County Commission - Regular Meeting

And how are you today? Doing great, doing great. Glad to have you with us. Is that our stenographer in the back, back there? Yes, there he is. Here is our new stenographer. Can you do shorthand? Did you know there's very few of us even know what that means anymore, but Laura Lawley, she did the minutes. That way none of us knew what it was. You might have been the only one on the commission who could read it. All right. Well, we'll get started here today. Before we actually call meetings to order, if you'll bow with me, I'll ask God to direct us today.

being our God and for being a good God. You're good all the time. God, we thank you for the protections you've got over us and our families and our friends, dear Lord. We ask you to, if you would, just in our prayers and our pleadings, dear Lord, that you pay attention to those that don't have what we have and don't have the resources to fight the health problems they have, the housing problems they have, dear Lord, the needs that they have. Dear God, within all that also, give us the wisdom to govern as you have basically laid out in your word, dear Lord, that the jobs that we do are importan

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,

Staff, thank y'all for being here too. Of course, Tina didn't have any choice, but y'all probably laid out of work today, but we'd have only got Tina.

There you go. I appreciate our EMA director, Patrice Kucieski. I love to say that. We'll be here today. And our director of emergency communications district. We're actually looking at some changes to make that something that just flows off of people's tongue instead of E911, 911. That's old terminology now, Ashley. And we appreciate you leading us in the direction that would help us with our relationship with the state communications program and all the things that are coming up in the transition. And we'll get to that as we get into your agenda. And that's the first thing on our agenda today

All in favor. No. Motion carries. Next item is to officially change the name of the 911 service. Board to the St. Clair County Emergency Communications District Board. And within that, to change the title of the director to the director of that board. Do I have a motion to do that? DAVID BURRAGE- Motion. DAVID BURRAGE- Do I have a second? Probably moved to second. Now, any discussion on that? Aslyn, am I going in the right direction from what you've heard? This is what I got out of it.

Yeah. And not only that, we're probably going to see some changes on the state level that this will follow along with. I know Alabama is a proud 911 county. We made the first 911 call made in the United States of America. We were made from Haleyville? Haleyville. Haleyville, Alabama. And then it took us a while to transition to E911. Anybody remember what E stood for? enhanced enhanced the 9-1-1 we dropped enhanced just went back to 9-1-1 and now we're from there into emergency communications districts uh i i think you're going to see some transition on the state this is all in some discussion

And if you look at our growth rate, we're up there, but always up there in that 5 or 6 as far as the rate of growth, and that's not necessarily a good thing. That brings on challenges sometimes we wish we didn't have to mess with. With that, I'll call the meeting to order, the regular meeting. The first item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. And I won't be asking for any agenda items, but I will be looking to do some parliamentary things on down in the agenda. try to bring some things in front of us from my perspective and not that there's any better than y'all's but I apologize for miss

All opposed, no. Motion carries. Reports. Under reports, we've got the first person up, Clay Phillips, our county engineer. He's going to tell us that all the potholes have been patched and our roads are in excellent shape. No sense to even have a road commissioner. We might as well all go out and do the economic stuff.

Could you do something for me before I'm gone by November the 11th? Tally up the total number of hours and the beginning date and ending date of Trails End. And then tally up this one and see which one's going to end up the winner or the loser. You know what I'm saying? See which one of these are going to compete for the one that took the longest to finish. I think that'd be interesting for us to know. And we'll use both of those as good examples of bad examples of a way not to do business. It's going to end up costing us a bunch more money. A bunch more money than we thought this would do. Yo

Yeah. Trails End was, what, 1.7 extra million?

So the total was 1.7, so the extra wasn't about 700 or 800,000.

You've heard the recommendation of the engineer to consider an agreement with the town of Raglan. Is there a motion to approve? Motion. Second. Properly moved and seconded. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed no. Motion carries. Thank you.

135 feet of my one mile. Yep. Okay. You can hear his part. You can't help more people than that. That's right. I've got to pick it apart.

1026 miles. This comes as a recommendation from the engineer based on our policy to have a motion. Motion. Second. Second. Properly moved and seconded. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed no. How much? A mile? 5,280 feet. Can you do math on that? You can do math on that for us. You've got about 5,100. Give or take. DAVID BURRAGE- You can win friends and influence people for a while with that. DAVID BURRAGE- Oh, yeah. DAVID BURRAGE- All right. DAVID BURRAGE- What are you laughing about?

I heard a recommendation that we surplus an HP plotter in the road department. That's HP plotter design jet 88 model HC7780B dash inventory number 5485. So moved. Thank you. I probably moved and seconded any discussion. Is that one of those great big 54 inch ones? Will it still plot?

That's not something working. Yeah, this is a disposal. Where Corey could make great big maps and things with it.

Probably move to second any other discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed no. Motion carries. Thank you. No for mapping skills.

DAVID BURRAGE, For a recommendation to the engineer, for a recommendation for a general labor position in the Department of Transportation. Have a motion? DAVID BURRAGE, Motion. DAVID BURRAGE, Second. Properly moved and seconded. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. DAVID BURRAGE, Opposed, no. Motion carries. Any questions? We're about to get used to your department is the Department of Transportation. For years it was just Road Department. And we've still got people that's familiar with that. So that's the same thing. That was a similar situation. The state was pushing counties to adopt

We should be getting, surely we're getting close to reimbursing everybody. Yeah. But that's been good for all of them. They felt like we participated.

If there's not any objection, we'll just allow, I guess, just allow you to post the meeting call. Yes, sir. I mean, it's not a, we don't, we just have those meetings as we need them. We don't have to worry about it being an official call meeting as such.

OK. Any of the commissioners have any questions for county administrator? All right. Moving on now to the county attorney, Kirk Walker.

DAVID BURRAGE. That bill is still pending, I guess? How much is it, 18, 19, what was it? 19, 19. How much was it, Ashley?

So it would have been plus or minus 40 no matter what. We were looking to see if it included the 18 or 19. Yes, sir.

We'll just keep plugging at it until we've got a solution to it. Otherwise, it's not, in today's operation of the event center and what we do out there, it's not overwhelming us to continue to pump out the tanks. So it's not like we're broke down. But the more that we pay, the better we'd rather put that money to a sewer system. But what's it still cost us? $800 to $1,200 to pump out a tank. So it's still a lot better than paying $300,000, $400,000 for sewer. And that's not monthly, actually.

That's whenever we need it. So we're OK to run it like we are until we The better way would be, no doubt, would be for future plans to have sewer in there.

Any more questions for the county attorney?

okay uh moving on to my reports i i i know it's scary but i i took my budget information what little i had with me down the beach because i sat in the air conditioner and really wasn't the beach but it's a bunch cooler and i'm sitting in my little little hillway spot down there in the woods And if you ever really want some good reading, just carry your budget stuff with you. You can look at Michelle's little yellow marks and green marks and no marks and question marks. She's got some of those in there. And then she's got a couple of smiley faces, but a whole lot of devils.

So I did carry it down there, and I looked at it. Don't know what the final we don't know what the final report will be on what the fund balance That's the thing that seems to drive us a lot water What are our fund balances and how much are they going to deteriorate? deteriorate by the final figures coming in for For this past year and but we know pretty good we should know pretty close we hope we do anyway But right now our cash flow was down to 1.67 at one point in time. But there again things start coming in pretty soon. So the cash flow gets down low that wasn't That didn't include the six

DAVID BURRAGE- Well, the one way we can end up with 30% Our problem, this is all part of my report, so y'all please bear with me. Y'all can throw me out at any time, which is no big, that's okay. I love y'all anyway. We cannot balance the budget on causing, I'll be careful with this, because I know y'all not trying to do this either. Y'all care about the county employees. I know you do, big time. They tell me that y'all come by and visit them and all. And I care about them. We care about them as a group. But we can't balance the budget based on them not getting a raise. Let's say my policy on

That's $750,000. I don't think it'll cost more than that. Yeah, it won't cost any less than that. And I'm using that as Bateman math.

So Bateman math, $750,000. And if you add $250,000, let's just say we paid $250,000 for it, which we paid.

If we keep going like we are. If we remodel it. For what? We're not really sure what we're putting that kind of money in is what we need. So I'm going to propose when we get to that point where I can and we do this, I'm going to propose that we surplus that building just like we do other things. That's the way you're supposed to dispose of property. We clear that bank building, surplus property, we put it on the market to sell, we get our money back, and we save three-quarters of a million, or 900,000, or a million, too. We don't really know. We save, regardless of the math, we're going to sav

Commissioner Joyce Stevens. Well, just to follow up on what you said about our upcoming trip, look forward to meeting with our delegation to our congressional delegation to discuss a couple specific projects and discuss some economic development issues that we're going to have coming down the pike after the change of administration in Montgomery and Hopefully that will eventually bear some fruit. So I look forward to that. That's all I have for you today.

Okay, thank y'all for your reports now moving on to the agenda First item on the agenda is old business and we don't have any old business Next item is under new business. Consider adopting resolution 202642 to determine the amount of the SSUT monies allocated for SRO distribution for the FY2026-27 budget. And you've got that resolution had how those monies are broken up. Isn't that right?

That's the one that was handed to me right here. Breakdown of the FY27 opioid and SRO resolution. And you've got that. That's how we would break those things down. The SSUT money right there at the top. In the 27 budget. All right. Y'all ready to adopt resolution 26? Have a motion? Second. Probably moved and second. Any discussion? OK, the discussion I would have is, to me, this is sort of another layer of earmark. And sometimes we have to earmark to say where the money's going to go. I think that the county commission This county commission was the first one to deal with a big part of the SSU

That's always a big part of discussions every county I go to. And you're right. I don't know who they'll be. The big cities, the school systems, state debt. Who's coming after, we don't know yet. But I can't think of a better expenditure of the money than the way y'all got it set out right here. So with that, any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Item two, the 200-doctrine resolution 2643 for the ACCA Workers' Compensation and Self-Insurance Fund longevity bonus and refund. So we have a resolution for the bonus and refund. Does that include any money?

And we'll start bragging about that. Yes. Okay. All right. Very good. Have a motion to adopt a resolution? Motion. Second? Second. Mr. Proctor, move to second. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. OK, item three, consider adopting resolution 2644 to determine the amount of opioid settlement monies allocated for DARE SROs, SRO DARE vehicles, and nursing medical service distributions at the jail. OK, you've got a resolution on how to disperse that opioid money. Resolution 2644, do I have a motion to adopt that? So moved. Second? That's it. Probably moved and se

DAVID BURRAGE. Properly moved and seconded. Y'all please agree to this. I don't want to take mine off and have to turn around to another company or something like this. Got a little nephew that is wearing it. You got some clients wearing it? Probably. Probably. Any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. Consider a request from County Administrator Tina Morgan to renew Jenny Conyas' employment contract for one year. Y'all didn't think I knew how to say that, did you? Isn't that what you said? Conyas?

Yeah. So moved. I have a motion. Second. Properly moved and seconded. She is doing an excellent job. Any other discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. I'm six. City recommendation property manager Rod Wolfe to award bid number 2026-40, Operation Center Emergency Management Building Generator to THM Electrical and Maintenance Services in the amount of $73,802, with an alternate number of $30,800. So a total of those would be $101,000.

That's what I was thinking. We could probably do it. It's a very simple operation if it hasn't got burp contacts or whatever you call them. It seemed to be in good condition when I looked at it. So this is the final bill that we're actually approving when we get the recommendation to explain it before we get into the motion. This is replacing that old diesel-operated generator out there that runs the whole building. And it gets it on to a natural gas system, more efficient. And in the county commission's decision, it was worth pursuing the cost to get a better operation out there and probably

Oh, listen to that. It's not even election time yet. Consider request probate Judge Andrew Wellington to renew the diversified company's LLC contract for two years. This is reminders for tagging business license renewals with various pricing. Those are those reminder notices that we get that helps me not be as late as I already am. I have a motion. Motion. Second. Second. Properly moved and seconded. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed no. Motion carries. Item nine. Sir, request Sheriff Murray to surplus and sell the following vehicles. You see a list of those vehicles. I'm

But that wasn't what it's for, so I could talk. Not that I wanted to do that.

You've had it all morning. I've had it for nearly four years. Four years. I'm going to give it up pretty soon. Somebody else can have it. First thing I'm going to do is, whether it happens or not, I'm going to make a motion, since I can make a motion now as a voting member, to approve a 3% color raise for all qualified county employees. That's my motion. Motion on the floor.

Just in terms of discussion, let's talk about what that would do to talk to, explain to us what that would do to our members that we've previously discussed.

Well, to keep from crash landing the numbers, I would recommend you table my motion If somebody will second it, I'd recommend tabling it until January.

Yeah, that would just give me a chance to say where that $850,000 would come from. I looked at it, and it can be done. You can split it two different ways. Yeah, and you've got other funds that are part of the MA funds. By the way, we're going to have to fight hard to keep the LPG money coming from the state. Things are happening there. So if we have a second, it doesn't cost us anything to table it to January, and then we know exactly what the budget said, because then we've got all the money. Well, I'm kind of confused about what you've said. Right now, my motion's there, and it's going to die for lack of a second, so we can't table it.

Well, what I'd like to say, I mean, if you want to do that, or if that's the motion, then I would suggest that or would you be okay with passing the one that is existing and then that exists now and then revisit the issue of the coal in January? I mean because we're going to get revenue hopefully we'll have more an idea of future revenues in November and December is that right?

the beginning of november so we will have final fy 26 numbers then we we and of course if the chair allows us we can discuss openly even though we haven't got a second on things and uh i appreciate that leeway uh the uh I made a commitment that I would be in favor of at least a 3% pay raise any year that the inflation rate exceeds 3%. I made a commitment to several people. And if I don't do what I'm doing right now, then I hadn't done what I told them I would do. So I'm trying all I can to get it on the table. and this year's inflation rate is 3.8% and so if you had two years at 3.8% now you'r

I'm going to revisit in January after we have revenue.

If you don't have it in the record, then I'll take your word, but I'll be working on it. I'll be working on a house at the fish camp.

Michelle, what are we showing as our projected expenditures for this budget?

I have. It's roughly what we said. Well, that's about a $3 million problem.

You still have 25% estimated fund balance in unreserved funds. yes you will but you will not sustain that if you keep going that's the same story last year we won't sustain it i don't i'm not even looking to sustain it i'm looking to know where it is for sure the day we need it uh we're basing our figures on really good uh future estimates by you And I turn around and base mine on a lot more liberal approach, to use a terrible term in a Republican community. I look at our growth a little more positive than you do, because you have to be careful. I'm saying we won't know what it is until the en

Well, at that point in nine, we're going to pass the budget without the raise. We pass the budget without the raise, and we table it until January. We still haven't spent any of it. But we'll know exactly what the figures are then. That's my point.

My commitment to the employers was to, I support the raise. As long as it's 3.7%, and I think the money's there. And the money's there to me. I think the money is there.

I'm asking you to broaden your thoughts on that 6.6.

Mr. Chairman, let me point out the 6.7 million are not savings. 6.7 million is part of the total fund balance we're estimating we have in the bank. And 6.7 million plus at the end of your estimate, we're going to be down to one point something. So 6.7 plus the one point something is more like seven or eight. Pretty soon we're dipping into the seven we say we've got a problem on. We haven't got a $7 million problem, in my opinion. We don't have one. That's your opinion, though. Yeah. These numbers don't lie, right here. And neither does the chairman, who's done 20 budgets. I know. And Michelle,

The raise comes every year, and the employees work every year.

I'm only here six more weeks, and I would not be in favor of laying off an employee under somebody that doesn't know what the figures say because they can't read the budget. Thank you. I'm going to have to get back down to where it is. I know what the budget says to me, and I've done 20 of them. The budget is not scary, and it's not something we should be scaring employees with. The budget is going to end up with a minimum of $8 million in general fund. A minimum. 6.7 or whatever it is, plus whatever the fund balance is in the estimate of our CFO. The road and building fund.

If the estimates land like they are, and if the income is even a little better, then it's pretty easy. I know y'all don't like .. Some of you don't. But I'm optimistic that that 8.7 is just $300,000 for me and 9. The money's going to be there in a bigger figure. to me. And we'll wait and see. We'll wait and see. It's all written down. It's just not fair to the employees or the citizens that we're furnishing services to to say, oops, I'm sorry I was wrong. I'm sorry I was wrong. We said we was only going to have $8 million, but we got $11.

We have a different philosophy on how to spend the money. I'm not here for putting the money up if we've got needs for the employees, which basically means we have means for citizens. 70% of our budget is employees serving citizens. And we don't buy it for the employees unless we are in favor of them being able to keep up with inflation. Write these figures down. They're going to be $9 million. when we get all of our figures in. Plus, in the general fund, as of when all of our figures come in for next year, there'll be over $9 million in that account. Now, what will be in road and building? No

There's a whole list, but some of it we don't have to spend. I went over it too. Some of it we don't have to spend. One of the things out of road and building is if we spend one point something on remodeling the bank.

Then what's in there to spend the $7 million in road and building?

The 4.9, part of it's being spent on equipment that may or may not have to be replaced. We're looking at that, too. Look, there's some things we don't have to do. That's why we went to Caterpillar and said, how about we finance this stuff instead of writing a check for it? You know, is that factored in? Are we going to factor in just the payments for this stuff instead of paying for it? And I think you've worked on that. What is in here is the payments for the... What's the estimated balance of the... Your balance will show estimated balance as of the end of... FY27. Yes. So what's the estimat

If we don't have a good plan for it, and, you know, we've bought, in four years, we talk about a lot of things, but in four years, we've bought property we didn't have to have. We've torn down buildings and moved people we didn't have to move. We've, uh, we've, uh, We gave away a jail that we could have put other things in. It depends on how you think about it. There's a lot of things that will have differences of opinion on them. I'm just telling you, my figures show that we can afford a 3% raise for sure.

Is the motion just with the motion just being made?

I thought part of your motion was to come back in January, Stan.

I'd like for that to be, and if somebody wanted to amend it to that, yeah. My motion right now is to give the employees 3% raise, but if it helps the feelings, I'll change my own motion to 3% raise today. We could just put it on the table to have a motion. I can amend my motion to say I don't know. Move that we give employees a 3% raise or revisit in January the availability of funds, something to that effect.

I'd be willing to second that if it includes the January look back.

I move that we look at the first meeting in January, a 3% pay raise for employees.

I would like to offer a motion. There's some commitments that I've made along with some things that I've looked at in other ways of doing business. I would like to amend the discussion on our budget to include a two-step pay raise to the director of the Emergency Communications District. That would be Aslan working under Patrice. And what that, okay, that was my motion. If y'all want me to explain, not just to give Aslan a raise. If Patrice leaves, right now you've got an assistant director of emergency management that y'all put there. I wasn't here. Three of y'all was here and made a person a

I got a motion, I have a second. Second. In the way of discussion, should, and I don't, I think that we should probably revisit that in January. I mean, shouldn't we do that after, when we make, shouldn't we do that at the same time we do other employees? Absolutely. I mean, that's just my thoughts on it. What do you think, Aslan? I mean... I mean, I just think that, I mean, from a, just being pragmatic about it, I mean, shouldn't we do that all at one time if we're going to do it?

Well, I would agree with you if it made fiscal sense, but a two-step pay raise for her is going to be this big in this budget. I'm just saying we did this to other, we had department heads come to us way back and say, I'd like to move so-and-so up. We had road department, I'd like to move so-and-so up. and what we're doing here we're we're looking out in the future if that person is already she's already six steps lower than patrice for instance you start getting a situation where you're looking at other people that get that job instead of somebody that you can combine already and then you're

I carried my list with me. We gave several. We turned a lot down. Yeah. And Aslan hadn't recommended it. This came directly from me because I saw what I'm hoping that we end up someday in the future with one EMA director that is also the person that's over 9-1-1

I got a motion. I wouldn't make a motion to amend it to carry that over to January when we can consider it with all the other requests.

When we review the other requests for other employees, we can do it at the same time. Consider all of them at the same time. Yes. Absolutely.

You got any more motions on this budget before I go any further? Well, I think I've got my commitments out of the way. Whether or not I have all the comments out of the way, I don't know.

Yeah, there you go. Usually we put an amount in the minutes.

$386,000, $17,000, $9,000, $435,000, $2,000, $121,000, $160,000, $4,000. So what does that mean, Stan? Explain what we did there. That may not be. Above and beyond the budget. That may not be.

Two million dollars, whatever it is. Four. Those. Well, count them up. I was trying to count them up while he called them out, and it wasn't four million. A little less than two. Count them up. There's a little less than two million dollars. Now, some of those you could have denied. Some of those you probably have a hard time denying. If you all remember, Mr. Chairman, our policies being not to do capital projects that we had to bid. until later to do them as an amendment. That way the person bidding didn't know how much money we were gonna spend. So those should be, to me, those are all justi

But we put in the budget for us. That's the sheriff's building for a SWAT building, didn't we? It was already budgeted, so we didn't have to do it.

So that's one of the amendments, but we did it because we bid it. That was a bid building. And we don't know what kind of price we would have got for it. It was high enough as it was. If we'd have put the word out there, estimated it's going to be half a million. Or the other thing to think about, you know, we put $200,000 in the budget to build the Sheriford building that cost $400,000. We're not thinking further than $1,000, whatever your cost. That's all. As a sitting commissioner, I'm not afraid of amendments. That figure.

Just for informational purposes, this check run for this week was $1.5 million for our bulls this week.