Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

All right. It's 9 a.m. on Monday, August 10th, 2026, and the special call meetings of the Tenno County Commissioner's Court is now called to order. I'm going to take a call on the roll. Commissioner McCollum. Commissioner Regan.

Present.

Commissioner Parker here. And I'm present. Commissioner Chapman is absent, so we have a quorum of four members of the court. We've got to get right down to business today because we only have an hour allocated.

and i guess i'll hand it over corinna to kind of walk us through where we started and where we're currently at with legend judge commissioners um if i may i did pass out a current copy of general fund for revenue and expenditures so that's up today this is going to show the salaries and benefits that that have previously been um discussed those are in there all the changes that were made should be in there i am now going to pass out uh something originally started i believe the general fund was about 2.7 million expenditures over revenue. Where we sit right now is $7,580,547. So what I'm going to give to you, I can explain, but it's just a breakdown of the revenue and then the one-time expenses and capital improvements. just some big ticket items that y'all can look at to determine if this is any of these is where you would like to pull. I will tell you, we do not have 7,580,000 to pull from fund balance. Our current, our beginning fund balance was $23,015,721. You currently have $4 million budgeted in this year's budget for fund balance. So that means your unassigned fund balance is $19,015,721. If you were to use all 7.5 million that were short right now, that would bring your fund balance to 11.4 million. So right now, as expenditures sit in front of you for general fund, it is 61.8 million. If you take out all capital expenditures and you, which is the GASB, the governmental accounting standards, where it says you can just have your reserves part of your operating. That means to continue to operate. That means you would not be able to do any of these projects. Your minimum fund balance, that 25%, which I don't recommend going down to, is $14.1 million. And you're going to see this. At a minimum, 30%, taking all of these out, not out of the budget, but meaning if a disaster were to happen, then I would have to say you cannot do any capital expenditures so that we could operate perfectly. with that 30%, that's $16.9 million. So I would recommend that you shoot for that $16.9 million to leave in your fund balance because you don't want to enable your FY28 budget by not having a fund balance to support expenditures. So I'm going to give you, if I could pass this out to each of you.

All right. And so to summarize, the other option is to raise taxes if you want to keep everything. Is that the other option?

Yes, sir. Because the taxes that are in the tax amount that's in your budget right now, which is $37,500 per current, that's based on the initial conversation you've had with Mr. Hudson, potentially trying to lower the rate. Okay.

And would you say it's financially more responsible to keep maybe a 17.5 million reserve balance, knowing that we're a growing county, the budget seemed to grow every year and pushing it down to 16.9 is cutting it close?

So I would say you would need to.

Yes, it is. And the reason is, you have to project your long-term expenditures. So some of the big ticket items that we have in here, I'm calling them one-time expenditures because we haven't had to budget this exact expense before, but I don't know if some of these would cause additional expenditures next year. So you do wanna be able to operate your budget only needing fund balance to do your capital improvements. or your capital expenditures you never want to use fund balance to operate because if you do then you have to reduce your operating and you're operating besides employees and benefits your salaries and benefits are the utilities the fuel it's things like that that we have to have to to operate a business a government so what you have to look at is what do you think your long-term capital improvements will be and how much fund balance do you think you're going to need for that? But you certainly can go to that $17 million. I would just not recommend going below the $17 million.

All right. I'd like to see us continue to try to focus on focusing on a $17.5 million reserve balance with continuing with that .373 tax rate reduction. When we started this budget, we were at 2.7 million, like you said, using reserve balance. And the two items that pushed us over there were my recommendations to buy a building for future growth and build the metal building on Tupperwine. And I removed both of those. So every addition since then is new additions to the budget. And so we have a short day scheduled today. So it's all about cutting. I just don't think it's financially responsible to go much below 17.5, knowing what the future has. And, you know, and then there's also, did we factor in renovations following the flood? Like, is there money? Do we have enough money set aside? Because would it the grants from the government that repay us for the repairs don't come in for years or for another year. We have to have those funds available to make those repairs. I don't think that that's factored into the current budget. So I think we have some serious financial concerns right now. And the more we cut, the better off we're going to be for the next year. So I'll hand it over to whoever wants to start with some cuts. Take us off.

Okay, so I've got something that we can cut substantially. It's an update as well on the verdict center, because over the last few days, these conversations have really changed the way I'm looking at this project. And the first was with Stacey Decker, and I think Stacey and Judge Kuhn may be on, and I know they want to speak. Stacey has been telling us for some time that elections has outgrown the building, and she really took a lot of time to walk me through Senate Bill 2753 and what that means. Essentially, elections used to have several days between the end of early voting and election day to retrieve equipment, service it, stage it, and prepare for that Tuesday. And that window is now essentially gone. So many of these things have to happen at the same time. So to clarify, this isn't about Stacey wanting a bigger office. It's about whether the building allows her to conduct our elections securely, which was the premise behind Senator Hall's bill, election security, and do this efficiently under the laws that we have today. And then talking with general counsel and a judge neighbor, some other ideas came up. I'm very grateful to them for brainstorming with me because then I sat down with Judge Cahoon and she walked me through what's actually happening at the district courts. You know, we have two district courts and associate judges. And according to Judge Cahoon, we've had judges 21 times, visiting judges come 21 times since October. And there are times when one of our district courts essentially has to give up its courtroom so another judge can hear them. So we can't conduct two 12-person jury trials or two large criminal dockets simultaneously in the courthouse we have today. And so that was the piece that really started to change my perspective. So maybe the verdict center doesn't have to solve one space problem. Maybe it can solve three. First district court, as I said, would need additional courtroom capacity. Second, elections and that security. And third, JP neighbors needing that secure functional courtroom. So three real needs and one county-owned building. But here's the problem. We don't have unlimited space, and we know now we don't have unlimited money, and we've always known that. So we'll have approximately $7.5 million over our target. So I'm not interested in solving our space problem by continuing to create budget problems. We have approximately $4 million available this current budget year. So that's the box. That's what we're going to have to design for. So I'm going to propose to cut this $2 million. I think this is a break room. We have a building that's going to work harder with actually three departments there. Also, I can mention Grand Jury can use it. we'll design it for judge neighbor we'll sign it for the district court for 12 person jury and design it so that elections can work in there and have flexible space and i really want to thank judge neighbor judge cahoon and stacy this all came together just over the last three days on on figuring out how to make this this work i talked to the architect this morning he goes okay that's the budget so we're going to have to make some tough decisions i know we can cut out a million dollars right away we cut out that mezzanine And then we'll just have to look at our finishes and find the other cuts. And I know we don't have a lot of time, but I just did want to give Judge Cahoon and Stacey the opportunity just for a couple minutes to weigh in.

Are you all there? I am, Commissioner. Good morning, everybody. Thank you very much. I know that we have been here a couple of times talking about the space needs for your district courts. And I couldn't have said it any better than Commissioner Wiesent on the opportunity to have a bit of a better band-aid here while we continue on the path. This is by no means would it be a long-term fix. But it would allow us to operate right now. The idea that we're functioning appropriately with these two courtrooms, the need for space isn't theoretical. We absolutely can't do two 12-person jurors in this same building at the same time. But this... sure this fix that Commissioner Weijian has talked about is a very good getting us while we do further space needs on how to get your justice center to the capacity that it needs to be. It is starting to affect the way that we operate our courtrooms and the way that we operate cases, which means it's affecting the constituency of Kendall County. For these reasons, we do request that this be considered. It wouldn't be a usage of all the time. It would be allowing the visiting judges to have a place to go and also to be able to have an additional 12-person jury for the 498th to be able to accommodate that 12-person jury, which right now this courthouse does not accommodate that 12-person jury. Commissioner Wieschen, I believe that talks about what I had said to you in that discussion, and you delineated the reasons also very well in your opening comments. So if there are any questions about that, I would be happy to talk about that.

Okay. Following the recommendation of the Commissioner of the Region.

If not, 2.2.

2.2. 2.2 long.

Judge. I didn't want to just ignore you. We took the 2.2 and everybody understands we're going to work together to design to the 4 million. But just real quick, did you want to add anything?

Yes, thank you so much for giving me that opportunity. Kind of to piggyback off of what Judge Kuhn said, this is not our long-term fix, right? Elections is growing, we need more space, Just looking at our space requirements, we could have utilized the entire verdict center, but we know that that's not the stepping stone that we're at right now. So being able to work with the court and being able to work with the district court and with the JP2 office to have all those needs be met now with a let's put this, you know, back out there down the agenda line process. for some permanent fixes. This would be a great opportunity for our office and I'm really looking forward to working with everybody to find a solution for flex spaces that really tackle keeping that security of elections and the integrity of elections as a forefront thought for everybody as we move through this process.

Someone else have another cut.

Currently, we have 300,000 dedicated to space needs study. I believe that we need to sit down with our department heads. We need to get an office plan of all of our offices we're trying to accommodate and sit down with department heads and actually go do that together and find out what offices have space in them, how can we utilize them better. I think we can do that in-house and save $300,000.

Any objections to commissioner Carpenter's request to cut? There being none, Corinna. Someone have anything else?

Ms. Speer.

What's our target? Is it 5 million?

No. Ms. Speer.

Judge Cahoon.

Does anybody hear me? I don't know. I don't know if I'm allowed to say anything at all at this point. I'm sorry if I'm not.

Summarize all your points because we only have an hour today to make all the cuts and we got to cut about another couple million. So out of courtesy, just...

Well, I didn't know that the $300,000 was subject to be cut for that space needs, which is definitely a necessity in the entirety of where to go for the future of what Ms. Decker talked about and what I talked about and what Judge McDaniel has come up and including the district clerks and the county clerks and the DA's office to cut the space needs analysis is a... short-term fix with long-term implications. I think we need to have somebody who can tell us how we need to be going forward. None of us are engineers with that type of experience. So to my, I just want to request that that stay within the budget so that we can figure out what we need for the future as we're going forward.

Thank you, Jessica.

Can you tell us, can you tell us, we're at $7.7 million on the capital expenditures. What exact number are you wanting to see?

I think you can get to $4 million. If you can, I think if you spend, if you budget $4 million, I truly believe that you would have that $17 million. or 17 and a half because I don't believe you're going to spend all four million you have budgeted right now.

We need 3.7 billion cuts. That's a that's an whoever's listening. That's a big undertaking. It's not a small a small goal.

And when some of the things that we're looking at come to cutting, I don't think the community is going to appreciate us cutting an ambulance or things for safety like that. So there's got to be give and take. You can't Again, it always goes back to there's one pie and a lot of mouse to feed, and we've got to make sure everybody gets some of this pot of money that the taxpayers pay the county. So you just don't want to make changes.

So where are we right now if we cut the 2.2 and you want to get down?

The 2.2 and the 300, it's 2.5, which brings you down to $5,201,000.

We need 1.21.

I did just want to say also on here, I do want to stress things that are on here that are the big ticket items are not the salaries, they're not the benefits, they're not the five new full-time employees that the court have allowed. It's not changing the one part-time animal control to full-time or the general fund taking over one of the CDA attorneys and the part-time grant coordinator. So all that is still included. The new employees are $664,000. And then at the last meeting, y'all did entertain moving employees as far as up to a step four or step six, depending on if it was recommended by their department head or elected official, as well as step four or six, depending on if they were non-exempt or exempt. That is approximately 190,000. So both those are on the list that I gave out to you, judge and commissioners. That's not included. I did not include that. in the capital expenditure part, because that is now salaries, that's an ongoing expense. So the other items that you have in there are the efficiency audit, the Jersey barriers, the capitalization fund to the Hill Country Fire Coalition, the IT equipment, the district clerk imaging index criminal files, the building assessment list that Jason Parker brought back in round two, that we added $175,000 to his budget. as well as he came back in round three and asked for the Courthouse Foundation fare, which is another $225,000. It's the upgraded video server at the jail. It is $369,175 for an ambulance, as well as the $177,540 for ambulance equipment. The $200,000 for the fire blocker truck. $200,000 to assist the light for Comfort High School. $500,000 for future road infrastructure. And then the $2,235,000 for grant match. That is just the Texas Water Development Board grant match and the FEMA grant match. That's not actually the expenditures. That would be what Kendall County... would not receive in grant. That would be our portion. And so I've listed where the GL code for just the knowledge. I'm not recommending any of these things to come out. This was just kind of the bigger ticket item first glance for the court to see. Obviously, y'all can take out anything that you feel like you need to take out of the budget. These are just your capital improvements or your one-time costs at a glance for the court.

And I don't think the grant matches can be touched because those are commitments that we've already undertaken that are going to be due and owing in the coming year. So we have to budget that in mind.

Correct. And one of them, I did pass out the grant documents last support to you guys. One of them, I mean, it's a $10.6 million grant. I think it's a three-year grant, but we do have a match of $1.1 million. And so the reason I'm going ahead and budgeting is because I have to get it out of fund balance because we will be expending those those funds once that full, if the full 10.6 million actually takes place, then our portion of just that one grant is 1.1. So I do want to say, I know that looks like a lot of money. That's not all the grant match. Most of the grant match is in general fund. You'll see it in the revenue. and the expenditures there. These are just some that we would put into the capital grant fund. That is a non-budgeted fund because those are FEMA grants that come through, Texas Water Development Board grants. But it is over $20 million worth of grants that the county has. And so all in all, included in grant match in the general fund, we have about 2.6 million match for grants. And so that's a larger number than we've ever had also. So that's an impact to the budget. Just want to state that.

And just to remind everyone, we have 38 minutes left in this meeting. We've got 1.2 million.

Jeff, what is our hard stop? I believe it's... And why is that?

I think that was all we allocated, generally. I thought it was an hour, but this was scheduled for an hour.

Is this room going to be taken? What is the physical orientality that we have to stop at 10?

You need to go over. I believe you can go over.

But there's no reason to drag it out. I agree. Let's pull the band-aid off.

But for some reason, I had in my head, there was a hard to stop at. That was just what the court decided. I don't remember. I remember the date, but not. And there was nothing. It was part of the discussion.

It was part of the discussion. But like Chad said, there's no sense dragging this out.

Do you have any other recommendations that you can talk about where to begin? initially shave off another $100,000 off of efficiency audits.

So you may move it down to $200,000. All right. Any objections? All right. For now, shave down to $200,000.

As much as I really appreciate the whole country by our coalition, I believe they've gotten their grant for $2 million. I know that they have a cash flow problem. Perhaps we can sit down with them and solve that problem by not throwing county money at it. So I would propose to take that out.

I disagree with that one because they're carrying out accounting functions by using, doing our law for our protection plan and doing all that. So y'all can cut it if you want, but I just voiced my objection to that.

I understand. I believe now they're getting their reimbursement turned around, and that was the problem, is that they had a cash flow problem submitting their receipts and not getting the reimbursement. So let's work on solving that problem and not just funding something that we don't need to.

Okay. Which one did we... Can we shave $25,000 off for now as we move through this list and see if we can still get to the 3.7?

I would propose at least cutting it in half, especially if they're getting their money, if the money is coming in. She's let us know that. So maybe $75,000?

I think we should take the whole now. We're going to sit here and nickel and dime this and we're trying to come up with another 1.5.

I'm going to chat for reducing it. How much you want to reduce it?

I mean, it's like positive. That's three. Three votes. Other votes.

Reduce it by 75? No, choose 70. Even at 75?

Put it at 75, please.

Can we take off 125,000?

Can we take off 125,000 on the fire blocker truck and put 75,000 in for a used one and it's not support effective?

any injections there being moved i do have a comment on that and i think sheriff auger brought this up but i'm not sure that there may be some cheaper ways to find a big bulky item to sit in that road was it the school bus sheriff did you mention that i mean you're just trying to have a buffer right between the equipment you still want to protect the firefighters but a buffer between the equipment and traffic does it have to be a fancy new thing no ma'am it's been brought to

uh to our attention that there's possibilities of using other pieces of equipment like a dump truck that's been uncommissioned uh school bus uh that's being uncommissioned you know larger vehicles that potentially could be used for the same thing so that was an option that was brought and that's what some places are trying to utilize you know other pieces of equipment it says depending the big dollars uh the other thing to consider with that is that it's going to take a manpower to man that piece of equipment. So if you put that up to the fire departments, whatever, that needs to be part of that discussion, sir.

Thank you. Piggybacking off Sheriff's idea, when I was at Roden Bridge, I believe the cab of that vehicle that was rear-ended, I think it's an F750 or something like that, is still in good working condition. It's just a box. And if they remove the box, they were telling me you can buy blockers to add to it for like $60,000. 60, 70,000. So that may fall into what you're looking at where we're using a good vehicle because they maintain that vehicle for years. So that could be an alternative solution that gets within that figure. I'd say 70 just to be safe. But don't say I said.

Hi, I don't understand. We're already halfway through the process for the space needs. We've already out for bids and then we're keeping $200,000 in for the efficiency audit, which we haven't even gone out for bids. We've already been talking about the space needs analysis and the need for it in the court. So I just wanted you all to know that we're already out for bids on that. We're already halfway through that process. The efficiency audit hasn't even been started, hasn't gone out for bids. hasn't been discussed about. So I'd like to reiterate the absolute need for that space needs analysis, as we've already discussed again, and we're halfway through that process.

Thank you. Thank you.

Do you have any ideas? No. Well, I just want to make sure that we have 70,000. Do you think that's enough? Yeah. kind of outfit and what we were the process of using the vehicle we were talking about. Does that sound like that?

I have no idea.

That's out of my wheelhouse. I know the vehicle that was rear-ended is still fully functional in good condition. It's only got like 20,000 miles on it. And so that should be, I think, the first thing that's looked at using that in the capacity the sheriff was wanting. They can add a blocker to the back of that. That may be the cheapest alternative. And then the next step is something like sheriff's at a dump truck, whatever. But we just got to, you know, be creative with how much we spend. 70. 70 is, yeah.

And then, Corinne, can you tell us about the building assessment and the, yeah, and then also the foundation repair? I have to say about that.

Yes, so in round two, or round one, y'all asked Jason Parker, facility manager, to come back with a building list for him to do an assessment. In round two, we took that budget to 500,000. It increased based on y'all's discussion with him to 500,000. In round three, which that was on July 13th, We increased the budget to $500,000 and it said presented a building priority plan. That was just my personal note. I did not get a copy of that. That went to the court. I don't know what he gave y'all. And then in round three, what I'm calling round three, which was July 30th, Jason, or we discussed the judge, discuss the foundation repair that because he had been in contact with Jason of another $225,000 for the courthouse, this courthouse foundation, I believe he said on either side of this is slacky. So there's $725,000 budgeted currently in building repair and maintenance in Department 10.5.10 based on those two factors. What he started with as this regular Repair maintenance, whatever his building assessment priority list was to the commissioner's court, which I don't have a copy as well as the foundation repair. So those who I added to this is not a carbon copy of what I gave you originally. This is what's in the budget as of today based on those changes.

And just a reminder we have several buildings that have not been maintained over the years, like the veteran service building that's going to eventually have to be torn down. So I think it's critical that we keep these two items because this is deferred maintenance that's been neglected for years. And the courthouse, we're trying to come up with creative ways to find space for people. So we cannot let these buildings deteriorate. I mean, the foundation is sinking on both sides of the building. You can see the rock on the outer face of the building separating an inch or more from areas of the windows. I think it would be a big mistake to take those two items off of this just to save pennies because it's going to cost us more the longer we wait to repair them. That's just my two cents on that.

So I agree on the foundation repair. Just help me understand the building assessment list. Is that making a list or is that money for addressing things that we find on the list?

I didn't get a copy of whatever he turned. If he gave you, if he gave, passed something out to the court on Monday, July 13th, he came in at two o'clock and that's the, that's the, the meeting where he, that I wrote presented a building priority plan. So he must be, I don't know if he gave something out to the court. Um, and then y'all increased his budget over 200,000. And that's the same meeting. We took out 600,000 for the topper one, um, AC thing. I just don't know what was on that list. I just had a figure.

Is that a, I don't know if it's a study or, I mean, surely.

No, in round one, you asked, in round one, the court asked Jason when he first came to commissioner's court on June 24th to do a facilities inventory, to get a list of major projects, to do a capital improvement plan and to bring it back in round two for him to do like a building assessment and priorities list. And so that is what he discussed when he came back on July 13th.

Can we get someone to give him a call to see what exactly this is so we can confirm? Because like I say, 100%, we keep the foundation right there. Let's get some clarification on 175 because I'm not seeing that sheet.

And I don't know that we gave you a sheet, Judge, but I just know I didn't get anything out of this discussion.

While we wait for Jason, I do not want to ignore Judge Cahoon because I told her and gave her my word that I will help figure out what we need to do to have a permanent solution for District 4 in our justice system. So just remind me again, what did we say on space needs? Because she is correct. Those RFEs, Corinna, they were RFEs, right? Not RFQs? General Counsel, thank you. So we should have an idea of that number. So can we...

It is my understanding that we're getting responses back.

And I think I see it is that that's what we're trying to address right now, that district court. I'm not sure we need to go top to bottom throughout the county and inside out. And yeah, just, I mean, it comes down to, do we build a justice system here at our property near this complex? Yes. Or do we do it in the courthouse parking lot and have parking garage and offices? So, okay.

So what is the final verdict? What do you keep? And then Jason Parker's coming over in a second to explain that other item. So Corinna, what's our current total?

I do want to say that on the space needs.

You have taken $2,680,000 out. Go ahead, Sharon. Yeah, I'm sorry. You are still at 5,021,233. OK, Sharon.

I just wanted to say on the space needs, you know, whatever the respondents came back with, we're just right now evaluating their technical qualifications. As far as what we have them do, that's up to us. We don't have to have them do every single thing right now. We can say that we only need this portion done right now and for a lower, like we can negotiate that. Like, I just want to put that out there.

Thank you, Karen.

And are we sure the textile is requiring $100,000 contribution for Jersey bears or will they absorb the whole cost knowing our financial situation?

Corinna, have you factored in that now that we've been accrued for the ambulance grant that there will be 350,000 coming back into the budget?

So my understanding is that y'all had, you were going to do two ambulances so that the ambulance on here would not be impacted by that grant. So if that grant Because I don't know if that's coming in FY26 or in FY27. So it's not budgeted at all. What would happen is when I know that grant is in FY27, if your budget's already adopted, I would certify that revenue after October 1st of revenue and expense. If it happens in FY26, then I would certify that revenue in FY26 as revenue and expenditure. I feel like it'll be FY27, but that should be a wash if you're going to get a $350,000 grant. grant for an ambulance, then you can spend $350,000. If at the time the court chooses to spend more, they would have to come up with the difference. But we don't know what that would be. Because part of what's budgeted right now is to outfit the chassis that you bought last year. But if they'll choose not to provide two ambulances, then that would change this budget.

I have a question about the livery.

Do we know that we can meet the delivery with this budget? Or is this going to lag over until FY28? Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know, because I'm not involved in that part.

Typically, we've had no problem getting a chassis each year. So Jason, would you mind coming up? And you've got to have the mic. All right. So our question for you is, can you walk us through We put $175,000 in your budget for building assessment list. We can't remember what exactly that entailed.

We started with $325,000. And in round one, they asked you to come back to do a building assessment and a priority list. And they increased it to $500,000. And in round three, they added the $225,000 for the courthouse foundation experience.

And we're good with the foundation repairs, but keeping them at, we just didn't know what that 175 was for. Do you remember?

The roofs over at Comfort, they got damaged in the Hellstone. We've got that park over there that's got all the gazebo, the whole, there's several roofs over at that park that got damaged. JP4 got damaged. EMS got damaged. We have some insurance money, but the rest of it, Just for the with the insurance.

So in your opinion, these are critical services, critical repairs to make sure that we invest to make sure these last a longer period of time. Yeah. That's all we needed. Thank you, sir. All right. Anyone else have any other ideas?

Can I speak to the $500,000? That's her future road infrastructure originally. Um, there was a discussion, there is a billion dollars in the hearth road interchange in the, in the capital fund, but there was discussion to add $500,000. It was later determined that you didn't really need that for the hearth road, but that y'all could put 500,000 for future planning. I believe with this kind of fund balance that I don't, I think you need to use that 500, I think 500,000 probably could come out this year because any kind of real infrastructure improvements is not going to come out of our current loan balance at this point.

What about my comment about the flood deal in Shep? You've encouraged knowing that we're going to have to invest some money. That could be, could that be the money we use towards bridging the gap until we get state funding or federal funding reimbursements?

So what, so you have to have cash in the bank to cover that. And that is why you need to have a strong loan balance to cover it. But if you're going to If you're going to, you want to fund the whole thing, then you would need to plug in about a million dollars of the anticipated, which we did go through that on the 30th. It was $500,000 for the Zeller. bridge about 300 000 however i did speak to mary ellen after that meeting about 350 for a little joshua uh low water and about 350 for mountain view uh trail covered i've already plugged in that y'all y'all said 115 000 um into the engineering contract services for the bit mod grant so we have that plugged in so i plugged in in part of that two point $2 million of grant match is what our portion for the FEMA would be. The $1.1 million is not budgeted because that would come back to us. But the county would have the cash to carry us forward that right now.

Your recommendation is to still move forward with the $500,000?

Well, the $500,000 is going to a capital project. So it wouldn't even be in the right line because we don't budget For FEMA. FEMA is an indifferent. It's a non-budgeted thing because a FEMA grant can last years. So it's not part of your budget. What is part of your general fund budget is what you're transferring out to that grant. So if you look at our department, 10700, that's called transfers out. And that is where, if you look on your list, I have 10700-57096. That is transferring out. to our grant fund. And that grant fund is not your typical grant funds like where we're hiring people and things like that. It's for your Texas Water Development Board grant and for your FEMA grants and your flood mitigation grants. That's what gets paid out of there because those are years long. So they're accounted for separately. You can see all of that once we have an audit or a financial report that I do to the judges and to the commissioner's court. That's on here. Yes, ma'am. Any other questions? But that $500,000, the last discussion with that was just, I believe it was Commissioner Chapman who said, if we don't start planning for our roads, we're going to be behind. But you will not have a strong enough or a, shouldn't say the word strong, you're not going to have a big enough fund balance to continue to set aside for roads currently because there are some other needs in the county, you know, um whether that's a bond issue or something later on down the road i have no idea what roads need to i mean i can't speak to that i just know this 500 000 would be an easy thing to take out if in fact you only need a million for her because that's what you currently have budgeted any objections to that all right i would agree we do have a separate road material balance from the fees being correct collect right so fund 11 is a road and bridge month

You can cut it. It's just a 421-233 spreadsheet.

I don't know. Yes. All right. So another 420,000-ish we got to cut. Hmm.

Yes, they can we turn the efficiency another hundred thousand because if you can do the space needs and increments, because you do the efficiency in the rooms. There's another hundred thousand. hundred thousand.

will let you work.

If we want to learn to very great. Yeah, Brian, can you come up?

Could you go over what we can? Is there any questions?

on this project, then we can push some things out a little bit further. Not too much, but I think we can. I'm just going to send you a note. Try to budget ourselves on that. Server storage to 100,000, to the 170,000. So we have, we have some things we just have to do. And we have a hundred something on this spreadsheet allocated for server storage. We can cut 70 off of that.

Is that 103?

No, the 103 is the videos, upgrade the video wash server. That's one of the two, but wash videos.

Yeah.

Yes. So cut 70 out of 2.4. Yes. We have a short gap on FY 29 on the spreadsheet.

So it's just going to push things out a little bit for increased

What about it? You know, rather than continue to get some infrastructure needs for the county. What did we increase any allocations to any other entities that should be targeted because before making our employees suffer or the needed repairs to the county for our continued growth there could be a you know 50 to 100 000 elsewhere in the budget in those random places if we increase allocations just the thought of an area to look for remind me what video server is i think the jl video server upgrade is important because that allows them to meet all jail standards and ensure there's adequate coverage throughout the facility so i think that's a must keep okay um so the libraries received a three percent increase i believe that the

Fire departments received a 5% increase plus an additional $30,000 one time for Sisterdale to assist in a truck payment, additional $40,000 to BirdCon to assist in personnel costs. You increase the Meals on Wheels program at the center by $5,000. We're already taking off our collision. We added 5000 to visit Comfort, Texas, Dx. And you added 4000 to Golden Age Center. So those were the only allocations that actually received any kind of an increase or outside of hard to say.

Does anyone have any desire to make modifications to any of those?

How much would the loan?

how much is the library exactly that five percent what does that amount to i think they receive three percent

The library increased 13,700 and the library increased total is 13,757. I'm not sure that's the total.

We could possibly look at cultural services, which I think that does the library fit into that? Cultural services, is that the fund 645?

The library department 650, but that is the one you're referring to is the one I just read from the increases there.

Well, I think there's some debate among the public on whether or not the county should be funding these at all. So we could look at each one of these. I'm not sure if that's going to add up to $251,000, $233,000. That's, I think, where we need to be. But rather than cut public safety and fire and jail and the clerk services that we need, I mean, cultural, because the county legally can, but should we be funding these? Just throwing this out there for discussion.

If we do it, I think it's a... shape it's like a percentage across the board i think it's the only fair way to do it if that's the road that the court chooses to go it varies it it's been it's probably as much as it it's probably been as much as

five or 7% for the libraries and as low as like 3%. But it does vary depending on what they request and what the court is able to do each year. And I will say on this department 645, you're gonna see that $138,000 per fire coalition. And that's different than the one-time expenditure that I gave you that I said 125, because they asked for 13,000 in operating, the 125 was the one-time capitalization fund. So if y'all are reducing them to $75,000 for capitalization, they still would have the $13,000 for their actual allocation, operating allocation. So I just want to say that's why that shows $138,000 on the department budget. But on the sheet that I gave you, it shows $125,000 because this is the one-time expenditures. And y'all have typically been giving them some of an allocation of some sort. So this year when they presented to you, they asked for the one time 125 and then an allocation of 13,000 for general operating.

What does it look like if we decrease this 5% across the board on 545?

We can't just take 5% out because they've already reduced comfort to 100,000 and the fire coalitions at 75,000, just like the 13.

Anyone that's not been touched here?

Because you have to take out that $506,000, you have to take out the Comfort High School $200,000, and you have to take out the 138 Fire Coalition. I've already determined what those are.

the very little, but I mean, I can reduce some 5%, but you know, that's reducing kid advocacy, a hundred dollars.

Reducing family care is $250.

That's what y'all want me to do.

So it's at 168,500.

That's what I think I would, yeah, reduce.

I mean, just taking the two that y'all increased down to what you had this year, it's $9,000, the two that you've increased.

I know this isn't capital. But would we delay the hiring of the new employees the six months into the new year?

Which ones?

Well, we're at $664,000.

Your other option is to delay a year, implementing the new STEP program for current employees. That's $190,000. I mean, that way you're not touching everyone's salaries with their COLAs. This is just...

can't afford right now, because we're still at 270, 300 forward.

Let's look at that. I would rather try to keep the way we've set our employees and what they're getting in steps and rates. I'd like to leave that alone. We have imaginary people.

that aren't going to be affected because they're not hired yet so can we just go look at that list of all the new hires so what did what the general fund included in that 630 or 664 000 is the salaries plus the benefits associated with these so uh the first thing we did was absorb one attorney from centerville 22 to general fund He exists and he already exists. And so the general fund is just picking that up. And then the general fund is also picking up the $15,000 for the CDA grant coordinator that was in Senate Bill 20 that she asked for the general fund to pick up. We have one part-time animal control position that y'all have said can move to full-time. You have one new JP clerk, which then would give all four JPs a second full-time clerk. You have two new deputies in the Sheriff's Department. One new administrative three for the, in development management, but in the Blanco building itself to assist. And then a fleet mechanic two in Road and Bridge.

How much is that in three?

62, with benefits about 84,000.

What was the increase we gave, you know, county employees?

Four percent.

Four percent.

Four percent to the scale.

Four percent to the scale.

And how much was that?

I don't have that total.

The question was how much did we increase our payroll across the board? I don't really want to mess with that, but if we delayed hiring the new people, it would possibly get us below where we're trying to get.

which historically commissioners courts have historically commissioners courts have delayed hiring for some if not all positions just based on various factors some of it is the money it is an impact to your budget next year but like you do know that but it's just for the current year that keeps us at 17.5

So just to close out the employee, I would advocate that we delay for a year. The admin free position development management and Brady's office will have to come up with some other solutions. Just on that until next budget year.

So that would be an actual cut from the budget. So that's Okay. So that can be removed completely, that admin position. And then the question is, do you want to delay the other hires for six months? Does that get... That's the next question.

The remaining... Could we talk with... There would be two deputies, which I would not be in favor of doing that. I think that that's critical. But that's open. Talk to Donnell about his mechanic... Animal control. I mean that's just going from that's not gonna be anything So maybe hear from Donnell about the mechanic and the JP's about the clerk The clerk would be

Almost 74,000 with benefits, and then 53,861 plus 20,800 in benefits. Deputies are 77,900 plus 25,300 in benefits. The fleet mechanic is 56,560 plus 21,306. These are estimated benefits because we don't know. It can be more if somebody decides to cover their spouse, their children, or their families .

Are we at 167, 233 if we get rid of that admin? I mean, we're close.

We delayed them three months.

Delayed everybody and cut the admin or keep the admin in delay three months? Delayed.

Do you have any thoughts, Commissioner McCall?

I'd like to look again at the fire coalition. I think another 25 off, they'll still have 50. That would still give, I mean, we're going to cut hiring an employee, I think is fair.

can't support that. I mean, if you guys want to do that, I mean, they are doing a function where we'd have to hire employees to do and they're volunteering.

They are, but they're also getting their funds and that's what they were going to use this money for. It's coming in more quickly now that they're kind of established, so.

Like I said. I'm going to delay a few months on hiring new people and I hope that will

If we just delay three months, four months, where we need to be without making any other adjustments?

What would a four-month delay look like?

Four-month delay.

I'm sorry, I didn't bring that calculator.

Four-month delay in which employees? I guess the grant coordinator, the... Well, the grant coordinator, the only reason she wanted that $15,000 was the carryover.

Which employees are we talking about? Because there's not many left.

And to clarify, you want to cut the admin three or delay admin? We cut admin three. We're at 167, 203. I don't have that.

So I'm not even sure where I don't I don't know what else y'all have done that. I haven't done it 160 70. That's what you have left still to cut.

Yeah, that's the total that we have. But we'll need to bury them.

But admin three.

Yes.

And that's at 167 233. So if we delay every single

employee. I mean, we have to talk to the DA because she's that employee is already there. Stephen's already there. And then she'd have to absorb that. That's going to affect her numbers on her using her SB funds for employees. So maybe we don't touch that one. Could we get Donnell on the line?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, Donnell. You're live. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Yeah. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Just tell me I'll be there in five minutes.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Donald said he would be up there in five minutes. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Okay. Okay.

We want to hear from Sheriff Archer what that would do delaying hiring of deputies.

I would be fine with that.

You would be fine with that?

It's been done before.

I know we've cut some easier things. We're getting to the harder things to cut, so we're just going to have to make some tweaks where we

looks like delays are probably going to be the easiest way to make this work versus more cuts so commissioner are you changing what you're thinking now keeping the admin three but that would be in the delay a six month delay i mean if you have to just i mean we gave everyone four percent increase we moved people around on staff

So the current budget right now we have, and I know that we don't know exactly where we are, but we're safely in the $17 million fund balance range already before doing any other changes right now. All Kendall County employees have received a 4% increase plus their staff increase. For those that get a staff increase, we've more than taken care of the Kendall County staff. And so this is where it gets tough, you know. But these additional staff members, this goes into next year and the next year's planning as well. Every time we add someone, it's another $84,000 per year minimum added to the future budget for the rest of our future.

So if we delay, just say for three months, a clerk, two deputies, an admin, three, and a mechanic, do you think that that would get us there? I think it would. Realistically, is it going to take three months probably to get all those people on board with this?

probably be safe even kind of delaying up to six months because some of these are kind of technical technical hires like finding a grant quarter is going to take some time sheriff may have you know take what's it typically take to hire someone three four months to find someone of your standards that you're looking for it can take a couple months yeah so you could say uh

120 or 125,000 by delaying on three months. You're going to say it's going to go more. Obviously, if you do six months, but that's all.

Those four positions.

On those four positions, a deputy, a deputy, and a mechanic.

What about that? What about the admin? And the admin. That was five.

Five for three months, and he'd say what?

About 140,000. It's because it also depends on exactly how many, there's 26 pay periods, so you can't just do divided by 12, one, five, five, three. You've got to get out once you get better than .

I'd rather err inside a six-month delay to make sure that we hit the 17, five. I don't know. I just, having that little extra cushion is a concern for me.

Because what we're doing is we're just pushing automatically increasing FY28 budget by the full amount, which is then less. That's going to eat up fund balance in that year automatically because that's going to be recurring costs. But it is a way to get there this fiscal year. And then you set up parameters and standards of what's going to be allowed in your FY28 budgets. Certainly there are times when you have to have no capital outlay freeze. There's times when you have hiring freezes. There are times when you have wage freezes. There's different things. And I don't think the court is there yet. I think right now it's just this fiscal year, there were a lot of capital needs that the court wanted and elected officials have requested or department heads. And in reality, you actually are hiring five brand new employees and allowing one to go from part-time to full-time and then just absorbing a temp and a full-time person. So it's less new hires than we've had in the past. But even with that, it's still an impact of $664,000. So that just tells you delaying six months is probably $330,000-ish.

And in the end, all we're doing is kicking the can down the road where next year is going to be impacted. So if you truly want to be financially sound with this budget, you freeze the hires until next year. That is the only way to guarantee no impact on the next year's budget. It's because you could find yourself in a more precarious situation next year with the flood damage and the repairs and having to put out costs for that. But I'm just giving my thoughts on things. Use it as you will.

I think you're right. I mean, we've added How many new employees since this is our fourth time? 35, 40. That's the fastest growing of this county in our history. We've also increased pay by probably 3 million a year more than the number before, which is a lot faster growth than this county has ever seen. We definitely put the brakes on what we're doing overall, but we're not going to be sustainable. Yes, sir. It would be nice to have it. I mean, this guy's been struggling back there for a long time. I mean, I know it's understandable. It's hard because if you don't get it this year, you're going to wait till next year, but that's just farther that they're going to be behind themselves too. You know, it's hard with four guys. One guy's sick, one on vacation, and it just leaves two guys back there. I mean, it's ultimately y'all's choice there, but I would recommend it if we could get the one we can. It would be helpful for us. We're looking forward to it.

So when did you get a more exact number? I was just playing with an average of 84,000 times five divided by two. 85,000, like just an average of each of these five employees, what their salary would be for a year, then divided by two just for six months. I got 210. That's very rough.

For six months, it'd be about $235,000.

To the average taxpayer, they're going to ask us, the question is, when is enough enough? And That means people aren't happy. That means departments aren't happy. But that's what you do in the real world. And you get by and you work harder and you. I know I'll get lots of flack for saying this, but that's the real world when you pay people really good pay. There's a point where we are not even compared to the real world with our county government. And so I'm I could go either way on this with putting a hiring freeze on or not right now.

I tend on this one because of the number I want to put this next future court, you know that position financially and that is just 665,000 that you're going to hear this next year's budget right off the rip. So I think that's the of the things we got left to cut that's most right.

I agree for the positions or for any of the positions. The new ones.

Just a request, please.

So you're saying no new employees this year? Not yet. If we wait six months for hiring, that gets us to 16,233 is what we're lacking. So I get it.

Can we agree to not hire anyone and reassess at six months? Is that something we can possibly do?

We've still got a budget for six months, right?

Correct. She's saying we could budget it for six months on starting and then reevaluate at six months to see if we want to move forward.

I'm in favor of that suggestion.

So one of the things y'all had me do in the last The last time we talked about employees was for the county clerk. Y'all suggested budgeting some. We put $40,000 in contingencies. I increased commissioner's court other compensation. It shows 200,000 right now. And that is, we have to have funds available. 40,000 of it is if you decide to move forward at a later date. That was just the placeholder for the county clerk position. there's money in there. If people leave and then we have people who retire, we have to have retirement money to pay out. Or if new people get hired that their counterpart left and they don't have insurance, the county needs money for insurance as well as to pay comp time out at the end of the year if that's what the court's going to do. So that's where I would suggest putting the funds. I would put any funds that you wanted in the commissioner's contingency. It's called other compensation. And then if the court wanted to reassess, there would at least be six months of salary for all the positions that you want to reassess there. For those positions that you would allow to be hired, then we would do the budget adjustment to the appropriate department for them to move forward and hire. But nobody could advertise or hire until the court did a budget adjustment, put the money in the appropriate on them. So you can do that.

That keeps our fund balance protected.

In a sense, as long as you don't spend it on. Are we sure the imaging index Camille files? Is that a part number also? It's something like that.

Yeah, they'll look at that at the beginning with Ms. Jackson.

Right, but I'm just saying, is that a?

That she received.

What about Chad's idea to put it in contingency six months?

What about the idea of Chad's putting six months in contingency for all the new hires?

Good idea. I think it doesn't bind the court next year. It increases.

It doesn't bind the court because...

It's not binding, but increases.

It increases the budget, but you don't have to spend it if you don't hire them. So it gives you flexibility to say no and then not have that $664 on your FY28 budget.

So we would move forward with the general fund absorbing the attorney

absorbing the fifteen thousand dollar from cda grant coordinator are you moving forward with the part-time to full-time at animal control and only the true five new hires which is jp1 two in the sheriff's office one in development management and one in road bridge those funds for six months would be budgeted in commissioner's contingency for the court to reassess yes ma'am And I did want to stress that you are trying to balance this, knowing that you are trying to reduce taxes if possible as well. So that is the, that's, I just wanted the citizens to understand that.

So with that, with that change, are you able to kind of give us a ballpark of where we're at financially now, anyone?

We're about $16,000 off.

I think we go to those allocations by other entities for that.

I would not worry about $16,000 in a roughly $57,000 budget, Judge, because while Clint did, he did an analysis and he looked through all the fuel, we increased fuel where we needed to, and then I, on Friday night, went back through utilities. I'm still looking at, like, cell phones and these kind of things to make sure, and the contract services. I still need to do that, like, today and tomorrow to just adjust those to make sure that those numbers are good in there. Typically, it's not a matter of adding. It's a matter of being able to take out here and there. So I think if you are that far off, you're okay.

I think you would be okay.

Because also, James Hudson, Mr. Hudson will give us the exact numbers exact revenue. So there may be a little bit more current property taxes that we can add in once he has done the calculation based on government agenda item tomorrow, based on that.

So based on what you're hearing, you feel we've made enough adjustments to get us through?

To get you into the $17 million fund balance range, yes, sir.

Do you have anything else to announce? Do you have anything else to add?

I just applaud everybody for the good hard work and making do with what we have, making do more with less and cutting the tax rate. I think that's a commitment to our citizens who are feeling the pinch as well. Thank you.

You're good.

I just need to go over the schedule now. So originally we had scheduled for the judge to the judges and budget officer and he has to file the budget in the county clerk's office. We were going to file it tomorrow. I did not meet that deadline. I had an article to the newspaper by 10 a.m., but we were not finished. You can't do that because there's a couple things that have to happen. At this point, the judge, you will need to file the budget on Friday. You can't file it before Friday now because we cannot have the public hearing before the 25th day after the date that it's filed. This is all for Local Government Code 111, if anybody's interested, which is the budget chapter of Local Government Code 111. Our first commissioner's court in September is the 25th day after the day we file the budget. So we meet that deadline. The other thing that has to happen is the commissioner's court is required to give notice to the elected officials of their salaries. I have prepared that document based on if changes might have been made today, I wasn't sure, but that has to go into the newspaper as well as a notice that the budget has been filed in the county clerk's office that it's available for public inspection online as be posted online and filed. So all those things will take place on Friday. So I anticipate that the elected officials will get a copy of their budget and a notice of their salaries. We'll probably just send everybody a copy of the actual newspaper ad as everyone's in there. But that is a requirement of the commissioner's court, not the county judge. But I can do that if the court would like me to, or I can send my copy to someone and someone else can distribute that. I feel we can do it. The court just has to give it to the elected officials before it's available for public inspection. That's all part of the Chapter 111. you just got to do i don't want to miss any deadlines so do your normal protocols okay so then i will um all this the public notice will go into the newspaper the electronic edition next wednesday as well as the following sunday's edition we'll do it twice but then we do meet the threshold of advertising the elected official salary and The notice that it's available, that has to be done. The newspaper ad has to be between 10 and 30 days, and both of those states do meet the requirement of Chapter 1. And the public hearing on the proposed budget will be September 8th.

Does that come on the Switch Monday?

No, I don't think you... It's on a Tuesday because Monday is Labor Day. So it was last year. So yeah, it has to be Tuesday because that's the 25th day. September 8th is Tuesday. September 8th is Tuesday. That will be the public hearing on the proposed budget. So I will have a copy. We will finish the proposed budget with all the extra pages that Clint and I put together. We will have that available. It will get filed by the judge to... the county clerk's office, and we can get a copy to the commissioner's court and judge or the commissioners of the judge. All that should be ready by Friday. So the tax rate change, I believe, has items on the agenda tomorrow, but the tax rate can be at the same meeting or it's a different meeting gets put up. The court has followed the tax code, not the local government code when it comes to the tax rate. If you do have total public hearing and the requirements are different on the number of people that have to be there and who has to. So that is more of a Mr. Hudson's wheelhouse. But the last time I spoke to him, which was Friday evening, I do believe he will be ready for that date, the September 8th date. So they can both be at the same meeting. They're just not required to be at the same meeting.

All right.

With that, it is 10.27 a.m. this Monday, August 10th, and the special call meeting is adjourned. Thank you.