Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

Okay, I'd like to welcome everyone to our regular Commissioner's Court meeting. It is the 1st of September. We're going to annex as usual. We're going to begin with the invocations and our pledges. If you'd join me and stand, please.

Let us pray. Lord, we just thank you for this day, and we just thank you for the love that you show us each and every day. Lord, we pray for wisdom today as we make decisions for the county to be with us. Lord, we ask you to be with our employees as well. Lord, they're working hard in the heat and in the offices. Lord, we just thank you for all of our employees. And, Lord, we also this morning want to just do a special, just keep Yolanda and her family in our prayers this morning with our employees. We thank you again for all your love and the blessings that you show us each and every day. In

He was in a hurry. Okay. Does anyone have any routine correspondence this morning? Any cleanups coming this month? Another one? Okay.

There should be one. Yeah, we should be for August 1st. It's going to be September the 5th, and it's going to be at the City of Kauffman. It's going to be in Precinct 1 this time. So remember, electronics could have a fee, but there's some restrictions on that kind of stuff, but we like praying.

Okay. We'll move on to the consent agenda then. We just have one item, discuss, consider, and accept. The commissioner's short and regular meeting minutes for August the 25th of 2026. Any corrections? Any changes? I'll make a motion for you. I have a motion. Commissioner Phillips, do I have a second? I'll second. Mr. Crowell makes second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Ms. Brenda. Yes, sir. Discuss, consider, and approve their authorization of additional services for the road bond program management support task order number 36 and 37. between Coffman County and Tignall-Perkins in

It's confusing to me. Do another environmental on the road that's already existing? Is that just required? Is it necessary? Does that just delay things?

It just seemed like a lot of extra stuff was already existing.

Okay. All right. Any questions? Mr. Keith, this is in your precinct. I'll make a motion. We have a motion from Commissioner Phillips. Do I have a second? I'll second. Commissioner Crowell makes a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Brenda, thank you very much. Thank you. You all have a good day. Okay. Okay, next up, Ms. Teresa. She wants to present and for us to accept the Kauffman County Assessments and Collection Contract for Fairfields Mud Number 1B. Good morning. Good morning, Teresa.

Sixty-nine, goodness. Yeah. And where is this exactly?

All right. Well, this is a common thing we do. It's the same rates.

Mind if I need anybody to have any questions for Teresa? No. Need a motion to approve then? Commissioner Moore makes the motion. Do I have a second? I'll second. Mr. Lane makes a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Teresa, very much. Thank you. to fill a vacant patrol contract position in Department 193. Morning, Jason.

I have a motion. Commissioner Phillips, do I have a second? I'll second. Commissioner Stroll makes a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Number six. Once again, Constable Johnson. Discuss, consider, and approve Deputy Taylor J. Rankin to fill a vacant patrol contract position number 44040356 in Department 193, Devonshire, with the Coffman County Precinct 2 Constable's Office.

Same person, same way. That's right. Commissioner Phillips makes the motion. Do I have a second? I'll second. Commissioner Crowell makes a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Constable Johnson, once again, discussed, considered, and approved the deputation of Miguel A. Del Toro, as the Deputy Constable with Coffman County Precinct No. 2 Constable's Office, Defendant Beckett Patrol Contract, Position Department 192. Yes, sir.

Any questions? No. I'll make a motion. Commissioner Phillips makes the motion. Do I have a second? I'll second. Commissioner Crowell makes a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Once again, Constable Johnson discussed, considered, and approved Deputy Miguel A. Del Toro to fill a vacant patrol contract position in Department 192, that's Mud 5, Travis Ranch, with Coffman County Precinct 2 Constable's Office. Yes, sir.

Okay, and I'll make a motion. Mr. Phillips makes the motion. Do I have a second? I'll second. Mr. Cole makes a second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Ms. Shannon, she wants to discuss, consider, and hopefully approve the final plot Is that Benalis Addition located on US 175, I mean Highway 180 in Precinct 3?

Okay. I'll make a motion. Commissioner Lane makes the motion. Do I have a second? I'll second. Mr. Moore makes a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Ms. Lorena. Discuss, consider, and approve two Mack dump trucks with 16-foot dump beds from Bruckner Truck Sales utilizing HGAC by contract HT07-26A. Good morning.

That's good. I'm paying cash. That's good. Do I have a motion? I'll make a motion. I'll second. Okay. Mr. Crow makes a motion. Mr. Phelps makes a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Lorena. Thank you. Okay, number 11, we're going to go to a workshop to discuss updating and amending our current Coffman County tax abatement policy. Y'all have a copy of that. The last time we did this was back when you and I first came into office.

And the stewards here with the city, and they've kind of been mimicking what we do pretty much. And so now it's time for the first to discuss because 12 years ago, things didn't cost as much as they do today. And some counties are not giving abatements. Some are, and some have got limits where they start at a higher number than what we do. So now is the time to discuss it. Give me your thoughts and ideas. And we've got triggers in here. And if they don't do something, who's going to monitor it if we do give an abatement? So what's your thoughts?

Yeah, would y'all like me to start? Yeah, I like letting them answer. One thing I will tell you is... I'm all about the maximum time on a bank was 10 years anyway. I think that's what most people is trying to do. The only thing that I would ask that y'all would consider that I'm interested in doing is, you know, once we figure the numbers out for different types of projects, like for real estates, one, schools, you know, different things have different percentages on it, but I'd like to include a pilot program in that so that each... We can do a pilot any time. Yeah, so I think we need to star

Okay. Back in the day, we started at $10 million. Now, we started at $3 million. Three, five, and ten. You can't hardly buy much today for $3 million, even $10 million on new construction. This does not include any houses or apartments. This is strictly commercial. Anything tax-exempt will not be included because they're tax-exempt. You know, the pilot, you know, the payment in lieu of taxes, that's the way a lot of counties are doing it because it doesn't affect our tax rates, which is good. The 180 agreements, I don't like. Do you all still do 180 agreements?

The last conference we went to, what, last week was... Most counties are not doing the 380s at all. They're just doing 312s and pilot, which is the same thing.

380s is for a tax, I mean for a sales tax.

Yeah, we don't do those. We don't do sales tax. We don't have sales tax.

Yeah, I know, but I'm not doing it. I'll deal with a sales tax. I think we need to get part of the city's sales taxes. I think that works. Would you agree to that? I think the city would agree to that. Talk to Jeff Jordan about that. I don't think that's going to work. Okay. Okay. So, honestly, some counties start now a minimum of $25 million. Don't even talk about a tax abatement. And, you know, we have a seven-year. We don't do 10. We just do seven. That's as far as we can go. So we need to come up with some plan to where when someone comes in here, just like we did recently, we did the seve

But that's been the last one we've done in some time.

And then one there and one over in Terrell. What did we do in Terrell? I don't remember. This year? No, last year.

Okay. We did a 10-year modified with Kauffman on the storage plant, didn't we? Did we have seven on that one? I thought we did a 10-year modified.

It should be. I mean, the reason I say seven, you know, the reason... You know, it's not made. It's more for startup. If it's in county, it's more for startup, getting them to get started. Seven years, if they haven't made it in seven years, I'm not sure they'll ever make it. Yeah, come on, Stuart. I mean, I'm sorry. You know, it's not there to support them forever. Not us.

I know we can. I'm not saying there's not a good point because the county, we don't have any extra money. We have only, only. tax. And if you give it all away, it makes it almost impossible for us to keep up with our growth.

And the things we run into sometimes is who reports to whom is the number of employees. Do they actually hire who they say they're going to hire? Who's keeping track of that?

And you can do that being the city, but we don't have that authority. I haven't gotten anything from the appraisal district as to what they're doing. I think that would need to be automatic, right?

That's something we need to update ours. That's the reason I want to do this report.

Modern day instead of 12-year-old programs.

Right. There's just a lot of things that we need to revisit.

Yeah, a couple of things. I mean, you know, like the 312 or whatever, it was a certain amount of money, so you're always paying the same thing. It wasn't something that It's a big task to try to figure out sometimes on abatements. They'll wear that department out trying to figure out what the value is and what the thing is and be able to figure it out because it changes every year.

And, you know, I think we talked about it a few years ago, and we said, you know, some of those things, 312s and things, are just so simple because it's that amount of money every year, no matter what happens, doesn't change things that, It just seems like a simpler process. But everybody's got their own opinion. One, you know, it's hard to keep. What am I going to do? Hire a person to keep up with the people? Then keep the person. Or, you know, it's not just as simple as everybody says it. It sounds simple, but it's not very simple when you're doing, you know, two thousand abatements or whate

You know, I mean... Well, and I think there's value in large companies bringing a large number of employees, because that helps the economy overall, not just for cities, but for counties all the way around, and we need to be mindful of that also. But you were self-employed. How long did it take you to break even? Yeah, oh, the first year. Oh, well, he's a plumber. He can charge you. You're going to pay.

I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. My success came between three and five. After my third to fourth year in my company, I had a lot of employees on a lot of trucks. I was smoking, and I never got a nickel from the city, county, or anybody. I mean, it was 100% on my own power.

If the end result is to get a good corporation here, you have to be able to negotiate with them to make it work for both of you. Yeah. It can't be one-sided.

And we've got some examples of other counties, what they're doing. And some of them, they don't tie exact numbers to it. It's just all negotiations. And I think that's probably a pretty good thing to do.

I'm supposed to be back in Austin the 16th. We'll see what some things are going to happen.

All right. Anything else you want to ask Stuart about while he's here? I know we're not the same as the city, but We still have to work together with all the other cities. I want you all to take our abatement policy, look at it, mark it up. In a couple of weeks, we're going to come back and revisit this again and try and tie some things down because we want to get this done before the first year for sure. We'd like to get it done next month, by the end of this month if possible, so we know where we are, what direction we're going. We've talked about TIFs and TIRs. No one here is in favor of th

Houses have to be cut out. Well, houses. We're not giving payments to houses.

Should have never gave them. And I would like to ask you one question about like on the Do y'all do any pilots for the city? Are you allowed to do that? I guess that should be my first question.

All right. Let me ask you one other question. Sorry. You're very well knowledgeable in this area. What would be the benefit of us running our own abatement with these companies? Because it seems like every time we do one of these, it's the city showing up here. Their people's looked at it. Their attorneys looked at it. And it's kind of like they come in here and ask us, and we have this throw-down abatement program. It's like just a base model, which different things from commercial properties to different types of construction should be handled differently. So... Would it be more beneficial f

They don't want to do that. You don't want them. No. You've got to pay your bills. That's got cities in trouble. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We know why. But, you know, that's just what it is. And we are separate. They come to us. It's generally the reason they're in the city first. And they bring it to us because they have a development service. We don't do that. We don't hire development services.

I believe the 381 or the 312 has to be in a TERS zone, right?

Sometimes, you know, and I talk about it, it's a simple process where you're saying, hey, you're going to have this and that and we're going to pay you backwards from the face of it and say, hey, we're going to give you 10% of your tax back and whatever it is and not on a sliding scale thing. It's that amount of money for the next five years, six years, seven years, whatever you decide to do. And it's a simple payment. As long as they're in business and thriving, she's going to write out the check when they pay the taxes. In the end of the story, you don't have to always worry about...

Percentage of the cost. So two weeks, we're going to discuss this again, another workshop. Stuart, if you don't mind coming back if you want to, you're welcome. Anytime. Anytime. Oh, yeah. And we work with Karen to get the wording right and follow some of the other counties that's updated theirs recently. It's a lot easier than what we have. And get it tied down. So when someone comes, we hand it to them, here it is. We always make exceptions to the rule. So, okay. You had a good teacher. Or I was a good teacher, wasn't I? Yeah. Anything else on the abatement policy for right now? No. If not, then we'll move on to Ms. Archer. Consider line item and budget transfers.

Y'all got those last week. You've had time to see them. Any questions, corrections? Need a motion to approve? I'll make a motion. Commissioner Phillips makes the motion. Do I have a second? I'll second. Commissioner Crowell makes a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Ms. Archer, claims for payment.

Y'all seen those at the same time? Questions? Need a motion to approve? I'll make a motion. Mr. Lane makes the motion. Do I have a second? Mr. Moore makes a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. I'll make a motion to adjourn the meeting. We have a motion to adjourn. Do I have a second? I'll second. Mr. Crow makes a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you.