it into two different departments with a lot less responsibilities on each side. And so what are we expecting to be faced with as far as financial when that happens? Are we going to replace that person in the development department at your level? How are we handling the pay when we're dividing the responsibility up and having less?

So it is less duties assigned to each position, but at this point, I mean, the work isn't getting done because it's more work than one person, one department can manage. The In terms of you're promoting somebody up to that development engineer position, for this budget year, the expectation was not to backfill the other position because it was not creating a new position when this was presented to court. If and when the court wants to look at what additional needs that development management department would need would be next budget year if there's changes that need to be made.

And would your new position be more road and bridge engineer? I'm sorry, what? Different than county engineer, that would be road and bridge engineer. I think we need to look at designating that and making the change.

I'm personally not concerned what the job title is. If the court wants to change that, that's fine. I left it at county engineer because I'm not just managing road and bridge engineering. I'm still handling all of the grants. I'm handling the capital projects. I'm involved in the Burdick Center. I'm involved in the flood control structures. So I left it at county engineer because the county has previously had a county engineer and a development engineer. But if the court wants to change the title, that's not going to hurt my feelings. But I just left it at that because it wasn't just supervising road and bridge.

From a legal standpoint, I think we have to keep the county engineer.

You are correct. Sorry, I didn't think about that. I was thinking about my personal feelings.

Silly me. We have to keep county engineer for them to oversee road and bridge.

That's correct. Good. I'll go with that. So if we're going from three engineers to two, essentially, are you able to help backfill in this type of situation with a disaster? In a way, you said you've been duplicating services

up to now and that's part of the reason to separate because they can work but if the need is there for you to backfill I guess so to say the engineering I am going to continue doing exactly what I do right now which is if somebody needs something and it's related to what I do I'm going to help and I'm not going to leave the development services office high and dry when you know I'm working on a report that doesn't have to be done this month and they need something right now, I'm going to help them. So that's my intent as much as, you know, the person in charge says, hey, I want, I need some help. You know, we've had a disaster. I mean, obviously with a disaster, I'd be involved from the Redden Bridge side anyway. But if things are happening and I can help, I certainly would. All right. Thank you, Mary Ellen. Yes, thank you. And it may come at Capitol, but I know we had the barriers on 46 East. I also have that on my list.

So, yeah, I'm going to bring that up under my... Go on, Mr. Catlin.

Go. Before you leave Mountain Creek Trail, I think we need, I mean, it would be a road and bridge while you're here. So let me explain. On Mountain Creek Trail, there are three five-foot diameter culverts that got undermined very similar to the Ranger Creek. We did a temporary repair. We were crushing the culverts. We have to get in there and replace them. There's 50 to 100 homes back in there that have no other access in route. Donnell has been working with Mary Ellen and myself to get some estimates. For $14,000, we can buy two eight foot by 40 foot, basically temporary bridges. And it would be for the time that we're going to have to have these, cause this is probably going to be a minimum of 30. And I'm thinking more, we should allow 60 day project depending on weather and everything else to rent them. would be more expensive than to buy the bridges. Then we would have the bridges. They are of a weight that we could actually move them ourselves at some point in time. We may have to have a crane to set them, but we could probably at least retrieve them without a crane. I don't know. It doesn't matter at that point. The other thing that we're going to need is this is going to have to be a one-way lane for the full duration of the repairs. whether it be 30 or 60 days. One of these flashers, if you've been down Adler Road and you have the one-way lane flashers, one flasher for, was it one month, was approximately $14,000 to rent. And so... I'm going to say that we need to buy two of those as well because we're going to pay at least 50% and maybe more of the cost of purchasing them to rent them, and then we would have both the bridges and the flashers for the next emergency.

How much are you proposing to add?

All in, you are probably... uh what it was uh 60 somewhere in the 75 000 range let's add 90 92 or budget line is this similar to like a railroad or like yes it is a railroad that's what they used to have yeah that they've converted into a bridge it's uh it would be two bridges and two flashers. The flashers are actually the arms that go down over in your precinct or off your street. They're on Adler where you only have one way and they have the arm. We would need two of those, one at each end. I think this would all go under road and bridge.

The signal, the pair is 65,260.

Okay, $65,000, so we'll put $100,000 in. Okay. Is that your last item?

Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Who would you like to call next, Corinna?

The next on the agenda is really to go back through the Commissioner's Court request. I do know that Jennifer Forbes is coming in, I believe, at 10.15, so... It is until... For what? To discuss the transition. I think Nicole offered that if the court wanted Jennifer to come in to discuss how the transition would work. When we discussed this, I don't know now if it was Monday or Tuesday. I'm sorry. But I knew I needed to bring back the... I had asked both the grant coordinators to submit to me... a couple of weeks ago, all the grants for FY26 plus all the grants that they brought forth for FY27. So I do have those for you.

Can we start knocking off some of these capital projects that we've kind of been at and back and forth for Commissioner's Court because I have some preliminary, just a guesstimate based on Jason Parker talking about the structural damage to this building and that I think we put $225,000 aside, and that looks like that's a safe estimate for the amount of repairs that are going to be needed.

You think you have $225,000?

I think that's what I asked you to put in.

But where did you ask me to put that? Because you increased building repair and maintenance to $500,000, which is the 10-5-10 budget. You did increase that in round one when Jason was here. You increased that to $500,000. I remember that.

And I think it was included in that. I think originally we asked go to $550,000, but I was like, no, cut it a little bit and make it $525,000, I think, ish.

Is that going to give? That's essentially going to leave him. It's going to take away half of his budget.

So you actually added $175,000 because we went from $325,000 to $500,000. We need to make it at least $225,000 for fixing this building structurally.

He's been talking to several companies, and that's just one ballpark estimate, and so I'm building a little cushion.

But really, you would have to do a – so you're talking about hiring a company.

Yeah, because the building is basically sagging at both ends. The center's holding, and that's why you're noticing cracks throughout the building, cracks on the exterior. It's because the building's sinking. I would get a second opinion. He is. Okay. But I just want to put a figure in here for her role. So I'd like to up it.

For budgetary purposes, are people going to have to move out while they're working on this?

Don't know about any of that at this point. I don't think so. It's kind of like a, it's kind of like a, When you have foundation issues, I think that's all this is. They're working on the outside.

Okay.

But we need at least $225,000 just for that project.

Y'all increased it, but let me figure out.

I know you did it. I just can't remember where. I thought it was Jason's budget since he was the one handling it.

I see a capital projects 600 on his budget.

But that was Topper 1, and y'all said no to that. Oh, that's what you put.

It wasn't on any list. It was in your notes where you added that.

Okay. Okay, so I'm not sure. You may have to add the whole 225 because I don't have a note that says that's why you increased.

Will you add the 225, please? All right, what do you want to go through the list for the court?

Yes, because y'all... Corinna, one note, ACOG, Elmo Regional Transit's coming. I told them to be here at 10, but they can wait. Anytime we just need to talk about whatever senior transportation.

Oh, okay. So... Yes, I think y'all wanted to, we went back through this list on briefly, but we had it assigned for today.

Let's go through it one more time, and we're going to get firm yays and nays, and then we're moving on.

On capital?

Yep. So it would look like this paper right here. We have potential real estate acquisition, $2 million.

I no longer support that. I don't know where everyone else stands because from the figures I'm seeing here for other stuff, I don't think this is a prudent time to be doing it. So I don't know where everyone else stands, but do we keep the $2 million or remove it?

I would like to see the space needs assessment done before we buy anything.

Until this afternoon, I don't know where we...

I can tell you, I don't think we're going to be standing where we should be, so I think it's more prudent to drop that request. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. McCall? We need to look at the space needs assessment before we... All right, so you can cut that, please.

I write in different colors so I know what date stuff happened so I don't have to watch a bunch of meetings. Okay, so there was already a no to the Topper 1 storage, the $600,000. Correct. We have additional road infrastructure, the $500,000 that we briefly spoke about. That's going to your capital projects fund?

Yep, I think we're all in agreement that needs to stay, especially in light of the flood.

The 247, it says 405, but it's $247,447 for district clerk imaging and indexing of her criminal files. I think that's a requirement that she needs to maintain. $247,447. That's all preservation issues, so that's a must. So the ambulance of $369,175.

Okay. This is my opinion. I know we got the ambulance grant investing in making sure we have enough high quality equipment as we grow. It seems like it's cheaper to buy it now than delay a couple of years, but this is an area where if y'all want to cut, so be it. But I think it's long-term, it's about a good investment for our citizens to have another bus available. So I still support this, but I'll leave it all up to y'all to decide. Chad.

I know we're trying to whittle down the end. I say we leave it, and at the end of the day, we need to start taking the red pen to things.

Okay.

Commissioner Chapman? I say leave it. Commissioner Regent?

I'd like to leave it for now. Okay. I agree.

All right. Let's leave that.

Okay. IT equipment, $317,000.

I guess I'll go first here and just ask Brian. You want to come up, please? Explain the $317,000 one more time. Actually, $318,000. How much of that is critically required this year? Do you have that spreadsheet?

It would be... He gave you guys something when he was presenting.

And I think we were supposed to be brought down from that 317 number. What number is your department, Brent? 415.

It's actually 244,000 is actually in round one. He took out 73,865. He's on page 24. So that 317 figure actually came to $244,000.

I'm good with leaving that in. Commissioner Carpenter?

That's fine. Commissioner Regent? Yes. Commissioner McCall? Okay. Keep it.

$300,000 for the space needs study.

Huge number.

It is. I mean, and again, I was splitting the baby with numbers from what several people were requesting. I just...

I don't, and I will just caution the court. I think that's a very conservative, well, that's not a conservative number. It's probably going to be 500,000. Well, I don't think it'll go five, but I think it could be slightly higher than three, which... We're hoping, doesn't look like it's going to happen, that we had $50,000 in this year's budget that we could have used towards it had we gotten started on it. But I don't think we're going to get started on it. Ladies, what are your thoughts?

I think we're going to have to do it. We've given our word to the judges and Nicole that we would look at this. They're out of space. And before we buy things and build things, we better see what we need.

I just caution everyone with where I think the budget's going to end up this afternoon. Keep an open mind of whether it may be better for next year. But put an asterisk next to that one for now, Corinna.

Who does the space needs? Like what kind of firm would do that? A firm that's going to charge us. Is there like a college or university somewhere with interns that are Not that I would trust with this.

That's a lot of money. Several years ago, the court did an RFP, I believe, to find a company. They started it. They did several meetings where department heads and elected officials were invited to come and discuss their needs. And they went through this process. And that company, virtually the court, Ended the contract.

We ended the contract because we started off with one group of people, and then people from within that firm left the firm, and it started going downhill. And then when we spent one day over at the, I think the Methodist Church Hall over there, going over what... was the motto that we need for the county. I said we need to end this, cut our losses, and go, because I'm not willing to spend all of that time on developing a motto for the county. No, we were trying to do a needs assessment. The motto is don't waste taxpayer dollars. Don't waste taxpayer dollars.

trying to think because I slept since then and my brain's full, but I thought we got our request for proposal packets in on space needs last Friday at 10 o'clock.

I think there were four.

They haven't been reviewed, is that correct?

Correct. Sharon's putting together a committee. Those were RFPs, not RFQs?

I have no idea. Can I speak?

There she is. Yes, ma'am.

Yes. We already have the RFPs. The whole process has already been started and the RFPs are in and I have the committee together and they're supposed to all be coming by to pick up their packets. And so once the technical evaluations get reviewed, then the cost part of it will get reviewed. And again, in the end, when this is all done, if the court decides they want to reject everything they can, but, um, as of right now, the process has started. So we already have four respondents. So yes, I believe, um, We just need to go through this process and see how it turns out.

Can I ask you, Sharon, were there any prices talked about in the proposals? She can't answer that.

Well, I mean, I can't talk about the prices, but yes, in the request for proposals, we ask them to submit a cost. But that's not the first part that's being reviewed. We review the technical part first. for fairness, we don't include the cost in the first part of the technical review. Because you want to pick a company based on cost if they're not gonna do the job good enough.

Okay, all right, thank you. Do you feel like we're capable of getting square foot, like floor plans of all of our properties that we're trying to fill, shuffle people around, And have a public workshop where we are all involved in looking at where people are, the number of employees. I mean, I have a really hard time spending half a million dollars a taxpayer on something that we already know we have to figure out.

I'm in agreement with – sorry, you speak first. Go ahead. I'm in agreement with you. I think if you put the right team together, there's alternative strategies to get where we're trying to go without doing this. We know there's space problems, but it's getting all the people together because these companies are going to come in and – build you the Taj Mahal. In the end, you're going to find you're going to end up with a $50 or $60 million bond request to build a justice center in the end to accommodate what the requests are. I think you can still accomplish that same objective through other means.

I want to say also, this is not For architectural services. So this space needs study, the respondents were just supposed to respond with their methodology of how about going to a space needs and what they're going to do to evaluate our space needs. They're not going to be designing anything.

It's still half a million dollars. Right. And every department is going to say we need more space. So you already know what the answer is. Everyone needs more space.

Well, and here's where I say, and I agree with y'all. that's a lot of money. I don't think it's going to hit a half a million. Sharon will know in the near future, the committee will. I don't think it'll hit a half a million, but where I think that we need this assessment is that we do have so many different things that are involved here. We have the potential of taking, and I'm just going to throw this out there right now. We've kind of, put the parking garage on hold. But would there be a chance of taking the parking garage? And I've asked this of Mr. Thatcher and he could not give me an answer because it's a city council question. Could we go one floor down and one floor at ground level with office slash retail space and still go three full floors of parking because the upper floor of parking is really a half a floor. So it wouldn't be a four-story building, so to speak. It'd be like a three and a half. Would the council allow that? Because right now they have a three-story cap. So anyway, that's a possibility of getting the space we need and parking Because you could get essentially 40,000 square feet, 20,000 per floor by doing that. And it would be on this campus. And you've got everything now still in a very compact, close campus, as opposed to building another building there. And then you could maybe even put the commissioner's court there. over in that area. I don't know. This is where I think you need people that can think beyond what we're thinking now and look at the court system and take them into play. Look at every department in this county and get an idea of now and 20 years from now what we're going to need and build us something one time And it may end up coming back that they say, go over here on Adler Road and build a justice center and go get a bond for $50 million. I don't know. But I think until we have professionals that come in here, I disagree with y'all in that I don't think any of us sitting here collectively or individually have the time to and or the expertise to do this. What about waiting another year, given what we're seeing with this budget? I'll let you tell Judge Cahoon that.

I think we've started the ball rolling, and let's see what their capabilities are, what the committee comes back and presents, and we can also give them a budget, like this is how much we have to spend.

Yeah, and we can also, since it's a request for proposals, once we get the top rank from, we can negotiate with them.

My view is that I'm with Chad. I'm scared by the cost. I think there's other, I agree with you. Yes, we're not professionals, but in light of what I'm seeing, this may not be the right year to do this. But, you know, are you a for or against? We're just going to put 300 in or not. I mean, we. Because we just got to kind of make some decisions here, and we can revisit at the end of the day.

Leave it in until we get to the end of the day. We may see that we created an increase in property taxes if we're not careful with where we're going with this.

All right, so keep it in for now with an asterisk, please.

All right, what else is on the list, Corinna? So the $177,540 for the ambulance equipment.

That's a need because we already purchased one.

The upgrade the Bosch video server equipment at the jail for $103,000. Y'all have said yes to that initially.

I think that's a requirement for the cameras, if I'm not mistaken.

It's the infrastructure that is outdated that will not support any new.

Right. That's what I mean. It's a requirement.

So that stays.

Yeah.

Okay. The boating equipment was able to be done in FY26, so that $70,000 is off. The engineering study for the HEERF ESSER, that went down to zero, I believe. That's correct. TXOT is funding that. The jail administrator vehicle, that was able to be funded in FY26, so it's off. The $13,000 498 jury room. furniture because there's only an eight-person table and she has 12-person juries and all that. That is able to, with the budget adjustment next commissioner's court, that's able to be funded this fiscal year. It's funded this year. And so that $13,000 can come out of next year if you are okay with that. And then the human resource software is still in there. That's the $13,000, I believe, in attendance. And then we already took out the treasurer's office furniture for the new employee. That is not happening. And then the EMS IQ counter-rolled medication software is still in there, the 5,640.

I think that's efficiency and safety issues. So keep that. That's a drop in the bucket. So that knocks off all those.

That knocks off all of this. And then Jennifer is here. If y'all want to go ahead and do...

grants because i asked her to be here or she was scheduled to be here about 10 15 okay we want to go we're gonna can you start early because we're just going to try to keep thinking what would it be determined on that 500 000 for the special project fund for hearth road we add we move that to road and bridge for just general

Well, we moved it for repair and transportation.

The $500,000 is going to the capital projects fund where you have the HEERF road. Or $1.5 million now. And so now we're going to have that $500,000 for just infrastructure. So that's future road projects that you said.

Separate and apart from HEERF because That stays at $1 million. That way we can use it for flood related.

But it's just going to live in that fund. We've already dedicated that money over here. So if you need it, can we take a

Yes, I was just going to call that.

Real quick before you do that, one last thing. I would like to address the Herfesser Engineering Study money in my budget. I'd like to tie it to my budget, so not completely off the shelf yet.

Okay. You can talk about it when we get to your stuff.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Unfortunately, we're going to take a five-minute restroom break, so I called you up a little early, so I'm sorry. So it's 10.09. I'm comfortable. We're going to break until 10.50. All right, we're going to keep everyone on track today. So it's 10. 14am and we're back on back in session. We're here with Jen Forbes kind of just given us a briefing on what do you got? Just giving us a briefing on what grants are out there and what the path forward looks like over the next few months.

Before Several weeks ago, I asked my coordinators to send me, I kind of made up new information. Deb had done it once before for me, but we did a little bit different for me because I needed to know what grants had been approved by the court and what grants could be coming. So this is the current judicial grants, and this is the current library. So I'm going to pass out the FY20. That's Actually, maybe it's just easier if I give you a Black 26 and 7. They're marked. So that's the judicial grants. These are the county-wide grants for Black 27. And then I give you that. I'm sorry, Doug. No, you're good. So I could do this, and then I did not get a chance to ask myself. Those are the judicial. These are county-wide. Okay, thank you. Okay. These are the judicial grants at flag 26. They are marked at flag 7. These are the countywide grants. Thank you. Thank you. I have to go back and get another. These are the countywide grants. These are the judicial. Two different coordinators, two different people.

Congratulations. Thank you.

All right.

Oh, these are together. Thank you. All right.

Oh, that's okay. Just tear mine up.

I'll take the torn one. These are the county-wide grants. FY27 are obviously just some that your grant coordinators have brought to you to request to apply for next fiscal year. But a lot of those do, like, in February, March. So that's why they've already approved to apply for those. So these are your current grants on those two pages of FY26. FY27s are one you have said. Yes, to apply for. Obviously, the FY27 countywide does not have any of the stuff that's potential from this flood that y'all just discussed, all the ones that are going to be FEMA. We do not have those listed yet.

So what is the proposed path forward? Let's get right to it.

There may have been miscommunication because when I asked Jennifer to come, she was really to be here to help facilitate y'all's discussion on how you want to go forward. And then answer any questions. Yes, that's viable. No, that's not viable. Because my understanding from Commissioner Chapman's comments.

Nicole, would you come to them so the Zoom people can hear you? Sorry. I'm trying to stay out of it as much as possible.

I invited her to. I know that y'all need to discuss the passport. path forward, whether that's hiring somebody a month early, what y'all need to do. And so I invited her to kind of be here to answer your questions as you're having that discussion, because I know y'all had some questions for me that I couldn't answer because I don't have the expertise in the grants. So that's kind of.

Yeah. So, and that's really what it is. These are just the grant reports I said I would bring, but Jennifer had asked for a copy of them. So she would just know what's out there before she answered questions on how to move forward based on what's potential. So that's why I gave her a copy of these.

I thought we had decided this morning already, and maybe y'all can add to this, but we're going to have to hire a company, GrantWorks, or somebody similar to GrantWorks. We're going to hire a specialist to take in the continue on with the FEMA grants and to start the new FEMA grants. And then we're going to hire the grant manager or whatever that looks like.

So let me catch her up on, because I was listening on Zoom when y'all were discussing that, talking about the engineering department's current FEMA grants and making sure that there's continuity. And I believe that she said she was going to amend the budget to include, there's a, you can do 8%. Do you want to? We'll just need to catch her up on that discussion this morning, because I do believe she'll probably have some insight in what y'all were talking about.

Correct. So the CDBG grant is about $115,000. I may be able to amend the budget to get that incorporated as part of the grant funds. Instead of allocating it to a project, it would just go to grant administration. But either way, the county has to have that money in order to be reimbursed. So it has to be budgeted regardless. You mean amend the contract? Yes, amend our contract with the general land office to account for that grant administration.

But it is amending the budget with them as well, which we don't know if they will do at this point.

So I guess the question is, how likely is it that somebody who comes in would be able to get up to speed quick enough to take that over? Is it something that they're absolutely going to have to have? I mean, what's your opinion on that?

So we were talking about putting that in as a requisite in the job description with the FEMA experience. And if we approve that job description on the 11th, then is there any reason why we couldn't post it right away and start searching for the person?

No, as long as there's budgeted funds to hire early, then that would be fine. It is in the proposed job description as preferred qualifications. And the question I would ask Jen is, I think that if somebody has extensive knowledge in grants, if they have not specifically worked with FEMA grants, I think that they could come up, correct me if I'm wrong, I think they could come up to speed very quickly. They took the training.

Only if they took the disaster accounting from TETM. It is just a different, it's not a grant as we know a grant. You don't just do apply and you do quarter the reports. It's daily. It's daily. It's just a different thing. You would have to understand.

So by the time we search for a specialist, we may as well just be searching for the grant manager and not not have an extra person to come in.

If I may ask, does TETM have any recommendations or do they have anybody that they worked with that could help kind of fill that gap just as temporary? Because that might be worth asking instead of going out looking for a specialist. They may actually have folks that they've worked with and have experience with to work directly with TETM in the interim. And then to get whoever on board and up to speed. Speed and hand it off.

Yeah, the training is absolutely essential. That's one of the people that we talk about. Where they come from, whether it's T-DEM or whoever they come from, that's immaterial. They're going to have to be a specialist on this type of grants. But then the grant manager at some point in time, my opinion, is that they cannot be – They have to have the experience to pick them up with the disaster of this year. They have to be able to pick them up. They can't be on the learning curve, not with it being this. They have the experience or they don't.

And FEMA is just one time. You have 10 other – I mean, you have about 10 – collectively maybe about 17 or 18 grants total collective judicial non-judicial uh because there's 10 just on this one at fy 26 that are not fema or titum you know they're they are um og oag and and then they are um you're the texas general land office the texas water development board um which they are FEMA, but you're not working with FEMA. You're with the Texas Water Development Board. So that's even different than your disaster grants. It's the disaster grants that are so specific, which in our state, we typically work with TETM, but TETM is not going to do the work for you because they're the state. They're going to give you the training and, make you do it you can contract with somebody to help but that that's that's not even the question of how to move forward the question i think is just for you guys to understand where the grants that you have currently in the grants that you have approved for your grant coordinators to go out and apply for next year and what that looks like and i needed this so i could know what to budget for match but even if the court approves the um

job description on August 11th. It's going to be the 12th or whatever, at least before you advertise for these grants now, or for this person. And I would say you're probably going to have to advertise at least for two weeks and then interview. So now you're at the end of August, you interview and into the beginning of September, if the person is worth their salt, then they are going to have to give a two-weeks notice. We're three-quarters of the way through September. That's reality, folks. So this is why Mary Ellen is saying, no, we've got to go out today and find somebody that can take over these grants. The grant manager is not going to be able to handle this right off the bat.

I do think there are some of those grants that Corinna mentioned that can be handed over, probably the Texas Water Development Board SB3, one that's just starting. That's probably one that could transition. We have Hill Country Alliance Dark Sky where we got monitors. If that continues past September 30th, that's one that I think could be transitioned over. But when it comes to the disaster, you need to have somebody ready to go. I mean, In my opinion, we need to be advertising right now for that person to come in and be prepared to start on the disaster.

So could you take Jennifer's suggestion and work through your contacts at TETM and find out if they know of people who do help counties, and then we can try to find that person that might be the most efficient way rather than advertising?

We have to go through the procurement process, so... When it comes to FEMA, they're very particular about how we go through procurement. We typically can't even just use the boards. We have to go through specific procurement. Hire a person? Yes. So, I mean, I'm speaking out of my lane on procurement, but from the disaster accounting class, it was very strict procurement policies that are different than what we can do for other things.

To hire personnel. Okay, then I suggest somebody start writing who can write that job description.

No, it's not for hiring a person. It's for hiring a company. That's what I'm talking about. Jennifer had an idea to contact TETM.

Do they know any grant writers or personnel people who help counties through the process of working on the grants?

I think what Mary Ellen's saying is even if they do know someone, there's still a procurement process that must be followed.

And what I was envisioning is that that procurement would be for a firm like GrantWorks. I mean, there's plenty of others, but like that type of a firm that has the experience with disaster recovery, disaster management for the reimbursement to come in and be able to handle it. Could it not also be just a person and not a firm and independent? If it's properly procured, potentially, what you may run into is if it's a person, they may know the FEMA part. but they may not have an engineer on staff that could help with understanding that portion of the grant. So by having one of the larger firms that has that depth and expertise, you may get a better option. I didn't know there was an engineering component. I mean, right. We don't fully know, since we're just starting this disaster, we don't know all of the things that we're going to need.

That's just on the FEMA grants. That's not everything else. Thank you.

So did we already budget sufficiently to cover these contingencies, what we just talked about this morning?

We did. But somebody's going to have to be in charge of taking the lead on finding that firm. So I guess, would you get with Sharon? to do that? Yes, I'll work with Sharon. Okay.

All right. So then I think probably the question is, so I know, I'll just take it from like my angle and why, you know, I asked for the money to budget for Jennifer to stay on through the time that she can for my grants, at least, is I need to make sure that there's a transition period where nothing falls through the cracks with my grants, because that's very important. So Jennifer and I have agreed that she'll give me the max amount of time that she can to kind of help that person with those grants, turn those grants over, make sure that they're well-versed in what that is. And correct me if I'm wrong, we were speaking, she's not going to say no to helping also with anything else and just general questions with whoever comes on, obviously. And while I have knowledge, I'm not the expert in this field, so that's kind of why I said I would really, really urge you to utilize um Jennifer in the in the um search for a new person to do this job and the questioning and interviews and that type of thing but you know I think that she will she's not going to leave anybody hanging even if it's not just a criminal justice grant correct okay I'm available to help make sure I mean our purpose is to serve the county and make sure that nothing gets dropped um so absolutely I'm I'm open to helping any any place that I can

Disaster relief is not my forte, but whatever support I can offer.

Of course, a second disaster was definitely not what anyone wanted and want to have to deal with. Unfortunately, that's our priority. Absolutely.

And it should be. One thing I would suggest, and you can take it for what it's worth, I wouldn't gear this one grant manager position exclusively about disaster relief because there's a lot more that goes into it. into the grant side of it than just disasters. And I mean, there's a lot more money that's coming into the county that doesn't necessarily address disasters. My experience is if you have somebody who is well-versed in government grants, they're going to have at least some element of those. Hopefully nobody has to go through what Kendall County and Kerr County have gone through in the last couple of years, but they're going to have some element of that, and that's where you come back in when they need additional support. But taking what the county currently has, and that includes both the CJ side as well as the general county side of it, I would argue that this is definitely doable for a single position as a grant manager from start to finish. within that role. But again, that's also going to require a little bit of grace when it comes to some of the established grants, working with program staff and the different offices to make sure that the individual who is hired knows what they're doing, what that looks like, what those programs are, and getting to know those, but also relying on staff's input for that. But other than that, beyond the disaster relief, it is very specific, as Corinna has mentioned, and And it is difficult to find someone who is very focused in that area. But I would caution that you don't want exclusively someone focused in that area because, God help us, we don't just want to focus on disasters. There's a lot more really good that we can do for the county.

Well, and I think the court was very wise in their decision because it's so unique. And because we just had another disaster, yes, you have some funds in case we need to have somebody just for that grant to make sure that that's unique.

And you're not finished with last year's disaster with me. So you're going to be working with two different things. My concern was that Nicole wisely asked the court for some funds so her grants don't have a lapse. Y'all have this big spreadsheet or what I consider y'all's grants because the grant manager or grant coordinator countywide works for the court. Y'all can't have these fall through the cracks either. That's my concern. That's going to be covered, the grants that that they take care of, and obviously she said she could help, but October 1st, some of these are still going to be wrapping up. Some of these are going to be starting. So this is where I needed y'all to understand the grants that y'all have for your grant coordinator or grant manager, what that might look like for you, because I don't do any of the work that they do. I don't do any of that. I don't even know what all they do.

I recommend offering our current... grant coordinator a stay until we replace?

I would just request y'all have some funds either to hire early if possible to have an overlap or do what y'all had talked about of trying to go ahead and hire somebody from the outside. I can help as much as I can help, but I don't do any of the grant work stuff. I only do financial reporting and that's, that's what I, that's, that's all I know. Um, I don't.

How long do you think it would take somebody to come up to speed with all the rest of them that you're just kind of glancing over now?

I'm, I really think that if you have somebody who is experienced and, and knows what they're doing, it there, it's not a extensive learning curve. I mean, it's pretty standard. We're kind of in a lull right now. Um, Grants that are coming out of, at least like, especially from the CJ side, coming out of the Office of the Governor, those don't launch again until December. We're going to have award letters, hopefully, knock on wood, come out in the next couple of months. Those are resolutions to get through for the approval process and working and just kind of kicking off and ending the grants that end on September 30th. But that, again, that's working directly with program. Program's going to get whoever it is that fills this position they're going to get them up to speed because it just behooves them to work directly and help do that. I don't think it would be that difficult. When you say program, what do you mean? Like your office, sorry, different hats, different worlds. Working with the departments. With the different departments and offices, yes. I don't think it would be, it's not outlandish for someone who has experience to dive into this.

All the files should be available and the applications and the correspondence, the email, I guess, would, all the email would be available to that person, be archived, correct?

And from my knowledge and my understanding, at least from what I know on both sides, all of this stuff has been very well documented and kept maintained. All records have been very well maintained.

Okay. So have we addressed everything we need to address?

Yeah, we had talked about grants before, and I said I had asked them to do a spreadsheet for me, and so I was just bringing it forward. And if it's colored, it's just where I'm missing information or I think there might be an error in that data. So that was more for me to know.

Karina, will you need a request for a budget adjustment if they want to hire early on that?

Yeah.

On grants? That would need to be in the next agenda.

All right. We're going to wrap up on grants and move on.

Commissioner Chantin, do you have a comment? I need to regress. Back to the capital expenditures. Okay, we went through, I've got a new total of $1,212,000 based on what we said. But what we did not do, we did not put in here the efficiency audit, did we?

It's not, no, because that was not a requested item.

Efficiency audit is... I'm going to say another 300,000.

Have y'all approved to do an efficiency audit?

I thought that was in a commissioner's budget, right? Commissioner Carpenter? I think that was.

No, I didn't ask. Y'all's, your individual requests are on this piece of paper right here. That y'all have already said yes.

And we went through and I put the ones that I thought were universally approved in there when I did my budget. And then anything that I didn't put in were put on that separate sheet that you got. So that sheet is the ones that were some of the omitted items too.

Now y'all have 350 for a county study.

That's for the space needs. For the space needs.

That's already in your budget.

350 or 300.

So what's in the budget is 350 because there was already a 50. I think the 50 was in there originally for the HEERF and the 300 was for the... space needs. And that's the total that's in 401 right now. But I know y'all didn't talk about grants, but if you're going to hire somebody earlier, I'm sorry, I need to backtrack before I wrap up. I apologize. Then if you would like to do that, to have the continuity of or whatever, then we would need to do a budget adjustment or some funding to go ahead and have somebody...

So like a month's salary?

Yeah, however fast that happens, if it can, or whatever y'all decide to do. I just want to say that would need to happen for FY26 if you plan to get somebody in here to have the continuity. I don't know what has to happen at the end of all the grants. I just know what I'm going to be asking all of them for if I don't already have it.

So if the...

Okay. We'll circle back to you. I got you.

Yeah. I just needed to say that.

So what figure does anyone want to put a figure in or do we roll as is? We just got to wrap up Kerna's question. Do we anticipate allowing to hire someone early? And if so, how much?

I think we should. And can you just, can you prorate it?

I can, I can do like a month, you know, I can do all of September or I mean, if, if.

So what is your request? Whatever a month's salary would be. Okay. McCall?

I would say at least a month, just in case.

Well, because you really only have September if you... Basically, it's September. Oh, yeah. That's true.

Because you're not going to... $9,000 or something like that.

It would just be minimal because it would be whatever a salary and the benefits allowed when you first start. Like you... Have that.

I'm just... Wrap that up.

But that's not this fiscal year. That would be a budget adjustment.

Make the budget adjustment. Okay. Did we also include if we don't find someone in that time period? Well, it's already budgeted if we don't hire.

Yeah, you do have the position budgeted to start, you know, October 1. But I don't know what that salary is supposed to be. I don't know what y'all have not decided on the salary for that. Like what's like what she has a number in the job description, I'm pretty sure. I don't have that. But the court has to decide where on the scale that person would be hired. The max they would be, which if that's going to be a non-exempt or an exempt, you'll have to determine that. Do you want to do that now? We need to call back.

Yeah, let's knock it out and then chat. We got to circle back to chat.

This position is going to work for the court. And so the court would need to decide if it's an exempt or non-exempt. Typically... They're probably non-exempt. I think right now your two grant coordinators, well, one is part-time and one is full-time, but I think they are exempt. Melissa, can you call Nicole? And Juanita, I don't even know, should a grant manager be exempt or non-exempt based on the rules?

They should be exempt.

They should be exempt?

Yeah. In my opinion. I'm just a mechanic.

She says. I'd say exempt two. She says classification 17, by the way.

Right, but y'all can hire up to a, if it's exempt, up to a step six. If it's non-exempt, up to a step four. That's what I need for budgetary purposes. Nicole, you had a recommendation on exempt versus non-exempt.

Do you want to tell us what you were thinking?

Okay. In my opinion, and I'll double check with Jen on this, this would be an exempt position because they do have a lot of autonomy. They do have a lot of decision-making that they will be doing on their own. They'll be directing other people. And when it comes to, you know, administering these grants, I'd actually proposed what I've submitted to the court is it's, I've changed the name really to kind of grants management and, and I forgot the next word, but development or basically project management, that kind of thing, to make sure it goes from start to finish. So there's a lot of autonomy. The education requirement's much higher. So in my opinion, this would be an exempt employee. They'll be required to work on weekends, after hours, because there are some times when you have to get a hold of somebody when people are on, even if I'm on vacation or if they're on vacation, I know Jennifer's been on vacation several times and we've had to just take care of stuff very quickly. So it is not something that's a traditional eight to five.

All right, we can work out some of those details. We'll just put 100,000 in there because that, well, yeah, because on a step level 17, if it goes up to a step five that they're exempt, it's up to 100,000.

Yes, I put 17. That's in line with Donna in my office.

Hold on, I'm sorry. I misread, I misread. Let me put my glasses on, okay? Okay, everyone, give me a break here.

95.

I'm sorry, 93. You're not going to get an experienced person for 93.

But that is your step 17.

Step five.

Step six. You can go up to a step six if they're exempt. But these are the things that I have to know.

Yeah, in order to do this budget, we got to put numbers in. And that's all I'm trying to do is like, y'all can sort out where they fall, exempt, non-exempt. I'm just putting the max number in so Corinna can punch her numbers and do her thing. Because today is the last day of budget.

Right. And Jennifer had said that that would be sufficient.

Does that include fringe? Okay.

We need that number. Not the numbers.

Because otherwise you're moving. If you want it over 100, you're moving, creating new categories and all that.

If it puts it in perspective, like Deb and, thank you, Deb and, thank you, because I was about to call you right when I got out of here, Donna said, they it's that level of experience, that level of, you know, administration, that level of experience and expertise. And so that's why I put the person in 17. And it was also in line with Jennifer, what Jennifer had said about salaries. And, and honestly, it's on the higher end when I was looking at job descriptions for other grants stuff, but the ones that had all the elements that I liked in this job description were at that level.

Yes, Corinna.

I'm just asking, would the court like it to be classification 17 with the max allowed budgeted, which would be whatever step six is with the 4%? And then the benefits associate doesn't mean you have to hire at step six, but at least the money is in there if the court hires, because this person will work for the court.

You know, so y'all... Yeah, that's why I'm saying we can work out those details, but just so you can get what you need. Okay. Assume everything that's been requested is being granted, and you can always go lower. This court can always move it, say, oh, we're going to do a 16, but at least the money's budgeted for the highest that's being requested. All right. Next.

The reason I came?

Yes.

Just to let you know that it should be listed as non-exempt as a default. Whether someone's exempt is based on specific job duties. So once the court is approving and reviewing the job description, that's when exemption status could potentially be changed to exempt. The default's always non-exempt until you can show that they meet the test under the FLSA to be exempt.

That's still, that's an issue for later, but you have what you need to move on. No, it came up, so. Yeah, thank you for clarifying.

Can you send that information to us again? I know you sent it before with the How we determine that?

Yes, I can send you the link to the Department of Labor's website. They have great back sheets that show you how to go through the test. I'm referring to the duties test to see whether someone can be exempt from overtime.

All right. Thank you. What do you got next?

Because if they can't, then the employer should be paying the overtime.

Oh, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

An hourly rate. All right. I'm good on grants.

Commissioner Chapman has a circle back to the efficiency audit Okay. Money not being in the budget.

Right. So, as I go back and reviewed my notes here, the, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, Corinna, but on the contingencies county study, I put the 350 in there. The 50 was for potentially reworking the Development rules, 300 for space needs assessment. So that means, but we've got space needs assessment up here, 300.

That's still, this is not, this was included in the budget. But this was just telling you- This was. That this page right here is already included. I just broke it down so that you can see when the judge did his proposed budget, he was needing $2.9 million of fund balance- If this went as it got turned into y'all.

Okay.

But part of that $2.9 million was $4.9 million of capital or one-time expenditures.

Okay.

So that $300,000 is budgeted, and y'all have said yes.

So then we do need to add the efficiency audit.

If y'all are going to, yes. But if you approve it. If you are going to approve it, then you need to have money next year if you're going to.

It was already approved as far as.

Right, but you can't approve a contract unless you have money budgeted next year or you have money budgeted this year.

Commissioner Chavez is requesting us to budget some funds. Correct. I just need to know. Add another $100 because there's $50 in there already. No, I don't think you can. You think $300 again? Another $300. I tentatively put that in there with an asterisk. I think these are ones that we may just have to wait on if it's all going as it's going.

I know we're trying to wrap up today, Judge, but I am not going to be able to give y'all figures today if the plan is to be done because we have a meeting at 1130. I'm not sure how we're going to be done today, so I'm just throwing that out there early on if you're going to want hard numbers for me based on what

No, not hard. I want to get you every decision that we've made. So you have something to start working with. And if we got to meet for a couple hours to fine tune a couple things, so be it. But we're making big decisions today. So you can be dialed in for that last couple hour meeting where it's basically you telling us, here's the bottom line.

I would like to see the budget before it's filed. So if we need to meet for one hour just for one final review, and I don't know if Melissa wants to consider posting that because you've got to have three days.

The earliest we can meet is Wednesday. We'll work on that in the afternoon session. Let's see where we're at. So what's the next decision you need to make?

You want $300,000 additional dollars for efficiency.

Has the RFQ gone out for that, Commissioner Carpenter? Yes.

I believe so.

No, that, that has not gone out. No, no one's gotten with me.

Okay. All right.

Is there a timeline for that? Somebody would need to write the scope of work that you want done. It's not done yet. And then y'all would turn that into sharing.

Nobody comes to me on the scope of work. Yeah. We have to have all that done before I can even send it out. So I don't, there's no dates or anything. Nothing's been done.

Okay. I'll come and meet with you.

Well, I guess we got the art people here. Let's just knock out art. Do you all want to come up?

We don't mean literally knock you out. We have Joseph and Ella on the regional transit. And I'm sorry, I don't remember your last name. Ella Nash? Joseph, what do you want to say? So both the judge and I had met with Sean Scott from ACOG Art and tried to get a handle on exactly... what the needs and funding are. I know that when the Burdick Center, the Burdick Center, Olivia Burdick's here at the Burdick Center, the Kronkowski Rainbow Center lost funding for transportation. And, you know, there was a deficit there. They sold the bus. They're not in that business anymore. And then I think ACOG picked up the funding for last year because we hadn't budgeted. And so I had really tried hard to get some numbers from Sean on what needs are and what the alternatives are like microtransit. But at this late date, we're not going to be able to evaluate that. There's no way we can look at microtransit in light with bus routes and all the options. So I suggest we start on that now because it's already nearly August and we'll be back here next May, June, and then we can look at it then. So I understand that your ask today is $8,000.

Is that correct? So, yes. So for to continue the service as is we are. And so the numbers that Mr. Scott sent over right now, the county is contributing eight thousand dollars to the program. And that allows us to additionally match that with our funding for an additional eight. That number would allow us to continue the service as is. And if you notice, there was a about forty eight thousand dollar increase. shortfall in service hours. We're providing additional service hours to the county, but we're contributing and covering that through other contractual services that we have operating in the Kendall County area. Mr. Scott is confident that for the incoming budget year, that can continue to as is. Past next year, we'd have to reevaluate and see how those contracts are performing for the following budget year, but that would be to maintain the service levels as is. With that, we do know that there is considerably more demand than what we are able to service at that level. We did have a proposal for an additional $175,000 microtransit service. Most people attribute that to Uber or Via Link. That service primarily would probably fall in a densely populated area like the city of Bernie and surrounding areas. That's where we see the most success in these microtransit areas where they can really key in on those densely populated areas. We consider that a more premium level of service right now our existing services called advanced demand response and what that requires is that the resident call in at least 24 hours in advance and schedule that right and it's based off of the availability in the area, I will say our our service in the Kendall County area is pretty much at capacity we do quite a bit of trips. I know we have since I think it's so that was yes.

distribute these. We have some one pagers on what the current level of services as well as the closed microtransit.

While you're handing that out, what is City of Bernie's commitment?

At this time, we have not engaged with anyone at the City of Bernie. We're still kind of getting the proposal for the microtransit together. So we have not engaged with them at this time. So that's something that we definitely would like to see what their interest would be in a project of this scale. Primarily because the density of Bernie would greatly benefit a program of this type. And conservatively, with the numbers that we have, and honestly, I think it would probably increase a lot higher than that, but conservatively, to start, we're looking at about 1.5 rides an hour or 7,000 additional rides annually. That's on top of the 8,000 to 9,000 that we're doing now. We know from talks with Olivia and the center that they were doing about 9,000 rides annually alone in their area, so that would be pretty comparable to And as people, you know, it's a lot of marketing and things like that. As people get familiar with the service and start utilizing it, we've seen those numbers grow in other areas. Right now, we have this microtransit service running in the city of Kerrville, in the city of Seguin, and we started with this same 1.5 rider metric, and we've seen that grow exponentially through the months.

And New Braunfels has one as well.

Correct. Yes, ma'am.

Well, again, I think it's a great idea. I still... You know, I was looking for metrics and I sent Sean a bunch of questions. I did get some data back. I still had some questions. And so to my mind, I don't want to look at anything beyond what we've been funding. Do we have the $8,000?

Y'all actually have, that's on page 70 of your budget. And y'all did already okay initially, the $8,000. Okay. That was the same as the current year that we're in. They'll have approved that tentatively for next fiscal year. It's still in the budget.

And if you can just continue to work with Commissioner Weijan on the advanced response or whatever you want to call that, microtransit for the next budget year, that'd be great. Yes, sir.

And we can have conversations in the city of Bernie and then make sure we're on the same page. I just want the data because I know that Mr. Thatcher told me a lot of the rides were school children. And it's like, there's a bus service called the yellow bus for school children. So we just have to, we can't discriminate. I understand anybody can ride, but my concern are seniors need to get to the doctor to get to the grocery store that are isolated.

So we make it for that. All right.

So if I may, we consider it all general public and we do assist some if I can clarify a little bit that program is considered our youth transportation program. We utilize a larger bus to transport those students before and after school with projects like this. The great thing is, is that as we have additional resources for those seniors that availability and efficiency just continue to rise. But the youth transportation program is specific to assist those families that fall outside. A lot of times school districts have a two-mile or greater radius that they will only provide school bus service for. And so we fill that gap for those families that are looking for additional support in that area that the school bus does not traditionally cover.

It's complicated. There's a lot of information. There's just no way we can look at this. It's going to take months. Understandable. Yeah, definitely.

So it does look like most of the trips are within the city of, I mean, I think there's just over a thousand more for the overall, but the majority it looks like are within the city of Bernie limit. So I know we're all wrapping up our budget. I think it would probably should get with them pretty quickly if we're going to continue for the area.

So thank you for coming in all the way to Bernie.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thanks. All right. What do you got next, Corinna?

So the only other thing we have before lunch is the Commissioner's Court, which, Judge, she did not have anything specifically in the 401 budget request, but this is the breakdown page that I gave you initially that had the four different requests from the commissioners that were not requested. in here, and you've already gone through this, but we can go back through this again.

Sounds like Commissioner McCall has a request on hers. Okay. We'll start with her. What's your request, Commissioner McCall?

Okay, so we talked about the Robert Steele contract already, right? The tech stock got back to me, and the improvements for Webster's Curve, the Jersey barriers, the total is about $630,000. And this is a little different than the project at Herff and Adler because that's what we're giving them as a percentage. This is kind of an outright cost for the Jersey barriers and widening the road. So I asked Clayton Ripps from TxDOT to see, really put a pencil to the numbers, and he said that if we could contribute about $100,000, that would help close the gap and be able to keep this project going. And the idea is, potentially this could start earlier than their projected date of September 27. So we need to have this in our FY27 budget. The $600 or the $100? The $100. He said if we put in $100, that should close the gap without additional funds that we would need to add.

And that was for which road? I'm sorry. I heard you say Jersey. It's 46 West at Webster's Curve.

Thank you. So that's why I was thinking of the, I was looking at the 50,000 we weren't going to be using for the engineering study on HEERF and ESSER. Commissioner Region?

I don't think I need a thing because I was able to... Before we get to you, I meant Jersey barriers.

Oh, Jersey barriers.

I'm sorry. Yeah, I talked to Clayton Rips at the AMPO meeting and he had said 600,000. It's like, yikes, can we divide that between two years? And so then he We both pestered him, and he felt, I guess, compelled to try to find the money. So we've got fatalities on 46 West.

Gentlemen, I'm going to say no, because if we start subsidizing TxDOT on every project, we're going to be asked to subsidize them on every project.

Well, we better get ready for that, because that's what's coming down the pike. As federal funding and state funding are drying up, HAMPO is moving in the direction where

pay to play and we put a million dollars towards her finesse or 46 um i'm a yes we need to get something done on 46 okay corinna add 100 000 please

All right. Is that your only other request, Jennifer? Mm-hmm. Okay. Commissioner Whedon, are you good with yours? I am.

We won't need any money for water conservation because I've got funding through Cal Creek, GBRA, and Bernie Radio, and I still have. So I've got, let's see, $575,000, probably close to $10,000, and then one pending.

Fantastic. You can take all my stuff out. All right. Commissioner Chapman, anything from you? No.

I think most of mine have already been covered. Commissioner Carpenter?

Again, remove the $1.5 million for purchase of parks and recreation space.

This afternoon, we're going to go back to employees.

Yes, sir. The only thing on my list then, other than that, would be the stoplight at Comfort ISD, and I'd like to leave that in there and see where we land at the end of this. For the record, there's $300,000 I put in there. That's not enough to cover the entire cost, but it's something that Comfort's been trying to get done for years, and A lot of these students are leaving high school after the blinking lights stop blinking, and they're like playing Frogger trying to get on the road when there's people driving 65, 70 miles an hour. These are young drivers, and I'd like to leave that in there for now.

Commissioner, could the school district cover some of that? They're having to. And we still need 300 if they cover some?

Yes. The total cost, I think, is 450 to five. We can look at where we are at the end of the day and see, you know.

Could they do one of those lights like they have on River Road that when the pedestrian, I mean, I know that they have different rules on roads for, you know, TxDOT has different rules. I don't know if that speed is too fast, but could they

The problem on 87 is TxDOT will not slow down. Unless you're in an incorporated area, they will not slow down the roadway beyond a certain speed. And so just like on Main Street and Bernie, I think 35 is the slowest unless you're in a school zone.

Okay. I do not think we should be funding the majority of this. I mean, I could see funding something, but if it's a half a million and we're going to throw in 300,000, I got a problem with that. This is a school district problem, and this school district should pick up the majority of the cost.

Well, just like Highway 46, we've had so many fatalities out there. There is a time and place where this county needs to step in and figure out how to improve the safety for these people.

Just be prepared. It's a slippery slope. We're going to have private subdivisions, Tapatio. Everyone's going to be coming because after this flood, everyone's suffered significant damage and be like, we have no homeowners association funds to pay for this. We need your help. You know what I'm saying? So just keep that in mind when we start granting requests we normally might not grant. So put an asterisk next to that one. Once we get final budget here, that was the only other thing on your request list.

And Commissioner Weijian, I apologize. I was taking a note. You said you do not need the water conservation. Don't need any of that. And then what about the Voss rainwater? I had that for round two.

No, Commissioner Chapman and I talked about that, and we're not watering that much landscaping there, and we're not going to use it for drinking water, so we don't need that.

Okay.

We still got 25 minutes. Can we use it and start jumping ahead to some things? Or because I have a list. I took notes yesterday.

Sure.

From the meeting. And so can we start going through? Is that okay time to do that?

Yeah, I'm good for whatever you need.

Here's the first question that came out of the session. And you confirm that in the budget that you prepared with me, that we included a 5% increase to all VFD budgets.

That was your intent.

Yeah, that was my intent, but I want to make sure that we put that figure in because the court agreed with that figure, and we just want to confirm that it's done.

Let me just recalculate this. Oh, wearing. Nope. I didn't add anything for wearing. I carried, it's 62-3, 62-3. So I just missed them altogether. I didn't calculate anything there, I guess, in my spreadsheet. I just didn't pick them up. And then... And then, of course, Castle Lake, we did not do the 5%. And then Blanco, we also did not do because that's just a portion. So, yeah, Waring, I didn't calculate anything at all.

All right. So you can add that in? Yeah. Okay. So we're good there.

Yep.

I'm going to cross that off. I'm going to jump around. I'm going to try to take out some of the easy ones from yesterday. Okay. How about?

And where it should be, just so I can tell you all, $65,415. All right.

Sisterdale, they asked for an additional $30,000 for an upgrade of that vehicle. So they have one vehicle that they're upgrading to make it more of a command-style vehicle, and they're saying that's going to cost $30,000. So, Mr. Chapman, this is your precinct. So we'll split it, right? It's split.

We'll start with you since you're here, sir. All right. I mean, we have always in the past helped the fire departments with truck payments, and traditionally they are broken up, one this year, one, and so I don't have a problem with it.

Yes, we'll wait for Chad. Chad's the other one. While you're here, do you guys have what's your thoughts on this?

I think that's fine.

Chad, we're talking about the $30,000 request for the truck upgrade for Sisterdale. Commissioner Chapman already weighed in saying yes. Yes. Yes. All right. So to their budget, it's a one-time bump up for truck upgrade.

Then next year, if the court chooses to do a percentage, would the $30,000 come out before y'all did a percentage? Yes. So it's strictly to help the truck upgrade.

Yes, ma'am.

What page are the fire departments on?

Tell me when you're ready. Are you good, Corinna? Yes, go ahead. Okay, next one. A fire blocker vehicle for comfort. Or to be used to support all the fire. This stems from an accident out in comfort where their big truck was hit. And so the thought is to buy a blocker vehicle, which is about 200,000 new. to be used to park on the highway to deter traffic instead of using a big truck.

Is this for the county to buy, for the county fire department, so that the county can use it everywhere, or is it for Comfort Volunteer Fire Department?

It's for the county, for all departments.