Remarks by Chad Carpenter
124 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 5
- Play at 9:46
“I was introduced to her by my father-in-law as greedy, my sweetie. And I guess he spent quite a few different visits in her courtroom for speeding tickets and moving violations. And so she has been an amazing part of our community for, for years. And she always worked hard for this County. So we love her and we will miss her dearly. A hundred percent.”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 31:19
“Any other questions for Erica? We have the space needs study that's about to kick off, and we'll need to keep that in mind, trying to keep you closer to the sheriff's office.”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 55:19
“Any other questions? Yeah, I have something to say. Okay, so day one of budget, to address some of the questions that were brought up, one of the first topics was a 4% increase on county pay. That should have been delayed until the very end of our budget process where we knew where we were, or at least in the middle of the budgeting where we knew where we were. We also had a flood in the middle of our budget proceedings, and we were trumped. Basically, we went to the Um, sheriff's office for a one hour meeting where we had to go through and slash how many millions that we slashed in a matter…”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 59:20
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 1:00:00
“We could not have extra meetings. So I do feel like some of what we're looking at right now we made some decisions quick with timeframe related to flooding that made it more difficult on us. I'm sorry to be on a ramp, but I look at things through a different lens than a lot of people in this courthouse. And I really feel like if I could give employees that work for my wife and I in this community, the benefits that people in this community and this courthouse and county government get, we would never lose any of them. But the simple fact is we can't, we can't afford that. And we have to make…”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 1:10:01
“One last comment. I promise not to rant. When I talk to our legislators about our property tax bills that we're being haunted with nowadays, their response is, yes, we're forcing the appraisal districts to increase values To represent what the true sale property, what value would be if you sold your building or your house. They expect us to go down on our property or our rates. They expect us to reduce our rates to make up for that gigantic increase. But that's not typically what governments do. They grow, and they grow, and they add more people, and they add more expense, and they build…”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 1:13:09
“So after having a few people reach out to me about not making that change, I talked to you, and you said at this point it would be very detrimental.”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 1:49:32
“Some of those are good points. We may be able to do the Burdick Center for half of the $4 million on the renovations, but we don't know yet. We are working on that. And I won't get into a lot of details on that topic, but the moment you slap government on a job, it doubles in price. It triples in price. The way we have to go through the process of securing someone to do the work and go through the process, it literally becomes ridiculous. None of us would consider building a home under the circumstances that we have to go through to build something for a government use. The space needs study,…”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 1:53:40
“So the average county employee is bringing home closer to $90,000 per year. Don't compare the county pay to the private sector because it's not comparable. And so shoot me if you want, but you need to look at this from a reality. I know it's the higher people making higher wages that are doing the $457,000 and not the lower, and I understand that. I would say the bigger question that we need to have, and we need to have this in open court, is can we continue the STEP program going forward? If we have a recession that hits our economy and our appraisal values plummet, the last three years will…”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 2:03:28
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 2:06:00
“I have one more thing I want to add. At the very end of our budget process, we had law enforcement and criminal district attorney's office come in here and rallied at the last minute to move their employees another step on our pay scale. This is not a 4% we're looking at. We're looking at a 4% plus multiple steps for how many people was that?”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 2:06:33
“If you haven't been paying close attention, you're not seeing everything else that's been going on in this budget process. Would you agree?”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 2:32:34
“All right, Chad, do you want to table this or do you want to move forward for the vote? I'm not in favor of 35 miles from Kendall County Courthouse. I live 20 minutes past here. If I have a conference in San Antonio, I'm going to get a hotel, even if I have to pay for it myself. And I've never, hardly ever used my travel budget. I've paid for most of my own. I think I've only turned two forms in my whole time for reimbursement. suggest a change you want to go farty I use downtown as a I think we're responsible adults and we can make decisions on if we want to stay the night if you've been out…”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 3:12:02
“I'll answer that one. First of all, I appreciate you doing what you've done, Sharon. And I know you're just doing what you feel is the right way to go. There's a lot more issues going on with EMS. We have our neighbors, our partners, burning fire. And due to the situation with the relationship with the volunteer fire department, the emergency medical services, That's why they broke away and got their own medical director. And we've been dealing with this for two years, trying to bring some sanity back to the table. And I really think that this should have involved commissioners. They answered…”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 3:25:11
“We probably have a $6 or $8 million EMS facility sitting on the edge of Bernie right now. The city of Bernie has been contemplating doing their own EMS service for Bernie and doing away with Kendall County EMS. We have a duty as a neighbor and as a partner with the city of Bernie to make sure we get our crap together and that they're happy with what we're doing and we're happy with what they're doing. This goes both ways. This is not just about what we want. That's why they hired their own medical director to begin with.”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 3:26:57
“I think Sharon's in. I think you're completely like neutral on this. I don't think you have a dog in this fight one way or the other. And I'm sorry that you're caught in the crosshairs. That's not fair to you.”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 3:32:29
“I do have a question, though. I mean, the other part on this is we have nothing to look at. We have no documentation other than this to review and I've had countless hours of my time spent dealing with EMS, sitting down, doing interviews with paramedics, going through meeting after meeting and I'm not happy with the way this has worked out, that we didn't have a court member. Again, no offense to you, Sharon. I don't have any idea what these people are charging either, and that's kind of a big deal.”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 3:33:08
“So, I mean, we need to know what they're going to charge, what we're getting for our buck.”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 3:35:28
“I disagree. We have issues we've been dealing with, and this doesn't necessarily put to bed any of these issues we've been dealing with. This continues. All right. Y'all have made up your mind to call the vote.”
Commissioners Court · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 1:28:09
“I say something real brief. Yes, the granted that we're talking about was. Was from the sheriff's office and this is his item, so he has an opportunity to talk more than just three minutes.”
Commissioners Court · Aug 25, 2026
- Play at 3:02:52
“Okay. You know, my job as an elected commissioner was to represent my constituents. And this topic is overwhelming. No, they do not want this. And I know this is not popular with law enforcement or the criminal district attorney's office. I know there are crimes that are being committed where they can actually trace someone from where the crime occurred to the direction of where they live. I get that. Imagine being in Washington DC on January 6th and you wind up in jail for three years because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Just because your cell phone, they could ping your…”
Commissioners Court · Aug 25, 2026
- Play at 3:07:27
“To follow up on Commissioner Chapman's comments, what else could this fund be used for? Yes, sir. I don't, we've never even, we've never explored that idea on, you know, I'm not talking about license plate readers. Please don't, don't take that. But if we do have the grant, we did get it. We were accepted for the grant. I would like to see where else I can do something for law enforcement. I don't know if there's another way.”
Commissioners Court · Aug 25, 2026
- Play at 3:43:15
“I have a question And I may be wrong. This is our fourth time Around doing budget and everything else, but did we ever approve the compensation committee's procedures? that would be up to the judge because I I believe the judge of the court approved a procedure for that.”
Commissioners Court · Aug 25, 2026
- Play at 3:43:35
“We don't even have procedures anywhere. I mean, I agree that we need procedures, but we can't default to another level that's not even organized and approved by the court either. But I feel like there's there's a couple of things going on here. If it's taking three or four months to update job descriptions, that's the first thing that we need to pay attention to, that we need to be better with our record keeping and make sure that our job descriptions are being maintained better in every department. If there's an elected official that's not wanting to participate, that's not okay either. We…”
Commissioners Court · Aug 25, 2026
- Play at 4:08:14
“Judge, I move that we approve the agreement with Visit Comfort to provide marketing services for the purpose of building Comfort's digital brand, developing wayfinding and visitor infrastructure... providing marketing education and promotions for local businesses and entrepreneurs measured through tourism and visitor data that will be provided to the county at no cost, not to exceed $5,000. Motion be by Commissioner Doppler. Is there a second?”
Commissioners Court · Aug 25, 2026