Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

I have a question. Are we going to give it another number then?

Does development have more vehicles than the road and bridge side? Yes.

Commissioner Chapman? Well, notice, I mean, the engineer's part is drastically cut, which I'm questioning is, did you give yourself enough space, number one? Number two, under contract services, you went from $250,000 to $225,000. With the flood event that we just... Should we not keep that at 250 and put 50,000 in yours?

Well, what I'm saying is your members don't add.

So just to clarify, you were going to you had $50,000 for contracting out some work that you said you could do yourself and you're still willing to do that. Yes. Okay, perfect.

But we don't know for sure that they will even allow us to take the grant money and pay somebody else. So we have to be prepared to pay for this out of pocket.

All right, so $300,000. I think that Little Joshua, that's a little on the low side.

On Little Joshua, I think $300,000 would be closer.

I think Nicole's coming to next court. There's already an agenda item to go ahead and get the job description out and

Would you recommend us bringing a specific FEMA professional that handles this to get through this process?

Is that the disaster accounting 101? Yes.

Did Jennifer Forbes go to the training? No.

There's another component to this. Even if we get, let's just say GrantWorks, because that's the first name that comes to mind. We get GrantWorks to come in here on a temporary basis. GrantWorks is not going to do everything that we need done, correct me if I'm wrong, and hand us a check going, here's your money.

So for the time being, real quick, we got the grants last year and our grant coordinator handled those. So can we not continue that way until your current grant coordinator doesn't have a job after September 30th. Right.

Yeah, I'm letting Nicole know, I'm making some notes, that we can put that in preferred experience. I mean, if either the person has it or not. But then, I'm sorry, what did you say?

I would rather hire someone specifically to do the FEMA claims for us. There's so much money riding on this, not just our own county damage, but... If y'all go all the way up to the north and south fork of the river right now, there is more damage to roads, bridges, personal property, business property than we have ever seen from any recent flood in the past 30, 40 years. And if this person can come in as a specialist, help us with public assistance and our county, at least making sure that we're not missing out on any it might be the best funds that we've ever spent. But that's why I say they

But not our new hire. This is someone separate. Are you talking about a different person? Different person, yeah.

Okay, so just back to the job description, because Nicole's coming on the 11th, and so do we then want that required experience? And, I mean, if not, then how soon can that person get the training? So...

So then should we be also advertising and budgeting money for the specialists? I mean, if the grant... The grant manager comes on soon enough and he or she has experience and we would need the person, but it's going to take a while to get the job description and post it.

I'm talking about just a FEMA specific. Yeah. Like we're not learning how to ride a bike. We need to know how to fly a jet right now.

I mean, where do you want to get this person from? I think it's a good idea, but what are you saying?

There's companies out there. I sent a message to one of my friends in North Carolina that went through This whole process, and they hired special outside FEMA specialists to help them. Because then you submit your grant information and they deny it.

Then you have to keep. Do you have a budget in mind?

If you have a number in there and we can get reimbursed even on that admin, you're saying that's a possibility?

At the end of this, it may not actually cost us a penny.

We're going to budget $115,000 for GrantWorks or somebody, $150,000 for a interim service, person and the grant manager yes that's what it sounds like and uh the and i want to get across the fact that we if grant works portion is covered by the grant it's not free it still cost us 115 000 that we could have been using as repairs as what as repairs on a bridge or whatever out of the CDBG out of the grant.

I think the landowner would like to have it removed. And so I think the landowner would cooperate with us. I don't think that'll be a problem. I just think that, yeah, where are we going to get the money from?

A couple years ago, the county went in and removed two bridges. Same situation. And both landowners are wanting assistance.

I would suggest working with the landowners and if there is protruding rebar, that type of stuff, that we, as a bare minimum, we go in there and if that's the only hazard, we remove that immediate hazard and then try to

The bridge at James Keel had a problem with it, like an undertow, and a dog got caught under it and drowned, and we were afraid children were going to get caught under that. So is that the situation?

It all depends on the water level. If that water level drops, the bridge has become a major death trap.

Yeah, I would say sooner than later. Okay. What's your last item?

I think we put 30,000 gallons on Ranger Creek Road.

Was there a reason? Didn't we have like one? We're going to plan for one 10 up top and two 10s down. I think that was. Was there a reason for that?

The flood has erased some memory of all. We want to ask them for some sort of a match.

You're talking about the formatting and the compilation. And that may be premature. Maybe that's something to look at next year because it's going to take a good amount of time.

It goes back to the very top of the first sheet, and that's exempt personnel paid. We're taking a county engineer position and dividing it into two different departments with a lot less responsibilities on each side. And so what are we expecting to be faced with as far as financial when that happens? Are we going to replace that person in the development department at your level? How are we handling the pay when we're dividing the responsibility up and having less?

And would your new position be more road and bridge engineer? I'm sorry, what? Different than county engineer, that would be road and bridge engineer. I think we need to look at designating that and making the change.

From a legal standpoint, I think we have to keep the county engineer.

Silly me. We have to keep county engineer for them to oversee road and bridge.

That's correct. Good. I'll go with that. So if we're going from three engineers to two, essentially, are you able to help backfill in this type of situation with a disaster? In a way, you said you've been duplicating services

So, yeah, I'm going to bring that up under my... Go on, Mr. Catlin.

Go. Before you leave Mountain Creek Trail, I think we need, I mean, it would be a road and bridge while you're here. So let me explain. On Mountain Creek Trail, there are three five-foot diameter culverts that got undermined very similar to the Ranger Creek. We did a temporary repair. We were crushing the culverts. We have to get in there and replace them. There's 50 to 100 homes back in there that have no other access in route. Donnell has been working with Mary Ellen and myself to get some estimates. For $14,000, we can buy two eight foot by 40 foot, basically temporary bridges. And it would

All in, you are probably... uh what it was uh 60 somewhere in the 75 000 range let's add 90 92 or budget line is this similar to like a railroad or like yes it is a railroad that's what they used to have yeah that they've converted into a bridge it's uh it would be two bridges and two flashers. The flashers are actually the arms that go down over in your precinct or off your street. They're on Adler where you only have one way and they have the arm. We would need two of those, one at each end. I think this would all go under road and bridge.

Okay, $65,000, so we'll put $100,000 in. Okay. Is that your last item?

Is that going to give? That's essentially going to leave him. It's going to take away half of his budget.

I see a capital projects 600 on his budget.

Yes, because y'all... Corinna, one note, ACOG, Elmo Regional Transit's coming. I told them to be here at 10, but they can wait. Anytime we just need to talk about whatever senior transportation.

I would like to see the space needs assessment done before we buy anything.

Until this afternoon, I don't know where we...

Mr. McCall? We need to look at the space needs assessment before we... All right, so you can cut that, please.

I know we're trying to whittle down the end. I say we leave it, and at the end of the day, we need to start taking the red pen to things.

I guess I'll go first here and just ask Brian. You want to come up, please? Explain the $317,000 one more time. Actually, $318,000. How much of that is critically required this year? Do you have that spreadsheet?

And I think we were supposed to be brought down from that 317 number. What number is your department, Brent? 415.

I'm good with leaving that in. Commissioner Carpenter?

I don't, and I will just caution the court. I think that's a very conservative, well, that's not a conservative number. It's probably going to be 500,000. Well, I don't think it'll go five, but I think it could be slightly higher than three, which... We're hoping, doesn't look like it's going to happen, that we had $50,000 in this year's budget that we could have used towards it had we gotten started on it. But I don't think we're going to get started on it. Ladies, what are your thoughts?

I think we're going to have to do it. We've given our word to the judges and Nicole that we would look at this. They're out of space. And before we buy things and build things, we better see what we need.

Who does the space needs? Like what kind of firm would do that? A firm that's going to charge us. Is there like a college or university somewhere with interns that are Not that I would trust with this.

We ended the contract because we started off with one group of people, and then people from within that firm left the firm, and it started going downhill. And then when we spent one day over at the, I think the Methodist Church Hall over there, going over what... was the motto that we need for the county. I said we need to end this, cut our losses, and go, because I'm not willing to spend all of that time on developing a motto for the county. No, we were trying to do a needs assessment. The motto is don't waste taxpayer dollars. Don't waste taxpayer dollars.

trying to think because I slept since then and my brain's full, but I thought we got our request for proposal packets in on space needs last Friday at 10 o'clock.

They haven't been reviewed, is that correct?

Correct. Sharon's putting together a committee. Those were RFPs, not RFQs?

Can I ask you, Sharon, were there any prices talked about in the proposals? She can't answer that.

Okay, all right, thank you. Do you feel like we're capable of getting square foot, like floor plans of all of our properties that we're trying to fill, shuffle people around, And have a public workshop where we are all involved in looking at where people are, the number of employees. I mean, I have a really hard time spending half a million dollars a taxpayer on something that we already know we have to figure out.

Well, and here's where I say, and I agree with y'all. that's a lot of money. I don't think it's going to hit a half a million. Sharon will know in the near future, the committee will. I don't think it'll hit a half a million, but where I think that we need this assessment is that we do have so many different things that are involved here. We have the potential of taking, and I'm just going to throw this out there right now. We've kind of, put the parking garage on hold. But would there be a chance of taking the parking garage? And I've asked this of Mr. Thatcher and he could not give me an ans

I think we've started the ball rolling, and let's see what their capabilities are, what the committee comes back and presents, and we can also give them a budget, like this is how much we have to spend.

Leave it in until we get to the end of the day. We may see that we created an increase in property taxes if we're not careful with where we're going with this.

grants because i asked her to be here or she was scheduled to be here about 10 15 okay we want to go we're gonna can you start early because we're just going to try to keep thinking what would it be determined on that 500 000 for the special project fund for hearth road we add we move that to road and bridge for just general

Real quick before you do that, one last thing. I would like to address the Herfesser Engineering Study money in my budget. I'd like to tie it to my budget, so not completely off the shelf yet.

Okay. You can talk about it when we get to your stuff.

Nicole, would you come to them so the Zoom people can hear you? Sorry. I'm trying to stay out of it as much as possible.

I thought we had decided this morning already, and maybe y'all can add to this, but we're going to have to hire a company, GrantWorks, or somebody similar to GrantWorks. We're going to hire a specialist to take in the continue on with the FEMA grants and to start the new FEMA grants. And then we're going to hire the grant manager or whatever that looks like.

So we were talking about putting that in as a requisite in the job description with the FEMA experience. And if we approve that job description on the 11th, then is there any reason why we couldn't post it right away and start searching for the person?

So by the time we search for a specialist, we may as well just be searching for the grant manager and not not have an extra person to come in.

Yeah, the training is absolutely essential. That's one of the people that we talk about. Where they come from, whether it's T-DEM or whoever they come from, that's immaterial. They're going to have to be a specialist on this type of grants. But then the grant manager at some point in time, my opinion, is that they cannot be – They have to have the experience to pick them up with the disaster of this year. They have to be able to pick them up. They can't be on the learning curve, not with it being this. They have the experience or they don't.

job description on August 11th. It's going to be the 12th or whatever, at least before you advertise for these grants now, or for this person. And I would say you're probably going to have to advertise at least for two weeks and then interview. So now you're at the end of August, you interview and into the beginning of September, if the person is worth their salt, then they are going to have to give a two-weeks notice. We're three-quarters of the way through September. That's reality, folks. So this is why Mary Ellen is saying, no, we've got to go out today and find somebody that can take over

So could you take Jennifer's suggestion and work through your contacts at TETM and find out if they know of people who do help counties, and then we can try to find that person that might be the most efficient way rather than advertising?

To hire personnel. Okay, then I suggest somebody start writing who can write that job description.

Do they know any grant writers or personnel people who help counties through the process of working on the grants?

We did. But somebody's going to have to be in charge of taking the lead on finding that firm. So I guess, would you get with Sharon? to do that? Yes, I'll work with Sharon. Okay.

Of course, a second disaster was definitely not what anyone wanted and want to have to deal with. Unfortunately, that's our priority. Absolutely.

I recommend offering our current... grant coordinator a stay until we replace?

All the files should be available and the applications and the correspondence, the email, I guess, would, all the email would be available to that person, be archived, correct?

Commissioner Chantin, do you have a comment? I need to regress. Back to the capital expenditures. Okay, we went through, I've got a new total of $1,212,000 based on what we said. But what we did not do, we did not put in here the efficiency audit, did we?

Efficiency audit is... I'm going to say another 300,000.

I thought that was in a commissioner's budget, right? Commissioner Carpenter? I think that was.

That's for the space needs. For the space needs.

I think we should. And can you just, can you prorate it?

So what is your request? Whatever a month's salary would be. Okay. McCall?

I would say at least a month, just in case.

Because you're not going to... $9,000 or something like that.

Make the budget adjustment. Okay. Did we also include if we don't find someone in that time period? Well, it's already budgeted if we don't hire.

Yeah. In my opinion. I'm just a mechanic.

She says. I'd say exempt two. She says classification 17, by the way.

Do you want to tell us what you were thinking?

I'm sorry, 93. You're not going to get an experienced person for 93.

Can you send that information to us again? I know you sent it before with the How we determine that?

Right. So, as I go back and reviewed my notes here, the, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, Corinna, but on the contingencies county study, I put the 350 in there. The 50 was for potentially reworking the Development rules, 300 for space needs assessment. So that means, but we've got space needs assessment up here, 300.

So then we do need to add the efficiency audit.

I would like to see the budget before it's filed. So if we need to meet for one hour just for one final review, and I don't know if Melissa wants to consider posting that because you've got to have three days.

Has the RFQ gone out for that, Commissioner Carpenter? Yes.

We don't mean literally knock you out. We have Joseph and Ella on the regional transit. And I'm sorry, I don't remember your last name. Ella Nash? Joseph, what do you want to say? So both the judge and I had met with Sean Scott from ACOG Art and tried to get a handle on exactly... what the needs and funding are. I know that when the Burdick Center, the Burdick Center, Olivia Burdick's here at the Burdick Center, the Kronkowski Rainbow Center lost funding for transportation. And, you know, there was a deficit there. They sold the bus. They're not in that business anymore. And then I think ACOG

While you're handing that out, what is City of Bernie's commitment?

Well, again, I think it's a great idea. I still... You know, I was looking for metrics and I sent Sean a bunch of questions. I did get some data back. I still had some questions. And so to my mind, I don't want to look at anything beyond what we've been funding. Do we have the $8,000?

And we can have conversations in the city of Bernie and then make sure we're on the same page. I just want the data because I know that Mr. Thatcher told me a lot of the rides were school children. And it's like, there's a bus service called the yellow bus for school children. So we just have to, we can't discriminate. I understand anybody can ride, but my concern are seniors need to get to the doctor to get to the grocery store that are isolated.

It's complicated. There's a lot of information. There's just no way we can look at this. It's going to take months. Understandable. Yeah, definitely.

So it does look like most of the trips are within the city of, I mean, I think there's just over a thousand more for the overall, but the majority it looks like are within the city of Bernie limit. So I know we're all wrapping up our budget. I think it would probably should get with them pretty quickly if we're going to continue for the area.

So thank you for coming in all the way to Bernie.

Okay, so we talked about the Robert Steele contract already, right? The tech stock got back to me, and the improvements for Webster's Curve, the Jersey barriers, the total is about $630,000. And this is a little different than the project at Herff and Adler because that's what we're giving them as a percentage. This is kind of an outright cost for the Jersey barriers and widening the road. So I asked Clayton Ripps from TxDOT to see, really put a pencil to the numbers, and he said that if we could contribute about $100,000, that would help close the gap and be able to keep this project going. A

Thank you. So that's why I was thinking of the, I was looking at the 50,000 we weren't going to be using for the engineering study on HEERF and ESSER. Commissioner Region?

I don't think I need a thing because I was able to... Before we get to you, I meant Jersey barriers. I'm sorry. Yeah, I talked to Clayton Rips at the AMPO meeting and he had said 600,000. It's like, yikes, can we divide that between two years? And so then he We both pestered him, and he felt, I guess, compelled to try to find the money. So we've got fatalities on 46 West.

Gentlemen, I'm going to say no, because if we start subsidizing TxDOT on every project, we're going to be asked to subsidize them on every project.

Well, we better get ready for that, because that's what's coming down the pike. As federal funding and state funding are drying up, HAMPO is moving in the direction where

pay to play and we put a million dollars towards her finesse or 46 um i'm a yes we need to get something done on 46 okay corinna add 100 000 please

We won't need any money for water conservation because I've got funding through Cal Creek, GBRA, and Bernie Radio, and I still have. So I've got, let's see, $575,000, probably close to $10,000, and then one pending.

I think most of mine have already been covered. Commissioner Carpenter?

Again, remove the $1.5 million for purchase of parks and recreation space.

Yes, sir. The only thing on my list then, other than that, would be the stoplight at Comfort ISD, and I'd like to leave that in there and see where we land at the end of this. For the record, there's $300,000 I put in there. That's not enough to cover the entire cost, but it's something that Comfort's been trying to get done for years, and A lot of these students are leaving high school after the blinking lights stop blinking, and they're like playing Frogger trying to get on the road when there's people driving 65, 70 miles an hour. These are young drivers, and I'd like to leave that in there

Commissioner, could the school district cover some of that? They're having to. And we still need 300 if they cover some?

Yes. The total cost, I think, is 450 to five. We can look at where we are at the end of the day and see, you know.

Could they do one of those lights like they have on River Road that when the pedestrian, I mean, I know that they have different rules on roads for, you know, TxDOT has different rules. I don't know if that speed is too fast, but could they

The problem on 87 is TxDOT will not slow down. Unless you're in an incorporated area, they will not slow down the roadway beyond a certain speed. And so just like on Main Street and Bernie, I think 35 is the slowest unless you're in a school zone.

Okay. I do not think we should be funding the majority of this. I mean, I could see funding something, but if it's a half a million and we're going to throw in 300,000, I got a problem with that. This is a school district problem, and this school district should pick up the majority of the cost.

Well, just like Highway 46, we've had so many fatalities out there. There is a time and place where this county needs to step in and figure out how to improve the safety for these people.

No, Commissioner Chapman and I talked about that, and we're not watering that much landscaping there, and we're not going to use it for drinking water, so we don't need that.

We'll start with you since you're here, sir. All right. I mean, we have always in the past helped the fire departments with truck payments, and traditionally they are broken up, one this year, one, and so I don't have a problem with it.

I have books from the very beginning for used. I know they're out there.

Well, I'm looking and Donnell had a contact and he was going to reach out and evidently he has... How about, can we circle back to that after lunch?

I think, yeah, 200 is a safe. Let's put 200 in there for the fire blocker, but it may reduce based on Commissioner Chapman's questions. But, yeah, I think that to answer Corinna's question, my thoughts are that, yes, it would be used, a county asset. But my question then is, is a comfort volunteer safe? let's say, is he legal to go drive that?

Yeah, but see, in my way of thinking, if we're going to do this, it needs to be a county vehicle. It needs to be then accessible to any of the fire departments. It needs to be accessible to the sheriff's department. It needs to be accessible to DPS. It needs to be

Mr. Chapman? We're going to use this just for the for vacation, that type of...

They go off for a week, but it's a really small increase.

I'm glad you gave the background on that. That helps me understand it better.

So I talked to them this morning and I said, I was pretty sure that that was not going to fly. And so let's talk about some other proposals. I don't like the idea of giving them everything that they asked for and then just starting a half year late because like in half year toward the budget, because then we're locked into that next year. And I think that's too big of a jump. So I asked them to get me kind of some thoughts and they said that the 5% increase on operations would be fine. They thought if they had $100,000 to pay a full-time employee, that would cover the salary, the fringe, and t

No, it would be under the Bertheim standard operating procedure. And we've already gone. I'm not going to argue that point again and go around and around with that. We know all of all of the arguments.

I can't support that. Right now, with the budget that we're going to be facing and looking at this afternoon, I think we have to hold to the 5% like we did everybody else. We have to look at the I mean, I don't know. There was a few people in my subdivision or my precinct who were affected by the flood. But before I gave $500,000 to Berkham Fire Department, I would rather use the $500,000 to try to help some of the flooded victims in comfort. And I just don't think we can...

do we can't justify in a tight budget of going up a huge amount in one department well to be clear they're not that's not the deal anymore it was the hundred for the full time and then the dollar raise um what about since last year we structured bergheim and comfort to um Kind of be equal, even though it's structured differently. The Comfort Volunteer Fire Department doesn't get the money. It's under Brady's department, but it serves comfort. What about a $40,000 bump for personnel and whatever they can add in their paid professional staff part-time that gives them a little bit more that would

And then 5% on the office. We also have to understand that we also pay for the communications, which is $8,000 a month or no. We pay LCRA for the radio time, which for the fire department's loan is, I believe, $8,000 a month totally. So that's money that's not even in their budget. I just, again, we'll find out this afternoon, but I think the numbers are going to be shocking. And if they can't live with 5%, they told us last year that just give us this and we will be golden. And now they're coming back this year and asking for double, but willing to back off. And I don't like playing that game

I understand the no. I do want to clarify I don't think it was a game. I think they came here in earnest with integrity to present what they thought looked like a true full-time professional volunteer fire department without going to an ESD.

I know we can't give them what they want. They are trying to run their department like a professional department would run, and eventually it'll be an ESD. I know it will. But I think we need to look at the end of the day and find out where we are. At a minimum, it needs to be what Comfort's getting.

I agree with the 40. If we're giving it to Comfort, we should give it to Bergheim.

I don't know anything about Bernie PD and their vehicles or anything.

Did you look at Glassdoor or anything? You know, I don't, not just, I don't know.

I think we're going to need... If we're not going to be able to get to the end of the day and have any idea where we really are, we're going to have to meet again. And I had said no to the IT person initially. And... Unless we find funds, I don't see us hiring more people. Mr. Chairman?

I've got to hold off. I've got to agree with Carpenter that we're going to have to get at least into this afternoon. Can we have funds? Can we have any figures and meet tomorrow?

I'm available tomorrow. Just throw that out there. I really understand your need. And I would like to say yes. I don't know where we're going to be at the end of the day. I've fought hard to get you four deputies. We got two. And then all of your people got the salary increase that you had been asking for for quite some time. So I think this is coming to us too late. I don't think we're going to be able to put it in. So I would be a no.

I say we still wait and see where we are, and I'm available tomorrow afternoon.

Open up your questions. Well, I've had more interest on my emails blowing up from support from around comfort for you guys than any other topic that's been around in a long time. And so, yeah, I don't know the final numbers, and I appreciate what y'all have been doing in Comfort, helping people to share, helping assess damages. Both the Chamber and Comfort have been very busy helping the Comfort community right in the past couple weeks. I know that out of 1,500 in Kerr County, 1,500 damaged properties, over 500 of those were businesses, from what I have been hearing. I don't have that assessme

Just one. Would this be through the Comfort Foundation or through Visit Comfort?

I'm not an attorney, but it is a legal question, and we cannot donate money to the Chamber of Commerce, which is a similar status. That's true.

that becomes a legal matter of whether or not we can give it number one number two with all due respect i know y'all are trying your best to improve things and and get things going and and i've been to one of y'all's meetings and i do admire that but right now we're looking at uh a huge part of repair bills that we're going to have to do from the current flood. And I can't see, with all of the other requests that have been made in the county for staff, I can't see giving $25,000 out there whenever we're cutting back on what we're giving to staff.

But at some point in time, from a prior businessman's perspective. I would like to invest in comfort, but my idea of the county investing in comfort would be to go down and put a road in down by the river on the property that we just put in, put in some picnic tables, put in an area that people could access the river from. This could be the county's contribution to visit comfort and so that to me is more of a county function because it's the development of a park and then a direct donation to visit comfort that's just my opinion we would love to have that park i would love to have a place to p

You're able to start gathering data then.

Yeah, and to echo Mr. Chapman, we've got a lot of needs, and I had said at the outset of the budget that I was all about public safety and our roads, and now our roads, they didn't need another trip. And so we're really going to have to see where we are with the budget. We missed two budget days, and now we're in a crunch. And so I may be open to some amount of funding. I'm going to not be able to support the entire 25,000. So... We will see where we land when we get to the final numbers. I think we're going to try to continue today's session until tomorrow.

We just did that with the fire department. They were here yesterday, and then we pretty much decided right before lunch what they were going to get. They don't even know.

Can you just hit on very, very, very concisely? You said you wanted to service comfort and all surrounding areas. How do you propose to do that?

Thanks for answering. Thank you for all the work you guys are doing. I appreciate it.

No, I agree, because... we have experienced in previous court where we took it down, in my opinion, too much, and then the next year we suffered because of it. So you can go down too much, and so I would be good with the 373. Mr. Governor?

I'm good with that as well. My concern is if the economy keeps slowing and we keep growing... We're going to have problems.

And if it's right, let's say we drop the tax rate by two pennies. Not that we could, but if we went into a major recession, we couldn't recover without going back for a vote. Is that correct?

I've been here for a long time. But what does concern me, James, is that what you've already brought up. You have a lot more people turning 65. And over the years that I've been here, that number is going up. And correct me if I'm wrong, but Okay, I'm over 65, I'll admit, by a year or two. Anyway, when you lower the tax rate, my taxes are frozen, but they can go down, but they will not go back up. So every time we lower those taxes, everybody that was frozen drops down again and can never go back up.

Uh, I'm really glad that you came and I'm encouraged by all of the information that supports. I'm not sure that, uh, I'm not sure where I was last year when you came, but I'm glad you're here now. So, again, this is encouraging information, and I'm looking forward to being able to drop the rate.

Thanks for coming. So the economy is feeling flat, and so now we have numbers. So we're down about $78 million in the improvements. You said $372 million this year, $450 million last year.

Um, so why did you say that our, uh, interest in sinking is dropping because our debt is that amount is actually low debt, the debt payments.

Okay, and then the last thing, talk to me about, you said since we're adopting a no new revenue rate, which our representatives in Austin will be thrilled because they've been throwing us under the bus about the property tax relief they've given us and then jurisdictions raising the rate, but we actually lowered the rate last year. So that's exciting to be hitting that no new revenue rate, but you said the process for adoption is different, so we don't have to publish as much, or how is that?

That's a good point because it begs the questions like, well, why are you keeping so much in fund balance and continuing to not lower our rate?

All right. Thank you, James. Thank you. Roughly $56 million on this budget, plus or minus?

So I don't even bring those notes from yesterday. Brady did such a good job talking about it. So we rely on the National Weather Service, which is funded by the government. National Weather Service does a good job. However, it covers in our region, oh, I don't know, a dozen counties or so. And after the flood last year, several of these meteorological weather service companies just started coming out and saying, you know, we can give counties and cities more pinpointed information earlier. because the National Weather Service is not going to be able to be on the phone with the emergency manage

No, this is an actual consultant. So we got with Sharon, and she did a request for information. We had 10 companies, a couple local and all over the state and all over the country, and gave us the information. So that's how we were able to compile the white paper along with National Weather Service and NOAA and other resources that we found on the Internet.

You're saying that Tuesday before the Wednesday flood that hit Barney, that's when they had that meeting at the fire station. You're saying they could have actually specifically said, because Brady and Chief Ball and everyone else, 10 to 30 inches of rain are going to hit. We think it'll be west of us, but we don't know for sure where it's going to hit. You're saying they can... they can get really specific and say, tomorrow Bernie's going to get hit hard.

Yes, and because they're constantly monitoring it in real time and in communication, you get that messaging sooner. The National Weather Service has a shift of, I don't know, whatever, 12 hours or two or three times a day, and then they do have alerts and they issue warnings and watches. And it's not different information from the National Weather Service. It's more layered information, and it's more tailored to someone paying meteorologists to sit there and monitor that particular area 24-7.

My understanding is that some of these companies have been in Austin recently talking to TETM and the governor's office. So that might be something in the future that they would use.

I would have to agree that this is a premature number one on this type of level. And I think there's other Information that's going to be developed and something even better next year, possibly. I would like to see it at least put off for a year. And we get this grant completed where we're doing the modeling. Because I think the modeling which we're getting done under a grant is going to be of much better benefit to us than and use the National Weather Service. Chad, do you have any other thoughts on it?

I mean, if I'm interested, I just, again, don't know where we stand on the final budget.

I agree. We don't know where our numbers are.

And just on the weather thing, if we kept the $20,000 in there and did requests for proposals, then we would find out exactly what they could do for how much money. We wouldn't have to hire them.

Okay, let's just think that that's a pie in the sky that we don't need right now. We need to take care of, we've got requests from the sheriff. I'm still going to bring up one more time. Y'all can tell me no again, but I'm going to bring up about general counsel. We need help in that office. And without help in that office, we're going to go south real quickly. Anyway, we need the help. our own people before we start helping other people.

So my request was to move his pay to 120. But as we talked about yesterday, it's really a great change, just a step change. And for a comparison, you have Bernie Fire Chief Emergency Management making 160 per year. We have our captain in comfort at the pay of 119 with plus benefits. That's with the regular pay overtime, which is part of emergency management or part of firefighters and paramedics basic plan package. Even the second in command firefighter over in comforts at $88,000 without benefits, which puts him, I believe, even more than what Brady's making. And he's the head of that departm

I was going to ask, when you talked about raising the elected officials' salaries increase, You said you didn't want elected officials having somebody that worked under them making more than them. And that's what we have right here.

And so this is again for the person. Well, I don't believe this county needs to keep growing with new employees to the number we've been doing year after year after year. Like I would rather pay department heads a fair rate, a competitive rate, and have them deal with their department and make it function.

We already raised an engineer's position by probably $30,000 just two years ago in one change. We raised our general counsel significantly to make sure that we provided the pay that was asked for to bring that person in.

If you do, Brady, because Adam is making more than him, then you need to go in and raise Brian and Shelly because there's numerous paramedics that are making more than those two because of the overtime pay. So that argument could be taken. I mean, again, then do we raise Donnell? Because Donnell is supervising many more people than what Brady is supervising. And it stands to be a whole lot more at risk with Donnell's group. So, I mean, again, where do you stop this? Once you start it, you have opened the floodgates and we are, you might as well take this two or three years of the pay chart and

What would we need to do as far as grade for Brady to make?

Because we started the extra salary for the law enforcement and for Brady's group, Donnell will be in here next year, I can guarantee you, asking for additional pay for anybody with CDL. There is no difference. And the CDL drivers are of high demand.

You were going to make a point about the total if we do one for all. Is that what she was bringing up with all the requests that we had? Where have these requests been?

You did that on your own? No. The department had sent it all in.

There's something else we can talk about while waiting. She should be here briefly.

I think we're going to have to say yes for doing it for one.

Mr. Carpenter? I was after increasing the department head's pay, not across the board, but I do think Mr. Diamond deserves to be treated fair, and I don't want someone coming in and making... It's a bad example. Yeah. I mean, we're kind of put on the spot. I was trying to correct one department's... And we do need to go back to that. But this fixes a bigger issue in law enforcement. If we're going to do this, I want to fix the... Well, go ahead. We'll finish this. Yes.

Can I ask another question? Go for it. So what was that number that you?

So in the 500,000 you were talking about a minute ago, can you tell me where that is in this picture?

Chairman? Yeah, we've got to be consistent.

Okay. I'm still trying to raise Brady. I mean, I understand he's a department head. He's not another.

Can I say a few things? Sure. I did try to bring this up in compensation committee, and we talk about things in compensation. You bring them here. We talk about them again. So I'm just going to go ahead and bring this forward. My idea was shot down when I brought it up repeatedly, but Guadalupe County has a fire marshal who, Their fire marshal is also the emergency management coordinator. He makes 115. The assistant makes 105. Just in Comal County, the emergency management coordinator makes 100. In Bernie, the fire chief makes 162. So it is all over the place. I think that as we look at We've

You had idea. We didn't have a complete consistency on that, but I've brought it up in the past to address his pay and it was not received. And so since we're talking about it, I'd like to mention it again We had people that were promoted two steps from what they were. Two steps is the, when we promote, it looks like from this list. So that's, I would like to put that. Promoted in grade. Promoted in grade and then steps.

Absolutely. Come on up. Why not? We're going to be here till tomorrow anyway.

They're The emergency manager in Guadalupe County. How long has he been there?

I don't think we even went into that depth on the people that we added to this chart.

I think that does come into play whenever you're dealing with the emergency manager in Medina County. I know him, know what he makes, and he comes with, I don't know, 30 years experience. And it's not that much money.

One thing that was on our list was to propose to split the fire marshal and EMC. And I believe the proposed number was somewhere around 64 to 67. I'm not sure.

We proposed keeping the salary the same. We had a number that was mentioned if we split.

So that was one of the ideas because you said you would talk to Brady about that. And so with that in mind, with what he's doing now as the emergency management coordinator, along with his rural fire and his fire chief, if we were to split and we would have a position that we would pay an emergency management coordinator, taking that off of Brady's job duties, 64, we had a number in there. Why would we not increase what he's making now?

I want to, for the record, the call and sheriff. The county staff has never been taken care of as well as they are right now under this court. We did a $1.85 million increase just in county staff excluding the sheriff's office two years ago in one swoop. We added $1.85 million plus ongoing in extra expenses year after year to our overall payroll. The average county employee is making $84,000 per year with benefits. That needs to be well known with every person that works for this county. You can't go into the private sector and do a lot of jobs for small businesses and make even half of what w

I was trying to raise one person's pay, and now we're 27 people in, plus Brady. Now it's 28.

But we had plenty of that just now. My number was 120. I just threw it out there. But it went a long way away from what I was

That's a little bit more than what you were calculating yesterday. A little bit more. Yeah. I was thinking it was about 99.

So I'd like to say one thing to the sheriff. I have fought with him for nine and a half years. Fought with him? With him. Yes, against him. Occasionally for him. But I do respect the man for fighting for his people. Amen for that. And I'll just tell you that, Sheriff. Even though I will continue to fight you, hopefully for another two and a half years. I still respect you. Thank you. I look forward to it, sir. Thank you.

So he's at, with his 89, 404 and 1200, he's at 90,604. And then with the stepping up and a 4,800 certification, it'd be at 105, 445. That's a $14,841 increase. I just wanted y'all to know that it,

Don't push your luck. Jennifer? Jennifer?

I'm going to take this in a minute. I mean, you can't see him on the 18 anyway.

I am because it is a nice bump for him, and I'm really leery about hopping all over the board and not being consistent. And I just think that's something that this court needs to do, if anything, is be consistent.

So it's like a 16% increase. Okay. So because of the fact that he's paid from two different categories, he's not necessarily right on an 18%. Like when I'm looking.

So what do we got left for us to knock out for you?

How much do we have budgeted, Corinna, for Burdick renovation?

All right. So... Well, you're figuring that, Corinna. And is it all right, Commissioner, if I go over this? Yeah. Okay. So the stapled, the unstapled sheet that's on one page, unstapled, with a total of 8,471,000 at the bottom. All right, so this was given to Commissioner Wieschen and myself a week ago, approximately. On the 23rd. This does not include the owner's rep or owner's contingency. And the owner's contingency, I feel that we need it because... In any project, you need an owner's contingency because you're going to get into it and you're going to go, oh, man, we didn't think about put

And just to kind of back up, we had asked him early on the price per square foot, and What was that, Commissioner? 400, 450?

He had originally, in our very first meeting, when we met with him, Commissioner Wieschen asked the question how much he felt this project would be, and he said, well, what is your budget? And she said, well, I've got half a million dollars in there. And he said, well, that should cover the design cost. And then she said, okay, how much would the construction cost be? And he said, probably in the $450 square foot. When you add a 10,000 square foot building, that's four and a half million. So $5 million for the overall project, kind of is what the figure that, how we got the figure that we had

It's a dumb waiter. A lift for stuff. So... he was going to, we felt that that was necessary. His first thought was, well, can we cut that out? And I said, no, because you're using part of this mezzanine space for the IT room for all their connections and cabling. You need for the HVAC system a place for that. And so that's put up there in the mezzanine. And so anyway, All in, we're going to end up with roughly 13,800 square feet at a cost of roughly $6 million. And if you... Again, we've got to get with him to see what these figures mean. There still could be some site work that's going to ha

So adjourning today and going tomorrow is not an option, even just one more day? We can't follow a timeline?

So the budget has to be filed by the 5th.

We can have a meeting when? On the 25th?

Well, if we don't do that, then we're faced with the day that we adopt the budget of saying we're not going to adopt the budget. And that can't happen. I mean, it can, and I wouldn't want that to happen. So if we could, if you could, we could file as much as we can, but just one look, on the 10th, wherever we meet.

No for the $300,000. It would be a yes for part of it, but not for all of it. I'm the same.

Chad, do you think we can talk to TxDOT and get something out of them?

Would you all do $200,000 towards it? You said it was $500,000? About $450,000. $200,000. Fair enough. Chapman, are you good with $200,000? Let's say yes.

I don't know. We gave them five already. And then general counsel remind us, we have to do some sort of service agreement with them because of their nonprofit status.

And if we gave the money to the area foundation or whatever that foundation is, then that foundation could make a grant to them that would be acceptable.

It's a 501c3. And then it makes grants and in turn it could give the money to them or is that circumventing the law?

You know, we got to talk about Burdick. And so I'm going to just...

grades that everyone's looked at i just want to put it on notice and then i'd like to rediscuss the general counsel position so on the um steps now where that's going to potentially move more people potentially 25 it's going to do it for 27 people i do think that deb and melissa deserve to be taken care of right so um i don't know where weather stands but i think we should Pull that total, because it was kind of up in the air. I think we did. We did? Okay. Oh, you haven't pulled it yet. It's still here. Yeah, pull the weather, because now we've just increased employees, and I would rather take care of employees that we have.

No, Deb went down when she was transferred back into. Correct, and I think there's.

I'm going to keep my position that taking on one more employee with benefits without first defining the scope of what the office should be doing. As we heard, general counsel wears many hats and general counsel needs to wear general counsel hats and whatever deficiencies we have need to be brought to the court. So we can address those, and then I'd rather outsource to experience attorneys who have expertise in a particular field, and then we could look at it again next year.

Okay. Commissioner Chapman? I'm still going to go with a yes in that we've just experienced in our family of having to go to an attorney. And when you start paying at $350 an hour, as opposed to $73 an hour, it doesn't take very many hours to make up the difference. Plus, this is a, to address Commissioner Wieschen's, this would be a neutral position to the overall budget because you're not adding, yes, you're adding a person and you're adding that, but you're removing then the same amount in the contingency for attorneys. So it is a neutral budget item. I don't, I don't see how that that is n

Well, to clarify, I didn't say that the general counsel was just for the court. I addressed general counsel wearing many hats, and what I think Commissioner Carpenter put well the other day is that if there are departments that need help as a department, we need to figure out what they need that may not be legal. I just think general counsel is taking on responsibilities that are outside the scope. But I have asked three or four times now to get that scope defined so that we better know what we're doing and get a handle on it.

So to clarify, I didn't say you were deficient nor your department is deficient. I was referring to what you said about wearing many hats because nobody had been hired to wear them or nobody was wearing them. That was my deficiency. So you misunderstood. And so I'm clarifying that. I always started the conversation with, I think you do a great job. I think you care about the county. I fought to hire you at a higher salary. And so I've been your champion. So there's no need to think anything else because I tell you that every time that we talk. Defining what else you need to do in your scope, d

All right. How much do we have in our legal fund? So we have money. $600,000 in the budget. Okay. Okay. So I'm still a part-time, and we have money in our, I would like on some of the things that are pressing, if we can't get some of these things done, I'd like to use some outside help to get those cleared off of our desk.

I'm really worried about our bottom line at the end of the day, and I'm worried about our bottom line on the 10th of August on where we are financially.

Sheriff, can you get by with some part-time help so we don't have to take on another employee with benefits?

So the bottom line is just by opinion, is if we're going to do this project, we need to set aside $6 million. So another two? Yes. Commissioner Carpenter?

Just money. So I feel like the government way is the most expensive way to do anything when it comes to development. As a business owner, I've built multiple buildings in this county. I would never even come close to spending $500 a foot on a commercial building. You're a builder in the past. What's a home going for now? A custom home, probably $300,000 to $400,000 a foot. I'd say probably around $300,000.

You just ask about homes. But in some respects, you don't have to build the Taj Mahal. I was going through some numbers. The $13,800 square foot building at $500 a foot was $6,900,000. So, I mean, if you jump that up to 20,000 square feet at 500, you're at 10 million and you have 10,000 square feet. What did we pick for the Burdick? 1.8.

We're going to be 10 million into this building when we're done.

Well, it's commercial building and we have to follow procurement laws and we have to have a set of stamped architectural plans and we have to have an owner's rep and to do business as a government. You're absolutely right. We can talk about alternatives if we don't want to proceed.

3.9. So how much do we have set aside for this?

So by the time we get through it this year, we're still going to spend another... however much on the architect to finish phase one. We're contracted through phase one. And that was, do you remember how much? So I'm going to say 200,000 or a hundred and at least, you know, somewhere in the 200,000 range that we're, I believe contracted for. So Sharon, are you listening? And if you are, do you have that figure for phase one? I'll look. What's that? She's looking. Okay, thank you. Anyway, so let's just say $200,000. We're still going to have to then budget $2.2 million of reserve funds. On top o

My worry is we're going to be at $17,000 and then we're starting to get into...

So the lowest we can get to is 16 and a half, unless we change our rules.

How much was the EMS center? I know I didn't ask that a minute ago, but wasn't that $3.5 million?

I mean, we could take nearly a million dollars out if we didn't put the mezzanine up.

Well, Do you mind dealing with it? Because Chapman and I just got the new numbers late yesterday evening.

Well, we're going to need you because if we're going to move elections over there by the deadline, then we're going to have to figure this out.

The actual latest figure that he came out with, Jen, was $5 million... and $57,570. I added $250,000 for owner's contingency and $300,000 for the owner's rep.

And so then rounded up to $6 million in case we needed some parking lots. So that's where the six million came from. I have one more question.

I'm not trying to tie this up, but the parking garage idea, I'm just looking at the whole thing. How many square feet was that going to create? Please, this is a... After looking at $10 million on the Burdick Center, I'm not going to shoot at anyone for any ideas.

You configure a parking garage, which... of $30,000 a square foot, I mean a parking space. And I know that is just, you think, how can that be? But I'm sorry, that's what it is, 30,000 per parking spot. So if you figure three floors at 100 spaces per floor, that's 300 times 30,000, that's $9 million. Now, if you figure two floors, 40,000 square feet, at $500 a square foot, because, I mean, overall, some of this, the parking garage, anyway, I figured 500 a square foot, you're looking at a total of $20 million for two floors of office-slash-retail There's $29 million to put a, if the city would

I kind of like the plan. I don't know about the retail, but we would have, In essence, another courthouse over there with parking and be right here. Part of the complex and let residents and tourists park there on the weekends.

I think, and don't hold me to this, but I think this facility right here is roughly 40,000 square feet. All three floors.

And if we like that idea, we might circumvent some of the costs on the space needs.

I just have a lot of calculations to do.

Do we want to meet on the 10th? Yeah, I don't know.