Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. It is Tuesday, August 25th at 9 a.m. And this regularly called session with the Kendall County Commissioner's Court is now called to order. We'll begin by calling roll. Mr. McCall.

Present.

Mr. Wiesion. Present. Mr. Chapman. Here. Mr. Carpenter. Here. And I'm present. We have a quorum consisting of all five members of the court. I'm just going to make a couple general announcements before I hand over to my colleagues, Commissioner McCall and Commissioner Wiesion, for announcements of our prayer and pledge. First, We're pulling item 26 from the agenda today. Number two, we are going to be doing service awards after our declaration of conflict of interest. Next, I know we have some very community sensitive issues on the agenda today. particularly the flock camera debate. So I just remind you, this is a courtroom. And so I remind you to, there's going to be no applause. If you're, if you have comments, save them for afterwards. We're just going to engage in educated debate today. So be respectful of opposing viewpoints. And we're going to limit everyone's comments. We have so many people that are interested in this issue. In order to get through everybody, everyone's going to have two minutes today, those for and against. And that will give the court enough time to thoroughly vet this issue and give everyone the full opportunity to speak today. And so with that, we're going to begin with our prayer and pledge.

Good morning, everyone. I wanted to welcome you. I'd like to welcome Pastor Neil Vanderbush from Messiah Lutheran Church to open us in prayer.

I invite you to join with me in prayer this evening. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you for this good day. And we thank you for this place that we call home in the county. We ask you, O Lord, that you would guide us this day with wisdom and discretion. That as a community, O Lord, we are all concerned at all the business every day. But Lord, there are certain things that are especially on our mind. So give us also peace. We would communicate clearly. That we would hear, that we would listen. discern, but especially for these commissioners. We pray that you would bless them, O Lord, with wisdom, discernment, discretion, fortitude, that the truth would be known, that your people, O Lord, would be blessed. Thank you for their service to us in this community. Lord, we also thank you, O Lord, for the beautiful land for which you drive. So we pray, O Lord, for rain. We also pray for all those that deal with emergencies that come at this time of year. We pray, with great thanksgiving for all of our emergency service personnel, to bless them and their families so that they can be about the task of caring for us, especially in times of need. We thank you also for our infrastructure, and we pray, Lord, that our infrastructure would be blessed, not only for this generation, but generations to come, and that decisions that are made today, oh Lord, would bless the growth that's happening here. But Lord, as people come, we know, Lord, it also brings change. So help us to be the best neighbors that we can be. We thank you, O Lord, for the love that you have given many of us for you, but we pray that we would also be that love poured out for our neighbors. It is in your precious name, our Savior Jesus, that we pray, knowing that you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Thank you. At this time, I'd like to welcome Preston Hill, who lead the pledges, and he's a member of the Voss Eagle football team. Go, Preston.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

On the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to the Texas flag.

All right. This opportunity to announce declarations of conflict of interest. Anything from you ladies today? No. Nothing. Gentlemen, anything from you? Nothing from me. And now we'll move to our awards. We have two folks that are not here today that were to receive awards. First, Brenda Felcone with our district clerk, 10 years of service. and then also Jesus Menara's recycling 15 years. So we'll start with Dalton Hurst with our sheriff's office, five years. Dalton, are you here? Yes, sir.

Appreciate your service, Dalton. Yes, sir. Thank you. Would you like to say anything? Thanks, everybody.

All right, next up, Tammy Coward-Willett, 10 years of service.

Well, congratulations. Would you like to say anything?

Next up, Deanna Gombert, tax office, 10 years. Thank you, Dana.

Congratulations.

Next up, Heidi Justice, Auditor's Office, another tenure.

Congratulations. Would you like to say anything?

Yes. It has been a wild ride. Another 10 years. Linda Wilkie.

Congratulations.

I know you have something to say.

Thank you, everyone.

I love working for the county. It's an amazing town, so thank you. Thank you for all you do.

And last but not least, Dennis Rusk with Roden Bridge, 35 years.

Would you like to say anything after all your years of time here?

Thank you for coming. I do have a request. Can you get a picture with his family too?

100%. I didn't know your family was here.

Aw.

So cute.

Doug, you going to get in there? Sure. Don't worry, he won't bite.

All right.

All right. Now we're going to get back on order here. We're going to start with comments from the bench. Commissioner McCall, would you like to say anything today?

Yes, I want to say that I appreciate all the emails, messages, phone calls regarding the agenda today. This is how local government should operate. Constituents having access to and engaging with their elected officials. Through your outreach, you have provided me with a tremendous amount of information and perspective that I otherwise may not have had. Your input has been invaluable in helping me better understand the issues and considerations surrounding decisions today. Thank you for taking the time to be involved and for being part of the decision-making process in Commissioner's Court today. Public participation and engagement are essential to good government, and I appreciate everyone who reached out and shared their views.

Commissioner Regents?

Thank you, Judge. Good morning, everyone. So some good news. Kendall County has been selected as one of 10 counties statewide to receive a 2026 Texas Association of Counties Best Practices Award. This award recognizes the program that we developed with the Berghain Volunteer Fire Department to address gaps in emergency response when volunteers are not available. The goal was to have personnel at the Berghain station 24 hours a day while keeping the volunteer model. And that's what Berghain has accomplished. So in addition to the county, this award belongs to Bergheim, to the men and women who've made it work. So TAC will be here in October to formally present the award, and we'll have those men and women in with us. But I just wanted to let everybody know that today.

Great. Thank you, Commissioner Regent. Commissioner Chapman, anything for me?

No, Judge, I'm going to let you cover that. All right. Thank you.

Commissioner Carpenter, you're up. Okay, so a couple things just to make an announcement. Coming up Friday, October 9th, 2026 at 630 at Singing Waters Vineyard in Comfort, Texas. There's going to be the Kendall County Friends of the Night Skies hosting a star party. And so that's going to be an opportunity to get educated about stars and see the stars through telescopes. It's going to be a fun night for kids and families. And then there's a group of local youngsters that have put together a pamphlet to help protect the night. It's furtherance of protecting against light pollution. And so they created a flyer. It's going to be put out throughout the community. They're going to be at the Kendall County Fair in a booth. I encourage you to go visit them, and you'll get this little packet. They create it all by themselves. They're working for their, what's the equivalent of the Girl Scout, equivalent of the Eagle Scout badge. And so try to visit them. You get a chance to win a Friends of the Dark Sky placard. if you sign up to be part of their list. And so I just wanted to make that announcement on their behalf.

So thank you. Do you want to piggyback on that? There will also be a $100 gift certificate awarded there at one of the local hardware stores donated generously a hundred dollar gift certificate to actually support dark skies. And so I think it was our ACE hardware distributor here in, in town. And so we'd like to thank him for, and all of his team for donating that for the dark skies.

I think we have one of their team members here today. Would you stand up? So thank you for your family support of this initiative. All right. Not to put you on the spot. All right. So next up, accounts payable claims. Consideration and possible action and approval of accounts payable claims for purchased services and vendors. So what's the total on today's 22 pages of the

Judge and commissioners, today claims are in the amount of $946,810.31.

Does anyone have any issues with any of the claims? If not, I'll entertain a motion at this time.

Judge, I move to approve accounts payable claims for purchases, services, and vendors in the amount of $946,810.31. Thank you for that motion, Commissioner Region.

Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Commissioner McCall. Any further discussion? If not, Teresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall. Aye. Commissioner Weeson. Aye. Commissioner Chapman.

Aye.

Commissioner McIntyre.

Aye.

Judge Delisle.

Aye. Motion carries five to zero.

Judge, can I go ahead and test this out?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

Okay, next up, a request for Commissioner's Court to recognize Pete Macias, paramedic RN, and Jennifer Harris, paramedic, for their efforts in the care and exceptional EMS services to our community. Brian?

Good morning, Judge. Good morning, Commissioners. Good morning. These two individuals were dispatched to our courthouse for an individual that had a medical episode. The patient was a special needs individual, adult. With the help of them and our local law enforcement sheriff's office, they helped de-escalate the situation, get the patient treated and transported to the appropriate facilities. They showed compassion and professionalism above and beyond normal call to duty, and they need to be recognized for that.

And I can concur to this because it was my court proceeding where this happened, and what I observed was outstanding because this was a individual in high distress and with extreme mental needs. And they just stepped up. And so I'd like to read the recognition for everyone. First of all, can Peter and Jennifer come up? You can stand right in front here. Peter and Jennifer, it's with great appreciation and pride that I recognize you both for the outstanding care, compassion, and professionalism you recently demonstrated while caring for an autistic patient who experienced a seizure and required transport to the hospital. Every day, EMS professionals are called upon to provide medical care during some of the most difficult moments in a person's life. What sets exceptional providers apart is their ability to combine clinical excellence with genuine compassion. The care you both provided exemplified exactly that. Pete, as a dedicated member of Kendall County EMS for the past five years, you have consistently demonstrated a commitment to serving others with professionalism and integrity. Jennifer, although newly hired to our organization, you brought over two decades of experience to this call and immediately demonstrated the qualities that define an exceptional EMS professional. The patience, understanding, empathy, and reassurance you both showed to the patient and those involved in his care reflected the very best of our profession. Your countless hours of training, education, and experience were evident not only in the medical treatment you provided, but also in the compassion and dignity with which you treated the patient. The calm and caring manner you displayed helped create a safe and supportive environment during a stressful event. The actions you demonstrated are a reminder that EMS is about more than medical interventions. It's about serving others with humility, kindness, and respect. Your commitment to providing patient-centered care serves as an example for all of us and reflects the highest standards of Kendall County EMS. Thank you both for your dedication, professionalism, and servant-hearted approach to caring for our community. Your efforts do not go unnoticed and are deeply appreciated. So let's give both these interviews.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And it wasn't just EMS, our dedicated law enforcement officers in this building, Mark Diamond, Ovi, Gabe, and others stepped up at this moment of crisis as well and showed exceptional, exceptional service to this community. So let's give them a round of applause. All right. Next up, our burn ban. Is Brady here? Warren? Consideration of possible action regarding order number 0-20260825-1 regarding the burn ban. So let's see. So I know that conditions have worsened. Correct. What can you tell us today, Warren?

So the KBDI is up to 576. The trends in grass fires have also went up. We are just seeing conditions deteriorate. We have some precipitation in the forecast, but very minimal, nothing that will sustain or saturate the county this week. So it's our recommendation with the support of all fire chiefs that we reinstate. Brady is doing well. He is back in the office, but he had follow-up questions.

Perfect. And so it looks like the KBDI range is near the minimum 537. It's towards the high end. So this is a more serious condition that we're in right now. All right. So I move to reinstate the burn ban for a period of up to 90 days in the unincorporated areas of the county due to the existence of conditions that have created public safety hazards that would be exacerbated by outdoor burning pursuant to order O-2026-0825-1. Do I have a second? Second. Motion by the judge, second by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion? If not, Teresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall? Aye. Commissioner Whelan? Aye. Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter?

Aye.

Commissioner Isaac?

Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Juan. Thank you, Juan. Next up, consideration possible action regarding Resolution R-20260825-1, a resolution expressing support for TxDOT's transportation proposed improvements to State Highway 46, River Road at Hearth Road, Esser Road, endorsing a design alternative one as county's preferred alternative and urging acceleration of the project. Commissioner Regent?

Thank you, Judge. Good morning again, everyone, and Mary Ellen, thanks for being up here. Our county engineer is going to I'll also speak to this. So this is a project we've been working on for quite some time, and I'm pleased to see the pieces finally coming together. So TxDOT submitted the State Highway 46 HEERF ESSER improvements to AMPO for funding, and now we have a commitment of federal funding with Kendall County committing $1 million to the project. So we're going to look at alternative one. There were two choices, and this gives us some improvements to the intersection while preserving the big cypress trees that are in the right-of-way in the middle of HEERF. and providing a separate pedestrian bridge. And that right away is being given by the Cibolo Center for Conservation. So we appreciate them doing that. And they and the City of Bernie are supporting this plan. So does this solve every problem on 46? No. But it's a real improvement, and it is funded, and we can move forward. Transportation dollars are very limited. They're going to be more limited in the future, I can tell you. So when we have the opportunity to improve safety and traffic flow, I think we take it and we keep working on the longer-term solution. So if an opportunity becomes available for AMPO to slot this project in earlier than the committed 2032 letting date, then we want to be ready to take advantage of that because there'll be projects in San Antonio and Bexar County that won't be ready to let, and we'll be able to slide in and get this done earlier. So with that, I'll turn it over to Mary Ellen to take us through anything you'd like to discuss, and I think we do have some slides as well.

Yes, so TxDOT's plan is to add turn lanes to improve the efficiency of the intersection. There is a right turn lane off of Herff onto 46 East that would improve. As you know right now, you kind of get stuck at the light waiting for your chance to turn. This would make it a free right turn, allowing that movement to continue and get people through the intersection faster. And then creating a dual left turn from 46 onto Herff, which is one of the main movements. Making that dual left will get more people through the intersection. And then extending the turn lane capacity from River Road onto Herff as well, right turn. It would just add a little bit more length instead of having one car at that intersection and having to wait for the light. So this will get more people through the intersection. Alternative one and alternative two create the same end solution, but it's how do we get there. Alternative one is the Cibolo Center for Conservation would provide easement dedicated to the city of Burney for construction of a trail that would get pedestrians a nicer path through the trees, through the Cibolo Center for Conservation's property, and better trail access, and then would connect to the trail that's already there and over to the Cibolo Nature Center and soccer fields. The alternative or the benefits of this is for the public using that trail. It allows for faster construction and less expensive construction. Essentially, the bridge that's there now would just be shifted over in the lanes, but construction on the actual bridge would not be needed. In alternative two, the cypress trees in the center of the two bridges would be taken out and the bridge would be widened, which costs more has the impact to the trees that are important to the community and construction would take much longer. So I think meeting with the Sybil Center for Conservation and the City of Burney and TxDOT, this community's support has been to proceed with alternative one as a better benefit to the community.

Okay. I'll change the motion at this time.

Okay, Judge, I'd be happy to do that. Judge, I move to Adopt Resolution No. R-202-608-25-1, a resolution expressing support for the Texas Department of Transportation's proposed improvements to State Highway 46, River Road, Adherp Road, Esser Road, endorsing Design Alternative 1 as the county's preferred alternative and urging acceleration of the project.

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

I just want to say that it's encouraging to see the dedicated work of the Kendall County Fair Oaks Transportation Committee. I'm sorry, Kendall County, Bernie Fair Oaks Transportation Committee reflected in a plan that now has advanced to fruition. There are members of that committee that are here today. In 2024, the committee may not have anticipated that its diligent efforts would contribute to a preferred plan within such a short timeframe. I support this design as the county's preferred plan. which is also supported by the City of Bernie and Siblo Center for Conservation. Just wanted to point that out.

Anything else? No. Please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall.

Aye.

Commissioner Lee. Aye. Commissioner Chapman.

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter.

Aye.

Judge DeLarza.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Thank you.

Thank you, Mary Ellen.

Okay. Next up. Consideration and possible action regarding Resolution R-20260825-2, a resolution accepting a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice in the amount of $915,961 through the Office of Justice. programs, OJP FY 2026 special attorney's program, round three grants to fund a position for a special U.S. attorney with the U.S. attorney's office. This is coming back because last court it was approved, but we didn't have a resolution. And so this is just to approve the resolution that was submitted. So at this time, I'll entertain a motion as to approval of the resolution.

Judge, I'd like to make motion to adopt resolution number R-2015. Excuse me. Resolution 2026-0825-2. Resolution accepting a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice in the amount of $915,961 through the Office of the Justice Program, OJP, fiscal year 2028, Special Attorneys Program, round three grant. to fund a position for special assistant U.S. attorney within the U.S. attorney's office. Thank you.

Motion made by Commissioner Chapman. Is there a second? Second. Second by Commissioner Carpenter. Any further discussion?

I just wanted to say one thing. My concern about this grant is that the county would be expected to assume substantial responsibility for administering and supporting this grant while realizing little to no tangible benefit. Given the workload, ongoing obligations, and limited value to our taxpayers, I'm not in favor of pursuing this grant opportunity.

Okay.

Thank you. Any other discussion? If not, Teresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall?

Nay.

Commissioner Wieschen?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter? Aye. Judge Stolzik?

I abstain because of my last abstentions on the last two rounds. So with that, a motion passes 3-1. with one abstention. So commissioners from precincts two, three, and four in favor. Commissioner one opposed, and the judge abstained. Next up, agenda item 12. Is this one still on the agenda, General Counsel?

I didn't get any... resolution of the question that I had, but I think that this should be pulled. I'm told that another taxing entity has already objected to the method, and therefore a vote on this today is not necessary.

Okay, so we'll be taking no action on agenda item 12 because it's pulled. Okay. Now, the next three are flock items. I just want to clarify that The vote on number 13 has no impact on agenda items 14 or 15 because agenda item 13 relates to a prior year's contract. So it's an obligation that the county already incurred. So don't take our vote as an indication on anything about 14 and 15. So I just want to make that clear before we begin this one. So agenda item 13. Consideration and possible action on an agreement with Flock Safety Group to participate in the Flock Safety Platform and for necessary Flock Safety professional services and installation fees with the term beginning on August 15, 2025 and ending on September 30, 2026, with the cost being reduced from $258,305 to $212,608.14. of which 80% will be paid by the grant awarded through the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority. So, and General Counsel, you reviewed the proposed contract and it meets all your standards?

It does.

I will hand it over to

Lieutenant Klarner? One thing I have to add to this one, the reason for the reduction in the total rate is due to the delay with the tech stop permits. And the first part of the grant, we only had 13 cameras installed. And then starting first, second week of July, once we got the state permits, they started installing the rest of the cameras. So since majority of this year, We only had 13 in the ground. I asked Flock if they would do a prorate or discount, and they agreed to give us, I think it was $46,000 or $48,000 discount. So that's the difference in the total for this year's contract.

I'll open it up for any conversation or discussion.

Gentlemen, anything from you? I do, Judge. So I do appreciate what discount we got. But if you consider 13 cameras, even if they were done on day one, which I know they weren't, that's 22% of the contract was fulfilled. And I believe most of the remaining cameras were being installed within the last 30, if not 60 days. And so... I mean, I know I went to a small school, but the math just doesn't add up there. Yes, sir. We're paying for what we actually received, so that's my comment. Yes, sir.

Anything from you ladies?

So has this contract been fulfilled? Do we have all of the cameras in the ground right now, today?

They have two remaining cameras to be installed this week, and then we'll be at 100%.

And then our 100% will be how many?

56.

Okay. So I had understood that we were at 80% a couple weeks ago when I asked you.

So you... Yes, they've had several the last couple weeks. Okay. Yes, ma'am.

So, General Counsel, would you consider this company in breach of this contract?

Commissioner, part of the reason why they give us the discount is because they were not able to install everything in the timeline in which the parties both expected. And part of that was a delay due to conditions outside of their control. For example, the tech stock permits to enter right-of-way to install cameras. Because of that, them offering this, what I consider to be a pretty substantial discount, my math may not be as good as Commissioner Chapman's, but it's not common for a contractor to offer us a discount when there has been a performance issue. I just want to acknowledge I think that was a good faith effort on the part of FLOC to try to make it more right. The grant, we also did speak with them, Lieutenant Klarner did, to make sure this wouldn't have any impact on the grant. And it won't, we'll still receive the 80% coverage from the NVCPA to cover this reduced amount and the county's portion will also be reduced accordingly. Please note that this contract does end in about a month. So the next item we'll discuss whether the court wants to continue beginning after the end of this current fiscal year or not. But I would consider this to be at least substantial compliance with the duties that were required in the contract. And to me, the discount offered, again, is to me quite a concession. And so it's up to the court to decide what to do. I would ask you to approve the contract today with this reduced amount because the parties have performed substantially for almost an entire year already. So I would ask that you approve this today. All right. Thank you. Sounds like you did the best you could on getting that concession. Lieutenant Klarner. handle that. So I'd just like to acknowledge him for asking for that on behalf of the county.

I tend to agree with Commissioner Chapman on this, but in the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's worth getting into substantial compliance and all the nitpicking. So this one, the true is part of the issue is the next two issues. And that's going to be decide the fate of this contract. So I think we just, my recommendation is to support general counsel in this and approve this and get to the real, real debate. So I moved to, I moved to approve, uh, uh, I guess the participation in a flock safety platform for the necessary flock safety professional services and installation fees with the term beginning on August 15, 2025 and ending on September 30, 2026, costs reduced from $258,305 to $212,608.14, of which 80% will be paid by a grant awarded through the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority. Do I have a second? Second. Motion by the judge. Second by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion? There being none, Teresa, could you please call the vote?

Commissioner McCall?

Nay.

Commissioner Regents? Aye. Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter?

Aye.

Judge Stolarzik?

Aye. Motion carries four to one with commissioners from precinct two, three, four, and the judge in favor. And precinct one opposed. All right. So I'm going to read the agenda item and then I'm going to call up constituents to come sit at either. You can sit at either table. I'll call two at a time so we can kind of speed this along. One sits on one side, one sits on the other. Once someone finishes or once the two finish, I'll call up two more and we'll just go through that and you'll have two minutes. You'll see on the screen to your right, there will be a little timer that shows up and it'll have a little bell. Once you announce who you are and where you're from, your countdown will begin. So you go through your speech. Once you hear the bell go off, kind of wrap up your sentence succinctly, and then we'll let the next person begin, and we'll go from there until we get through everybody, okay? So agenda item 14, consideration and possible action on agreement with Flock Safety Group, Inc. to continue to participate in the Flock Safety Platform and for necessary Flock Safety professional services and installation fees. beginning on October 1, 2026, and ending on September 30, 2027, for a cost not to exceed $198,550, of which 80% will be paid by a grant awarded through the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, subject to review and approval by general counsel, and authorize the county judge to execute necessary documents. Before I begin, Ms. McCarthy, you submit a form. You're going to go through the normal comments. Okay, just want to confirm. All right, first, Mr. Fields and Stephen Belt. Good morning, gentlemen.

Thank you to this court. Good morning, everyone. My name is Stephen Belt. I represent the Kendall County District Attorney's Office. I'm a felony prosecutor. I've been here currently about a year. Before that, I was a prosecutor in Harris County in Houston. I was also a federal prosecutor down in McAllen. I am here to show the court. that we are very much for the flock system in multiple ways. I can tell you that at least in my experience in Houston, the flock system with the largest county in the state of Texas was extremely valuable. We have solved and brought to trial and got guilty verdicts. at least on two that I've done that were primarily found this suspect using the flock camera system. I will also say in my time here at Kendall County, a recent manslaughter case that we worked on, the flock system was vital in understanding the timeline in which the defendant was uh started uh his night before the fatal crash that ended on highway 46 so i have seen positive outcomes there as well as a current evading arrest for a motorcycle that got away from law enforcement the lprs that we use were able to track his movements We were able to get search warrants, and we are moving forward with prosecution on that defendant. So I have seen a substantial benefit from the flock system. I live in Fair Oaks Ranch. When I see those LPRs, I feel safer. I will say that Kendall County is a rapidly growing 662 square mile county. This will save money for the county because it takes time to identify a suspect. When we have an LPR with a license plate, we know where they are, we know where they're going. That's going to save money for law enforcement that would take for, you know, talking to witnesses and getting other evidence together. So I will say that the policy protections that are in place are valid. They only last for 30 days. And I believe that we should continue this relationship with Flock. Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning. Morning. Y'all know me. I'm Andrew Fields. I'm the special victims prosecutor here in Kendall County. I've been a prosecutor for almost 16 years in San Antonio and here in Kendall. I exclusively work on the crime, the felony crimes against women and children, arguably some of the most vile and disgusting things that we have in our county. I can tell you that when I saw this Hullabaloo building up on Facebook about flock cameras. The thing that came to my mind is what in the George Soros is going on here? Why are they trying to take this evidence from us? And I can tell you in the last two years, I've had five cases directly solved, sex offenders directly solved with flock camera information. And the sheriff's going to speak on one of them, but for whatever reason, some people come to our county, maybe because it's rural, maybe because they're trying to get away from the city, but We've had five sex offender cases solved directly with that flock camera information. One was a kidnapping case out of Florida, and they came here. One was a man who was doing terrible things to his own children out of Dallas, and he came here, and we caught him using the flock cameras. Another one was a sex offender who was failing to register here in our county and had moved to Aransas County and was living in a trailer park with a playground and children nearby. We were able to find him and find that he was evading our registration here in this county. And we have two other cases that are actively pending that I'm not going to speak on, but we are tracking them down with flock cameras. In addition to my time in San Antonio, I can say that I've had flock cameras directly lead to solving aggravated robberies with guns stuck in people's faces and a murder where flock camera information was extremely valuable in apprehending that defendant. My fear in taking down these cameras is that one day, and heaven forbid this ever happened, But one day, we're going to have an abduction or a murder, and I'm going to get the case, and people are going to say, I saw a black SUV leaving the neighborhood. And we're not going to be able to do anything with that. But if there's flock cameras, we can say this black SUV was going down Main Street at this time, and then we picked it up on I-10 at this time, and we suspect that they're going here. And we'll have a license plate number, which will lead us back to somebody's house, and hopefully we can save a child or solve a murder. And in that situation, I would say these flock cameras are invaluable. And I know that the parents of a child in that situation would say that that's invaluable. And I pray that that never happens in this county. But I fear that one day with the county growing the way it is, we will deal with that. Your time.

I'm sorry. That's OK. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Crystal Reeser and Nicole Bishop. And if Emily Hamburg, I can't read your writing. If you want to come to this next table and get queued up, you're good.

So good morning. My name is Crystal Reeser. I am a crime analyst investigator with the Kendall County DA's office. I use Flock. I'm probably one of the most used flock user. To conduct a search, you have to document an offense type, case number, investigative reason, vehicle information, location, and a time frame. And every search conducted is audited and all the LPR data is automatically deleted after 30 days of flock. And what I put up there is exactly what flock the parameters I have to put in. So between 2023 and 2025, Kendall County experienced 256 burglary of a motor vehicle incidents. Only 20 of those resulted in filed charges. Many investigations lacked sufficient suspect information. The highest concentrations occurred along the I-10 corridor, Regent Park, City Parks, and Old San Antonio Road. And then you can see up there the heat maps of where all these early remote vehicles occurred within 2023 and 2025 prior to Flock. Looking specifically at the burglary motor vehicle trends this year in 2026, they have decreased by 77% from the peak of 2025 to the current period. This reduction is also reflected in the neighborhood level. Regent Park alone in 2024 had six incidents. In 2025, they had seven incidents. And since they had a flock installed, they've had zero incidents. In Kendall County case number 10180, three vehicles were burglarized at the North Rupp Park. A camera captured the suspect vehicle, but there was no readable license plate. Using only the vehicle's make, model, color, and a time frame, I was able to locate the vehicle using flock data. The suspect was located and arrested and was determined to be associated with the felony lane gang, a national criminal organization known for coming to the rural areas and committing financial crimes just like this. Without Flock, investigators would have never had enough information to identify this suspect vehicle.

Thank you. Of course, Bishop.

Part of the reason I became a prosecutor is to also protect Fourth Amendment rights for people. I had encountered individuals, prosecutors, who would file cases even though a Fourth Amendment violation had occurred because they thought, well, let's see if the defense attorney catches it. That's not something that we do in my office. In my office, we protect everybody's rights, even criminals, if their Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure is violated. This, again, are picking up vehicles in a public place. We can, should, and do have strong policies governing retention, access, auditing, and misuse, but rejecting a proven investigative tool because it could be misused is not the answer. The answer is strong oversight and responsible use. When properly regulated, flock cameras give law enforcement another set of eyes and give victims a better chance of getting answers. When we cannot afford to have resources to have an officer on every corner 24-7, these cameras stand in their place. Please do not take away a law enforcement tool. By doing so, you will send the message that Kendall County is open season for criminals. I would rather explain to a voter why I supported a tool designed to catch criminals instead and explain to a victim why I voted to take it away. I ask you to ask yourself that question. What will you say to a parent whose child has been abducted and we no longer have a tool to find a vehicle that that child was abducted in? And I think that that's very important to ask yourself that question. Our law abiding citizens should feel safe driving into Kendall County. The people who should be uncomfortable crossing that county line are people coming here to commit crimes. I have seen firsthand where smugglers and human traffickers avoid towns and roads that have LPRs and these flock cameras because they know about it. I have seen like in Regent Park where people they've targeted as soon as we get those cameras and they do not target it anymore. This is a protective measure for our county. This protects the bubble around our county. Please do not allow the crime to rise in this county because, again, these cameras are in a public place. This is not a Fourth Amendment violation.

Thank you. All right. And Ms. Okenberg, if you can come to the other table and you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning. My name is Emily Hamby-Irvine, a Kendall County resident, and I'm asking you to vote no on items 14 and 15 and end Kendall County's involvement with flock safety. I'm not asking for a modification of this program. I'm asking you to defund it and discontinue it. Flock creates a searchable record of the movements of ordinary citizens who are not suspected of committing a crime. Vehicles are photographed, timestamped, location stamped, stored, and searched simply because they passed a camera. And we already know the consequences when these systems fail. Earlier this month in Wisconsin, two innocent people were pulled from their vehicle at gunpoint after a flock alert connected to their SUV to a homicide. The vehicle had already been cleared. An error in a database became a gun-strawn police encounter. In Colorado, an innocent woman who was summoned for theft after flock placed her vehicle near a package theft. She proved her innocence only because she had her own cameras showing where she actually was. What happens to the innocent person who cannot prove where they are? And misuse is not hypothetical. A national investigation has identified dozens of law enforcement officials accused, charged, or convicted of abusing license plate reader systems, including officers allegedly using them to track wives, girlfriends, and ex-girlfriends. Now, Kendall County is being asked to spend approximately $200,000 every year on this system. We do not own the equipment. And grant money is still taxpayer money. We should not pay a private corporation to build a searchable record of the movements of law-abiding Kendall County residents. This is not limited government. This is not privacy. And this is not infrastructure I want to normalize in Kendall County. Please give Flock no more years, no more dollars, and no more opportunity to expand. Vote no on items 14 and 15. Thank you. Thank you.

And Ms. Leah Beggs, if you can come to this table.

My name is Lenore Okerberg, I'm a Kendall County resident. I'm here today to strongly oppose the county's continued use of expansion of flock cameras. I'm frankly appalled that our elected officials would consider the level of surveillance to ordinary citizens an acceptable trade off for the possibility of assisting law enforcement in solving some crimes. These cameras don't just photograph criminals, they photograph all of us, the overwhelming majority of us who are suspected of absolutely nothing. There will always be technology that can help law enforcement's job to be easier, but making law enforcement's job easier cannot be the standard by which we decide how much privacy citizens must surrender. I respect our law enforcement officers and the difficult job they voluntarily take on. but the difficulty of that job does not give government unlimited authority to monitor law-abiding citizens simply because the technology now makes it possible. And the evidence does not justify treating this technology as an overwhelming public safety necessity. Research on license plates readers has shown mixed results. There may be benefits in recovering stolen vehicles or investigating certain crimes with those benefits must be weighed against creating a system capable of documenting the movements of thousands of innocent citizens. We're looking at more than $200,000 for the current term and nearly $2,000 for the following. Yes, 80% of that may come from a grant, but grant money is taxpayer money. More importantly, our privacy should not suddenly become negotiable because someone else is paying 80% of the bill. Once the infrastructure becomes normalized, where does it end? Today we're told it's stolen vehicles and catalytic converters, but what happens tomorrow when the same technology can be used to identify who attended a peaceful protest, a political meeting, or an event challenging the government itself? That's where surveillance begins to threaten more than privacy. It can chill free speech and lawful assembly. We should not build that infrastructure and simply trust that the government will never misuse it. Kendall County, not Houston, is a place where people value individual liberty, limited government, and personal privacy.

Thank you.

And one last call for Leah Beggs. Is she online? So I'm going to call James Oxford and Sean O'Connell. You may start, sir.

Hello, I'm Sean O'Connell. I'm a resident of Kendall County, and I just wanted to speak about the flock camera issues. So I want to argue that privacy is directly related to security, especially in the cybersecurity world. And it's about preventing people from getting privileged access to your data or privileged information about you, such as your whereabouts. And other things about your your behavior that you don't want to necessarily share with everybody. A couple of and I just feel like this surveillance in our lives is becoming like an increasing phenomenon. So like one example is I'll just give two examples. So like one example is the iPhone. I think it was in like 2018. Suddenly, like all of our. photos were like automatically analyzed by AI and For like objects like text and like facial recognition and stuff and they didn't ask like any permission to do that it's just like on all our iPhones enabled by default and so Like, you know, that assumes a lot of trust in the company that we didn't really grant them. And then the second thing is a good thing is the transition from HTTP to HTTPS on the Internet. In the last like 10 years, it's gone from 30 percent to 95 percent. And that like completely prevents eavesdropping on the Internet. like all the traffic is not seeable by like a man in the middle attack. And so I think if we use that as like a model, I think Like, I hope that we move in that direction instead of the other direction where it's like this slip in of surveillance. So another thing is, well, actually, those are my main points. But yeah, I'm just hoping that you vote no on 14 and 15. And yeah, thank you. All right.

Thank you for your comments. And then we're going to call Sue Ann Pyle over here. All right. And you may begin.

Hi. My first concern is about Flock Safety itself, privately owned company founded in 2017. Since less than 10 years, it's got 120,000 cameras across the United States.

You didn't identify himself?

Oh, could you please? James Oxford.

Okay. And are you a Kendall County resident?

I am. Okay. 120,000 cameras across the United States. The result is a system capable of tracking movements of ordinary people who never consented to being monitored and have no meaningful way of opting out of the system. A private company elected by no one, accountable to no one, who has erected a surveillance system that we don't have any real option about. George Orwell wrote in 1984, Big Brother's Watching. This is all happening right in front of our eyes. Um, what is also not talked about is the misuse of these systems. It's already happening. Um, in California, a former Riverside County deputy was convicted of using flock to stalk his ex fiance and Pasadena, Texas, a police Sergeant resigned after allegations of him misusing flock systems and Georgia, um, a police chief chief, not an officer at chief, um, searched flock hundreds of times to track his former girlfriend and her teenage daughter. Same thing happened in Kansas. Another police chief reportedly used the system 200 times to track his ex-girlfriend. So these are incidents that have already occurred. It's not a what if, it's who has access to these things and how will they misuse them. Um, you know, Lord Acton famously said power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. Today it can be rephrased. Absolute surveillance will surveil you. Absolutely. Um, and I want to be clear that I'm not an enemy of law enforcement or the elected officials sitting in this room. You guys have difficult jobs, um, and I'm sure the system helps you in certain ways, but where does it end? Um, you know, big government shouldn't have the authority to sit here and surveil us without any, you know, real promises of, you know, pulling back, you know, so take that into consideration.

Thank you for your time. All right. Brody Huff, if you can come up next. I'm Sue Ann.

My name is Sue Ann Pyle. I am a Kendall County resident and I am a retired social studies teacher and I taught government civics many years, and I am very worried about the continual encroachment of our liberties. I do believe, contrary to what somebody said earlier, that this is a Fourth Amendment right. I believe that we have a right to privacy. I understand that law enforcement has a hard job and they need to do their job with the best tools they can, but I do not think that surveilling the entire county, every person in it, is... what we want to have. We do not want to become a surveillance state. We do not want to become, as somebody said, somewhere where they track our every move and start saying things about where we go and, like I said, go into a protest. That is, we have the right to gather. And if that we start being targeted because of the places that we go to, that should not be happening here. So from a constitutional viewpoint, I do not believe that these flock cameras should be used on ordinary citizens. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am.

Next up over here is going to be Steven Riggs, and the floor is yours, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the commission. My name is Brody Huff, and I am here to represent myself. I'm a resident of Comfort, Texas in Kimball County, and I stand in firm opposition of any renewed contracts with Flock Safety Group between them and Kimball County. Not because of the cost of any new contract, and not because of how ugly they are on the sides of our beautiful roads, but because safety can never overweigh liberty. All of you on this commission are Republicans, so I'm sure that all of you are familiar with the age-old argument that if we just get rid of guns, our communities will be safer. This same argument is being used to push flock cameras. If we just put these cameras up, our communities will be safer. I am asking that you don't put a Band-Aid on an arterial bleed. Stop treating the symptoms, start treating the problems. Try to urge your community to heal, and perhaps these crimes will not happen as often. I'm sure that some of you are aware of it, but just in case you are not, We were warned about people who would give up liberty for safety in 1755 when Benjamin Franklin said, those who would give up essential liberty deserve neither liberty. Essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety. I see none of you as enemies. Ms. Wishon, I know you. Mr. Carpenter, I know you. Mr. Chapman, I am aware of your voting record and commend you for voting the correct way the past two times that this was brought in front of the court. I myself, and I'm sure that a few of us in the crowd are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to how the vote went the first two times, because the information and the controversy around these cameras was not present, but it is now. So please take it into account as the vote on this item comes forward. Thank you for your time. And I yield the rest of mine. Thank you.

All right. Next up at this table is going to be Emily Hamby. Oh, sorry. I already got her. Clayton Patton over here. All right, the floor is yours, sir.

Judging commissioners, my name is Stephen Riggs. I'm a longtime resident of Kendall County. I'm speaking today to oppose the mass surveillance system. As rural residents and taxpayers, we value our personal privacy and constitutional liberties. The deployment of automated surveillance that logs, tracks, and stores The travel patterns of innocent law-abiding citizens creates a dragnet system without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. This level of mass data collection represents unnecessary government overreach and carries a substantial recurring fiscal burden for our county taxpayers. Furthermore, serious questions remain regarding third-party data sharing, long-term retention policies, and public oversight. I urge the court to prioritize citizen privacy, exercise the termination clause in the county agreement with flock safety, or at minimum, pause the program until a dedicated, transparent public hearing is held to allow residents a formal voice on the surveillance infrastructure. Thank you for your time and commitment. Thank you.

Next up over here is going to be Lisa Albon. The floor is yours, sir.

My name is Clayton Patton. I'm a resident of Precinct 4 outside of Comfort. I'll tell you, I do not want to be here today, but it's an important issue that needs to be discussed and debated. I think these cameras are a great surveillance tool. That being said, they belong at the rim or west of downtown San Antonio. I do not think they should be on rural roads in Kendall County. I want to talk a little bit about facts and math that I've done to try to prepare for today. I'll tell you, I only have one way left to get to my house or from my house to comfort without being under surveillance of one of these cameras. I live seven miles outside of town. There's plenty of back roads by my house. I think the goal of Flock and probably law enforcement is to not allow me or other people in this county to use any kind of connecting road without being seen by a camera. I don't think they're harmless. As far as costs, sure, it's a grant, but think about the cost-benefit analysis of what we're using here. I know we're getting discounts, and there's been some other numbers thrown out today, but it seems like they cost about $5,000 a year for one camera. I have two cameras on 1621 near my house, or you all have them, really. Everybody has them now. And there are two more on Welfare and Waring Road. So what did we get with that? Are we finding two to three possible stolen vehicles every year? We're not finding. We're just seeing them on a camera and know which way they went. Or maybe every two to three years. So almost the entire cost of my property tax bill is going to pay for just one of these cameras for one year. I don't know if there's really a benefit with that. So what costs will be cut to pay for them? There is a grant. It's at the state. But how many law enforcement personnel have to be laid off to pay for them? Or how many prosecutors? If the job is made so much easier and it's an invaluable tool, there's got to be a cost-benefit tradeoff. I don't know where that is, but I would ask you all to think about that as you vote. So these cameras operate via a national software network.

Your time is up, sir. Thank you. Next up over on this side is going to be David Storley. Ma'am, the floor is yours.

I'm so thirsty. Oh, good morning. Good morning. Excuse me. My name is Lisa Alban. I am a citizen of Kendall County. And I've heard a lot this morning about the flock cameras and the LPRs, the license plate readers. But on the agenda item, it doesn't say you are looking to continue to participate in an LPR event. or a camera system, it says that we are here to consider to participate in the flock safety platform. So I was like, what is this flock safety platform? So I went on to the flock safety platform website And it just says the cameras are just the beginning. And I was like, well, what does that mean? I couldn't find anything on the flock safety platform on the flock safety platform website. So I looked up their patent. So when you look up a patent, you find out a lot about what this technology actually is. And it's really interesting. From the patent, I learned all about it. The name of the title of this patent from. Flock Safety Platform is a system and method for object-based query of video content captured by a dynamic surveillance network. And here's what everybody in this room needs to know. The Flock Safety Platform's patent explicitly describes not searching for license plates, but searching for people. What they're talking about in the objects in that title, they're talking about human beings. I'm not characterizing it this way. This is in their patent. The patent specifically describes that it's classifying and identifying people with their characteristics, sex, race, clothing, height, weight, and facial recognition. The patent is not just about searching for cars and license plates. It also describes searching for historical surveillance and creating maps and timelines. Block Safety Platform's patent, not me, but their patent, says that one of those timelines may, quote, may then create probable cause for questioning the driver. Create probable cause. Probable cause should not be created. It should grow out of evidence for pointing towards someone. Now, investigating a crime backwards or a missing person backwards, that is good police work. But this model, that's not what's happening. The patent is providing surveillance on everyone and stores it before anything bad happens. Suspicion gets created later. That's backwards. And that is fundamentally different relationship between citizens and government. The agenda today doesn't ask us to approve license plates. They're asking us to approve this platform. And I don't consent.

Thank you for your words. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we're going to call Robert O'Connell up next, and the floor is yours, sir.

Good morning, Court. My name is David Storley. I'm a resident of Precinct 3 in Kendall County. I'm here today to talk about flock safety. It could just as well be numerous other surveillance systems, but I'm using flock as a generic term here. I'm not here to disparage the technology, as there is no disputing that when used properly, these systems can help solve crimes. It's also shown in too many instances then in the wrong hands it can be used nefariously. One of Flock's strongest selling points is solving, may I say, not preventing child abductions. This is a bit misleading. Child abduction by strangers is an extremely uncommon crime in the United States, happening only about 100 times annually. Make no mistake, protecting children is one of the most important charges of our society. But at what cost? Should society relinquish all rights to privacy? Is this proportionally equal to the problem? The data collected falls into the wrong hands, which it invariably does. What can be done with it? Track people at church, Planned Parenthood, gun store, bar, psychiatrist, or cannabis dispensary. It's really quite frightening no matter where you are on the political spectrum. I believe there are enough cameras out there that we don't need taxpayer subsidized cameras. I'm here to address what tax dollars are being used for. I do not want the government bodies responsible for managing our communities spending tax dollars on our movements. What happens when Austin decides they no longer are sponsoring these grants? I would like to know if these grants given under the auspices of preventing catalytic converter thefts have saved one converter. Furthermore, I'd like to know how many converters were stolen in Kendall County last year. My redneck logic says that what was spent on surveillance in the county could have paid for every stolen converter and still had money left over. I asked the commissioner's court to approve item 13, which he did, as that's already been received. I also asked that the court vote no on items 14 and 15. and end the surveillance in Kendall County. Please do what is morally right and end the program now. Ultimately, I believe the Supreme Court will strike this down, but it'll be years away. And as has been mentioned before, I was going to quote Benjamin Franklin, and I will save the time for later.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. All right. Next up on this side is going to be Gavin Nash. And then the floor is yours.

My name is Robert O'Connell. I'm a Kendall County resident, and I oppose the flock safety funding. The Fourth Amendment states the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects. I suspect a car is in effect. Against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue upon property. but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures by government. Warrants must be issued only with probable cause and specify both the place to be searched and the things or persons to be seized. So questions arise respecting flock safety surveillance in the fourth amendment. One does a noble purpose become a perverse incentive. We don't want that happening. So the purpose may be noble too, since government is expressly prohibited from unwarranted surveillance of citizens is government thus prohibited from hiring private agencies to perform such surveillance on their behalf? Third, does government-funded surveillance intrude on a reasonable expectation of privacy? Re-long-term multi-location tracking Prolonged or comprehensive monitoring may constitute unlawful search. The Supreme Court has already ruled on similar methods, extended GPS and cell location tracking. This fits into that general categorization. I came to ask the commissioner's court to vote no on items 14 and 15 in perpetuity and also to decline the MVCPA grant intended to find flash cameras. Thank you, sir. All right.

Last call for Gavin Nash. Okay. So we're going to call Adam Lang over here and Josh Person over here. Is Josh Person here? If not, we're going to call Justin Hebert. All right.

Great. Well, thank you. My name is Adam Lang. I am a Kendall County resident. First, I'd like to thank Dustin for pulling together that petition and bringing all citizens together. And I'd like to thank Commissioner Chapman for responding to that petition. And thank you all for giving us the time to talk to you. I was going to make some points about the Constitution and all that, but I want to really just talk about, I understand where you and the law enforcement folks are coming from and wanting to protect the citizens of our county, right? But I think that the technology is just, I don't think we understand it well enough yet to know where this is going. And unfortunately, having been in the military and served in units that are associated with the Intel community, we have this history of us violating these things. We all get annual Intel oversight training that tells us about how we use these military-grade technologies back in the 70s to violate the rights of many of the civil rights movement's folks. We did that, and it's in the training that we now have to put these guardrails and controls in at the federal level. We talked earlier, the first few folks that talked about this, I understand why they want this, and they promised they're going to put guardrails in The truth is that they just don't have those and they don't know how to do that. I don't expect the law enforcement agencies in Kennel County, Fair Oaks Ranch, our local communities are going to probably do anything to violate this. But Harris County, Dallas, Ohio, New York, they are going to. And the company... I don't trust them at all. And I think that we need to understand more about the private organization that's maintaining this data over who knows how long and who they're selling that data to. Your data, our data. And so I'll just close by saying, like, I know that you heard the points made by law enforcement. And I think that the voters here are making better points.

So thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you.

And over here, we're going to call Jason Carroll. Floor is yours. Good morning, Dustin Avery, Kendall County resident. We all want to save community, but there are moments when government has to choose between more power and more liberty. And when that choice is close, liberty should win. I had 1,500 people sign the petition in about two weeks. 900 of them live in this county. We're at over 1,800 and over 1,000 today. Do these cameras help solve problems? Absolutely. The stories that were mentioned earlier matter. But public safety cannot become a blank check for mass surveillance. As of this morning, in the last 30 days, according to the Flock Kendall County portal, the cameras have photographed 545,000 unique vehicles. We only have 47,000 people that live here. That's not just criminals. That's everybody living their lives. No warrant, no probable cause, no suspicion. Just collect it all. And look at the business model. The county's own paperwork calls this a lease agreement. So us taxpayers are funding it. The private company owns the equipment, and we're generating the data. It's a hell of a business model, but it's not one for Kendall County. The bigger question is this. Does safety automatically outweigh privacy every time somebody invents a new technology? There will always be another crime that might be solved that another camera could help, another piece of technology can help. Constitution was designed to protect the people from government power before the power was abused, not provide remedy afterward. I don't believe anybody in this room wants a surveillance state. That's not the point. Our constitutional system was not designed around the intentions of the people in power today. It's about the people that's going to come in power tomorrow. And this is how the power grows. One camera, one grant, another database until surveillance becomes the price of leaving your driveway. So let's draw the line here. We don't need citizens cutting cameras off poles like it has in surrounding counties. We need elected officials willing to take them down. Vote no on next year's agreement. Vote no on the grant. And when we're out, stay out. Don't bring it back under anything else. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. All right.

And last but not least, if you're up. Judging commissioners, my name is Jason Carroll, a resident of Kendall County. I have founded multiple AI companies and I serve as an AI advisor for multiple organizations. So I'm not here as someone scared of technology. I'm here as someone who knows exactly what it can do and where it can break. In fact, a few weeks ago, I was issued a citation for something I didn't do in a California city that I've never been to. It took hours before a human would ever even look at the footage. I got a ticket, but as we've heard today from constituents, others are getting far worse. We heard earlier that flock usage is audited as if that's supposed to give us comfort. But the number of these types of stories that we've heard already and of abuse are growing rapidly. And when the machine is wrong, the burden doesn't disappear. It shifts to the innocent person. And that's backwards, isn't it? Here's why that matters for Kendall County. I don't walk my bike up at the gym. My very attractive wife walks at night without looking over her shoulder. We're a safe town with no signs of that changing. And that safety didn't come from cameras. It came from our wonderful law enforcement officers. It came from our neighbors. And once we decide that a camera can do that job, we're quietly inviting our neighbors to stop doing it. So here's my ask. Don't renew this contract. Follow Bandera County, Hood County, Hayes County, the dozens of jurisdictions nationwide that have canceled or rejected these contracts since january earlier we heard that one day something might happen and that without flock it's open season for criminals but that is not our current reality we can always add cameras back later in fact you could probably hire me to build a more creative safe solution here in the county but we cannot add back the kind of town that never needed these cameras to begin with.

Thank you.

Thank you for those comments.

I want to commend you all for the spirited yet respectful debate. Did you submit a comment? All right. Could you just announce your name and

Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Commissioners. Good morning. My name is Heather Bessie. I'm a Kendall County taxpayer. I'm asking that you vote no on items 14 and 15. I do not consent. I do want to let you know that I absolutely support and respect our law enforcement. Block cameras threaten our right to privacy. This technology is tracking our movement without our knowledge and consent. These are promoted as tools for our safety. But what it really is doing is giving the government and law enforcement the ability to monitor innocent people's movement on such a huge scale. This creates serious concerns on how that information should be stored, shared, or misused. We should be able to live our lives without creating a permanent record of our daily lives. In my opinion, this is government overreach, and this violates our civil liberties. Safety is absolutely important, but not at the cost of our privacy and our freedoms. For this, I ask that you vote no on renewing the Kendall County Flock contract. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Did I miss anyone that would like to speak? Okay. All right. Again, I would like to thank you all for your spirited yet respectful debate. That's all what this court's about. So I'll kick us out, kick us off. I'm going to be short and sweet. So my background includes serving as a military prosecutor for 10 years. So I know the value of technology in solving crimes. However, Flock has lost the faith and trust of communities across the country, and including, in my opinion, Kendall County. And so as a result, I can no longer support Flock's presence in Kendall County until that trust is restored. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to my colleagues. Commissioner Reasoner. I'd love to jump in. Okay.

Thank you, everyone, for being here and your time this morning. So Think about walking outside and your car's gone or you're a parent and your daughter hasn't come home and you're scared to death and every minute feels like an hour. And so in those moments, you want law enforcement to have the very best tools available. And we've heard from the sheriff's office and the district attorney that it works, that these cameras help catch bad guys and recover stolen property and find missing people. And those results matter to me. I wanted to support this technology from the beginning. But I believe that something this powerful needed guardrails. And so I asked the sheriff's office for a written policy governing the use and to make that public on the website, and they did. And I think the sheriff and his staff are taking those concerns seriously. But the more I've learned, the more I've come to consider three things, trust, control, and liberty. And I trust our sheriff, but our policy ends where our authority ends. Flock isn't just a camera besides the road reading a license plate. That information becomes a bigger part of a larger network. That's what makes Flock so useful, and that's also what concerns me. We can control our sheriff's office, but we cannot control every outside user, every future decision by a private company, or everyone who may try to get into that system. And independent security researchers have already documented these security issues exposures in flocks on cameras, and they do see more than just a license plate. And then there's liberty. Yes, cameras are everywhere. Amazon trucks have them. Tow trucks have them. Walmart has them. But there's a difference. I choose to walk into Walmart, and Walmart brought those cameras with Walmart's money. Here, government is collecting information. And even when we're using grant money, grant money is taxpayer money. So, of course, someone standing beside the highway can see your car go by, but there's a difference between being seen and being tracked. Technology will only get faster, smarter, and more connected. Technology doesn't have a conscience, but we do. The question isn't whether flock works. It does. The question is how much information government should collect about people who haven't done anything wrong and how much risk we're willing to create by collecting that information. Because most people passing these cameras aren't criminals. They're the mom taking your child to school, the rancher checking a gate, your neighbor driving to town. It's you. You shouldn't have to worry who might someday might be able to find out where you've been. Government should be responsible for making sure that information is protected. I don't think that we can. And for me, that's where the balance tips.

Commissioner McCall?

Yes, ma'am.

We actually didn't allow the sheriff or the sheriff's department to finish speaking. The only thing they talked about was the grant for the first contract.

Okay, I'm going to give them an opportunity.

I was wondering if the commissioners would like to hear them before they share their thoughts in case the sheriff's comments might change their mind. Okay.

All right. Sure. Thank you, Judge. Thank you, Court. Thank you, counsel, for that little bit there. So I'm going to take some time here, and I want to look at this holistically, and I hope that you will be open-minded and and hear what I have to say, and then make a well-educated understanding and a decision based on the whole picture of what I'm about to present to you. First of all, I want to say this. I don't consider this a threat against law enforcement. I just say, I hear you, and I agree with you. almost everything that you say. But hear me out. Give me my opportunity as well. Please. That's all I ask. Fairness. Because I'm going to address pretty much everything that's been stated. Let me say something else about everybody here. I brag about you everywhere I go. This community Second to none. And I am proud and I'm honored to serve in the capacity of what I do. And I know this is not a personal attack on me. I appreciate that. I have had great conversation with many of you. I haven't changed your mind. You haven't changed my mind.

And I'm fixing to express why you haven't changed my mind.

Allow me the opportunity, please. It's gonna take a minute, but I think it's deserved. So thank you, and thank you for the type of people that you are, because you are what makes this community what it is. Thank you. Thank you. I have a presentation, a slide presentation.

I say something real brief. Yes, the granted that we're talking about was. Was from the sheriff's office and this is his item, so he has an opportunity to talk more than just three minutes.

Thank you. Are you ready? I am ready. Are you already? Are you ready? I need slide number one, please. Okay, this is gonna be about the automated license plate readers, the ALPRs. Presentation of this presentation is about what the technology actually does, what the law actually says, and what limits should be used to govern its uses.

Slide number two, please.

I want to address the concerns being raised regarding automatic license plate readers or the ALPRs. This discussion deserves facts rather than fear from either my side or the opposing side. It needs to be based on truth and facts. I believe strongly in public safety. I also believe strongly in the Fourth Amendment. Individual liberty, limited government, and accountability for law enforcement. Those principles are not mutually exclusive. Slide three, please. These are questions as a court you need to ask yourself. And I hope you take these seriously. Is it lawful? Does it serve a legitimate public safety purpose? What does it collect? What safeguards govern it? And what happens when somebody abuses it? Those questions are more than useful than treating technology itself as either automatically good or automatically bad. Next slide, please. Slide four. This is larger than flock safety. ALPR technology. Slide five, please.

Hope everybody has a chance to read some of these.

ALPR technology. predates Flock and has been used for years, decades, by federal, state, and local law enforcement through fixed cameras, mobile systems, and public-private camera networks. Flock is one vendor. The underlying technology is about automated license plate recognition. There are several other vendors that are used throughout the country. So that you know that this is nothing new. This technology has been around for decades, almost 50 years. It was brought to the United States about 20 some years ago. And it's now being used in a way that's being used in law enforcement. So it's been given a lot of recognition and a lot of concern, rightful concern. Next slide, please. Go back one slide, please. What the ALPR automates. At the most basic level, the ALPR automates what an officer could historically observe with his or her own eyes on a public roadway, a vehicle, its publicly displayed plates and exterior, where it was seen, when it was seen, and whether the plate matched the legitimate law enforcement information. Technology simply makes this process substantially faster. Next slide, please. The distinction matters. The speed and searchability are the operational difference. A human officer, a patrol officer cannot stand at a dozen different roadways around the clock and later remember every vehicle that passed by. That increased capability is why both public safety value and the safeguards deserve serious attention. Next slide. What does a flock camera actually collect? Next slide. It's been mentioned here about the technology, and I'm telling you, all that technology already exists. A flock ALPR license plate reader is not a cell phone tracker. It does not extract driver's cell phone information, texts, calls, contacts, or internet activity. The ALPR product does not use facial recognition to identify motorists. FLOX published LPR data definition does not include Bluetooth identifiers, Wi-Fi identifiers, and intercepted radio frequency communication. I spoke with a local business person about a couple of weeks ago. They have a system that does exactly all of that. Why does he have that? He has it for the same reason Walmarts have them. The Home Depots have them. The academies have them. Big markets have them. So that they can know how to market their products better and increase their profit margins. It's for the commercial aspect of things. It exists. There is technology you can drive by and it will take everything in your car. Your smart watch. your Wi-Fi you might be using, whatever tablet you have activated, your cell phone, your infotainment system in your vehicle, all that data can be retrieved. It exists. The Flock ALPR camera is not capable of any of that.

Next slide, please.

A typical AOPR record can include the license plate image, a vehicle image, a plate number, the state, physical vehicle characteristics such as the make and color, the date and time, and the camera location. That's it. At that point in time, that's what it records. This is a vehicle-centered information. It is not a person- identification record. Slide, please. Still images are not continuous surveillance video. The ALPR system takes still vehicle images rather than continuously recording traditional surveillance video. Software converts the physical vehicle information into searchable data. The system The system's value is in those discrete time-stamped observations. One of the things where AI is used in these cameras is to not only identify the make, color, model, which is captured on a photo, but... Excuse me. It can take down characteristics for those circumstances of which there may not be a license plate available when somebody needs to search those certain characteristics. As mentioned earlier by somebody, it was a partial license plate or is a dark SUV or a pickup truck, a white Ford pickup truck. You might be able to use those things to try to identify a vehicle that might have went through that camera system or that camera location. Next slide, please. Cellular transmission does not cell phone collection. It's made clear that the system does not collect any cell phone data. The camera may use a cellular network to transmit its own captured record to cloud storage, but that's not the same as harvesting cellular signals or electronic information from passing motorists. It is photographing what is visually exposed on a roadway and adding the time and location of that observation. Next slide. It photographs everyone. That's correct, it does. The criticism that the camera captures vehicles regardless of whether they are already suspects is substantially correct, it does. There's no denying that. Everybody is photographed when you go by the camera. The important distinction is what follows. The vehicle direction is not suspect. Stop is not suspect or stop. The information is not an accusation. It's not an arrest. It's for human investigation to assist law enforcement. Most detections are never acted on. Of those thousands that are already on record, probably 90% of them have never even been looked at. Nobody even knows they exist. And they will be deleted in the proper timeline. Then they're gone. They don't stay around forever. Our public page states that the local data currently is retained 30 days. That's our policy right now. As we talk about policy and how this thing should be guided and regulated, that's going to change. Now, is it going to stay 30? I don't know. But I can tell you things are going to change as we continue through this discussion because things have happened. A large volume of observations, those photos, those still photos and everything that it captures, makes retention, access, sharing, and auditing more important. It does not convert every passing driver into a suspect. Next slide, please. An ALPR is an investigative tool. It is not a police force. Law enforcement is equipped with many tools, all of which can be misused against the public. The car we drive, the weapon systems we carry, the tasers we carry, the camera system we carry. So many things that we do can be misused and have been misused. There's no denying that.

Next slide, please.

An ALPR does not arrest anybody. It does not search a house. It does not issue a warrant. It does not convict anybody. It does not establish guilt. It does not eliminate reasonable suspicion. It does not eliminate probable cause or eliminate constitutional requirements for detection, search, arrest, or prosecution. The legal authority for police action still comes from the Constitution. Statutes, warrants, probable cause, reasonable suspicion, and the facts of the case. Not from a camera. Next slide. The camera produces information. It produces information. Sometimes that means a stolen vehicle or wanted person alert. Sometimes it assists with a missing child, endangered adults, amber alert, silver alert. Sometimes it's simple as a lead about a vehicle near a crime. Our current public page specifically identifies real-time alerts tied to stolen vehicles, missing person cases, and wanted suspects. A couple of stories. I don't need to go into these. They're all over the internet. For every bad story, you can find a good story. Every good story, you can find a bad story. Every bad story has got human error connected to it. Every good story has got good police work connected to it. Next slide, please. The ALPR system court is a force multiplier. I've been in law enforcement almost 40 years. I've seen the technology change. There are many that will say that this technology is right now the most advantageous and best technology available to law enforcement in modern times. A force multiplier and an investigation lead generation tool. That's what this is. This does not do police work. Next slide, please. The value after a crime. You've heard today that some people believe that the... Flock system will help deter crime. And you can go to some communities and some towns and they will validate that and tell you that that's the truth. Then you can go to the home office of where Flock is in Atlanta, Georgia, where they have, I don't know how many cameras around town, and they have had no significant drop in crime. An ALR program system does not prove that it prevents crimes. Prevention is not necessarily its primary function. What's the primary value? The primary value is not always prevention. although some will tell you it does an outstanding job in preventing or deterring crime. An ALR program does not have to prove that prevented crime and have value. Prevention is not necessarily a primary function. Its strongest use can be after a crime or an emergency when investigators need to reconstruct vehicle activity quickly. The force multiplier. This year, this month, a multi-agency working paper by Scott M. Morgoes and I.N.T. Adams published at the University of South Carolina examined the staggered deployment of flock-fixed ALPR cameras across 216 U.S. law enforcement agencies using FBI NIBRS data from 2017 to 2023. If you don't know what NIBRS is, that's the information that every law enforcement agency is required by law to forward to their state agency, and then it's forwarded to the FBI, and they're the ones that collect all the data and put all that data together to talk about crime statistics. Right now, what you're hearing nationwide, crime is down. Is that because of the flock camera system? I wouldn't say that it is. Could it have contributed to it? I would say it certainly could have contributed to it. This 2026 study, this multi-agency analysis of the 216 U.S. law enforcement agencies found that deployment of flock fixed license plate readers was associated with a 15.9% increase in motor vehicle theft arrest clearances. The same study also reported an 11% decline in motor vehicle theft after deployment Does that mean that can happen everywhere? No. But it's a statistic from a neutral party at a university that looked at 216 different law enforcement agencies, and that's the data that they come up with. Is that a good tool? You need to decide. In the city of Columbus, Missouri, or Columbia, Missouri, excuse me, They published an annual surveillance technology. They did that for last year. Their report, after beginning flock implementation in March of 2025, Columbia tracked 217 case outcomes directly associated with flock alerts. Of those 217 track cases, 89 were cleared, 69 by arrest, 20 by other means. Another 52 generated investigative leads. Columbia's report states that more than 55% of its track flock associated cases resulted in either arrest or actionable investigative leads. The force multiplier point. These figures do not mean a camera replaces a deputy or solves a case by itself. This shows how fixed ALPR can continuously generate vehicle observations and leads that let the same investigators and patrol resources work more efficiently when a vehicle is relevant to a case. Next slide, please. Every investigation usually starts with fragments. I don't know where you're at, sir. We should be on slide 20. You're on fragments now. Okay, thank you. Investigations routinely begin with incomplete information. It was a white pickup. No, it was a dark SUV. The license plate was A, B, C. I don't remember the rest. I don't know, but the truck had a roof rack on it. A bumper sticker. Some kind of identifying mark that sets it apart from everything else that stuck out in their mind. That's normal investigative work. ALPR can make those fragments searchable. Next slide. What FLOC can do with those fragments? An ALPR can compress work that otherwise may take hours, days, or weeks by helping investigators identify vehicles, warranty, further examinations. The technology does not prove who committed the crime. It narrows where the investigators should look now. Next slide. AOPRs do not solve crimes. Investigators solve crimes. The AOPR helps the investigators determine where to look. A hit of an LPR is not an automatic proof, probable cause or guilt. Next slide. So some documented Kennew County outcomes. These are some local examples of how FLOC has been used locally. Some of these might be on the website. Theft of property, construction equipment. Construction equipment was stolen from a property off 1376. LPRs captured the vehicle traveling with the stolen equipment as well as the license plate of the vehicle that was hauling the equipment. Property was recovered and suspect arrested. They got that information off an LPR because of the characteristics. They didn't have a license plate. They put the characteristics of a timeline of what kind of vehicle might have had that stolen equipment on it. That's how that case was solved. Had that fly camera not been there, that equipment would still be missing today, more than likely. burglar of a building, a commercial business. Two vehicles park at a local business and burglarize it. The business captured the license plate of one vehicle and the unique identifiers of the second vehicle with their security cameras. Knowing the first vehicle's license plate, the LPRs were used to identify the second vehicle that was traveling with it. The license plate was obtained for the second vehicle. The driver of the second vehicle was identified and the first vehicle license plates were were found to be stolen. It was also found that shortly after the burglary, the vehicle was involved in a major hit-and-run accident in San Antonio. The suspect fled, and the truck was impounded. Items containing potential DNA were collected and sent out for testing, and San Antonio PD later arrested the suspect without standing warrants. A hit-and-run. A victim of a hit and run accident was able to take a picture of the suspect vehicle, but the license plate was not legible. Knowing the date and time of the incident, LPRs were utilized and a vehicle matching the picture the victim took was located with the license plate. The driver of the vehicle was identified and the insurance information was exchanged so the damage of the victim's vehicle could be repaired. That's not a big deal. But if that was your vehicle and the guy got away and you never got found out who that person was, it was through the flock system that we're able to identify that person under a timely manner. For that person who got hit, it's a big deal. Mail theft, stolen property, a jet ski out of Gonzales County. Multiple Kendall County residents were victims of mail theft. One of the victims captured a suspect vehicle, but no license plate on security cameras. The vehicle was identified using LPRs. The vehicle's owner was identified, and charges were filed. The LPR images also showed the vehicle holding a stolen jet ski that had previously recovered, abandoned, in a field here in Kendall County. The jet ski was returned to the owner, and all the suspect information was forwarded to Gonzales County S.O. Those are property crimes. That's stuff people take, damage to our vehicle. Some of them seem kind of small, like police should work harder to solve those things, find people's property.

Next slide, please.

But the use of LPRs is not only for property crimes. Let me tell you how else this has been used locally. Investigators received a cyber tip of an individual viewing child pornography. IP results indicated the suspect lived in Kendall County, but other data bases indicated he may have another address outside of Kendall County. A vehicle registered to the suspect was identified and was seen repeatedly on LPR cameras in Burney, near the Kendall County address. During further investigation, investigators were able to place that vehicle at the address in Kendall County. A search warrant was executed and approximately 900 images of child pornography were located, charges filed.

That's here in your backyard.

This one was mentioned earlier. You may not know this, but sex offenders have a lot of rules they gotta go by. There was a, and this comes from our analyst, She conducted, and through the DA's office, a random sex offender check on one of our offenders because they were never home. One of the requirements is they got to be home. They got to stay home. They can't be gone any more than 48 hours, I believe. Offenders must check in if you're going to be away from home more than 48 hours. When the offender's LP was run through flock, it was found that he was in board A. As mentioned earlier, in Port A, living and staying within three miles of four different elementary schools. After further investigating this, it was found that he violated his terms for registry of a sex offender. He was convicted again for not complying. This guy was coming back and forth and every once in a while he'd come back here. And the reason he came back to Kendall County is because his doctor was here. And he had to go see his doctor. But he actually lived in Fort A amongst children. Here's another one that happened recently. While the deputy was on patrol, he received an alert for an attempt to locate a person interested in a murder out of Georgetown. The deputy ran the vehicle information into flock and received a hit, meaning he was in our county, in one of our cameras. The deputy was unable to catch up with the vehicle, but he forwarded the information to Kerr County, where they located the vehicle and ultimately took him and arrested him. He had murdered his wife in Georgetown. He was loaded down, headed to Mexico. Here's a good one. This is a nice one. A deputy assisted Bernie PD and located an elderly woman. She was at the bowling alley with dementia, made the wrong turn, not supposed to be driving at night. She gets turned around and courted to her husband. So the deputy used the flux system, was able to start tracking her. Yes, tracking her, not surveilling her. There's a big difference, and we'll talk about that. Surveillance is constant, a constant flow of where that person is. We don't know where that person went between the different camera locations. Ultimately, the story ends nicely. She's found in Uvalde, where her husband went down and picked her up. This last weekend, My deputies are out routine patrol. A car goes by 90 miles an hour. Makes a routine traffic stop for speeding. Turns out there's three people in the car. The end result is they all go to jail for possession of marijuana. A little bit of marijuana. That's one thing about Kendall County. You may not agree with that either. Not off topic. In San Antonio, they probably wouldn't have messed with you. These guys went to jail. They're from Houston. What are they doing here at night driving fast? Nothing out of the ordinary. However, in speaking with the deputy that made stop, these guys are young guys. They had no concern, respect, or any What am I trying to say here? Reaction to hold down Kendall County Sheriff's Office. These guys were professional crooks. There's nothing to walk in the park for these guys. No big deal. They go to jail. Good job, guys. We get an email the next morning from Pflugerville. Hey. Hey. I see that this vehicle, this license plate, was on the back of a wrecker that went by an LPR and were interested in this vehicle because it has been involved in numerous crimes in the Austin, Pflugerville, Georgetown area. Now, did these three guys commit crimes? I don't know. That's where the police work comes in. But Pflugerville didn't have any idea. And guess what? Pflugerville was working a catalytic converter theft. These guys are bad. They're out of Houston. They're in our backyard. We did a routine stop on them, put them in jail. The point to that is there's no telling what that investigator can do with that information from that day and time and that camera. This weekend, one of my deputies goes to the, I think he went to the board. He looked up some of the most wanted people locally. He uses flock system. He gets an alert. Saturday morning, I believe it was. I may be wrong on that. There's been several. They arrest this guy. for a felony warrant. That felony warrant was for an assault on one of your peace officers with Bernie PD right here in your backyard. Could we eventually catch that guy? The answer is yes. But how long eventually? I don't know. But the same shit that he put him in the flock camera is the day that he was arrested. Timely. Got him off the street. He's a bad dude. And he's here in your backyard. And finally, this past weekend, we recovered another stolen vehicle. Elderly woman, believe it or not, stole the vehicle and she's in our gym. Vehicle recovered. Happy vehicle owner. I don't know how long she had that vehicle, but she hadn't had it very long. Those are some local stories. So it's not only just property crime. This includes crime against people, your neighbors, your friends, your coworkers here. Let's get into some good stuff. Let's talk about what everybody's concerned about. Next slide, please. Your Fourth Amendment rights. Let's talk about that. Let's have an open, honest conversation about your Fourth Amendment rights. What does the Fourth Amendment say about ALPRs? Next slide, please. As already stated by the DA and many of you here, the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. If you've ever studied the Constitution and know where some of this stuff comes from, I would recommend that you look into a thing called the genealogy of the U.S. Constitution. Why does that even exist? The founding fathers were brilliant people. I think the Constitution is one of the most magnificent pieces of literature ever written. And if you ask me, my opinion, this is Al Oxford speaking, I think it was divinely inspired as well. Maybe not inspired by voices of God, but divinely inspired with the interjections of what God allowed these people to think, the historic application of everything that that document represents and has created the greatest country on this earth. The Fourth Amendment protects Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures. I support that protection without any hesitation or qualification. Supporting the Fourth Amendment also means accurately describing what courts have held, not claiming more than the cases actually decide. I had this conversation with counsel and lawyers and our legal, and they assured me that it is not a Fourth Amendment violation. I'm going to talk about that here in more detail. Next slide, please. what the Supreme Court has not decided. The US Supreme Court has not yet decided a case specifically holding that ordinary fixed camera ALPR systems are universally constitutional, nor are they unconstitutional. They are neither. And we're gonna talk about why. This is a good starting point to talk about our rights and our civil liberties. If you take the premise of what so many believe that taking a photo of a government-issued license plate on a government-issued road is a violation of your Fourth Amendment right, then I'm here to tell you I am so guilty in my law enforcement career. I have violated so many people's Fourth Amendment rights that you can't even keep track of it. There's this thing called rolling 28. What does that mean? Before computers, In the day where you had to rely on dispatch, you might have a vehicle that goes by or see it in a parking lot or whatever the circumstances are. I don't know. You name it. The rolling 28 means you're moving. So you're on the interstate, which I patrolled a lot. I'm on the slow lane. A car goes by me in the fast lane. I see a license plate. Do I have to have any reasonable suspicion or any probable cause to run that license plate? The answer is no. I've done it probably, I don't know, thousands and thousands of times. Based on the premise, if you think that that is a violation, then every police officer in the country has violated everybody's rights. Sometimes that rolling 28, Now you do rolling 28s today, but it's not via dispatch. You don't have to call it anymore because we've got the technology. We have computers right there. We just type in the license plate and that information comes back to us. In the state of Texas, all you get back is the vehicle registration information, the owner. And today, most of the time you get back whether they have insurance or not. But the idea is, is registration current? A lot of people forget. And it's not, well, it's forgotten because we take it for granted. Operating a motor vehicle on a public roadway in the state of Texas is not a right. It never has been. It is a privilege. You can't just find a vehicle, get in a car, and drive. You better have a driver's license. That vehicle better be registered. All the equipment on that vehicle better be in working order. You better have insurance. Okay. Next slide, please. Legal told me to be careful about this. I'm not an attorney. I'm not a legal scholar, but I can read. And I can express to you what I've read in writing. One of the things about the Fourth Amendment and about ALPRs. The developing case laws, the things people like to cite, you hear it a lot. So much of this stuff on social media is just, I mean, we've heard some of it here today, a lot of it here today, that's being regurgitated from what's being said on social media. A lot of it is concerning, concerning for me as well. But the developing case laws generally distinguishes limited, discrete public road vehicles, vehicle observations from comprehensive location histories that reveal the whole of a person's movement. What does that mean? Surveillance is watching you throughout whatever duration of time from start to finish. I know every single move you've made. The cases are fact-dependent. Camera density, how many cameras? Retention, the time the information and data is kept. The duration, the network reach, aggregation, all the components put together, and how the search was used can matter. multiple federal and state courts have rejected the Fourth Amendment challenges to particular limited ALPR uses while warning that a more pervasive system could present different constitutional questions. Glock says they've been challenged 40 times in court over Fourth Amendment violations or rights. I found that they're about 30. I don't know. Let's talk. Next slide. United States versus Yang. The Ninth Circuit Court, this is a 2020 case, affirmed denial of suppression of evidence But the majority expressly did not decide the broader Fourth Amendment question about warrantless ALPR database use. It concluded Yang lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in the overdue rental vehicle's historical location data under the facts of that case. I don't know the details. Apparently, he owed or needed to return a rental vehicle, and they looked for him through flock systems, and whatever the charges were, and I don't have details, so I can't really speculate. The important thing is, the evidence was not suppressed. The judge, Judge B, concurring separately, would have reached the merits reasoning that the database search did not reveal the whole of Yang's physical movements. So you really need to define what surveillance is. United States versus Jackson. This is a 2025 case out of Kansas. After an evidentiary hearing with five witnesses regarding the flock system, the federal district court denied suppression. That data was allowed to be used in court. Jackson found that the specific use, the nine points on a target vehicle during the one day, four hour search period with 30 day retention, was far less intrusive than the Carpenter Jones cases style of pervasive tracking. The court expressly warned that aggregation and searchability could reach a constitutional threshold in the future.

Next slide, please. And Sheriff, we have 30 more items to get through today. I want to be respectful of your time. Can you kind of move on to some other key points you want to raise other than case law so we can kind of make sure we get the vote while all these citizens are here on this? I'm sure they're anxious to hear what the court members have to say, but I'm trying to balance this out to try to be fair to everybody. I don't want to be disrespectful and cut you off, but I'm trying to make sure we get the whole agenda done today. So if you can kind of start hitting your high points, that would be appreciated.

They're all high points, Judge. These are all points that everybody has been brought up. The Fourth Amendment is a big one.

I think we kind of, I think we got a nutshell on the Fourth Amendment.

I'll respect your request, and I'll try to limit this and cut it down as much as I can.

Thank you, sir.

Okay. I just think this needs to be aired out honestly and openly with all the information, not parts of the information.

From a legal perspective, I think the Fourth Amendment's been vetted pretty good from my perspective here for the citizens. And I see heads shaking that Fourth Amendment, they feel good about it.

So to sum it up, the Constitutionally depends on the actual use of the systems. how it is used, how it is set up, all the components of it. Next slide. What are you doing now? Okay. These are cases that are brought up because it's very recent cases. I'm just going to tell you these are based on cell phone information, not LPR data. So when somebody tries to encompass things like the geofencing issues and the things about how data is retrieved through the LPR system versus how it is accumulated and what cell phone data gives you, it's two totally different things. That's what these cases are about. People are going to try to wrap these cases up into the, since they're so recent, they're going to wrap it up and say, now LPR is going to be found to be in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and that's not going to be the case. I'm not saying it's not ever going to. Don't get me wrong. I'm saying based on these cases, it's not. Maybe there will be a case in the near future. I don't know. The fact of the matter is... Next slide. Next slide. The difference between the two. A cell phone can accurately... A cell phone can accompany a person into a home, church, doctor's office, attorney's office, bedroom, and other private locations. Cell phone location data can reveal intimate patterns about the person carrying it. A fixed LPR observation is materially different. It states something like at 2.17 p.m., this publicly displayed plate and this vehicle passed this camera at this public roadway. That's all it does. Different does not mean constitutional irrelevance. It means the factual record is different and the courts analyze the scope and comprehensiveness of the information actually obtained. Next slide. So what's relevant and what's important? Scale matters. Retention matters. Aggregation matters. Next slide. Responsible law enforcement should acknowledge that possibly rather than claim that constitutional law is frozen in time, things could change. Next slide. Texas tracking. Let's talk a little bit about that. That's important to Texas. The tracking in Texas, a fixed LPR is not a tracker. People think that we're going to be able to follow you around with these LPRs. We cannot. It's a still shot of a location in time of the vehicle passing that field of view. Next slide. Again, that's all this thing does. The qualification remains that the constitutional analysis can change technology, scale, retention, and use changes. Next slide. Data sharing, contract. Does Flock sell customer ALPR? I've heard it said here that they do. I don't know if they have any proof to say that they do, but nobody yet, no journalist anywhere in the country has found anywhere that Flock camera law enforcement data has been sold to anybody. If you have proof of that, please show me. I would like to see it. If you know somebody that that's happened to, please let me know. Now, if you get it off the internet, I would be very careful about what you find on the internet. Flock currently, their policy states that customer LPR data is owned by the customer, we are the customer, and that Flock will not sell, publish, exchange, or disclose customer LPR data for commercial purposes. That's contractual. How many contracts do you sign in faith believing that the other person is going to do what they do? Next slide. While we're here talking about selling, another big thing is about hacking. A 12-year-old can hack into these things. And you're right. Not the ALPRs, but the video cameras that they supply have been hacked. So have others. You've seen it on YouTube. The guy gets on and says, see how easy it is to hack this camera up there, that flock camera? I get on my tablet here. I get on my phone. I put in whatever information he does. I'm not a tech person. I don't know. And he watches himself across the intersection. Yes, he has compromised that system. But the ALPR system has not been hacked. It has not been compromised. How do I know that? Because it's integrated with the state system. TCIC, NCIC. That's where all stolen vehicles are entered for national data and Texas data. Stolen vehicles, missing persons, the Amber Alerts, all that stuff is in that system. If the flock system is hacked through the ALPR system, that whole system goes down. It has never been compromised. If you know that it has, I don't know how you know that. but it has not been compromised. Even in that system, it is not a perfect world. I can tell you I have put people in jail that probably didn't deserve to go to jail because it was misidentifiers. People make mistakes. There are houses that have been broken, not broken into, but law enforcement has breached front doors at the wrong address. We are all human here. We make mistakes. But I can tell you the system has not been hacked. The video cameras? Yes. But they're not part of the ALPR system. That technology is out there. I'm telling you guys, yes, I'm scared of AIs. I'm scared of where this country is going and the possibilities of bad people getting good technology. The system has not been hacked. Nobody has been able to prove so. Next slide. It's absolutely important that we are able to share this information with our neighbors. We are going to be given control. And I'm going to get out of sequence here. to try to move these things on, but there are a lot of relevant points here. A written policy, next slide, please. But a written policy is not enough of actual platforms and settings different from it. The public confidence should rest on policy that is established, actual sharing configuration, and auditing logs. Our public page says access is restricted to automated personnel for legitimate law enforcement purposes, and all searches are logged and subject to audit. Our policy is not finite yet. The reason it's not finite and it will be finite is because Flock also just came out with some new safeguards that we haven't been able to implement. One of the problems with the system that we have here, one of the reasons you got your discount today is because Flock was not able to put in all the cameras as the contract stated. So they gave us a little discount. One of the concerns about the surveillance thing is about where bad people go. How do they come into this county? And when they're here, where do they go? We have strategically located the camera system to some identification. You can't go anywhere in this county without being flocked. There's a reason why the cameras are in those certain locations. 662 square miles of Kendall County. 54 ALPRs we've got. Well, two of those are not ALPRs. They're on this courthouse in the park. Where's that going with that? The 662 square miles and 54 ALPRs. Are you going to tell me that I can tell you every single move you've made with 54 cameras and 662 square miles? Impossible. I will know if you go through this camera, and I will know if you go through this camera. And I will never know that you go through those cameras if I have no reason to find out your vehicle was involved in anything or look for your vehicle. I will never know that. I don't care where you go. I don't care. Why would I care if you go to Walmart? Your doctor. That's not a concern for me. I'm not looking for that information. You are good people. I hope you think that I'm a good sheriff. I'm looking for those people, the small percentage of all those people that are on that system that have done bad deeds in this community. Those are the people I'm after. I'm not after you. I don't care where you go, where you've been. Next slide, please. Misuse and error. We've brought it many times. Let me just sum this up real quick. We're human, and we're going to screw up. I tell my people this. I expect you to screw up. You're going to have to make some serious decisions, and they're not always going to be the right decisions. You're going to screw up and you're going to face the consequences of that action or that decision. The difference is if that screw up is done with malice, that changes everything. If it's an honest mistake, it's an honest mistake. Let's learn from it. Let's grow from it. Let's move on. If you do something intentional, we got a problem. That's the way this system should be handled. It's going to be misused. You want to bring out all the bad people abroad. Police chiefs, yes. Sheriffs, yes. There have to be consequences. There have to be policies in place. There have to be rules and regulations of how the system is used to keep those things from being misused. I remember seeing months ago, long before this rose to the level that it's risen to. You heard the example this morning, the Denver lady. The Denver lady falsely accused of stealing a package. I saw that interview on the body cam or her ring camera. That was bad police work, people. I'm sorry. That was bad police work. Long before this came to the level that it is today with all the concerns about the misuses and things, Bexar County deputy uses a flock system and he catches a guy, catches a guy. He profiles a guy, I suppose. And stops him on the side of the road. And, yeah, this guy's in the oil and gas business. Got a child seat in his car, in his truck. Goes back and forth to South Texas regularly, several times a week. What's in South Texas? Oil and gas. What else is in South Texas? Drugs and money. Bad things. So this guy does an interview and takes his guy and empties his truck out on the side of the road. I listened to that interview. That was bad policing. We have them. We're just like you and we're not perfect. We put on our pants and our shoes and our shirts, get up in the morning.

We deal with everything that you deal with on a daily basis. We're only human.

So yes, there is misuse and errors can happen. I put people in jail for not paying a speeding ticket. I can't tell you how many times I did this. Oh, I thought my attorney took care of that. Maybe you need to do your own homework and make sure your attorney did take care of that. Mistakes do happen. Let's talk about police. And since it's so emphasized right now about cops, I'm going to defend law enforcement for just a little bit here because it's relevant. And it's important. We trust so many people with so many things in our daily lives. We trust teachers to teach our kids. We trust the doctors to treat us to the best of their ability and give us the best prognosis and treatment. We trust law enforcement to go out and do the right things. We trust clergy. We trust clergy. How many stories, negative stories have you heard about all of these professions of people that we put trust in? Let me tell you here in Kendall County, if you don't know, we've had attorneys, lawyers, doctors, and yes, teachers in this jail. And yes, police officers in this jail. People need to suffer the consequences when they misuse and abuse the authority that's been given them.

Next slide, please.

We can talk about all the different audits that have been done throughout the country. The bad is people misuse it. The good is the auditing systems are catching these people now. You can find all the stories on the internet about that. Savannah, Georgia is one example. Next slide, please. Next slide. So misconduct, understand, is not a technology problem. It is a human problem. Next slide. The Denver case mentioned earlier about the package, that is bad policing. That's human error. Bad training on that guy. Next slide, please. Part of the whole system needs to be verification. Has to be part of the policy. What is verification? Verification is you get a hit. You don't act on a flock hit because it could be wrong. And one of my guys, and I don't know if you're doing it, one of my guys last night told me that he put his license plate in this have you been flocked website thing, which I'd be careful if you do that. I don't know you can trust it. People can come up with all kinds of things. But he is wanted in Florida. His license plate is. He's afraid to go to Florida because that license plate is going to come up when it goes through a flock and he's going to get stopped. Well, you know what? There's a lot that goes into just stopping somebody based on a flock hit. There's a lot more that needs to go into that. Good policing takes it steps further and deeper to find out the reality. Verify everything that you know without even talking to the person or stopping them. You verify everything first through dispatch of your computer. Is it that vehicle? Is that the vehicle that matches that hit? Is it the right state? All these things. That's good police work. Next slide, please. Next slide. What slide number are you on?

I'm sorry.

Okay, thank you. Let's take it down to 52. Let's talk about Texas. What's going on here? Texas DPS Department of Public Safety. has installed ALPRs on state highways, state right-of-ways, and describes their uses involving suspects, missing people, stolen property, suspicious vehicles, and investigative timelines. The Texas Tribune reported on August 3rd of this month, described that DPS flock contract of up to approximately $26 million dollars, and statewide data sharing agreement with 206 county and local law enforcement agencies. DPS has made an investment in this system. Now, are they the golden child? Are they the be-all, end-all? No. But if they lead by example, it might be that what they are doing might be the right thing, and it might be the right tool. Point is, this is not going away. It's not going away. So let's harness it and use it the way it should be used. Allow us to have that tool. The system should not be abused. Policies and procedures need to be in place. Users held accountable. Limited access. All these things need to be in place. Not anybody and everybody has access to it. All those things need to be determined. It needs to be transparent to you. I'm not hiding anything from you. I may not be able to give you specifics about certain cases, but I work for you. We have to have teeth and safeguards. There have to be consequences. Slide 60, as I mentioned earlier, if you want to go to slide 60, please. And we're almost through. But I have a good thing here. Flock has announced some safeguards. They just came out within the last couple of weeks. We haven't had a chance to really implicate all that stuff or implement all that stuff, excuse me. But our policy is going to be updated, and I can guarantee you that it will be open for you to see our policy if you want to, and it will be restricted on how the system is used. Slide 61, please. Here we go. This is all over the internet. One of our founding fathers that helped put together that document we call the Constitution of the United States. Next slide, please. It's a famous warning. Benjamin Franklin's warning is frequently quoted in discussions about flock cameras. Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety. Powerful. Powerful. Let's put it in context. When did he write that? Why did he write it? Next slide. It's a powerful statement, but its historical context matters. Franklin was not writing about surveillance or warning that every public safety measure represents a surrender of freedom. The quotation appeared in 1755, as mentioned earlier, accurately. Response from Pennsylvania's elected assembly, of which Ben Franklin was a member, during the French and Indian War. Frontier communities were being attacked and the assembly needed money for defense. It proposed a property tax that would apply throughout the colony including to the enormous estates owned by the Penn family who didn't even live there. They were in England. The Penn family controlled the colony's governor and instructed him to not approve any bill that taxed their property. The governor therefore rejected the assembly's defense bills unless the Penn estates were exempted. The elected representatives were being pressured to surrender part of their governing authority in order to obtain immediate defense funding. That governing authority was the essential liberty Franklin was defending. The little temporary safety was the immediate protection the colony could obtain by allowing a wealthy and politically powerful family to escape the same tax everyone else would pay. The Penn family's 5,000-pound contribution came shortly afterward. Franklin's statement was issued on November 11, 1755, and the contribution was announced on November 24. The eventual law exempted the Penn Estates from taxation in consideration of that contribution. In practical terms, the pens were made once while preserving their claim that the elected assembly could not tax them in the future. Next slide. How does this apply to flock hammers? It does not automatically settle the argument for either side. Franklin's principle requires us to identify the essential liberty allegedly being surrendered. explain how it's being surrendered, and determine whether the public is permanently losing control over its government. Next slide. Legitimate questions about flock should be answered clearly. Who may use the system? What constitutes a lawful enforcement purpose? How long is the information retained? How is information shared? Are searches recorded and audited? What happens when someone misuses the system? There are serious questions and they deserve factual answers. An unlimited secret or unaccountable surveillance system could threaten liberty. It would threaten liberty. But a system approved by elected officials, governed by written policy, restricted to legitimate law enforcement purposes, supplied by recorded searches and regular audits and subject to discipline and public oversight is a very different matter. Franklin opposed the surrender of representative government. Two powerful, unaccountable interests. the Penn family. He did not declare that reading a government issued license plate displayed on a public roadway under accountable rules is inherently tyranny. His quotation should remind us to govern carefully. It should not be used as a substitute for examining the actual technology. the actual policy, the actual safeguards, and the actual constitutional questions. I know I've taken a lot of your time. It was apparent before me sitting here, before you, allowing me to explain the processes, the differences, the constitutionality, I would ask you to respectfully think about your decision. Let's go back to the beginning. Is it lawful? Does it serve a legitimate public safety?

I'm having to put your slide one back up for you.

No, it's slide three.

Slide three, sorry.

I just need, you just need to, thank you though for slide. The questions you need to answer. Is it lawful? Does it serve a legitimate public safety purpose? What does it collect? What safeguards govern it? And what happens when somebody abuses it? And to your comment earlier, Judge, with all due respect, many communities are doing away with this. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to say I wanted to come here full of pride. And not in any of this, in you. Because of the community that I get to serve, we can have honest dialogue. I wanted to come to you today so proud of this community to say that nobody has destroyed any of the cameras until the other day. Now, that's a crime. That's a crime. I was so proud of y'all, this community, to know that our neighbors in Bandera, they weren't up very long and their dad laid down on the ground. Because they want to take it all into their own hands and do it their way. Let's do this the right way. Let's do this the right way. OK, this is that hearing that some people asked for earlier. I got to speak most of my mind. I missed out on some. These are all relative important facts, things that you need to know. This is nothing that my office is going to use against anybody. It's going to be a tool used to hopefully, hopefully you will never need it to be used for you. And all respect to the gentleman that sat here earlier and said, this is a safe town. It is. When you compare it to other towns our size in relation to San Antonio, I've always been amazed that we don't have a higher crime rate and more serious crimes than we do in this county, in this community. A lot of it is because of you. But there was a day I would go on vacation. I would leave my house unlocked. I would leave my car open and unlocked. You better not do that in this community anymore. It's changed. And it's going to continue to change. All I'm asking is to be allowed to use this tool. Not against you. Not to watch every move that you make. To allow me to use it as a good, viable police tool to help expedite police work and investigations. We can talk all day about the bad, but we can also talk all day about the good. There are so many good stories throughout this country. We can talk data, we can talk statistics. I'm going to ask the court that you be open and think about this. I'll be honest with you. It seemed that, you know, you came here with some predetermined ideas about what you thought. I know you've been under a lot of pressure, a lot of phone calls, a lot of emails. But I would just ask that you approve this contract and allow us to continue. And here's what I will tell you. We told you this the first year. The first year was, allow us to do this and give us a year's time to accumulate data to show you the value of what this might be worth. We haven't been given that opportunity to nobody's fault. We can't help TxDOT not giving us the permits. We strategically located 54 cameras throughout the county so that we would be able to cover any and all ingress and egress to the county. Anybody coming in that does a dirty deed, we know where they came in and we might know where they go out. That's all I'm asking for. I'm not going to put any more cameras up. I don't need any more cameras. As a matter of fact, if you give me this year, we may reduce the cameras next year based on some of those locations where maybe they haven't shown to be useful. And I would grant that. But I'm not asking to expand it. I'm telling you, this is not going to go away. If you don't give it to us, then we're going to be without it. Our neighbors are going to have it. It's not leaving. Well, I can't speak for them. I'm not going to say. But Burnett, Bandera, Guadalupe, or at least three counties that I know that have done away with the contract, not because they didn't believe in it and it didn't work, but because people use shotguns and saws and vehicles to knock those things open. So I would ask the opportunity to be able to continue this this system at least for another year so that we can show if anybody complains about me watching you go to Walmart or whatever, then, you know, if you can prove that, then you're every move. But this is not a surveillance in the typical terms of a surveillance system. It's a point by point by point. I don't know where you've been before or after any one of those points. And Remember, according to the contract, that is our data. Why is the third party controlling or holding our data? Surprise. There are a lot of private entities that hold law enforcement data. It's not just flock. Same thing. Who has that data? Where does it go? As mentioned by many people, whether you turn the location off or not, it doesn't matter. It can still be found as long as the phone's on. I've heard people say, well, I can leave it at home. I don't need to show hands, but I don't know how many people left their phone home today because they didn't want anybody to know you were here at the courthouse. That probably didn't happen. I can tell you personally, myself, for everybody, our culture, our lifestyle is this is a lifeline to everything. It's unfortunate, but it is. I've gotten near my office in the morning. I shouldn't say too many times, but more times than I want to say that I had to turn around and go back and get this thing because I can't be without it. There's more information when you walk into any place where this technology exists. There's more people, more entities, more businesses that have information about you than I will have about you, your license plate, and the description of your vehicle. And I know the problem is the government has it. I get that. After everything that we've been through with COVID and everything else, I'm as pissed off as you are about what's happened to this country. I would ask each and every one of you to really reconsider. Give me the opportunity. If I can't change your mind, I can't change your mind. We can still be friends. You can see I'm passionate about this because I think it's a very viable tool. If you take it away from us, we may never have it again. Another misconception, just to clarify everything, it is not tax dollars that is paying for this. The grant is not tax dollars. You need to know that. Yes, the contribution from the county is tax dollars. The motor vehicle theft, whatever it is. Every time you pay or your auto insurance policy, it goes to this fund.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay. All right. I think so. So thank you. I appreciate everything you've said. We're going to We're going to finish this item and take it to a vote. I know there's a couple of commissioners left to speak, and then we're going to take the vote. I appreciate everything you've done. We've heard a lot today, so I'm going to read the agenda item one last time so everyone knows exactly what the issue is before us. Consider impossible action in agreement with Flock Safety Group 8 to continue to participate in the Flock Safety Platform and for necessary Flock Safety professional services and installation fees beginning on October 1st, 2026 and ending on September 30th, 2027 for a cost note not to exceed $198,550, of which 80% will be paid by a grant awarded through the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, subject to review and approval by general counsel and authorize the county judge to execute necessary documents. So I just want to propose this to my colleagues. I know I don't think we need to engage in a philosophical debate on surveillance technology and the constitution of ALPRs today. We're not looking at ALPR technology in general. The issue today is the credibility and trustworthiness of Flock. Flock is the vendor providing the service to us today. So that is the only issue for us. So if you believe in Flock, that's your first question you need to answer. So if you answer yes, you want to continue with Flock, then your second question you answer is you get into that constitutionality debate of whether ALPRs are good for this community. So I think the first question is, do you want to continue with Flock? That is the first and only question I believe That is before us on the agenda. So if that simplifies your thought process, I'm just throwing that out there. That's my opinion of what this agenda item is. So I'm going to open it up to the last three commissioners to give their thoughts, and then we're going to take this to a vote. So Commissioner McCall, you're up.

When I voted in favor of the MVCPA grant and flock contract, I did so because we were told the primary purpose was to enhance public safety. Protecting the people who live, work, and visit Kendall County is one of the most important responsibilities we have, and I remain committed to providing our law enforcement officers with tools that help keep our community safe. However, over the past year, and particularly over the last four months, additional information regarding flocks, operations, data access, data sharing practices has continued to emerge. As elected officials, we have a responsibility to ensure that any system implemented countywide adheres to clear standards for privacy, transparency, accountability, and local control. Based on the review of the current contract, I do not believe it provides sufficient assurance the data collected through the system will be adequately protected from access by outside entities. I continue to have concerns regarding who may obtain access to the information, what restrictions exist on the collection, sharing, and retention of that data, and whether the other entities have direct or indirect access to the information gathered within Kendall County. These questions are fundamental to maintaining public trust. While I support the efforts of enhanced public safety, I also believe we must ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect the privacy and rights of those traveling through our county. At this time, I am not convinced that the necessary assurances and protections exist. For these reasons and others that have arisen during the course of my review, I cannot continue supporting sorry i cannot continue i cannot support continuing the agreement with flock also if the county does not um continue this contract what is the process for terminating the contract and what obligations would remain after the termination and that's the general counsel question

Yes. Upon termination of the contract, it does require a 30-day notice period, and it would be up to FLOC to determine how to best address removal of the hardware from our right-of-way. It might take some time for them to be removed, but they would be non-operational. Okay.

All right.

Commissioner Chapman.

All right. First of all, I'd like to apologize to you. Anybody that I didn't give a return email to that emailed me, there was a bunch, and I tried to answer as many as I could. But I didn't get back to everybody, and I apologize. So we've talked about LPRs, licensed play readers, and that's what I remember us talking about before. This has been about licensed play readers. When we first brought this program to mind here, I didn't really object to my license plate being red. I really don't care. I objected to the numbers that were going out there. And I don't think we would be sitting here today had we stuck with a smaller number and put them in strategic locations. Two of my own constituents came to me and said, I do not want this camera put at my gate. Filming me every time I go in and out of my gate I agreed. And I mean, in one case, I know the camera was moved. In the other case, this was yesterday. I don't know that the camera was moved. I do know that the person installing it was asked to stop, and he did. Whether or not he came back and installed it later, I don't know. That's a problem that could have been solved and eliminated a lot of the people coming in there. But what I haven't heard about and what I don't remember voting on was the video cameras. We have five video cameras. What are they filming? And where's that information going? Now, true enough, the rest of them are license plate readers. There are some... 52 or something license plate readers, some of them are for the interstate, so they're high speed, higher resolution, and I get that, the need for those. And I really don't have an objection to those. But whenever I found out that we also have five video cameras out there, I did question, and I haven't got the answer on that yet. In reading the flock and in reading the grant application, there are other things that can be done with this money. Have we investigated what other things that we can do with this money besides just buying flock cameras? And so, I mean, I understand. There is good that has come out of this. And I understand there's bad that has happened. And one bad apple doesn't make the whole barrel bad. But it sure gives a sour taste in people's mouths with evidence of being here today. I asked the question, who has access in Kendall County? The answer was, well, all of the law enforcement. My response was that's not the correct answer that I wanted to hear. I would have expected a very select few that always would be around, somebody to be around to have access to those cameras. Our job here today is to weigh whether the good outweighs the bad, or the bad outweighs the good. That vote will come shortly. Thank you. Mr. Carpenter, wrap us up.

Okay. You know, my job as an elected commissioner was to represent my constituents. And this topic is overwhelming. No, they do not want this. And I know this is not popular with law enforcement or the criminal district attorney's office. I know there are crimes that are being committed where they can actually trace someone from where the crime occurred to the direction of where they live. I get that. Imagine being in Washington DC on January 6th and you wind up in jail for three years because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Just because your cell phone, they could ping your cell phone and do a reverse search and find out what your name was. This whole deal really freaks me out. And I'm a hardcore constitutional person. In October, I supported the idea. Then I realized about probably a week later, that wasn't the right decision. In April, just a few months ago, we had an opportunity to kill this completely, and I voted against it. And while I completely trust our sheriff, and I do, I trust you, I don't trust everyone. And so that's where I stand. All right.

With that, please call the vote.

Do we have a motion? Judge, if I may.

Oh, very briefly.

Yes, absolutely. So a lot of the questions and concerns, I think I was hit back here in April as well over unanswered questions. I would love to have the opportunity to answer those questions and really go over the safeguards and practices that are built into the system that we necessarily didn't get to hear today. There is an ongoing debate. We did see here today where there's misinformation, we need the disinformation on the functionality and utilization of the system, also the governance and policy which should be implemented behind that system. You made the comment earlier of communities deciding to leave FLOC, and there's actually a 7 to 1 ratio of communities continuing their contract and expanding their contract. Now, I'm not going to make a headline in the same manner as if a community decides to cancel their contract, but I think what the crux of what you guys are really getting at and what I feel like I haven't had the opportunity to officially brief you on is the governance, the oversight, the accountability that is built into the system to be layered onto how Kendall County specifically utilizes this technology today. Just this morning, all of the major law enforcement agencies are talking to the House of Representatives over regulation. ALPR is not a new function. It has been regulated in several states, Washington, California, Virginia. The reason it has gotten such national attention, one, is because flock cameras, flock ALPRs, are the most transparent tool to date and because of those safeguards that we have in place. Again, there's no Texas state law, but again, that is coming on what regulation looks like, and we are working with those legislators to figure out how Texas will operate different than Arizona and other states. And so, again, didn't really get to speak much today, but I would value the opportunity to again address the unanswered question that you guys do have that way of reflective model policy specific to Kendall County, whether it's access, clarifying the data retention, where the data goes. Again, those are unanswered questions that I have noticed that what's come here today that I would like the ability to be able to address head on clear with clear answers. And so I just wanted to state that before we wrap up here today.

Does anyone have any questions? Sorry.

So my name is Ian Leslie. I am the public affairs manager for the state of Texas.

And he's not going to be able to address your individual questions. It's more for the court. So does anyone from the court have any questions that they want answered? All right. If not, may I have a motion at this time on this issue? Would it entertain a motion as to agenda item 14?

Judge, I'll make a stab at it. Judge, I'd like to make a motion to not renew the agreement with Flock Safety Group and to stop participation in the Flock Safety and for necessary flock safety professional services and installation fees beginning on October 1, 2026 and ending September 30th.

Motion made by Commissioner Chapman. Is there a second? Second. Second by Commissioner McCall. Any further discussion? Yes. Mr. Carpenter, you're up.

To follow up on Commissioner Chapman's comments, what else could this fund be used for? Yes, sir. I don't, we've never even, we've never explored that idea on, you know, I'm not talking about license plate readers. Please don't, don't take that. But if we do have the grant, we did get it. We were accepted for the grant. I would like to see where else I can do something for law enforcement. I don't know if there's another way.

Commissioner, the grant application was specific to the flock system. I don't think that we, We're way past the deadline on the application itself, so I don't think that's possible for this upcoming fiscal year.

We could potentially use the money for the match. That wouldn't be a whole lot of money, but that would be some money.

The grant, the money that we had set aside for the match? I suppose you could have that available. I don't know what you put in the budget for 27. Could he repeat the motion?

Because I wasn't clear I heard. Could you please repeat your motion one last time?

My motion is to Not renew the agreement with Flockman Safety Group. Not renew the agreement. Gotcha.

Okay. You're up. Finally.

Commissioner McCall.

Aye.

Commissioner Whedon.

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman. Aye. Commissioner Carpenter.

Aye.

Judge Stolarzy.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. And before I let you go, we're going to, I believe, Agenda 15 is now no action, correct? Okay. With that, we're going to adjourn until 1-15. for a lunch recess, and then we'll pick up with our public comment.

I have some place to be on the other side of this county. Quiet, please.

Court's still in session.

Okay, would you all mind? I'm going to reopen for public comments. There's three people that have to go out of courtesy. You've waited patiently, so I'm going to let you have your public comments, and then we'll recess. So would you mind coming up? So we're still in session. Thank you for letting me know.

Yes, please. Thank you. Wanda McCarthy, Precinct 2, former member of the Proposition A committee appointed by this court. I, along with five other members, half of the committee, resigned two days after this court's actions to raid the remainder of Prop A funds with the focus of handing those funds to a developer. There was an emotionally whipped-up frenzy of Precinct 4 constituents being told pieces and parts of the story. in order to have their support in undermining and sabotaging the Prop A committee and wiping out their funds for land conservation. It sounded very similar today. Lennar Homes was mentioned repeatedly in the discussion at the court. Best projects were mentioned. Two years of floods were elaborated upon with the perceived dire and urgent need for safety and flood mitigation. Facts are that Lennar was never part of this piece of property as they are not so ignorant to pay premium dollar for subpar land substantially undevelopable being in the floodplain and further stripped of the water rights. Best projects were not close either. These are emotionally charged buttons used by members of this court to gain their support. And although safety and flood mitigation are admirable endeavors for this court, Prop A funds were never meant for this purpose, as I quote from the Prop A language, for the acquiring of open space and conservation land and acquiring conservation easements on land for any authorized purpose, including to ensure its availability for recreation or open space. or to protect wildlife habitat and water quality of creeks, rivers, and springs. Not once is safety and flood mitigation used in that bond language. But with enough legalese, wordsmithing, and whitewashing between this court and the court attorney, you are evidently creating the narrative to make you feel comfortable to slip this past the general public. The Prop A committee and you on this court are in full knowledge of the damage that you could potentially cause to future generations and the face of this county by snatching up the remainder of dollars in Prop A, which will ultimately be used to supplement development instead of conserving land. I cannot say, and you are relying on the fact that I can't say, there is another side of the story that the public doesn't know and is strictly confidential, but you know.

Can you succinctly wrap up, please?

I have just, I assumed that we were having three minutes. I didn't know I was going to be limited. Would you allow me that?

Any objection for this general? Okay, we'll give you three, you're finished for three minutes.

Your actions with using Prop A funds to fund alleged safety and flood mitigation and, oh, a baseball diamond for Chad's precinct is at best duplicitous, deceptive, and to the Prop A committee, ultimately to the citizens, extremely disrespectful. The possibility of disaster for the entire southern half of the county with your actions, the negative impact on tens of thousands of citizens and potentially potentially millions of people's water, well, it better be worth that baseball diamond. I have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours in all of your behalf to help you in supporting this county because I believed in your servant's heart. These are not actions of a servant's heart, but you have one more opportunity to correct this terrible decision before it's finalized. Do not follow through with the purchase of the proposed land in executive session with Prop A dollars. Do not tie your three names to the worst action by Commissioner's Court to ever affect this county. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. Blake, Roland, do you still want to speak? Brody? Okay. Thank you. Yeah, no worries. Thank you. All right.

Sorry, I missed the meeting this morning where everybody was kind of venting about their feelings. Mr. Chapman, thanks again. I'm one of those citizens that had the flock camera right in front of their front gate. So I went to Mr. Chapman the other day, and I kind of called the sheriff too, and I was like, look, if I just lay this camera down, it's got an easy disconnect. I'm not going to break it. I'm going to lay it down. I just don't want it scanning me every time I go inside of my driveway. Would you arrest me? And they said, yeah. I'm like, at what lengths are we willing to go to protect our citizens? We're going to throw people in jail for not wanting to be scanned every time they go into their driveway. We can move these things. I think there's a solution to be found. Maybe not with Flock, maybe not with a privatized company, but... I just want to say we believe in y'all. And I think we can come to a good solution that maybe serves the public, but also doesn't kind of get in the way of our privacy. So thanks for today. And yeah, appreciate y'all. Great. Thank you for your comments.

Alice Hansler, are you still here? All right. And last but not least, Heather Vesey. All right. Okay. So now we're going to recess till 1.15 for lunch. And with that, we're in recess. good afternoon everyone um i just just real quick i just wanted to uh go over the investment uh

report a little bit for you. We are holding consistent with interest rates in our logic, our main investment, and we're consistently earning over $400,000 every quarter in that fund. However, you'll notice that our interest in frost is going down pretty quickly. So we're hoping that Our new investment, Texas Range, that y'all approved last court, is going to make up for some of the losses that we're getting elsewhere in interest rates. We did have a CD that just matured that we're going to be moving over to the new investment, and we're going to be hopefully opening that up and getting 4.27% interest on that, and that will really be a nice change as to the 10 basis points in Frost. So I just wanted to bring that to your attention. And then I just have the investment report for y'all to sign, please.

Aye. Commissioner Regent? Aye. Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Clark? Aye. Ben Stelizak?

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Next consideration possible action on the payment of approved comp time at fiscal year end. Hey.

Morning. Good afternoon. Creature of habit. In FY25, the court decided to pay For the first time, really, in a long time, the comp time out that was in the banks, and I had requested this last fiscal year. And one of the reasons is that no matter the amount at 930, any increases happen October 1st. And then it's a bigger liability on the books for the county because you then owe more money out. And so I've been watching the comp time the last probably two months. And currently we have 29 departments that have employees, a total of 143 employees with comp time on the books. I did call every department about three weeks ago that hit anybody over about 50 hours and just said, hey, you know, I can't tell you to ask people to take off, but I just want you to realize here are some people who've earned a lot of time. This year, I'm not sure if it's situational or if something happened. It's none of my business. But I was going to be bringing this to Commissioner's Court to request you for this fiscal year to pay that out at fiscal year end. Right now, it's $74,818 as of today. I happen to know some of these hours go off this payroll right now that the Human Resources Department is working on payroll for this week. I don't know how many people earn comp. But I just think it's a good idea if the county has the funds to pay it out at 930. Therefore, we're not carrying those over. And if there's increases in any salaries, that money increases based on those new salaries. This way it's paid out in the fiscal year that they've earned it. Also, as comp time accrues up to 80 hours, it can put a burden on some of the smaller departments. Once it accrues to 80, the hours in the bank, then we're automatically paying those out because the current policy says you can only accrue up to 80. And also if people already get their vacation time, and if it sits, if it rolls over and rolls over, then people are entitled to take that time off because they have worked it. So I'm just here to ask you, I did budget funds in the current year, FY26 budget, and a contingency in the non-departmental contingency for this purpose, if it's something that the court wanted to entertain. So I'm here just to ask if that is something y'all would like to do. I have talked to HR and was assured that they could pay the last commission, the last payroll of September if it is approved.

Okay. I'll entertain a motion as agenda item 18.

Judge, I'd like to make a motion to allow the auditor to pay out the accrued comp time at the As of last of September?

It would be on the last payroll of September.

In the last payroll of September. Motion made by Commissioner Chapman.

Second. Second. Commissioner Carpenter, any further discussion? There being none, Teresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCullough?

Aye.

Commissioner Wheaton?

Aye.

Commissioner Trapper?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter? Aye. Judge Talarza?

Aye. Motion carries 5-0.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, request for Commissioner's Court to review and approve the proposed 2027 Kendall County Sheriff's and Constable fees as recommended by Sheriff L. Auxier, Constable Todd Setliff, Constable Paul Mill, Constable Gene Serene, Constable Brian Vaughn, District Clerk Susan Jackson, and County Clerk Denise Maxwell. So good morning, gentlemen.

And you'll review, Judge, Commissioners. Do an annual review every year because we have to look at where we want to go with our fees, leave them the same, increase them. We did the review. Sheriff, I reviewed everything. All the constables discussed it. We basically felt like we were right where we needed to be, the fees as we had had them for a couple of years. The only thing that we suggested was a change was the Whenever we give any kind of service as far as a writ, it takes a long time to do a writ of possession or a writ of attachment or all those kind of writs. So we give two hours to get that writ done. Sometimes it runs over the two-hour limit, and we had had basically a $50 per officer per hour charge. We decided we needed to go to $75 because of just tying an officer up that long. It may take two officers because some of them are kind of high-risk type situations. So that was our only change. We recommended a $75 per hour from the $50 per hour fee we had before.

I'll entertain a motion at this time.

Judge, I'd like to make a motion to approve the proposed 2027 Kendall County Sheriff and Constable fees as recommended by Sheriff Auxier, Constable Todd Setliff, Constable Paul Noe, Constable Jean Serene, and Constable Brian Vaughn, and District Clerk Susan Jackson, and the County Clerk Denise Maxwell. Motion made by Commissioner Chisholm, seconded by the Judge.

Any further discussion? There being none, Teresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McGraw? Aye. Commissioner Weeson?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter? Aye.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Next consideration and possible action on request by the auditor to conduct an audit of the Kendall County Sheriff's Department 59 asset forfeiture report as required by Article 59.06 of the criminal procedure.

It's not a request by the county auditor.

Okay. As required. I'm sorry. It

I now have to sign off that I was requested by the commissioner's court to do that. It's just a routine signature.

Okay, it's a routine.

It's not requested by me. The court is going to request me to do it.

Understood. We'll have to work on the wording for the final stage for the motion. It's a routine. It's a manual deal that we do every year for Chapter 59, asset forfeiture. Okay, I'll entertain a motion as to this item.

Judge, I move to approve that the county auditor conduct an audit of the Kendall County Sheriff's Office Chapter 59 asset forfeiture report. as required by 59.06 of the Code of Criminal Procedures.

I know it seems like a picky thing, but I make a motion to request that the county auditor perform the audit.

I would like to amend my motion. I move to request that the county auditor conduct an audit of the Kendall County Sheriff's Office Chapter 59 Asset Forfeiture Report, as required by 59.06 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

Motion to be made by Commissioner Region. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Commissioner McCall. Any further discussion? None. Theresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall. Aye. Commissioner Region. Aye. Commissioner Chapman.

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter. Aye. Judge Delisle.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Next up, consideration of possible action regarding the asset transfer request to transfer unit 1913, which is a 2019 Ford F-250 from Randall Patrol to detention. All right, and so I guess this is a. A vehicle that's no longer being used by detention or by animal control, and it's going to be have a good use intention.

Yes, I believe the detention office is already using this truck. And so we just said we told Captain Green he had to put on the agenda for the court to accept the transfer from the sheriff's office over to the detention center.

OK, I'll entertain a motion at this time. Is that an item 21?

Judge, I'd like to make a motion to approve moving the asset or approve the asset transfer request to transfer unit 1913, which is a 2019 Ford F-250 from animal control to detention. Motion made by Commissioner Chapman.

Do I have a second? Second by Commissioner Carpenter. Any further discussion? There being none, Teresa, you're up.

Commissioner McConnell?

Aye.

Commissioner Wiesman. Aye. Commissioner Chapman.

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter. Aye. Commissioner Isaac.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Next up, consideration and action to approve the list of central count station personnel. Stacey Depper.

Good afternoon. Or afternoon. I feel like it's still morning for me. So our first agenda item is approving our Central Count station personnel. This is my office staff. We don't appoint anybody outside of our office to serve at Central Count as part of our Central Count team. So this is just a list of my office employees, and this will be good for a one-year term starting September 1st, and it'll be ending August 31st next year, essentially.

Okay. And the central count, and that's all your employees?

Those are my employees, yes.

Thank you.

You have four now?

The official ones.

Stacey, you have four employees. I do, yes.

So at this time, I'll entertain a motion as to agenda item 22.

I move. Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead. I move to approve the list of central count station personnel.

Okay, motion made by Commissioner McCall. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Commissioner Weijan. Any further discussion? There being none, Teresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall.

Aye.

Commissioner Weijan. Aye. Commissioner Chapman.

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter. Aye. Commissioner Isaac.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Next up, consideration action to approve the list of election judges for a one-year term beginning October 1st, 2026.

And this one should actually begin September 1st, 2026. So for our agenda item, for purposes of approving it, we need the September 1st start date. I'm going to provide you the list of election judges for our election day polling locations, our central count, and our early voting ballot board. This is from the list of judges that both parties get an opportunity to submit for this appointment. So these are people that have been approved by the Republican and the Democratic Party locally. It comes to you all for the official appointment.

At this time, I'll entertain a motion as to this agenda item. Judge, I move to approve the list of election judges for a one-year term beginning September 1st, 2026.

We have a motion made by Commissioner Weijan. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Commissioner McCall. Any further discussion? There being none, Teresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall.

Aye.

Commissioner Weijan. Aye. Commissioner Chapps.

Aye.

Commissioner Herkimer. Aye. Commissioner Weijan.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Thank you. Next up. Thank you, Stacey. Consideration possible in action regarding the appointment of a representative from Kendall County Appraisal District Board of Directors to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Rodney G. Edmondson.

Judge, I have put an email in to ask about the appointment process now that that resolution from the appraisal district was objected to by a different taxing entity, and I'm waiting to hear back. But my advice would be to go ahead and appoint someone today, and if the appointment method changes, we'll revisit this issue at a future meeting.

Judge, I talked to a few people in the community, and I was able to get one person interested in serving on this board. General Counsel, how do you want to handle speaking about this person and interviewing him? Do we have any protocol or counsel?

As far as I know, you haven't done that in the past. At the last meeting, we talked about commissioners bringing forward anyone who was interested in serving, and you could discuss and choose a candidate. If you'd like to interview someone, you could do that. Or if there's only one person who's expressed interest, the court could choose to appoint or to push the appointment to a different date. You have lots of options. Anyone else get any names, Judge?

No, this is the only applicant I'm aware of. So, I mean, I'm comfortable with just this potential appointee.

I don't know if anyone else is.

Give everybody a minute to look at it. Yes.

So I wanted to say that I think we do need to fill this position today because September 2nd, which will be before we have our next commissioner's court, the appraisal board is going to review their budget and the budget is going to increase by almost $100,000. So I think we do need a representative there. with our vote. But I also wanted to know, how have we done this in the past? Do we interact with them quarterly? How do we, you know, how does that?

This process, we inherited Mr. Edmondson from the prior court. So this is our first chance to ever appoint someone. And so we didn't really establish a process for interacting. So this is our first opportunity to set a precedent for what our expectations are. And so we can set up another court where we sit down with our new appointee and kind of lay out what we expect of updates and things of that nature. So if you'd like to do something like that, we can certainly entertain that at a later date. But if today's main concern is to get the appointment done, but we can address your concerns down the road.

Well, just again, to just make sure that we're, that they're representing the court's interest, just concerned.

So this candidate's name is Neil Reby. He is a bona fide member of of the County, resident of Kendall County. He has an MBA, University of Texas, San Antonio, BA of Rice University. So, um, you can see his professional and technical experience through here. Um, I'm, I'm happy moving forward with Mr. Revy. He is very, uh, eager to serve and in light of no other candidates and we need to do something, I'm good with, uh,

he's no nonsense and very direct and analytical and i think he brings to the table what we're looking for in the representative so i so uh would you like to make a motion commissioner sure judge um i move to appoint neil d reby to wait where are we hold on number 24 um to the kendall county appraisal district board of directors to build a vacancy created by the resignation of rodney g edmondson motion made by commissioner regent second by the judge any further discussion If not, Theresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall?

Aye.

Commissioner Leeson?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman? Aye. Aye.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Next up, consideration of possible action in the handling of revised job descriptions. Commissioner Chapman, you're up.

So I've gotten several different department heads have talked to me, which is why I wanted to bring this in. Anyway. First of all, the attached instructions on how to file these job descriptions were never filed and officially approved by the court. And so I don't think that they should apply, number one. Number two, this needs to be going to HR and not a commissioner, not... A commissioner's helper, not somebody else. This needs to go to HR. This is a function of HR. And if we don't have confidence in our HR department, then we need to fire. And she's sitting right out here. So I think we need to quit. scrutinizing all of these departments, let them do their job. If they're not doing their job, we need to tell them, give them time to correct, and then bring it back in. But this document that was handed to these people to turn in is not a valid document.

So I'd like to respond. First of all, this process is working. I have several department heads and elected officials who have agreed that this process is needed. It did pass the review and maintenance process did pass Commissioner's Court on July 14th of this year. And this is just a detailed process that I put together to aid those in turning in the job descriptions. When we did the job description training, I asked HR how soon we could get these job descriptions done, and I was told by the end of the year. I thought we could get to it sooner, which is why I put it on the agenda. I was also told that that department was busy until the end of the year, and so I wanted to make it not as invasive on people the HR department to be receiving all of these job descriptions. And that's why I put this process together. And instructions. This is the first time Kendall County has had this process put in place. And it's never happened before. So I can see concern or, you know, resistance to change. But I have heard from some elected officials and department heads that that this is needed. One department has a full department of job descriptions that need to be redone. If we reinvent the wheel and start the process all over, which is supposed to culminate at the end of September, then we're going to slow this down. The instructions were created to make the process quicker. And again, just answer all the questions. I still have had questions and we're going to. This is new. But I do think that the process of how to turn them in in the event that the person they're turning them into is not available, I have a backup plan. And again, that way we're only going to HR with a group of job descriptions, not interjecting any kind of business for job descriptions throughout the day, just once. So, again, I think this process is very important. It recognizes the values of our employees, making sure they're fairly compensated. It also protects the county by ensuring the current job descriptions are accurate and they're maintained in human resources, reducing any kind of liability concerns. It provides transparency to our taxpayers, as I explained when we did pass this, by demonstrating that county resources are being managed responsibly and that their tax dollars are being used effectively and efficiently.

I agree that we need the job descriptions. What I disagree with the use of words shall and must to elected officials and department heads. Also, would like to say when these eventually do come in, they have to be brought to court and approved by court. And what I don't want to see is that we are presented on one commissioner's court meeting with 100 job descriptions to approve in one commissioner's court. That would not be fair to this court or anybody else because there's no way we can approve that many. So each one of these job descriptions has to come back to court for approval. Once that's done, then we can actually file them with HR.

So if it's an existing job description with no changes, maybe no substantive changes to the job, we are simply doing a review process and getting the employee to sign and date it, and we have an accepted job description on file, just like when they're hired. So any kind of changes, and what I spoke about was one department where every single job description needs to be changed. There's five people in that department. those have fallen through the cracks and we need an accurate job description so that if there was some type of a liability issue, we would have on file a current job description. So in that case, yes, those need to come through court. And we are going to work with this process again. It's new. This is the first time we've done it.

I don't think that's the concern. I think the concern is, okay, say they all get to you, you bring them to court. I know I don't want to sit down one day preparing for court, and have to review 100 job descriptions. That's going to be a waste of time because I don't know what everyone does. I don't have the time to research it. I think it'd be better to have batches, like we consider five every court and whatever, so we can do it in small increments. I think that's a more productive way. And then I don't think, and the other thing is, this procedure was never approved. Yes, we approved approving job descriptions, but this four-page whatever it is, instructions. Like I attempted to submit Melissa's several times and it was rejected. Like I sent it via email, rejected. Then I submitted in paper form, written and dated. And y'all said that that wasn't good enough. I had to come in and physically sign something. Those procedures were never approved. So that was my concern.

So I'd like to address that. I received an email from Melissa with her job description, asked her to go to her department head as the instructions. Again, it's a guidance tool for submitting these, which was reflected in what our vote was for the process. And the job description itself was put in a chair in the lobby, signed. We want to have a chain of custody for these with employee signatures on them.

And that's why I set up this process to detail one delegated authority to you to set up this policy and to mandate that every single elected official and department follow that four page document. That is the concern. There's a simple way to do it. Someone signs the document. that they want to submit to you, they hand it over to HR, give it to you, and you guys meet as a committee and do whatever you want to do. It doesn't have to be complicated. It's becoming complicated.

Juanita? Since you formed the compensation committee, we've always had a process for job descriptions. Always. There's always been a process. When you formed a committee for compensation, then that's what we did. We would receive it as a committee and you revised job descriptions. And as a committee, we would discuss it. And because we were working on forming the scale, that was also something that the committee had to research to make sure that we were following and putting, researching where these individual positions would be classified under. So we followed that procedure the entire time that this committee has been I receive a job description because there are some changes in the department, and I would forward that to the committee members. Some were able to respond, some were tied up, and we would make a majority decision and kind of help the department head work on these job descriptions to where it best would fit. You cannot have a job description that has an extensive amount of essential duties that It takes a lot of practice and time to go through these, and you don't learn it just because you attended a workshop. And so that's how come we're here as a committee helping our department heads. Some of them are very good at writing some of these. Some write too much, and you have to be careful how much you put in is essential to meet the guidelines, as our general counsel will also advise us on. So we've always had a system. Do they fall into the cracks? They fall through the cracks, of course. Department heads are responsible to letting us know when there are changes in their staff, because who better knows the job of their people is going to be the department head. So that's how we've been working now. I think it's best that we give the department heads at least maybe part of through October, maybe into mid-November to submit them. And if the ones that we do have that are revised, we can bring them in small batches. That gives everybody a little bit more time. Some of them may have just a few certifications they have to add. It's not like a full brand new job description. And maybe next year with the new Judge he'll decide that this is not the committee he wants and he wants something else and but currently That's how we have been working with with the department heads and the job descriptions.

I have a question And I may be wrong. This is our fourth time Around doing budget and everything else, but did we ever approve the compensation committee's procedures? that would be up to the judge because I I believe the judge of the court approved a procedure for that.

That committee was here before I got here.

We don't even have procedures anywhere. I mean, I agree that we need procedures, but we can't default to another level that's not even organized and approved by the court either. But I feel like there's there's a couple of things going on here. If it's taking three or four months to update job descriptions, that's the first thing that we need to pay attention to, that we need to be better with our record keeping and make sure that our job descriptions are being maintained better in every department. If there's an elected official that's not wanting to participate, that's not okay either. We have compensation and liability and everything. If we're going to say that we're trying to do this to protect our county from liability, it goes across the board to everybody. And so I don't know if there's just a resistance to do this or if it's just so new to everyone that that's what the complication is, that people are just not used to being checks and balances and being subject to doing something like this.

So I'd like to mention what the wording was for what the court adopted, and it was the countywide job description review and maintenance process. This is a new process. The instructions that I put together, I wanted there to be every possible, um, scenario envisioned and address it. And that's why it's quite wordy. And then if I, if, if the receptionist who receives those is not available, those same, um, instructions are repeated for me to receive those, um, And in the instructions, it does talk about that if there are minimal changes to the job description, again, this is the first time we're doing it, we are trying to get this process together because we're trying to get on to evaluations and this is the first step um so it does not all of these job descriptions have to come through commissioner's court and we may have to adjust but the timeline that we accepted when we accepted this process was september 30th and i have yet to talk to one department head who said that's not doable and we have very large departments down to very minimal departments with maybe two or three people and i have not heard in the in the department heads i've spoken with and elected officials that this is not doable in fact they think it's a great idea a great process and i have this is the first time i've really heard other than the judge um that there's a problem so so if i may weigh in um because i haven't had a chance but i appreciate commissioner mccall taking the bull by the horns and working on this it's it's key to make sure that we've got the job the pay the paperwork and match

And it looks like we, the court order was a process and you took great pains to do a step-by-step process of how to do it. Could we disagree on how to do it? If you've got some improvements you would like to make and help commissioner, that would be great. She's trying to assist your department because you were not able to get it done by the end of the year. So I applaud her on trying to get this across the finish line. So if we've got suggestions to tweak the process, then that should be okay. And I would agree that we can't plausibly bring 100 job descriptions in. So I guess, Commissioner, you have a plan on how we can do these in batches. Yes. And if somebody needs some more time, I would think that you would be reasonable and allow them more time if they could meet that. I have.

Especially with Road and Bridge, we had the flood. I've talked with the engineering department. I understand there are challenges.

There's a very recent, They were just completed in 24.

So again, this is a process for every department, not the newest or the oldest. It's everybody. And we didn't say whether it was one department that just started them or not. It's a process. It's new. It's a review.

How many have you received?

I have received one. I'm sorry. I've received three so far and they're getting them together. They started them in July. It's a process again, but I have, we have appointments this week for more. And so.

I guess my question is who decides whether there's been a change in

Well, it is up to the department head. And again, as Juanita mentioned, they know what's best. They know their employees the best. And so for this initial year, we are going to start with this process and it will be up to the department head. And as we review them going forward. If there are changes that need to be made and they need to come back to court, we can do that.

Who makes the decision that there has been a change made, which if there's been a change made in the job description, then it must come back to commissioner's court.

Right. And then that's stated in the directions.

Okay. But who makes that decision?

The department head and I would think especially, so with the ones we're going to go through that we are rewriting, I have already requested a meeting with Juanita and with Jen to make sure that they're accurate for the full department that needs to be redone. And so it'll be HR and the department head and myself.

With all due respect, The decision should be with HR as to whether or not there has been a change. They have the training. They have the knowledge about job descriptions. They are the ones that should say there is a change here and it just wasn't the word and or the. It was a change that needs to come back to court.

Then I would say that she has the opportunity to let us know that and we can address it at that time.

And we can't blanketly accept changes of the department head because, as Juanita stated, from the experience of the compensation committee, we end up with job descriptions that are 10 pages long because that's what the department thinks is correct when it's not the proper way to do a job description. So, again, it's the experience on the compensation committee. I know you're new to it that we have been dealing with job descriptions for the past three years, and it's not as easy as it's being made out to be.

So I go back to the fact that this is a new process. And if there is a job description that HR receives that they feel as too many changes, then we can address it at that time. We will go back to the department head and get the necessary changes. I just don't think we need to wait to the end of the year. We've already passed this process through commissioner's court.

So I guess are we assuming that HR is going to look at these?

They're receiving them. The last step is to get them to HR to be put in the employee's file.

But does your policy state they're to read and review them and critique them?

No. We can add that. Again, this is new. There's definitely, I mean, you're pointing out some things that need to be tweaked.

Those are important things. So we will definitely. I'd like to see this come back to court next time with some instructions that are not AI written, that are just simple, plain language on the process. The process needs to include the final thing is that the HR department is going to review them to make sure that they meet the overall standards of HR, and there have been or not been changes made.

OK, we can add that. And I do want to say that we have guidelines for use of AI, which almost everyone I've talked to

is using and they were followed so i believe our policy is right now that ai cannot be used we have guidelines right now i don't what policy pretty sure the policy that brian has put out was no ai uses is allowed we have guidelines that were listed i don't think that's correct and you show it to me i can i can look for it and i wish he was here today so he could speak to that I just, I don't know, that's not really part of the topic that's on our agenda, so we don't want to get off in the weeds on a topic that was addressed. I understand that there was a comment made, but we could talk about that offline or have an item next time to talk about it in great depth. But for now, if we can stay on topic. If you want to have a meeting between now and next time, I think Juanita, I'm sure, would be happy to sit down. I'm happy to sit down if you think that would be useful. I can provide some information on ADA language that I like to see included in job descriptions. And we can look at the format and make sure everybody is using the same format if you'd like to do that. Anything we can do to help, I'm happy to help you.

So we'll take no action on agenda in 25. 26 has been pulled. And now to the Burdick Center. Consideration of the Burdick Center Committee membership to include Judge Cahoon, J.P. Naver, Elections Administrator Stacey Decker, and to consider any other changes to committee membership to provide input and coordination regarding planning, design, construction, and implementation of the Burdick Center project. Commissioner Wieschen, floor is yours.

Yes, thank you, Judge. And so just to kind of update everybody, Judge Cahoon has kindly come to Commissioner's Court and met with several of us and raised concerns about needed space for the district court. And it's our job as commissioners who are responsible for the budget to listen to the elected officials and department heads and make sure that they get what they need. At the same time, it's our responsibility to set the budget and balance those needs with everything else the county has to do. So as I see it, we have three needs in front of us. The district court needs additional courtroom space. We're going to hear a little bit from Judge Cahoon. Judge Nabors needs an appropriate, secure place for JP Precinct 2. And elections needs adequate space to conduct elections, particularly under the new state law and accommodate future growth. So the verdict center perhaps can give us all three within these resources. We will be doing a needs assessment to figure out what we're going to do long term for a justice center. But until then, we have this temporary fix. It's not long-term, but we're going to take what we have and make due. So I think that we just do what everybody else does in the community, in the private sector. We take what we're given and take those dollars and go as far as we can with them. So I've asked Judge Cahoon to join the Burdick-Renaud Committee along with Stacey and Judge Naber and then anybody else who would like to be on the committee. I know that Commissioner Chapman, you have asked to bow out. So I'm open to another commissioner to help me if that be the pleasure.

I'll work with you on that.

Thank you, Commissioner Carpenter. And so with that, we just want to expand that committee and I can make a motion. But I think real quick, we'll hear from Judge Cahoon and Stacey and Judge Nabors since his regrets. He had a prior engagement and he just sends his thanks to the court for trying to facilitate the things he needs to do his job.

I wanted to just to the extent that I had Judge Falkenberg here, and he's one of our two associate judges. And I just wanted to remind the court that we have four judges here. that call Kendall County their home county. But I also wanted to recognize that when we came here, when I wrote the letter on April 13th and we came here on May 5th, that we brought to everyone's attention that there not only was the inadequacy of the courtroom space for the four judges, but also the inadequacy of space for the pettit jurors and the grand jurors and the inadequate space for the offices of the district attorney and the district clerk and the county clerk. And I bring that up because that was a global. Now, we have certain obligations underneath the code, underneath the local government code of 291 and 292 to provide a courthouse and space that is necessary, but we also have requirements in the family code under 201 to provide an adequate courtroom and quarters for our associate judges. Judge Falkenberg was going to come in and talk about the lack of any quarters, frankly, for our associate judges. They don't have a place to go. And when they have to, they have to try and find spaces over across the street. And he has to walk across the street to go and have that without any bailiff or any security. I need you to understand that what a CPS court does is it deals with family and their children, and it takes children away from some families. And if you want to talk about angry litigants, talk about your CPS courts and not having any adequate security. So one of the things that Commissioner Wieschen was talking about is was the ability to expand that verdict center courtroom as a band-aid but i need it to be stressed here that it's not a permanent fix because we still won't have space for the Pettit juror selection. We still won't have a space for the grand jury selection. We still won't have extra space for the district attorney's office. We still won't have the space for the district clerk and for the county clerk's office. It is a band-aid for the four judges to be able to have somewhere to hold jury trials and to hold trials because as it stands, what we have to do now is if a visiting judge is hearing a case, which a visiting judge is hearing a case against the county because we recuse ourselves from that, we have to step down. We don't have a space for them. So we, one of the two of us, has to not have court that day. Additionally, what happens is if we want to have two district court jury trials, we don't have space for two district court jury trials. We can't fit them in the two courtrooms and the two jury rooms that we have. So does this enable some space utilization for civil and family jury trials and those associate judges? Yes. but it still won't be a complete fix because it doesn't take into account everything else that is needed in the Justice Center. So I'm here saying thank you to Commissioner Weijian for noticing the problem that our justice partners have and for coming here and helping figure out some solution that we can at least get to where we need to be. But I do want to note that I'm still going to be coming. And we still need to be talking about how are we going to get sufficient space for the district attorney's office. I know that we talked about having a new person coming into the district attorney's office with the DOJ. I have no idea where we're going to fit that. But that's not that problem. It's not housed here.

Oh, that's good because we wouldn't have room.

But all of these things we need to talk about. Now, I know that Ms. Becker needs a lot of space, too.

Just one point real quick. Sharon, our purchasing agent, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that we have gotten the RFQ applicants in and you've formed a committee and you should be able to. It should be coming to the next court to move forward. Coming to the next court to move forward. Okay. So, Judge Cahoon, that is in the works.

Good. I'm happy about that, and I'm very appreciative. I do want to read one statement from Judge Falkenberg. He had court this afternoon, and when it didn't come this morning, he wrote up his words to me. He wanted you to know that he has 280 children on his caseload, his current caseload right now, and out of the seven counties that he works, This is the one county that doesn't have a dedicated space for him to be able to have court in. And he does want the commissioners to know, and I quote, the Burdick building presents a temporary solution to this problem. Were it to be built out for a secured courtroom and provided with a regular base bailiff, the Child Protection Court of South Texas, as well as other potential visiting judges, would have a protected space. to conduct these important proceedings. This is not a permanent solution, but it is a temporary solution to a long-standing problem until something permanent can be achieved. And it will allow Kendall County to be in compliance with the law pursuant to the Texas Family Code 201.103.

Thank you, Judge. Stacey, you're back.

Yes, I'm back. So I won't bore you all with 2753. I've fed it into you all for Quite some time now. We are working, our Association of Elections Administrators office, well, our association is working with Senator Bob Hall's office on some changes to 2753. He's even openly admitted that there were a lot of unintended consequences to the great idea he had. We don't know what those changes are going to look like. There are going to be some changes. It could be reduced early voting by one whole week, which is not something I'm in support of. I don't know where our association lands on that, but there are, we are looking at changes to come to that bill. That's not going to happen this year. It's not, it's going to be next year, maybe even towards the end of the next year when that's implemented. And if they make these changes again, we're going to be back right where we are with the secretary of state's office being mandated to develop an implementation plan for those changes. And we're already a year into that implementation process. And it's looking like it's not going to be till the end of this year when the state actually comes out with it. So right now, we don't know when that's going to take effect. We know right now, if everything stays on track, that's going to be the November 2027 election. Again, those changes are up in the air. Y'all know what our needs are. Every one of y'all have been to our building. You've served as a candidate or someone running for reelection. You've seen our space and what we've had to do to make it work. We have band-aided the band-aids and the band-aids. We have squished every ounce of energy or every ounce of space out of what we have right now, and we cannot continue to function with overlapping processes. That's one part of this bill that's not going to go away. Our ballot board runs at the same time as early voting. Our ballot board runs at the same time as election day and central count. We have to have separated segregated areas for those. Right now, we've shipped things around from one storage room and pile a ton of people in the room where we store all of our voting equipment in. We make the spaces work. We've taken over the break room in the annex building, completely locked it down because we have ballots in there by our kitchen sink, by our cabinets and everything. We've done everything we possibly can to make our space work. And whatever changes are coming down the line, even if they scale this back, which we just don't know what's going to happen with that, the problem still remains. We don't have the space that we need to continue to run elections in the way that our voters deserve. We need that space. I'm excited, and I appreciate the court allowing us to serve on this committee to even be able to be part of the committee, to work with the Judge Cahoon's office and the JP2 office to see what we can do. How can we make this space work? Is there a way to make that space work? What is everybody's needs? We've added a third department in there, and I think a lot of evaluation has to be done. I don't know what that looks like for us moving forward, but I'm willing to accept a seat at the table officially and work with everybody to find something that hopefully could work for all of us.

Well, thank you very much for reminding us again of your needs, and that is the next step. And for us to sit down with the architect, he was here, as you know, last Thursday to look at the courtroom and just see how we can configure this and take this building that's a great county asset and use the least amount of dollars and the maximum amount of space to get needs met. So it sounds like we have a committee, and with that, I move to update the Burdick Center Committee membership to include District Judge Kirsten Cahoon, Justice of the Peace Committee, Precinct 2 Judge Naber and Elections Administrator Stacey Decker, as well as Commissioner Chad Carpenter, to provide input and coordination regarding the planning, design, construction, and implementation of the Burdick Center project.

Commissioner, would you still like staff to remain on the committee? I think you had Jason. These would just be the additions. So the existing committee still stands and these are the additions? Yes, ma'am.

Okay, thank you. All right, motion made by Commissioner Regan. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Commissioner McCall. Any further discussion?

Yes, I just wanted to say that I appreciate Commissioner Wieschen bringing this forward. I think it's a forward-thinking approach to meeting the county's growing needs. And I would also like to add that I think we need to exhaust every resource we have here in the building. And I wanted to ask and add that that the commissioner's court coordinator work with the district judges and visiting judges coordinators in using the commissioner's courtroom, because we need to exhaust all the spaces we have here. So just wanted to add that.

I think she already does.

You do. Okay. Utilize this when we need to utilize across the street and judgment. It is a roving area of use. It's, It's a challenge. We're all bursting at the seams. And I'm no different than probably the sheriff's office and anybody else. I understand that. And I've tried to talk about that, but we do utilize the scan across the street.

Good. I just want to make sure we were using every space we had here in this building before sending Judge Falkenberg across the street or having to change buildings.

Okay.

Okay.

All right. Any further discussion? Teresa, you're up.

Commissioner McCall.

Aye.

Commissioner Wiesch.

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman.

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter. Aye. Judge Delizer.

Aye. Motion carries. There are no public hearings scheduled. So consent agenda. Thank you, ladies. There is items A through O on the consent agenda. Does anyone want to remove any one for separate discussion and voting? If not, I'll entertain a motion as consent agenda items.

Judge, I'd like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda items for August 25, 2026, items A through O.

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

Commissioner McCall? Aye. Commissioner Wiesner?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter? Aye. Judge Slyzak?

Aye. Motion carries 5 to 0. Next up, contracts. 29. Consideration of possible action regarding an agreement with Visit Comfort Texas to provide marketing services for the purpose of building Comfort's digital brand, developing wayfinding and visitor infrastructure, providing marketing, education, and promotion for local businesses and entrepreneurs. Measured through tourism and visitor data that will provide the county the cost not to exceed $5,000. Carpenter, you're up.

Judge, I move that we approve the agreement with Visit Comfort to provide marketing services for the purpose of building Comfort's digital brand, developing wayfinding and visitor infrastructure... providing marketing education and promotions for local businesses and entrepreneurs measured through tourism and visitor data that will be provided to the county at no cost, not to exceed $5,000. Motion be by Commissioner Doppler. Is there a second?

Second by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion?

Yes. This is in reference to the $5,000 that we approved earlier in the year, and this is just a formal contract.

Yes, the court previously discussed this, and at that meeting asked that Visit Comfort get with me so we could have a contract in place to explain that the county is getting data in exchange for these funds. This contract does accomplish that, and we recommend approval. Thank you. Okay.

If there's no further discussion, Marisa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall?

Aye.

Commissioner Wiesch? Aye. Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter? Aye. Dick Slorza?

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. consideration of possible action regarding the second amendment to the license agreement for the use of the county courthouse between Kendall County and Bernie Market Days. Management to allow the event to be held on county property from 6 p.m. on October 2nd, 2026 through 9 p.m. on October 4th, 2026. This is our annual agreement with Bernie Market Days. So I move to approved the second amendment to the license agreement for the use of the county courthouse between Kendall County and Bernie Market Days management to allow the event to be held on county property from 6 p.m. on October 2nd, 2026 to 9 p.m. on October 4th, 2026. Do I have a second? Second. Motion by the judge, second by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion? There being none, Teresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall? Aye. Commissioner Regan? Aye. Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter? Aye. Judge Stelizak?

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Next, consideration of action regarding the FY26 First Amendment to the agreement between Kennel County and Animal Springs Volunteer Fire Department from October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026, with an annual allocation in the amount of $37,042 and an annual stipend of $4,000. Chad, I'll entertain your motion.

Judge, I move that we approve FY26 First Amendment to the agreement between Kendall County and Alamo Springs Volunteer Fire Department from October 1st, 2025 through September 30th, 2026 with an annual allocation in the amount of $37,042 and an annual stipend of $4,000.

Motion made by Commissioner Carpenter. Do I have a second? Seconded by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion? There being none, Teresa, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall?

Aye.

Commissioner Regents?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter?

Aye.

Judge Storzing? Aye.

Motion carries 5-0. Next up, consideration of possible action regarding FY26 Kendall County Emergency Medical Service and First Founder Organization Affiliation Agreement for the Fire Protection and Emergency Response Services between Kendall County and Alamo Springs Volunteer Fire Department. Commissioner Carpenter?

Judge, I move that we approve FY26 Kendall County Emergency Medical Services and First Responder Organization Affiliation Agreement for Fire Protection and Emergency Response Services between Kendall County and Alamo Springs Volunteer Fire Department.

Motion made by Commissioner Carpenter. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion? There being none, Teresa, you're up.

Commissioner McCall?

Aye.

Commissioner Wieschen? Aye. Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter? Aye. Judge Stelarczyk? Aye.

Motion carries 5-0. Next up, consideration of possible action around the FY26 HIPAA Business Associate Agreement between Kendall County and Alamo Springs Volunteer Fire. Commissioner Carpenter?

Judge, I move that we approve the FY26 HIPAA Business Associate Agreement between Kendall County and Alamo Springs Volunteer Fire Department. Motion to be made by Commissioner Carpenter, seconded by Commissioner Chapman.

Any further discussion? There being none, Teresa.

Commissioner McCall?

Aye.

Commissioner Winkins?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter?

Aye. Hi, motion carries 5-0. Next up, consideration of possible action regarding the request for the Comfort Athletic Booster Club to use Faultine Field in Comfort to host an event which will entail building a bonfire and lighting it on fire on September 9, 2026.

Commissioner Carpenter? Yes, just a few words on this real quick. We realize we have a burn van. We're also... The bonfire is staffed by the fire department, and it's in an area where it's well protected. And so I talked to Brady about this last night, but it will be manned the whole time until it's done. Thank you for clarifying that. Judge, I move that we approve the request from the Comfort Athletic Booster Club to use Faultine Field and Comfort to host an event which will entail the building of a bonfire and lighting it on fire September 9, 2026.

Motion made by Commissioner Carpenter. Is there a second? Second. Second by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion? There being none. Teresa, you're up.

Commissioner McCollum?

Aye.

Commissioner Regent?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter? Aye. Judge DeLarge? Aye.

Motion carries 5-0. Consideration possible actually regarding requests for road closures for the Comfort Annual Homecoming Parade to be held on September 9, 2026 at the following locations, 5th Street to Main Street, 5th Street and High Street, High Street and 5th Street to 8th Street, and 8th Street to Main Street. Commissioner Carpenter?

Judge, I move that we approve the road closures for Comfort Annual Homecoming Parade to be held on September 9, 2026 at the following locations, 5th Street and Main Street, 5th Street and High Street, High Street from 5th Street to 8th Street and from 8th Street to Main Street. This would start, I think this would start at, do we need a time on there? It'd probably be nice if we do that. Okay.

I don't think that a time was submitted, but I'm sure that we can get that information and make sure there's a public announcement of when that will happen.

That's my fault. Do you think it's the same as the Bonfire or the It's it's right before the bonfire so it would be around 6 o'clock.

If you start with a treasure of 5.30 in the early evening hours, you know, let's just keep it bigger OK so in the early evening hours in the early evening hours, OK. I'm cool with that that work. We amend your motion included in the early hours.

Yeah, I'm in my motion to include the evening, early evening hours on September 9, 2026. And that motion is seconded by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion?

Please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall?

Aye.

Commissioner Wiesch?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter? Aye. Judge DeLazette?

Aye. Motion carries. Next up, consideration of possible action regarding the proposal for 2026 services renewal with Numo Group LLC for the agreement for Vanguard Records Management and Imaging System Software Hardware Solution for the county clerk's office for fiscal year 2025-2026 in the amount of $68,617.50. Which contract will automatically renew on October 1, 2026 for an additional one-year term and authorize the county judge to execute the documents? Sharon, I'll let you.

Okay, so this item is to ask the court to approval for a contract with NEMU. The vendor's called NEMU Tax and Licensing LLC for the county clerk's cloud filing management services and property alert system. This service has originally been the service that's been provided through co-file, but through a conversion within co-file, they sold it to NEMU. So we have to, this is to, this contract would be to formalize the agreement with NEMU versus with GovOS or co-file was before. The county has continued to utilize this service and it's still in place and she she uses it so the contract will just be For we need to do the contract for this fiscal year in and it'll include a one-year extension if agreed to by both parties and if the funds are in the budget for for next year and We'd like to ask that y'all approve it contingent upon general counsel's final review and approval just because there's a little bit of Kings for still working out with them with the Secretary of State registration and and such so

I move to approve the proposal for 2026 services renewal from the Nemo Group LLC for the agreement for Vanguard Records Management and Imaging System Software Hardware Solution for the County Clerk's Office for fiscal year 2025 to 2026 in the amount of $68,617.50, which contract will automatically renew on October 1, 2026 for an additional one-year term. and authorize the county judge to execute necessary documents, contingents on general counsel's approval. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Commissioner Wieschen. Any further discussion?

I did notice that in the URL, because I go to that website a lot and great research, and it had the little end, you know, kind of like in the logo. So I wondered what that was. Their new branding. Okay.

If there's no further discussion, Teresa, you're up.

Commissioner Paul?

Aye.

Commissioner Wieschen?

Aye.