Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

I voted for you, I think. I don't think so.

Well, of course, thank you, Dr. T. It's been an honor to work with you. You will be missed. Your impact has been very positive and always honest and forthright, and that's the way you are, and I appreciate that. Your personality fitted to a T with this responsibility that you had. One of the tougher roles in the county, being HR director for different departments. And truly appreciate you and wish you the best.

I've only known you for about eight months now, but you're a fantastic person. I've learned so much from you, and we will miss you dearly. So have a good life and enjoy it.

I'm just going to say, I'm going to tell the people online and in this audience, 95% of the time when you walk in that justice center and you hang a right and you go down that hall, that lady's office is open. And that lady welcomes you into her office. And her expertise, you cannot match it. In what she does, the advice she gives, words can't describe it. But that friendly open door, that is so important. That is so important. We're going to seriously miss her. It will be extremely difficult to replace her. She has absolutely been an asset to this county.

Commissioner? Well, you know I love you. It's so...

You have an amazing ability to look at things from such an aerial view. And you know all of the problems. And you're still positive all the time. And when things have gotten out of control, or stressful, or even when they're really good, you always have a very steady perspective. And it's been amazing. I think you've truly been a blessing to this county. You've been a voice of reason and encouragement. You've been positive when people are feeling down. You've helped people come back to filling the role that they're meant to fill. And I really couldn't appreciate you enough. I think that you ar

Yeah, I would judge it. I was kind of attacked, but that's okay. For over 24 years, I tried to get ESDs in this county. But as everybody knows, county government takes three votes. I was the only one who lived inside a corporate city. Everybody else was in a corporate area. So when they said, well, here comes another tax, they said, oh, no, no, we don't want that. So it failed every blessed time. And I say, one other thing is I have always advocated for the employees. And I think now more than ever, we need to get them from the back of the bus to the front of the bus. We always fund everybody

Yeah, 3%. We wouldn't have gotten that without a reserve, a healthy reserve. We're trying to do our very best with limited funds. So I know it's hard for you. But once again, I think the money should go to the employees to say thank you, to keep them here. And I've done it every year. And I'm sorry if the police chief's upset with me. Volunteer fire departments are just that, volunteers. We need paid professional firefighters if we're going to do this stuff right. And the sheriff's department, he needs people. But once again, where's the money going to come from? I can fund it for one year, ma

I'm going to speak after a while, but Judge, can you get back to that graph that you put up about the $1.04 billion?

Yes. Those of you that know me know I'm not scared to take on issues and say what I feel. If you look up there at the key takeaway... State required exemptions and corrections over 65 tax ceiling reduce the taxable value. I listen to every one of you good people and I agree with you. But we're sitting up here right now in a situation where we are taking the brunt of what the state has inflicted upon us. It's not the county employees. It's not the volunteer fire departments. It's what the state has done to us. And I seriously agree with Commissioner Ott in that I think the appraisal district pr

Commissioners, any other comments? We have discussed this many times. We've had a lot of budget workshops, and I think all of y'all are aware of the revenue shortfall and what we're faced with. I do want to recognize former Commissioner Seidenberger sitting in the audience, who's probably very happy he's not sitting up here right now doing this today. But I get it. You know, I've been serving this county and this city and my community for over 40 years. And I do care. That's why I'm here. And I have a passion to help people. That's just a burden or a benefit. It depends on how you look at that

So I'm going to talk in a little bit of bullet points, because a lot of things were said today. And I think a lot of valuable things have been said. And I think, first of all, I want to extend some thanks to the citizens that took their time to come here today and talk to us. We appreciate you, because everyone's time is really your most important resource, your time and your health. But I also want to thank the court. Because this has been quite a ride. We've had quite a ride. We have a lot of years of experience in this court. I personally have really benefited from that, from learning from

What I would like for us to do in the next fiscal year is engage the services of an outside auditor so that they can go through with the numbers that the appraisal district has given us, work together with our tax assessor, and see what we can come up with so that we can make decisions going forward. Now, the benefit of that is that we will be able to look at those numbers and those figures and get that information throughout the next fiscal year, plan accordingly, and speak and communicate with our departments and the public as it goes, so that this is not an unexpected surprise this time. Ho

I have more to say and some specific things that I don't know if the court wants to reserve more of the conversation for the actual action item if we want to try to cover a lot of this just up top. That's your preference. Do we want to cover more of the conversation right now up front or during the action item?

I'm just going to ditto what she says about FAR. Two weekends ago, GCFR was up north of Seguin at a big fire. It was close to 40 acres outside of Marion on fire. And who put it out? The volunteers. So to this rhetoric about are they qualified or not? If my pasture's on fire, I want a wet hose there. I want that truck there. I don't care if it says McQueenie or New Berlin or GCFR. And my constituents are the same way. And until we figure out how to make GCFR move forward, these volunteers are our firefighters. They're all we got. And we got to make it work. And to some of the points that were m

I wanted to briefly discuss one of the propositions I had within the Environmental Health Department. Mr. Warnes, can you see if Ms. Valdez is available?

Thank you, Mr. Peter. While he's doing that, I wanted to bring up one of the issues that we received some correspondence on from the sheriff in regard to the chaplain position. This court did discuss the availability of a chaplain position for the sheriff's office. It's my understanding, and if I'm unclear on that, then Sheriff, would like for you to clarify this for me. We did bring this up, and I understand that that position is paid for entirely and annually from commissary funding. However, our county attorney informed us that it does need to be something that comes before commissioner's c

No, I don't think so. I don't think anyone's requesting it unless somebody feels differently than I do, so I don't want to speak for the rest of the court members. But I wanted just to give my impression, because I know we had received correspondence from the sheriff in regard to the creation of a chaplain position asking us to do that.

It was my understanding in the last conversation that we had before this court that the retirement and perhaps the benefits were the reasons that we needed to maybe talk about it as a court and vote on it, other than just the simple creation of it.

Okay. So, you know, I think there must be some sort of misunderstanding here, because we received correspondence from the sheriff, and sheriff, you know, any input you have is totally welcome, but in our correspondence from the sheriff, we have received that if we don't do this, then we will, there's a potential that he is going to mandamus us to do this, and As a court member, I'm surprised and a little confused about that because I don't feel like there was any negative conversation about it. I think we brought it up. We talked about whether or not we needed those ancillary funds for retirem

What I want to note, court, is can we talk about that right now? As I stated before in the prior court, I have no issue with it. I think that it would be fine and beneficial if we did have a chaplain that is paid for out of commissary fund on an annual recurring basis. I don't have an issue with that person's benefits in or retirement. I think that it would be a benefit to the county. I think that that person would be made available to our law enforcement. I think that it's a positive thing. I wanted to see if the court would entertain that conversation right now.

I think for me, some of the confusion came from, you know, I attended one of the meetings with the department heads and some of the electeds. We were presented. We were given a proposition. There were 14 new positions in this proposition. There wasn't conversation about the chaplain. We had the conversation in court. I did not feel that we were necessarily opposed to it. Certainly not a majority was opposed to it. And so I was surprised to receive that correspondence. it was not my impression of how we left the conversation. I wanted to address it now with the court, if we can talk about that,

I think we need to have some opinions from court members. As I said, I'm for it. Could any of the rest of you let us know so that we can try to include or not include that in the decisions we have today?

So the funding out of the commissary fund for the chaplain is still at your requested rate of, is it 2201? What is the funding request, the pay rate? I don't remember the pay rate off the top of my head. I think it's 2201. I think that's what that is. Is that correct?

Judge, I don't want to be negative, but this has come to the court before as far as funding someone out of a special fund. And it lasts for two or three years, and then all of a sudden they come up and say, oh, we're running out of money. We need to put him back in the regular budget. So for two years, don't do it. I'll be here. I understand you want it. You feel it's really, really needed. But as long as it continues to come out of the commissary fund, I have no problem with it. But when you try to move it into the general fund, then, you know.

I know you've done the research on how effective a reverend or priest or whatever you want to call him can work inside the way there. Maybe you can reach these people and put them on the right path. That sure would be nice. Thank you. It'd be nice if they didn't come back, right? Absolutely.

Any other comments, questions? No, I think we have a consensus. Thank you. Yes, I did want to talk about environmental health briefly. Ms. Valdez, if you wouldn't mind coming to the podium. Court, Ms. Valdez and I had the opportunity to have a conversation yesterday, and she did have a proposition for the court within this budget cycle that I do support and wanted to bring in front of you. So, Ms. Valdez, if I start to say this incorrectly or lack some detail, please feel free to jump in. There is a clerk two position that is currently and recently vacant within environmental health. The pay i

And I do want to signify that the position that Ms. Valdez did request was a position, a development coordinator, a person that would need a specific skill set and experience to fulfill. And they would be able to do a certain caliber and level of work. So the position she's asking for, that she's certainly acknowledging that we're perhaps not in a financial position to fund at this point. that sort of work was not able to be covered by the person previously in the clerk role, and it wasn't the same job description by any means or anywhere near it. So I do support this change, and I would hope

Yes, no problem. Let me pull some of that.

No, the three positions are planner, assistant planner, and floodplain manager. The current step in grade is an 11.5. Danielle, is that correct? Yes. Okay.

Okay, great. And a two-step increase, of course, would be a 13.5. The current for the assistant planner is a 9.3. with the two-step increase being an 11.4. Current for the floodplain manager is an 8.3, with a one-step increase being a 9.3. Total cost on the high side of that is 24K. If you're giving the two-step increase to both the planner and assistant planner, if you're doing the one-step for each of those three positions, it's approximately 14K, both which fall within the monies that have been set aside for that Clerk 2 position that is unfilled.

No, you're good. Todd, Judge, could you come back up again? I have a different topic. And he's not aware that I'm bringing this up. So we have the Marion Project. We've spent $2.7 million on it. It's going to be a, well, it is a beautiful building. And Judge Friesenhahn sent all of us recently an email about his staffing needs. There is concern that we're going to open this beautiful building and we're going to put a sign up there, but we're only open Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday because we've got to work the rest of the time. So, and we want to try to put a tax clerk there, but the tax asse

But that's up to you all. Well, when you look at the workload and the amount of money that you bring in from your second only to Precinct 1, and if you had a weigh station, you'd be far ahead of Precinct 1. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, what I've always looked for is productivity. And actually, people will say, but how much money are you bringing into the county? And you're bringing in quite a bit of money to the county and taking care of things. So I see where it's needed. You just look at the numbers. It's one, four, two, and three.

So if you have a part-time, you could make full-time. I got two part-times. That's the answer.

It's not the total answer, but it certainly helps him at the present time. Because everybody keeps comparing us to Comal and Hayes. Well, they don't fund tax-exempt people. They don't do fire EMS. They have ESDs. So all the money goes to where it's really needed in the county employees to get the job done. So that's, once again, we need to take care of our employees first. And if there's any money left over, then you dole it out. But this year, there's not going to be any money left over.

To move both his part-times and full-time, what would that cost, Chris? I would have to run the force.

We can look at one if you'll run the numbers for one. I'm not sure what they're being paid now. Because you have three and two halves.

I think that's what it was. What would that cost difference?

We found out that the city church is not controlling any unincorporated area on the fire department. That's $25,000 there.

Judge, would that help us keep the doors open?

Once again, they're the backbone of this county.

I will echo to you that the Justice of the Peace Precinct 1 is also requesting that one of his part-time clerks be moved to a full-time as well. And I would ask that if we are inclined to do this for Precinct 4, that we would do it for Precinct 1 as well.

When Katherine worked for you originally before she went to MVBA, she's a rising star. That woman is extremely intelligent and knows exactly what to do on computers and how to streamline things. Matter of fact, it's going to be MVA's loss when she goes out of that way. But she'll do a great job for the county and always for you. She's like having two people. Absolutely.

When you look at his numbers, he definitely needs the extra staff. Once again, it's revenue coming in, and he's more than making up for it. Yeah, it's a wash.

I have a couple other individual items to bring up if we are ready to move forward. I have been contacted by Judge Kaler. He is our magistrate, as you all know. He is doing a great job. He is our full-time magistrate. Ms. Sunny Middleton, she is an attorney. She is our part-time magistrate. They do have a lot of fear, I think, going forward due to the I'm sorry. Let me interrupt myself real quick. Judge, the current clerk for the Justice of Peace Precinct 1 is a clerk 1. It is a clerk 1. Yes, sir. Okay. Back to the magistrate. So Ms. Middleton is covering every single night and every single we

Okay. I appreciate the feedback. We'll move on to the next one. The next thing I wanted to talk about, and again, this is something I brought up several times, was our admin, Commissioner's Court admin. Again, as we've discussed with the court, I don't think that her salary, the way that she's graded, is appropriate at all. Multiple counties that are within our similar numeric comparison have an administrative assistant for each commissioner. We have one administrative assistant total for all four commissioners. I again want to reiterate my hesitation and apprehension toward losing a lot of th

Our admin is just like any other department, but we're seeing more and more work. And she is getting the job done, facilitating things. I mean, there's some things that people don't see, She keeps having to deal with families that someone passes on and they don't want to accept the body. And she has to find a place with dignity to go with that. And she spends a lot of time on that. She definitely is getting the job done and I think I could support a pay increase for her. It takes a long time to train someone too and she's moved into that very well. We don't want to lose her.

So the challenge I see, and people are going to say here he goes again, is what we're doing is a leapfrog effect here. We're now going individually, departmentally, and we're nitpicking and not saying that people aren't deserving of it, but then we're going to have another department head come up and another one. Ms. Douglas is shaking her head, it's going to turn into something that we've discussed and the challenges we've faced. So again, I can't justify that leapfrog effect because it's going to turn into what we're doing. It's a process, but I understand everybody's burden as we've heard a

Commissioner Wolverton, would you share your thoughts with us?

If the court is unwilling to make that move, then I would ask that the court take half of my conference budget and put that toward hers. I want to urge the court. I don't want to comment too heavily on the changes that this court is going to experience. But going forward in the future, I am the only person that intends to run again, and I want people that are experienced and are doing a good job to stay and give the best service possible to the county. I really want to urge this court to look at our administrative assistant in the unique situation that she's in. This is the only administrative

The difference is mine was a non-occurring. transfer. It's a one-time deal where yours may not be. I've given Mr. Vasquez money out of my line also to take care of problems that we had that he was short on. I've done every bit of my education, and I think I had something like $3,000 left over, which was far more than what I actually needed. So some of the conference lines are grossly, you know, It's got too much money in it. All you need is 18 hours. Anyway, it's just, you know, my money went as a one-time thing to help the safety of this county.

I understand. I do. And if that needs to be something that continues for as long as I'm here, I don't have a problem with that. But, again, I really want to rearrange the necessity of keeping her here. Is there somewhere we can meet in the middle on that?

She was hired to take over the commission's court agenda and everything else and help Stephen out. Has that worked out?

So it's been able to take some stuff off of Mr. Tye's plate.

I'm just going to say it again. I don't have a problem with what Commissioner Ott is saying. I will say this. I do my job differently probably than the other commissioners. She absolutely knows where I am every day. She'll say, I call in, anything going on, Taylor? No. Yes, you got to take care of this. I keep her extremely busy, and that's just me. I'm not speaking for the other three commissioners. I believe that she deserves some compensation. She is the face of this court when we are having court, because she's there on the computer. with people interacting and so forth. So I have no probl

My calculations were not based on 28. It was based on 27.

Well, if we don't have three votes for it, then I don't know that that's even a relevant conversation. But I will urge this court, again, to look at what she's expected to do. And I wouldn't say this out loud without her permission and having talked to her about this, but she's expected to work for all four of us for $49,000 a year before tax. I can't imagine somebody in that position doing one job for all four people that is making that. I mean, that's an expectation to do a whole lot of things. And again, our surrounding counties have four people doing that job. I mean, it's not good. It's n

Yes, Ms. Kuehl. I think taking a jab at our employee is absolutely and completely inappropriate. There are plenty of people in this courtroom I could take jabs at and I won't do that because it's not professional. There are plenty of people in your office I could do the same thing with. You taking these low blows, you telling the court, good luck, publicly, you turning around and looking at another elected official and making smart comments toward her during this court is inappropriate decorum. I'd ask that you refrain from that. We are not here to tear anybody else down. You may have your opi

I want to say that that is something that I have discussed with Taylor, and it's something that she is fine with. I definitely appreciate Dr. T's recommendation toward the others. But not being able to speak about anything that occurs in executive session, certainly I'm aware of that, and everyone sitting up here knows what was discussed during an executive session or what wasn't. So we'll leave it at that.

Any other discussion on that topic? Yes. I did want to talk a little bit about there are several regrades. And I do, you know, I understand the court is in the position they're in. But there are If we would be open to talking about this, there are several re-classifications and or re-grades for several folks that I do want the court to consider. There are some requests in this proposition with several of our departments, and there are several department heads here. If they want to talk about those specifically, I certainly would be open to some of those changes. I know Ms. Balk was unable to b

And again, I don't want to speak for several of the other department heads that are in here, but please know that I would welcome you to come up here if any of you want to talk. And that being said, I want to shift to the last topic that I had other than that, which is law enforcement. First, I want to tell you that their proposed budget was a clerk position for the Constable Precinct 1. I have spoken with the Constable's Office, and Precinct 1 does have a part-time, unfilled deputy position currently. That deputy position is funded at either, I believe it's $33,000 or $5,000, and the Constabl

Okay, I want to keep on going. Court, I'm going to talk about the elephant in the room. I am not a fan of how the Commissioner's Court has been painted in social media. I think that was very difficult for all of us to stomach. I think that all of us up here are trying to do a job It is very difficult for all of us when we receive phone calls and emails from people that are angry at us from all of the things on social media that we've received. I will only speak for myself in saying that it is very frustrating to have to tell people that my position is that I support law enforcement when I cont

Yes, again, I'm going to reissue the request I made originally when we first talked about this, that we do have the $3 million set aside for land and building purchases. Part of the conversation today did surround us having a building in Precinct 4 that we're worried about staffing, a fire station that we don't have enough firefighters for. The building in Precinct 4, we're looking to try to put some folks in there, both in the tax assessor's office. We have some space that's unfilled in several of the JP's offices, things like that. We are, and I know that we have to do this to anticipate gro

We also need help in every department we have here.

Everybody is a valuable cog in this machine.

I understand. I'm not trying to prioritize anybody over anybody else. It is simply that... Law enforcement is law enforcement, and when any of us need help, that is who we're calling. If we have a fire, I mean, those two things are the life or death things. I mean, everyone here has important jobs. I have an important job, but their job is more important than my job.

I understand that we have JPs that need extra people. We have the county attorney over that way that needs extra people. Actually, he needs more space than extra people. So there's a lot of things we're going to look into, but... It's a tough one. If you spend all this money this year, where is it going to come from next year? That's my only question. I don't have a crystal ball. I wish I'd say the governor would get his head out of his backside and get things right, but it's going to be very, very difficult.

I understand that, and like I said, you know, we're spending... Sorry, I can't remember this figure, but I know our COLA was 1.8 or 2.4 for the 3%. I know it's one of those, and that's obviously a big difference, but a lot of numbers that are in front of me right now, but if you know, if we come to a situation where we can't do that next year and that might be something that offsets it, that might be something that we have to do. I acknowledge that and understand that, but I think if you ask anyone in this room and you ask people in the public as well, would you rather look at that for next ye

I understand. I understand completely. But we need to also understand that next year, I've got two guys that are going to be here. We're going to have to do something about tax rate because you're creating more cost, more overhead, and the only way we're going to be able to pay for it is the tax increase. And we've already heard the people complain about that. I understand that. I do. Because I do believe you voted no when I said 40 cents, because that would have covered everything.

I voted no to a double-digit tax increase. That's correct. Because I think a double-digit is more than the populace can stomach. I don't think people want a double-digit tax increase.

But you want to fund all these programs. The only way you're going to be able to fund these programs is to do that.

I don't think that we need a double-digit tax increase.

So you think you can do it without that?

Well, I think that the total, if we look at some of these things... Not just a few of them, just everybody.

Everyone who actually needs extra people. And every office needs it.

I understand that every office needs it, and I think that that's not feasible right now for us, to be able to do these things for every office. I wish it was. I don't think it is. I know that there are some that feel that all or nothing is the approach. I'm not one of those. I think that sometimes we have to look at certain things and make decisions. I know it's hard, and I respect your decision. And if your decision is not the same as mine, I respect it.

Well, the horse is beat to death. Take the saddle off.

I'm so sorry. One more that I didn't bring up. It was a request by several of the retirees and retired law enforcement. They asked that the court also think about the retiree COLA because they are not feeling that the COLA this year is adequate. I did inform them that I would pass that concern along to the court. So I am doing that.

I appreciate the information. Thank you so much.

Well, you're right. It's going to be a built-in tax increase. There's no two ways about it. It's not going to set well with the people, but if they want the services, this is the only way we're going to be able to get to them. Once again, if we continue to dip out of our reserve, like I said, $3 million this year, well, next year it's going to be $6 million because you already take the $3 million out. And so you want the same thing. It just keeps adding and adding and adding. Pretty soon, your reserve is gone if we don't get some large corporation side here that's got a lot of taxable value to

Judge, when you talk about the... The abatements we've given, it's just on brick and mortar. Furniture, fixtures, and equipment is not abated. Ladder roads are not abated. So we're giving up a very small amount to be able to get more in the future. And that's what some people just can't see. Yeah, we're going to yell that. Why did you give this guy a nine-year abatement? Well, it's actually nine-year on brick and mortar only, and it goes down to five years. So at that point, plus the rollback tax that we're going to get will be a huge shot in the arm. There's a lot of things we have to look at

No, and that's what we're being asked to do, right? Yeah. So in our next public hearing, we'll talk about the tax rate. But currently, we have that to go with, right? So bottom line to me, it comes down to what I've said before. 101 positions, we have to decide if we're going to fund out of reserve additional. 3% COLA, I'm still in favor of that, or even a 4%. possibly bringing back the baseline of 1,000 in addition to. But scenario, let's just say, okay, $1 million land purchase thing comes into play. Where do you go with it? Who gets what? What positions get funded? How does that work? Those

Judge, I would like Item E pulled for discussion.

Judge, it seems that he has sufficient hours this year, and once again, it looks as though he's using taxpayer money to get his doctorate in jurisprudence. I don't think he should be getting his doctorate on the backs of county taxpayers. So I would like a motion that we do not approve his out-of-town, his out-of-county, or actually his out-of-state travel. There's plenty of courses in Texas that he can go to that would take care of this.

I would ask, Judge Squires did ask if this was pulled, that he had the opportunity to step out of court and come speak to the court in regard to this item. Would the court be inclined to continue with the agenda until his arrival? And I just let him know.

Not today. I'd like some other time if he wants to come inside here. But he has, you know, how many hours does he need?

I don't know anything about his hours. I can't say that. He gave me a little blip to talk about if the court wanted detail and also asked that he could come address the court if it became an issue.

Well, I've just asked to pull it. If somebody wants to make a motion to approve it, they can do that.

Okay. Well, then let me give the court... Oh, excuse me, Judge.

I just want more information. I'm on board with that idea.

He is walking over currently. I can give you what I know for now. He says this is judicial training. This is part of what he needs to be on the teaching faculty for the National Judicial College. There are less than five judges in Texas that are on this faculty. He has received a full scholarship for this conference for tuition and fees. He would be asking for reimbursement for food and travel. and has attached the agenda and scholarship letter to the item and is on the way. So that's what I have at this time.

I just want to know how does going to this conference help Guadalupe County when it's become a teaching facility for the National Judicial College? How does it help Guadalupe County? And do you even get any CLEs or continuing education credits for it?

Question being, how many CLEs do you get by taking this course? I couldn't find any inside the way there because it was all about teaching and getting a degree to be on this thing. Once again, how does that actually help Guadalupe County?

So this course, if you retire, you can just move right into the teaching degree with this.

That's my question. I just don't see how it benefits Guadalupe County other than we'd have one on the board. What part of my answer did you not understand? That you said that it benefited Guadalupe County to be one of five people on this prestigious, I guess, faculty.

I just think if someone wants to do that much for their own benefit, that they should pay for it. That's just what I'm thinking. It's my opinion. It can come to the vote. You can ask the other questions. I see a lot of money going out of this place. We already have your CLEs in place, and this will give you more.

OK, I heard you. Anyway, that's my question. You heard what? I'm sorry? I said I heard you when you said did not go towards it. OK.

I want to tell the court just a little bit. With my experience as a lawyer, there are certain trainings and certain things that you can't get into until you have some sort of qualification that's certainly more applicable for judges. I do think the more qualified that we can have our attorneys and judges be, the better. This is something I would support if any of our attorneys attorneys wanted to do it or if any of our judges wanted to do it, if they could get into it. I also think that accolades received by our leaders are a positive thing for the county. I think it makes the county more attr

Motion to approve item E on the consent list.

How did it all fall through the cracks, not knowing that this was coming, that it couldn't have been in the original quote?

And they were... This is all the firm that we picked. We hired this firm, yes, sir. So we picked them, we gave them all the information they needed, and now they're coming back saying, well, you didn't have this there?

No, no, no. I mean planned, like, construction-wise. Because to me, change order indicates unplanned.

So, you know, like, when we had that soil testing issue and we had to retest and there was a change order with that, too. Now, these were the people that ultimately were doing that testing, right? Correct. Except for that the change order came through someone else's name? There was somebody else's name on that change order, though. It was probably about five months ago.

This is kind of the fear and the concern that we had going into this is that, you know, we have this deadline, and then the change orders started coming in. I didn't really think that the first version of the dirt testing was... I didn't really agree with it. I didn't like it. I think it was a foreseeable thing that they should have not had to come back and ask for more money for it. But are we in a situation where we're on such a tight deadline with this funding that we really just have to move forward? I mean, how many more of these are they able to do?

That's all right. I mean, I can talk about it now or then.

If this is something that we have to do to move forward with this thing or we're going to ultimately lose money because of the federal funding involved, then I guess we have to do it.

Correct. It's part of the, you know, we had an original agreement with UES. This is third-party inspections. This was something that came up with the EOC project. And it's adding $7,100 and $7,120 to their original contract.

Is this part of the grant that we got, or is this out of our budget? This is out of our budget. It's not.

If there's no further discussion, I'll move to approve a change order with us for additional construction material testing services for the Emergency Operations Center project in the amount of $7120. Second.

One other question. We're already testing the concrete, correct? Yes, sir. What else are they going to test? The cinder block, the grout, the mortar?

And we pay all those bills, not ARPA? Yes, sir.

Why was that not part of the architectural bid? It's not part of it. It's the soft cost.

Right. It's the owner's responsibility. The owner's rep. Because they can't hire an inspection firm. It's not ethical. We have to.

No, I've already paid all the bills on Marion. All the additional testing? Yeah. Okay. We did it. Yeah. That's why I'm asking this question.

This stuff coming up after the fact is what bothers me the most. It should all be brought up front so we know exactly what it's going to cost. This thing is just, what's the cost overrun on this project right now? I can't quote that off the top of my head, sir. I'd have to get you. It's too late now, but I'm just curious as to how all this stuff sits through the crash. We're still within budget? Yes.

Yeah, there's some contingency funds. We're still within budget. I think last meeting we talked about there was over $200,000 in contingency that was still available. So we're within the budget, within the fees, within everything that we've anticipated.

This is something we have to do. Yes, sir. Correct. That's our contractor.

Judge, I'll make a motion that we approve Item D, award the contract for RFP 26-16, Drug Testing Services, the DSI Medical, the sole sponsor proposal. Second.

All right. So these proposals are for the two projects with ARPA funding. If the court wishes to bring this owner's rep on to help manage and go through some of these processes, possibly save us some money, look at cost savings, streamline the process. Again, this was a proposal not to exceed. They did a proposal on each project, and Mr. Pinder may have some more specific details, but it's just for the consideration if we want to get them in five months on a five-month deal to finish this out.

No, sir. I will move to approve for Task Orders 1 and 2 with Broaddus & Associates to be the owner's representative services for the Emergency Operations Center Warehouse Project and the Emergency Response Center Project.

Yeah, so there's conflicting. They will need to verify that. And Wolverton may know the historics of it. And now Danielle is up here. So the general idea in the beginning was, while we're doing this, let's do this now. for future.

Y'all can check on the animal control. The architect on animal control. That was when you were here, Commissioner. Sorry. I'm pretty sure I said no. I have no idea. I don't recall putting a septic tank in there.

It's on sewer. I do not recall ever putting it in a septic tank.

We need to verify. Put a camera down. You'll find out.

Do you need a conference table? I got a brand-new 144-inch walnut still in the box. Let me measure it. We have two big conference rooms.

Ordered for Precinct 3, the Elbel building, along with the two workstations. You'd be surprised what I find over there. I've got a big screen TV I'm still looking for the cord for to see if it works.

You can certainly come get it. Reallocate it. Like I said, it's still in the box. I was talking with the...

No, sir. Move to approve budget amendment 26-94, transfer of funds from the Emergency Response Center fire station budget to the Emergency Operations Center warehouse for additional professional services and appliance expenses.

Yeah, I have a question. Yes, ma'am. For some of the things that Commissioner Wolverton is talking about, could they be used in lieu of some of these furnitures or fixtures?

I've got pictures of them. I'll be happy to show them. Okay.

Is there a motion? Yes. Move to approve Budget Amendment 26-96 to transfer funds from elections hourly employees and election equipment for additional early voting clerks, temporary part-time and election judges, and clerks' expenses. Second.

Just one question. When will we get an idea how much it's going to cost us for this new equipment?

The ones that are outdated that we have to.

After the 26th election in November, our next major one will be in 28, correct?

We may have a big one on the Justice Center, the new Justice Center.

Well, Judge, I put in front of everybody the... Deceased transport and autopsies called for the entire year from 25 to 26. JP1 had 12, JP2, 14, JP3, 11, JP4, 18. And autopsies called for was JP1, 8, JP2, 7, JP3, 4, and JP4, 7. And it's been brought to my attention that they don't have to go out and do the autopsies anymore. A police officer can now call and just ask them over the phone. no autopsies or inquest inquest

I know you started on the JP, but I mean... He was first, wasn't he?

What we do with like across the board kind of a deal.

Two things really quick. One, Judge Terry wanted the audience in the court to know that he was unable to be here due to a doctor appointment. Two, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Constable Springer indicated to this committee he did not want an additional raise, and they did not give him anything additional.

I think he's where he already was. He thought it would be best if we gave, and he just threw a number out, everybody $60,000 and lower gave them the increase.

No, I'm talking about this grievance committee finding.

That's what he said during the grievance committee.

Right. They voted to not make a change. They did.

Correct. Okay. So this was based on 3% longevity or COLA?

After a conversation both with Judge Terry and Constable Springer after the grievance committee meetings, they both did indicate to me that it was not It was more of the process that they disagreed with and not that either one of them wanted more money for themselves. They both wanted me to indicate to the court that they do not need this court to vote either one of them in for more money, but that they did not like that the elected officials overall did not want the, excuse me, did not receive the COLA same as everyone else. So I think that it is both of their desires as indicated to me withi

So you want to do a COLA for everybody and reinstall the longevity as normal, and then $1,000 to the hourly people?

That's all. I'm just curious. We don't do anything, or we do something?

Well, I don't think I understand the question.

Well, you said they didn't want the raise. But yet the committee voted on a raise. Right. So we have to either say we go along with the committee, or we don't go with the committee, or we go ahead and do everybody this particular way. The 3% COLA, the reinstalled longevity the way it's supposed to be. Is that what you're looking for?

No, no. It's my understanding that we can't make any adjustments to any elected officials outside of those that file these grievances.

My question about this is I'm inclined to agree with the committee because, as I said yesterday to them, this is a process, and the process was followed. But my question is, okay, you give this increase to a certain elected official, and I did question that in my mind right away. What do you do with the rest? But the other thing is, let's take the justice of the peace precinct three. If we grant this and he's no longer in that office, does it go back to what everybody else is getting? Or does it set it for that office? Am I making sense of what I'm saying?

My understanding of the statute reading is that it applies to the office and not the person. So I think that the budget line would remain consistent regardless of who the person is in the chair.

And the numbers show that Precinct 3 is, I guess, the When it comes to workload, they're at the bottom of it. Everybody else has more going through their office than precinct 3, simply because it's been compressed so much. It's just the city of Schertz and a portion of Ciblo. They don't have, I guess, the issues that the 1, 2, and 4 have.

So if Precinct 3 wasn't there next year, you could put it back to what all the others are getting?

We can put it back any year to anything. This is just for the remainder.

I'm inclined to not support any of these. I think that it would be, let me say it this way, the intent of the Commissioner's Court in making the decision to not give the elected officials the extra COLA was so that we could have more to either make the tax rate better for the public or to support the employees. And I think in that spirit, I will continue with that. I think it helps that at least two of the three have said that they do not want the raise, that they just disagree with the process. I hear them. I hear what they've said. I understand that they, you know, made a stand for accountab

I appreciate the Grievance Committee for being present. However, I think that this is a very complicated budget year, and we were really unable within one session or even one day to explain to them the complexities of what we are having to go through for this. So I'm inclined not to support any of it, although I really appreciate them. But we didn't have enough show up to make it mandatory on the court. My thought is that we don't approve these.

My question is, if we just do longevity, that doesn't affect the salaries, correct? Because longevity is something they have earned over the years. It would not affect the salary. It affects their compensation, but not actually their salary. Their salary stays the same.

Okay. I was just looking for the hourly employees. Yes. We'll go and try to figure it out.

OK, I'm going to move to deny the outcome of the Salary Agreements Committee public hearing and the recommendation of the Commissioner's Court regarding fiscal year 2027 salary and personal expenses for the following elected county and precinct officers. One, John Terry, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 3. Two, Teresa Keel, County Clerk. And three, James Springer, Constable, Precinct 1. Second.

Okay. Move to approve action item N, setting the salaries, expenses, and allowances of the elected county and precinct officers for the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget. Second.

It's been a long day, right? Lots of discussion, and this is totally meant to be funny because we need a laugh right now. When Commissioner Ott stepped out, I'm like, okay, let's get this done before she gets back. Just totally trying to be funny because we need a laugh today. So, again, going back through the discussions this morning and over the last... what seems like a decade now. I get it. We have emergent needs. We have population growth demands, law enforcement, fire and rescue, every department we have, right? 42 departments. But the emergent need has always been with us, employees. I

So I'm not saying that's what the million is for, but I'm just trying to throw out a number of what we have to deal with realistically. It's not just the salary, it's the benefits, the equipment in this case, everything involved. That's why I always ask about space and computers and, you know, you get MIS involved, that's a whole other budgetary process. That's a challenge we face. Hopefully, we can settle this in short order. But I'm willing to go that little bit to see where we are. But again, it's a matter of deciding who gets what, like I've always said. Whether you go $1 million or $10 mi

To the discussion that we were having at length that Commissioner Ott was discussing, like some of the positions with Daniela, we did mention, but we didn't put a figure on I'd like to put a figure on the BFDs of 350,000. Last year was 500,000. I don't have the exact math, but what Commissioner Ott was talking about and the BFDs, all that lumped together, you could probably do that for, I'm going to say, 600,000 to 700,000. I'm not inclined to use reserves for a large number of reserves to Commissioner Wolbertson's point. Next year, you've got to do it again. But I think we could go support Co

Just trying to fund one or two people in every department because the county attorney needs people, the sheriff needs people, the fire said they need people. Everybody, the clerks need people. Ms. Auder? Ms. Klein? You need people? Always.

will go back to this I'm sorry to interrupt I will go back to this and it's it's not a great deal of money but in in the Marion building you know we really need we're going to open the building and we can't put a sign up that says well we couldn't fund the position so it's closed for a day or two out of the week you know we we can't do that and we're not talking about a great deal of money here so i'd be in support of that so you're in support of giving judge hunter a full-time person from part-time yeah yeah that's what you said yeah because their workload has increased too

Judge, I'm sorry to interrupt. No, you're fine. You did the budget. You're the budget officer. So, like, I'm looking at one of our worksheets from the budget workshop. Yes. If you look at, you know, we're trying not to dictate next year's budget with what we do now. Is this what you were looking at? I'm looking at this one. Okay, but the bottom?

Okay. What part of what you projected, like I'm looking at 365 labs, okay, that's a maintenance and licensing, so we'll have to pay that again. When you made the budget, what part of like this stuff right here, these big items would we not do again? Do you know of any item?

There were some, for security, there were some items of security of the buildings. So I'm trying to keep us from backing ourselves in a corner by looking at what we may not have to spend next year again. Am I making sense what I'm saying? Right.

This is various departments longevity $2,000 base.

It's back inside. This is good. No, this is not an update for now.

LOOKED AT EVERYBODY'S BUDGET, AND I'M ESTIMATING, YOU KNOW, NOT KNOWING WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN THE NEXT 30 DAYS, THAT WE SHOULD GET SOME 1.5, 1.6 BACK. I COULD BE WRONG. I'LL SIT DOWN WITH CHRIS, BUT AT THAT POINT, YOU COULD TAKE CARE OF THE LONGEVITY OF 1.3 AND NEVER EVEN TOUCH THE RESERVE.

What if we did 1,000 each for longevity?

Right. Is that palatable? And then we have 700 for other things?

Is that inclusive of the 30%? It's in addition to, right? Correct.

OK. Mr. Klein, have you run numbers as to approximately what we're going to be getting back from the budget

I was looking at it. It's not a good day to calculate.

Well, we may still be here tomorrow, you know. That's true. Trying to make it fun. Okay. So I think all of you can see we're trying. Okay. So, but the challenge again is what positions, if we do positions, what positions? I'm like in the conversation of where I was, 3% plus the 1,000 base. I think that helps everyone. We had some part-time discussions a while ago with like Associate Magistrate, Commissioner Ott brought up. We had some other part-time deputies, the full-time, those kind of discussions but again what do you want to do

I really wanted $2,000, but I don't think I'm going to get that vote, so I'll at least go with $1,000 to get to the people. 3% plus $1,000. Yeah, 3% plus $1,000. I'd really like to go $2,000. I think it's just $700,000 more. If we're going to dip in, we're dipping in. I'm not ready to put my toe in, but maybe all up to my ankle.

Let me understand what you're saying. You're saying a 3% COLA and a 1,000 longevity?

I'm saying 2,000 longevity. He's saying 1%.

Because we are, there's a possibility of losing people. You heard them today. And it's just a way of saying thank you very much for sticking with us, because it's been a rough year. And we weren't able to do as much as we'd like. Maybe if the crystal ball gets a little clearer, we'll be able to figure out what's going to happen. I'm just one vote, so. Anybody got a suggestion? I would like to see the Precinct 4, the part-time, go into full-time to help him out. Do we have any other part-time people?

Yes. Precinct 1 has a clerk that is part-time that they want to move to full-time as well. That's the JP. Constable 1 has a part-time deputy funded that they want to move into full-time.

Okay, that might be wrong. Two full-time, one part-time. Okay. There's one part-time that is filled. There's one part-time that is not filled, and they're having trouble filling it. They want to move that into a full-time.

So, sorry, I had to redo that in my head. They have two full-time, one part-time, another part-time open, I believe. Can someone correct me on that if I'm wrong? And I see Nick about to text me. He's going to tell me. I got to a certain point in hours today where my brain stopped working on that. Sorry.

Yes. So one of those part-time is filled and funded at $30,000, and then there's that extra $30,000 that is not funded.

No, so they have a person that is working part-time that wants to stay part-time, but they've been unable to fill the second part-time. So there's been that $30,000 sitting there for this entire fiscal year. They cannot get someone to accept a part-time job. They've only been able to speak to people that want to work full-time.

That's the part I didn't understand. Yes, yeah. I'm asking that we change that line so you'd move $30,000 out and allocate that toward a full-time and then fund the rest toward a full-time so that they can use that money to have another person.

Because I know we were talking about JP1 with the clerk and JP4, but for the constable... JP4 and JP1 both have part-time clerks that they would like to make into full-time clerks. Those two part-time positions are filled, and they want to convert those positions into full-time for those people. And then Constable 1 has an unfilled part-time they'd like to convert into a full-time. It's not filled, and that's the reason why.

Precinct 4 has got the same issue. They had two full-time and one part-time. They would like to make the part-time full-time also. Because between one and four, you're your most active constables.

One quick question. How long will that fund last? Is it reoccurring, regenerating every year?

And isn't it true also that you inspect and inspect and inspect? So it's not like that's a new business and you did one inspection. You're getting fees in all the time.

It's not a fee that's going to go away. You can continue funding this thing.

What else? Mr. Doug, as you've been sitting out there awfully quiet, I was trying to get the popcorn concession, make a little bit of money, but it's not going to work. Has someone been taking notes as to what we have come to some sort of consensus on?

A little bit. Environmental health changes, are we OK with that? Did no extra money change in the?

Yeah, just relocating. Yeah, I've got no problem with that.

Abolishing a position, moving the money. Okay, so we have, there's one. Okay, 3% COLA, right? There's two. And $2,000 in longevity. I think we're possibly at $1,000 longevity. I'm just trying to sneak it by Drew.

And then the part-timers we discussed, right? There was a discussion, what, JP4 clerk marrying part-time to full-time, is that correct? Yes. Yes. And then what about tax assessor, was that also? Right, JP4, JP1. Was there a tax assessor discussion like sometime yesterday when we talked about this with part-time clerk?

It was the conversation that Commissioner Gurman brought up about sharing tax Clark between the tax assessor and JP4, but then I think we shifted into the part-time to full-time.

And then the part-time associate judge for magistrate?

Yes, we did talk about that. I don't know where we've, I'm not sure I've leaned a consensus on it.

Yeah, we just talked about it, trying to go back through the notes myself.

Are we at consensus with the JP1 and JP4 part-time to full-time, though?

That's JP4, part-time to full-time, both, just staff, yeah. Then Constable 1, part-time to full-time, is a separate thing, but are we out of consensus with that?

Okay, so Constable 4 and 1 also part-time to full-time.

Is that correct? Are we at a consensus on the associate judge that would magistrate an additional part-time? How about the chaplain?

Well, that was out of commissary funds, right?

He's out of the commissary funds. That's not. Right. That's the sheriff's deal.

But we still need to take action to create the position. Okay, so we have a chaplain. We are at $7,000. OK. County Attorney's Office felony paralegal. I'm sorry. There's just been so many facts today. But did Mr. Wilborn say that was a forfeiture fund?

He said he could handle it for a while. For one year. For one year.

Is that out of his... Forfeiture fund. Yeah, forfeiture, okay. That's for one year. For one, yeah, that's fine.

That is something I would support, but I think if we want to move toward that one direction or another. I think they said they were fine with it.

We'll have to look at it next year because he runs out of money and he needs the person. What is the actual cost of it right now? Paralegal? Grade 8?

Yes. That's the one you're referring to?

Okay. And that's out of his forfeiture. Mm-hmm.

and i hate to hurt him next year you know if he doesn't have the money he needs the person so why don't we just go ahead and give it to him now and then save his forfeiture fund

So Constable Reyes couldn't be here, but he had just sent me a message relating to same situation, part-time deputy position, wanting to do the same consideration full-time. So here we go, that leapfrog effect that I talked about. But Precinct 2, of course, I'm going to support that. And I know the judge is sitting back here thinking, here we go.

So that's one, two, and four, part-time to full-time, right? Correct.

I don't know. Y'all tell me if you want to keep working through. I'm happy to rip that band-aid right now. I don't feel comfortable voting on an increased budget unless it includes fire protection for my precinct. Commissioner Gurman, I think, made an initiative to meet in the middle at $350,000 extra. If we can get a third vote to support that, I would also stand with that. Is there a third vote that would foresee a budget where we can include that?

And I'm going to interject this with that 350. Last year we did 500, so this would be less. But we kind of didn't have a good formula for the way we did it. And so my suggestion is you take the run numbers and let's say that one fire department does 20% of the runs then they get 20% of the 350,000. Likewise, if you have a fire department that doesn't seem to get to fires ever, they get nothing.

Then I'd be on board with we allocate $350,000 in the budget and then we move on at another point and figure out how that allocation is going to work. Aside from their regular contracts.

I can't support that because you're just throwing money at a problem and you're not solving it.

Commissioner, we don't have anybody else that primarily covers our areas. There has been so many fires in the last month where GCFR is tied up. That is who is putting out people's fires in their homes, in their pastures. That is who Precinct 104 has right now.

I don't have fire protection. I have some of Cibolo, but other than that, I don't have fire protection in Precinct 4. I have to have the volunteers. Well, they're there. You have Marion, you have New Berlin, and you have Cibolo. I know, but I have to pay Marion and New Berlin something. They can't operate on nothing.

So has there been a discussion, Commissioner, about Marion? Are they at a point where they can do their own city work? funding of a fire? I'm not understanding what you're saying. So the city of Marion, do they not have the capacity with their growth to support their own fire department? The city of Marion. Just a general question. The city of Marion... Because they have a police force, correct?

Two full-time and one part-time, I believe. So the city of Marion, if you lump it all together, it's 500 acres. That's it. It's not a huge city. And the Marion Fire Department is covering many, many, a large area. Right. Now, I'm not going to argue. I think the cities ought to be putting more into their fire departments. But the bulk of their runs are not in the city. The bulk of their runs are out in the rural areas.

Just a general question. Yeah. So we did the $500,000 last year, and I had apprehensions on that just because of the management of it. So, Ms. Klein, what's the balance? What do we have left on that account? Because basically it's set aside as part of the general reserve fund that you're using as needed, correct? Is that how that's set up? So my take on that is, let's not set an amount. that they come to court like the normal protocol is, they need funding, because this is above and beyond the contracted price, what we're paying them already. So if they need additional funding, as they've done

Okay. But again, it all had to come back to court. I guess my take is if there's a desperate need for it, then yes, that's up to the commissioner's court still. Even if you set aside $350,000, you still have to come to court to get approval. So above and beyond the contract, I don't know if I could support a separate fund for that, but going forward, of course, as needed, case by case, just like with any department. I mean, we went through how many budget amendments today? So that's kind of how I envision that working. Again, I'm not wanting to not fund volunteer fire departments. I don't want

Right. So that's my point. you put it under the tax revenue, that 350 takes away from what we're trying to do, I guess, with public safety, with positions and what we're trying to do up here. That's just my take on it.

I think a court is much less likely to grant individual requests.

but this is a set-aside fund for this. I think just by very title that it's good. They're going to have much more difficulty. We allotted specific amounts for the six that responded to us last year, and those six used those allotted amounts.

put some cushion on it, and that cushion allowed us to give some money to Geronimo VFD. I still am a little confused on why we did that, because we know that those items were going to be used by GCFR. I don't know why we didn't just give it to GCFR. Whatever. It's being used to fight fires. That's great. But we put it up. They used it. we held them to a strict standard on it, and they followed through. I mean, they used almost all of it, and I think the amount that's unused was the cushion that we gave them, because we gave them, I think it was $414,000 and change that we added up between the

Right. It all started with that grant, if I remember correctly. New Berlin needed the money. Correct me if I'm wrong. It was over $200,000, if I remember correctly.

I believe the highest request for an individual department was $129,000.

But I think that's how it started. Again, like you said, it's been a long day. My brain is mush. I'm going to dream about numbers tonight probably.

Yes, sir. New Berlin bought a truck. Marion bought a truck. Dunlap bought equipment.

They each had to come up individually, and we had to approve every time that their items that they asked for qualified for what we set this aside for, and they did it. There was a lot of hesitation that they wouldn't cooperate with the parameters we set, but they did. I think that Commissioner Gurman and I are both at a point where we're going to have I mean, I have a hard time voting for something that does not include this money. So I think that the judge is right. I think we should get down to that part. If we can have a third person support that, then I think we can move forward with it. I

I don't have a problem at all with the way we did it either, where they came back, they had an invoice or whatever, and they showed it to the court and we voted on it. That's fine, and I don't think they have a problem with that either.

No, sir. It's just you keep throwing money at it and things aren't getting any better.

But they are. They're responding to way more calls. What you need is people. But they have a ton. Not equipment, people. But they have a ton of people. Their volunteerism is up.

There are volunteers that have to hold down two jobs at times. If you really want to help these people, you need to get a full-time fire department over there through ESDs or special tax initiatives or continue to expand Guadalupe counties.

I have no problem exploring all of those options. I have no problem setting money aside for a fire study to explore the ESDs. I have no problem with adding firefighters for GCFR right now. But we cannot add enough firefighters, and we cannot create an ESD tomorrow, and we won't get the money the next day to have sufficient fire protection for Precincts 1 and 4 right now. It's something we can't do. I mean, we can, again, we can beat this dead horse. we're putting our people at risk today right now if we don't have more money for these VFDs. And I want to say that being said, I am also in suppo

I'M GOING TO MAKE THIS. WHAT WE'RE PAYING THEM NOW ON REGULAR IS FINE FOR NOW. BUT TO KEEP THROWING MONEY, I DON'T SEE IT SOLVING THE PROBLEM.

Let me answer that a little bit, if I could. When I took office before, I said to myself and I said to a number of people, there's going to come a point when fire protection is going to cost the county more than it ought to cost the county because when you transition from from volunteers, which the volunteers know that eventually they won't be able to service everything. When you transition from volunteers to like GCFR or more with the municipals, you're going to have a point where you're having a crossing over not a crossing over of service, but you're going to have to spend money like with G

No, I said what I needed to, but you're correct. Again, we're in a tight spot. Back to the volunteer fire department discussion. Been involved with this for quite a while. So when we created GCFR, the idea was to help supplement the time that was missed for calls Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, right? When everybody works. Had that program established, it's working, we're building GCFR. And the idea at the time was the balance was supposed to shift more funding to our county department, less funding to the volunteers. Not that you're not important, but that shift hasn't happened yet. So I'm sti

When you buy gear, do you get all eight volunteer fire departments together and do it at one lump sum to get a better price?

What I'm getting at, if you've got Guadalupe Fire Department and all the other ones put together, even the cities, say, are you guys going in for any particular equipment right now? Piggyback. I know the sheriff allows the constables to piggyback on everything he does. It saves us a tremendous amount of money. When you can buy by train loan versus a car load, you're going to save money. Absolutely. And so I'm just asking you to look into something like that, because ones and twos, it's tough.

Well, that's why Commissioner Engelke is saying that, you know, just come back for a budget amendment. Instead of having this lump sum sitting right there. Once you get the contracts going, then you come back and say, this is what we're going to need to fulfill what we need today. At that point, instead of just sitting there and you're buying by ones and twos, you can buy by the gross.

You're setting them up to fail with these budget amendments. With all due respect, GCFR has two locations in Precinct 2. Precinct 2 has a lot of the city of Seguin. Precinct 3 is 90-something percent city of shirts. They all have paid fire departments.

City of shirts or city of Cibolo. City limits. I'm sorry. But city limits. They have paid fire departments. The majority of the land in Precincts 1 and 4 are unincorporated areas. We are just not situated the same. We're just not situated the same. I understand why you guys are advocating for what you're advocating for.

Because everybody in the city, sure, they pay taxes that go to that fire, EMS, animal control, library systems, all that. I understand that, too. So, you know, I've tried for 24 years to get something going on on ESDs. But once again, like everything else, it takes three votes. You can't help the past. But I doubt very seriously if we did it today, I'd get three votes.

He's saying what I was trying to say a minute ago. We have to take care of both right now to make it work.

towards the community and the county so I could give some sort of guidance and it's unbiased it's not them versus them it's it's just a neutral party to come in and do the assessment so thank you I just wanted to say real quick and one thing we're both of you gentlemen I think will agree with this so we're talking about volunteers and we're talking about GCFR and we're talking about this balance but in the meantime The developers are building thousands of houses. So we can sit here and talk about how to balance it. Let's just say that it all remained stable today and there was not another hous

Yeah, we're all moving in the same direction.

Well, it's nice to hear that idea coming around again, because we used to have those meetings. And some of them got pretty heated back in the day. just because that's just the nature of humans and the way they are in that setting at times. But it's nice to hear that again. Partnerships, that's what we do. Chief Herrick back there, I mean, we've got to work together. And I think we're headed in the right direction. It's just been, unfortunately, baby steps. And the explosion of the population has put us even further behind, right? I would say like 75% to 80% are medical calls, I would think, st

So that's important going forward, having that certification and what we need to do to help with that. So I can justify that as far as the training goes. If that's cost to help with, as Gary Chief had mentioned, you know, EMS for them, for the city of Seguin and their coverage, that service is being inundated and they're overwhelmed. So and we're seeing that in the county to any help with that definitely is appreciated and look forward to that partnership.

Moving forward we have to make a decision today as by statute and You can see what we're doing here so my main hesitation with even with the 500,000 last year Was there wasn't a plan it was just there so that's been my whole point you know cart before the horse now we're talking about meeting everybody has a plan and to meet, so that's a great thing. Chief Stry knows the history as well as I do, and we always come back together and work it out, and the important thing is the safety of the citizens of the county, and I do understand that, and so we just have to make the hard calls right now and

I mean, if it was $250,000 or two, I'm just trying to... Again, and if it goes above and beyond that, you'd come back and you would more than likely get it. $250,000?

Three. Three. This is like a negotiation in front of everybody, right?

But it's tax dollars. So... what about the other positions that we haven't discussed um thought we wanted to talk about fire rescue mr pender said they need at least three sheriff probably needs at least three deputies so would those be considered into the factor um paralegal like i don't know miss klein if you're kind of tallying this as we talk or not like how this would work financially as soon as you give me what you decided on i will calculate and i will run with it okay So I think what we have discussed already, Commissioner Ott's running a list here, and I don't know what additional tha

Yes. Yeah, I think non-criminal activity is the positive thing.

I haven't said, but she's still negotiating with me. I haven't heard anything from the other side yet. Thank you.

Commissioner, if it's going to get you there, then we're going to do what we have to do.

And again, according to the court, if I'm not here starting next year during the fiscal year, those decisions are made without the judge and I, of course. But setting up a baseline, I'm not in disagreement with it.

So where did we land? Where did we land?

Commissioner Gurman. Tell me the... We're currently at 275.

Yeah, it's hard for us because ours used all of it.

Well, I'm trying to think of all the requests we've made, how much more we need to fill positions.

I could do 300. Now we're playing poker. I could do 300.

For the safety of the public, of course. And then the other positions we've discussed, are we able to add three firemen, three deputies? I don't know what that costs. I know we said it's about $220 a deputy. Trying to go the employee route, public safety route. And that's, like I said in the beginning, we have to decide what we can do with what we're allotting extra out of reserve. I don't want to go much more out of that. And I know there's other needs. Like I said, 101 requested positions. But we're trying to go through this. So do you have any, like, a list there that Ms. Klein can go throu

I do, but I wanted to make sure we finished it, because one of the things I had mentioned earlier was three reclassifications for the district clerk from clerk one to clerk two. The difference in that hourly is 1876 to 2007 for each one. I wanted to see how the court felt about that. I'm asking you how the court feels about it.

There are several positions from the district clerk that she has asked me to discuss to the court from reclass clerk one to clerk two, hourlies 1876 to 2007. I'm sure Ms. Douglas, I know she's had some similar requests as well. I wanted to just get the court's appetite again. I wanted to discuss that because that's been a concern, I think, for several people with the individuals that they feel have earned clerk to payment. So, Ms. Douglas, I'm sure you also want to discuss that. But, again, I just wanted to talk to the court about their appetite for it.

The district clerk has brought it up, but Ms. Douglas, I is bringing it up currently as well. I know she has some requests for the same. So I'm just curious if we're wanting to do that. I'm not trying to make a prolonged argument. I am just making sure that individuals I've spoken to or that are indicating their preferences, that we're considering those as well. OK.

Does he anticipate being able to continuously fund that on an annual basis out of asset forfeiture?

I think we, do we want to talk about the regrade really quick? Do we want to talk about the regrades? If the court's not commenting, I'm not trying to force anyone to talk that doesn't want to speak. If the court doesn't have an appetite for it, of course I'm willing to move on. I just wanted to bring it up and see if that was something the court wanted to discuss. In the event that it's no, then yes. I'm willing to move to the constables.

Let's regrade in the clerk's office and everything else. The other thing I'm upset, you know, I can't support the extra money for the volunteer fire departments. They get enough. But I would like to add Precinct 3, the JP, not JP, the constable just called and said he would like to also move one of his part-times to full-time. I'm waiting for who's left.

I don't have an issue with that. Before we get to the two big ones, in regard to the Commissioner's Court Administrative Assistant, if the court is not willing to regrade hours, would the court be amenable to taking half of my conference budget?

I don't care how it's done. I don't care if it's some sort of money that can come through a different way. I don't know if that means that it's necessary to change a grade and that's where the money comes from. I'm not sure what the possibilities are with that. Is that a Ms. Klein question?

I mean... My take from the responses thus far is that we are at a deadlock. And if not, then I was asking if there was some way to give her some of mine.

Any thoughts? No, but Judge Hines had just texted over and said if we're considering regrade, she would like to consider her administrator because they have taken on the entire court workload after one judge has moved over to Comal County.

Well, we're going down this list like, yeah, that's why I need a tally of where we are.

The difference is $8,000 on this. It's the only person that serves multiple county officials. It's unique in comparison to anybody else.

No, I don't have $8,000 in my conference budget. I would give her half of my conference budget. I believe Commissioner Gurman has indicated he would give her some of his as well, if it's possible. But I'm believing that the feedback we're receiving from Ms. Klein and Ms. Douglas is that that's not a possibility to do the numbers that way. We can't just shift that without doing a regrade. So that's why I think we're back to that conversation. If there was a way to do it, yes, you can have it.

So it amounts to like two something dollars more an hour?

It's a tough decision because she's under the court, and it's not perception-wise for the rest of the employees. It's just, and I get it. I get the argument. I wish everyone could get everything. So is that 24-27 with the 3%, Judge? Yes, sir.

If you figure the 3%, what's the total compensation for a year?

On giving up your education hours, will you still have enough to get 18 hours?

Either way. I mean, if it means commuting or making a sacrifice, I'll make it. But I don't, based on these responses, I don't know that there's a way to do it.

I haven't used $1,000 this year. I'd be willing to kick some in.

Just come back when you're through. We'll probably still be here.

By taking it out of people's minds, you're just creating a problem.

Judge, can you give us your vote on that?

I believe it will put this commissioner's court in a very tough position if Ms. Doreen retires and we also don't have an admin. I think that will be quite difficult for us. Is there any way we can move that money, or is that a definite no, ladies?

I'll tell you, Judge Heather Hines has asked if we're doing reclassification. She would like her administrator for the district courts to be moved up two scales. What do you think about that? The district judge's admin is going up two pay scales. Going up what? Going up two pay scales. Judge Heather Hines has just requested it, if we're looking at re-grades.

If we're not doing any regrades, if we cannot find $8,000 for our admin for a regrade, I don't see where we are going to be able to do that. If that's the reasoning for other folks here not wanting to do it for ours, then I would imagine that reasoning would apply to the others as well.

I think I'm on board with what Commissioner Ott is saying. We've juggled around positions here and made part-times, full-times, and I'm not saying we're finished doing it, but we're doing it. Our admin has a completely different job than a lot of the employees in the county. She has four bosses, has to run the court basically, and I'm on board with giving her more money because it's an extremely important position. When people call, they're either going to call law enforcement for you know, something that's going on, or they're going to call one of the commissioners. And that person is a face

So, Ms. Klein, can we get a kind of a guesstimate of where we are based on, I believe Commissioner Ott kept some really good notes on where we are current? If she's able to either give you that list or read it off, can we kind of... I don't, I mean, we can't, I just don't think it's that... Because we keep talking and... Like I said before, we've got to come to a point where how much are we going to spend?

Well, I think the two things that we haven't hit on that between everything that everyone said, which I have been writing down, are GCFR and GCSO. So I don't know if we want to chat about that first and then the list, or I can give you this list. I can't give you this list, but I can read it to you. whatever you guys want to do. If we want to talk about this, I understand that Mr. Pinder, I know you said $227,000. I'm seeing three individuals being more expensive than that, I believe. Three deputies with everything. You're looking at $750,000. If someone correct me if I'm wrong with any of thi

Okay. Do you want me to read off these notes when we talk about this or not and that's fine?

If we are not doing regrades, which it looks like we are not, and we are not doing any additional full-time positions that are not fire and law enforcement related, I'm looping in the prosecutor's paralegal into that, then I don't think so.

Have the school districts come to you and say, we need this because it has to go through the school board, from what I understand from Senate Bill 3? Isn't that correct? That the school board is the one who will have to contract you through an interlocal agreement or contract? Yes. Has that happened yet?

But from what I understand, the school board has to initiate all this. is the way I read it. I could be wrong. But the ultimate responsibility, according to Senate Bill 3, is the school district. The school board itself has to come to us and say, this is what we want to do. That's what I thought. I could be reading it wrong, but since it's their responsibility, they need to come to us and say, hey, we would like this.

Oh, they don't have to. They just have to be the ones asking for it. I could be wrong if I'm reading the statute incorrectly, but it originates with them because they are responsible for security on campus. The school board is. That's the way I read it. Now, they can contract that with whomever they want, but from what I understand and I read, it has to initiate from the school board. You know check into that you know if it's what they want fine, but once again I think they need to ask us to come over the way there. I'd be more than happy to say yes. But once again... Commissioner, I'm asking

Well, I know in Precinct 3, our constables are over there all the time. They patrol the campus that they're in now. They're doing what they can. But once again, SCUC has, I think they have resource officers on the shirts. I'm not certain. They do. It's a similar type contract as what I'm proposing. But once again, it's a contract that initiated from the school board. And that's all I'm getting at. They need to initiate it. We just can't go over that and say, hey, this is what we want to do for you. Ask them what they want us to do. That's all I'm asking for. I'm unclear on what you're asking,

So we're just talking about two districts, correct? Primarily, yes. Primarily.

I'm not understanding, though, because I had a discussion with Marion about And Marion said that what they were doing was using off-duty deputies and paying them, you know, whatever, the fee per hour, that they had really, and that the sheriff's, I'm quoting what I was told, and that the sheriff's office coordinated, yeah, so-and-so's going to be you know and and that they would that it was working fine for them and that they were paying these off-duty deputies to be their SRO so the only thing that we were really out of as a county which I don't have a problem with is if the Tahoe sitting the

Because if we weren't doing it before with paid people, I hear what you're saying. But what changed? Why was what they were doing before not working now where you're having to pick up the slack more and more? Am I making sense?

I don't understand why, Sheriff, you are under the impression that we are against the SROs.

No, that's not what I said. What I said in our budget meeting, I asked if you could go back and see if you could negotiate a better deal for us because I became aware that other school districts were contributing more, whether it be through PTO, because I had seen that several times occur, or it had been through the school district that were helping supplement the cost. I wasn't saying parents should pay for it. I wasn't saying I was against it. I was simply asking back in May if you would be willing to see if they could come back with a better offer because I was seeing around the state where

I think we're just trying to have a conversation to understand where it's coming from. Because I personally am not against it at all. I think it's a great thing that we have them in schools. That wasn't it. I was trying to see if they could give us a better deal so that we could do more. That's all. I mean, there's no reason or motivation that I would possibly have for not doing that.

And I think it's unfortunate if that was a miscommunication that we did not understand each other at that moment. But I think that what we have to do is move forward in the best way that we can. It's really our only choice. So...

That's correct. There were two months between May. It was two and a half months between this conversation. I believe our conversation was in the May teens. And we found out that bad information on July 27 I think regardless we can get mad at each other over what I think is a Misunderstanding because I think it is your intention to help the schools. It was also our intention to help the schools truly.

Thanks, John. It's got a call from the SCUC, and they pay for all the SROs out of the school district, which is wonderful. That is great. They're probably a whole lot richer than Navarro, because Navarro was tapped out from what I remember talking to the superintendent. They are maxed out on their INS and everything.

One thing has been brought up. Maybe you can clarify this. It won't take a long time. On this SRO program, I was talking to some people from Cibolo, and they were trying it with steel. And they said that the problem they ran into is the school days are long. Those deputies have to be there a long day. And so they said what happened was that it sounded good on the outset, but But the deputies used up so much overtime and comp time or vacation time, whatever you want to. And when you got to the summer or to the Christmas holidays, when you figured you would have them more. And I understand what

I'd just like to see a proposal from the school board saying this is what we'd like, some sort of interlocal agreement that we can bring over to us. Because they have to initiate it. We just can't go inside their house and tell them what we're going to do. The way the bill is written, they need to approach us, and then we can say yes. Once again, y'all. Are they offering anything as any payment of anything else? I know they're probably strapped like everybody else is. But once again, the initial conversation has to originate from them because they are responsible for the safety and welfare of

I had said three deputies earlier. If that was able to work.

Any any thoughts on on that? Really need firefighters. Do we need admin? Do we need administrative or just firefighters?

I'm all in favor of boots on the ground. We watch Chicago Fire and all this other crap. Do they actually wear bunker gear and go in and fight the fires? Yes, sir. Okay, that's good. I just don't want them sitting in the truck pointing fingers like... Every one of our guys is certified for structural firefighting, and they're also an A&T basic.

So three lieutenants. If that's what the court wants to give us.

I think I need to understand more about how this works, because we talk about going out to fires, and there needs to be X amount of people operating a fire truck, four at least, probably five, right? Eventually, yes. No, to respond to a structure fire, right?

So the triplet one, one-on-one for each of the shifts will make a difference? Yes. It's not one of those?

And I'm sorry to sound ignorant about this, but on each shift right now, are there each of these, are there a captain and a lieutenant on each of the current shifts?

And those are all full? Yes. And so you're asking for the insertion of this captain into the hierarchy, which would be higher than all of those folks. Is that correct?

So if you had two lieutenants and one had a year or more, six months, he would be senior lieutenant. He'd be calling the shots?

Okay. How does that work with the... Why hire captains at that level versus promoting lieutenants and hiring firefighters?

Yeah, I'm really not trying to ask ignorant questions here. I'm seeing the difference between the captain and the firefighter being significant. I mean, I'm almost too tired to math, but $45,000-ish per?

I guess I'm confused about why we are not opening this to three firefighters.

I was thinking one lieutenant, two firefighters. To do what they're saying, because there's a need right now.

Well, I was kind of on her and boots on the ground, like, to be out there. But lieutenants will be out there. I got you.

Are we at a point where we can go through the summary list? We're done.

Maybe we can beat the Zoom deadline. No, it's not going to happen.

We've got a conference table over here. Okay. Glad everybody can still laugh. All right.

Chris, let me just ask you this, because we're trying up here to figure some things out. Is there anything from what you requested? I hear what you're asking for now, if it could work out. Do you know of anything from what you requested off the top of your head where maybe you could knock $100,000 off that you know of?

And they've gone up a lot. And they have gone up a lot. I heard you the other day. Yeah, it's ridiculous.

I got two water stations. I'm trying to give them away. It's cheap. I'll even haul them over here.

I was just going to say there's a lot of stuff in shirts. Have you seen those rooms?

I totally understand. I just wanted to make sure that you knew.

Go back to the district judges real quick. Judge Hines also said that she would like to have an admin for the district court. I'm sorry, a staff attorney for the district courts and the admin for both district judges to go up two steps. Since we're adding all these things. But once again, we need to find out how much money we're talking about, don't we? When will we find that out? We'll get done adding, I guess. Is Ms. Cline over that way punching the numbers?

Okay. Does anybody have it written down? Do you want me to read what I have?

I don't have a single re-grade on this list that I collected that the court agreed on.

Is that what you were bringing up? Yes, that was what I was bringing up. Yes. Do you have any problem with it? No? No problem? It's illegal. It's in your neighborhood.

Yeah, I understand. At this point, the only positions that we've approved are emergency response and something to assist felony prosecution. I definitely think we will get to a point where we will need a staff attorney for the district judges. I don't know if that would be shared with the county court of law judges, but it's a very useful thing. I know in other counties, that I've been involved in. The county attorney's office does do a decent amount of the work that a staff attorney would or could do for the things that are at least neutral or perhaps in the civil realm. They're able to do th

No, I know. But what I'm saying is I know that the county attorney's office in other counties that I am familiar with or have worked in have have been able to provide some of that guidance and work. I don't know what that is, what the situation is. I just don't know one way or the other. I haven't had the occasion to discuss that. I think it's something that will be needed in the short future. But again, I don't know. I don't know if that would be something that could be contracted out for them. What's that?

Dave says yes, he would like it because if we're giving the sheriff more people and other people, he's going to need the extra help.

To be honest, I have not thought enough about that to make a decision about that at this point in time, because that was something I thought was off the table with the progression in the proposition that was provided to the court. And had it not been, I would have thought more about that, but that is something that I thought that we were... And I know that it was... in exchange for, because there were other things that were prioritized. But that's not something that I have completely thought through. I do see where it will be necessary in the very near future, though.

I don't feel educated enough about the topic right now to speak on it.

Judge, I don't think we're getting anywhere. So I'm going to make a motion that we approve your budget.

I just want to go over that list we have. What is the number? I don't know if Wolverton was referring to the last one you did, the 4% you're talking about. We could have done that eight hours ago.

I'd have had a different... I don't see us getting anywhere today.

Yeah, I'd like to know what the numbers are.

Yes, I am ready to do that. Okay. Ms. Klein, these are just my notes, so if someone remembers it differently, please speak up, because this is just me writing as we're going. These are things that I think we had a majority consensus on. One are the changes in the grades that do not cost anything for environmental health due to the abolishing of the Clerk II position.

YES. PLANNER WAS TWO, ASSISTANT PLANNER WAS TWO, AND FLOOR PLANE MANAGER WAS ONE, AND THAT IS THROUGH THE ABOLISHMENT OF THE CLERK TWO POSITION.

And so it would change, yeah, 12.5 to 13.5, 10.4, 11.4, 8.3. Yes, okay. I'm sorry. Okay. Ready for the next? Yep. Okay. 3% COLA.

JP. Let me be sure I understand because So we don't go back. You're saying a 3% COLA, and we give $1,000 longevity. OK. I want to be on page.

JP1, moving the clerk one from part-time to full-time.

No, ma'am, changing the position from part-time to full-time.

Is that for one position? I think they have two.

Yeah. So we're moving one person from part-time to full-time.

Magistrate. Excuse me. Gosh. Associate judge to perform magistration duties part-time.

Sheriff. Which grade for the chaplain? I'm not sure we ever talked about that.

So pay rate of $22 an hour? I don't know if that helps.

County Attorney's Office felony paralegal.

Yeah, I think the conversation, I thought it was referred to as a felony paralegal, but that person, yes.

Yes. Okay. the next four are the four constables' offices that each have an existing part-time deputy line be changed into a full-time. So we're removing that equivalent of the part-time and going into full-time.

I think you're taking half of each and you're pushing that into a full-time position and then adding whatever the rest is to create that full-time position because it's an existing person or existing space.

I think half. Yeah, I think some of them have. Yeah, I can do that.

Okay. VFD Emergency Fund, $300,000. $300,000.

Sheriff's Office, I think we landed on three full-time deputies. 3. Gotcha. GCFR, three firefighters.

That's the end. I guess, I'm sorry, one detail that we did not discuss today but we discussed in prior court sessions was the $1,000-based longevity addition, the timing for that. I know we discussed a year versus six months of the employment history. I know we discussed changing that to six months, but I don't know that we, I can't recall if we landed on that in a conclusion for it.

I've got no problem just as long as I'm excluded from it. For personnel, it's fine.

I mean, can we update that in this conversation, or is that off the table? We need to stick with the year because that's what we have in front of us.

So if you wanted to make it that if you were here six months, you got the bonus, we'd have to change policy? Yes.

I just want to make sure that I didn't get it.

If we are able to change the policy to six months, I would think we should do that. Shouldn't take her that long. Is it HR or you?

Mr. Tice, do we do it now, or do we have to have another court?

What are our thoughts on keeping it October 1st and changing it to six months?

I say we revolve around October 1st because it's our fiscal year.

Not let her have it. October 1st of this year means anybody hired January 1 of 26 will get it. Will get it. Will not. Will because it's October 1 of this year.

That was what I had in mind. If the court's uncomfortable with that, I mean, I'm... I can flex that to nine if we think this is necessary. It is not the hill that I'm going to die on. I just wanted to bring up the details. I know we talked about it, and I didn't feel we reached a consensus necessarily.

I'm fine with six months. Just get this done.

Can I ask why you want to change it? I wasn't necessarily. I was just saying that it was something that we had talked about in prior budget discussions, and I wasn't remembering what we had landed on. And so just for purposes of Ms. Klein's calculations, Just trying to remember the details that I know the court had brought up.

Linda, let me say this real quick. So Teresa ran me some numbers recently. We have a lot of employees that have been here less than a year. And so I'm on board with that six months. It's like a bonus, you know, thank you for staying and coming to workforce. That's why I'm on board with that six months because it's a bunch. It's a lot of employees.

And I think that was dependent upon whether or not the court had an appetite for the felony paralegal coming out of forfeiture funds or being paid out of the general fund, right?

But I think we are... willing to pay for the felony paralegal out of the general fund, right? So, I mean, I don't have a problem with that if that's able to be covered. And I'm so sorry if I forgot the answer to this.

Yes. And if we do get in a bind, he would understand if that was something that we might not be able to? Yes. Okay, I don't have an issue with that court. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be like hijacking these topics The difference in the funding for the regrades he's asking for two regrades, but he says he can cover the funding annually through forfeiture funds

For the positions or the difference? For the difference. The difference, yeah.

Next year, or the year after that, it will be in general fund, right?

Okay, fine. I'd still like to go back to the district admins and the staff attorney for the district. If we're loading up the sheriff's office with extra people, which means they're going to need more people on their staff to handle the cases. They're down one judge because he moved to Comal County, so they're just two district judges this time, correct? Three three district judges. Olds, Crawford and Hines. They used to be for just the. The workload is is. Increased.

OK, yes. We're this deep into it. We're all the way up to our knees in it. I'm up to my chin. You're right about there? Yeah.

He's still here, Tom. Yeah. Are we waiting on the summary of expenses?

Every time you be quiet, somebody else walks up.

It doesn't matter to me. It's fine. Six months.

Tell us what your concerns are, though, because maybe one of us hasn't thought of it.

Isn't it true that that's what we have to call it? I mean, it's sort of a bonus or whatever, but officially that's what we have to call it?

Yeah. So could we establish that for this budget, it's six months, but then we go back to what we've done before?

Yeah, I think it's for her calculations today, but we have to come back and vote on it separately. So it's just for what she's asking for calculation-wise.

Which if we choose at the end of the day to go back to the one-year deal, it would be less.

Well, we didn't really have a consensus on those. I know we talked about them. The 4-H deal is something I said at the end of the day, if there's something there, that's me. But the staff attorney was discussed. That's why I'm curious what the numbers are, if we're able to... Do anything? It's not too far.

I just got a text from Ms. Balk, and she wants to clerk one position to clerk three is a minimal request. It's good to know people are still hearing the text.

Thank you for taking my offer. I don't think anybody can argue that we're not going through this and doing our due diligence.

Do we still have the line opened up so we can talk? Phone line?

Judge, we're never going to forget this budget.

I'm going to run it all over now. Not a good one. Not a good one, no. It's not a good one.

It's never too late. chief you must live a very boring life to sit here all day long

It was already built into the previous. I'm assuming that's what's down here. Gotcha.

That's what I understand, yeah. How much has it added to the budget?

She's back. They said you popped up and then came back down. Oh, boy. I don't think we can plug it in.

Are we going to executive session for a few moments?

I think we should knock those out if we can quickly.

No, they're not even giving the contracts. Okay.

What dates are we looking at? September 15th.

What potential date for interviews? As soon as possible. I can be here Thursday and Friday. Or Monday, it doesn't matter.

Our courts are usually long and drawn out, so we can do it without a court date. Unless you just want to do it on a court date and stay here until 10 o'clock.

Mike Brooks, Mark Green, and you had one other gentleman you want to talk to? Mr. Murray. Mr. Murray.

name lois ellie as the interim human resources director and set her salary at 85 000 a year second would you have a motion and a second any further discussion i'm sure hearing no other comments or questions all those in favor say aye aye opposed

So with that around 2 million, we had discussed earlier that historically a million gets brought back in from the previous year. And then we were looking at on my end, I was talking about the million dollar land purchase that we had discussed. but that's where I was willing to be at in relation to additional. So from what I'm reading in my mind at this late hour, it's a million out of reserve, or it could be less based on what we don't know comes back at the end of this fiscal year. Am I being correct about that?

Okay. Thank you for that work on that, Ms. Klein.

I would like Judge Hines to have an opportunity to come up and address the court.

So one of the things that when this was brought up earlier, I said that I wasn't educated enough about at the moment because I had reshifted my focus a little bit with the most recent proposal. So I'm glad that you're here to talk to us about it, is that I know that sometimes the county attorney can fill the role of a staff attorney in a sense, but when it comes to things that are of course criminal, then you would have your conflict of interest. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that. and talk about, you know, maybe I think really also research for the courts probably, right, and briefin

Is the county attorney's office even able to fully research or give opinions on certain criminal cases when they're the prosecuting entity?

So I wanted to talk about suppression issues as well for the court. And just what that means is that often in cases, one side will present a motion to suppress. And so that will be suppressing evidence so that the judge or jury, whoever the trier of fact is, cannot consider that evidence and ultimately reaching a verdict. And so that decision by the a judge is really important because if they do suppress that evidence and later it's appealed and that appeal is granted, that it means that case has to be tried again with that evidence in consideration for that subsequent verdict, which is bad. I

And I'm playing ping pong, but on the same side here, I suppose. But, you know, as you all know, the legislature does potentially change every two years. And so I remember as a prosecutor with jury charges, with child victim cases, feeling very challenged about hoping that that jury charge was perfect, and then sometimes you're wanting to research an issue and not even really know, like, what all do I need to research based on all these legislative changes, and I hope I get this right, and the judge told me to come back in 15 minutes, and is that enough time? And I think that is really difficu

I had brought up before and I didn't get the support, but I would like to go ahead and add the district judge's felony line attorney and also actually a staff attorney and then also their administration going up one step. I know you wanted two, but I don't think I can get two today.

I think that we have not done paid re-raids across the board, and I think for consistencies and fairness purposes, I think that we need to stay consistent. I am on board with the staff attorney. I really think it's very important and be very meaningful.

And if you were to get those three admin assistants up one step, how much would that be?

If you'll accept one step, maybe that would pass.

Yeah, Jim, we're doing 3% plus the 1,000, so... Did we raise anybody else?

No, we're not raising anyone else. I don't think you'll get it this year.

I think that was the number. No, these are what we talked about. Yeah, okay.

Can we pull the chart back up with the options? Yeah. Yeah, and we talked about...

If you went back to the 4% increase at a 3493 tax rate... We're sitting at a little over 2 right now with what Chris figured, right?

Yeah, that quite possibly could be a wash with what's coming back, but...

When you say tax rate decrease, we are just talking about a decrease in the ceiling, correct? Correct. A lower amount of increase. As it turns out, 11 and a half hours makes my brain go...

So back to the judge's original with these positions and everything we've just discussed.

My calculation says that we'll be taking 3.295 out of the reserve to make everything work to go back to the 4% increase in taxes. Chris? Chris Klein, yes ma'am.

Okay, so can we talk about the options on both far sides of this, if that is our prize package? If we pulled none out of general fund and it all went into a tax increase versus if we did no tax increase and pulled it all out of general fund, what are our parameters and what's in the middle?

I was just saying if you can keep the boundaries of each one and then we can talk about the range. No problem.

5.65 increase is pulling 2.1 out of reserves. Correct. So we could move money from the two, the building and the land purchase,

You're saying try to move back to 4%, correct? If we move back to 4%, it would be 2.1 plus that figure at the bottom of the 4%.

It's in the parentheses. 3,295,155. So that would be the...

building purchase line, the land purchase line, and the little less than $300,000 that would come out of potentially the TxDOT match, if that... Is the TxDOT match an estimate, or is the TxDOT match something that it's like the all-or-none package?

Judge, do you have handy the chart of the tax increases over time? Sure do. So you're talking about the tax rate? Yeah, yes. Well, do you have it by percentage? Do we have it by percentage?

Yeah, just how the numbers match up to the different options that we're looking at in the columns.

So 5.65 will reflect the 6.2 in the notice? Correct. Okay. And what was 2020? Okay. Thanks. 7.7.

I wanted to observe the trend from a percentage standpoint, so I think that's something we hadn't really looked at.

Right. You're basically washing. From the averages that typically come back fiscal year to fiscal year, it's a wash.

So I'm good with that. I think we've done a great job of going through all of this. I'm in vital positions now looking at decreasing the proposed rate, getting a little out of the general reserve, saving the taxpayer money. provide jobs focused around public safety as we've discussed. So I don't know what else we need to talk about. Are you saying the 4% or the 5.65? Well, if that's what the judge was saying, do we want to go a little bit further with, you know, we have the ceiling set at three, five, four, nine. Yeah. we have that ability to go down back to his proposed 4%. With what I'm sayi

I can live with that 4%. I'm a little bit concerned about what if we wind up with the same mess next year we have this year, where we're going to have to go into the fund balance again. That's the thing I'm concerned about, but I could live with it.

In the big scheme of things, it's just a very small amount to take out of reserve. It's a Besides, we approve it, taxpayers will be happier. You get to go home.

Well, the other thing is, too, if you look at some of the cities, and I know the school districts are coming, they're going to get pounded with taxes, so we don't need to compound the problem.

With the overall tax rate being back to what you had originally said.

all right i don't have that blue i don't have that sheet you know that she so would we just need to reference that and just reference each one individually or just just read it off mr sign chris klein if we

So if you did, as has been discussed before, if you did take the $2 million for the building purchase out of play, does that cover what we're talking about?

I think it'd be a good idea to remove both of them at this present time and just... Finish up what we have on the books now.

Okay. In a pinch. I mean, it's all reserved money. If it's needed, if there's something coming up, it'll just be there.

Do we need to remove the second one, or are we solid with removing the first one, just the first one, and we break even with what we have? I mean, I know it's not, I'm sorry, I know it's not break even, and that's the wrong term for it, but.

Is that what you're saying? Between like two 60 K and two 90 K. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, I, we, we get there with, if that's the, if that's the in-between and we get there with just removing the building purchase.

Yes. Okay. I'm going to make a motion. Um, at 9.56 p.m. to adopt the Guadalupe County budget for fiscal year 2026, 2027, FY27, with the changes to the proposed budget discussed, with also the consideration of the building purchase for 2 million to be removed from that effort projects list.

Okay. Well, then I will do as such. I will state that the auditor's salary COLA 3% is included in the budget.

Just two. You deserve the raise tonight, believe me. As much as we put you through, you really do deserve it. I didn't get everything I wanted, but it's enough inside the way there for me to vote with it.

So just that adopted budget, basically, in what's stated here, pretty much? So moved to ratify the property tax increase reflected in the adopted fiscal year 26-27 budget pursuant to local government code subsection 111.008. Yes.

Yes, at the request of the individual who is requesting the variants, I would ask that we take no action on this item today. And Ms. Rogers, if you would either remind me or if you'd put it on September 15th's agenda. Thank you.

Well, there's one for tonight, but it's over with, so I can't announce it anymore. 75.

Any other announcements? Just real quick. As our last budget judge, definitely a memorable one. I wanted to thank you, especially Ms. Klein, for our 12-hour for our day that we just had. But thank you very much. It's a good budget. I think we did a great job. I think we worked through it, and I think we did a good job.

So thank you all very much. I'm going to ditto that. I mean, it's been a long day, but we hammered it out, and that's the way people should do.