Remarks by Walt Smith
279 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 10 of 12
- Play at 3:01:40
“I'm not saying you were trying to hide anything, but my concern is if you knew that this would be a problem, where you knew that this was a possibility, or you knew it might have an impact on our contract as you being our vendor, if that's going to be the case, why did we not, if you've been in negotiations since April, why did we not know until a day before a walkout happened, even though five days prior you had been notified that we could have had, that it was a possibility? At a bare minimum, even if you didn't notify us that you were in negotiations with our service providers, the moment…”
Commissioners Court · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 3:05:30
“I don't have anything for Judge Tibby. I appreciate her openness, but I also see that Greg Cox from our DA's office is here. And if there was any interactions that you might want to share with us, you're more than welcome to. If not, that's fine as well. But not yet.”
Commissioners Court · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 3:07:30
“I would probably save any comments or questions for the exact portion. Very good.”
Commissioners Court · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 3:43:22
“Commissioner Smith, we'll start with you. It's going to be a hard year, and I appreciate it. In our conversation, the clarification on whenever we went through the slides and the presentation to actually, instead of have a percentage of the penny to put in there, what the actual impact on the bond rate would be. So the general public and the members of our court, whenever, I think that was the last meeting yesterday, whenever we kind of got an overview of this, I said, I think it'd be much more direct if we had those numbers in front of us where we can say when we get into conversations,…”
Commissioners Court · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 4:10:22
“Commissioner, did we pay for transport services to get them here today?”
Commissioners Court · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 4:10:41
“Okay. My concern was whenever we had one of the participants speak this morning and said that we paid for the ride to get him here to lobby on behalf of funding for the court, there's definitely an ethical problem with that, and so I wanted to address that. I'm really excited about the work of the court. There's been so much work that went into it. Even prior to Judge Brown, she's done an amazing job. But Judge Zellhart and Judge O'Brien both truly believed and cared in trying to make this work from the onset. Looking at some of the overall expenses on those costs, I appreciate where you all…”
Commissioners Court · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 4:30:24
“I would say, Judge, that whenever we look at the mental health needs in the jail, that we don't, and correct me if I'm wrong, DA's office, but working through the BAT and those kind of things, those individuals that do have mental health needs, we're paying for those mental health needs in the jail right now, but we don't outsource those inmates. Those inmates stay here. We don't have the ability... In general, they will not accept those inmates if we outsource. So we're paying that cost here in our jail.”
Commissioners Court · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 4:36:23
“The one concern I have is if we look at it from a departmental standpoint, the real problem is you have departments that have 100 FTEs or 450 FTEs, and you've got departments that have two or four. And at one position, they're automatically out of compliance, even if you put a 20% rate or something like that. So just from a logistics standpoint, we would... given the number of employees we have in some of these departments, you add one and it would double the size or at least 30% increase. Yeah, I have a three-person department. I understand, yeah. So I just don't think there would be a…”
Commissioners Court · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 4:37:34
“So just your personal view, I know that you have to deal with these, and Eric, I know you're in this boat too, you have to deal with these pay grade job description changes, requests for new positions fairly often. Would a process or instituting a process like I mentioned earlier, would that be beneficial relative to, okay, we look at it quarterly or at the mid-year? And if so, what would your recommendation be just for our benefit as we start to look at this if we did move to something like that?”
Commissioners Court · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 4:38:56
“No offense. No problem. Earlier, we were talking about FTEs and regrades and how we have... We have had a constant battle since I've been here to have our, and I just want to be very, very direct. Most of our directors are very good about, look, we want to look at the fiscal year when we're adding, when we're changing job positions or we're adding, regrading or adding positions, right? But we're constantly getting, okay, well, three months into the fiscal year, we're going to have somebody come in and ask for a new position or a new... putting it on a schedulized basis where there's one…”
Commissioners Court · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 4:41:00
“Until I have time to go through this, for example, I know on Sentinel Peak there's at least one new full-time position that will be needed, that is included in this budget.”
Commissioners Court · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 4:41:23
“It... doesn't matter that we still have to include it as a full-time position in the budget so my point is I would say give us one week on that so we can look and see what new full-time positions were included in here because there are some in here and a chance to review with those departments you bet absolutely I'm okay with that but Sentinel Peak we can we talked about potentially getting it through”
Commissioners Court · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 4:43:39
“On the third one, I think that it was pretty clear in the budget that those things, I think Jeff did that and scrubbed them already. And so I don't I mean, we can we can pass that. I think it's already in the budget.”
Commissioners Court · Aug 4, 2026
- Play at 9:39
“And that concludes our presentations. Thank you. Judge? Point of personal privilege. I know that there's a couple, none of our retirees are in court today, but there's a couple of them that I'd be remiss if we didn't have an opportunity to talk about. I'll start off with the Cunninghams from the Sheriff's Department. It's been a privilege working with them. as closely as I've had over the last eight years. They've truly been a gift to our county, and I appreciate everything they've done. I haven't had the opportunity to work as closely with some of the other members of the SO's office, but…”
Commissioners Court · Jul 28, 2026
- Play at 19:47
“I just want to say it. To your point earlier, evolve is a minor word. I mean, from where we started in this process to where we are now, and especially I would say Commissioner Inglesby and I get to see a lot of y'all's work from serving on the bat and some of the changes and more effective means that y'all have implemented in the pretrial services world. I'm sure 90% of our population out there really have no idea what your office does. But y'all are a key to ensuring that our justice system works here. And I really don't know at this point how we functioned or if we functioned in near a…”
Commissioners Court · Jul 28, 2026
- Play at 33:26
“I'm just constantly amazed at how y'all have been able to expand the program over the last four to five years. I can't say thank you enough for the outreach to both the elderly community as well as our school age community as well. The resourcefulness where y'all have actually looked at where we have vaccines, where they could be used, and they've being able to pair those needs with those resources and then actively take them directly where that need is present with the mobile unit is amazing to me. And it's a long way from where we were five, six years ago when we would do something for our…”
Commissioners Court · Jul 28, 2026
- Play at 42:07
“I move for the adoption of a new budget calendar, amending it with the budget being presented on August 4th.”
Commissioners Court · Jul 28, 2026
- Play at 54:57
“Commissioner Smith. I think Chief Bailey made a great point. This is a tool, and Every time we remove a tool from the toolbox that our law enforcement has to do their job, I think it's problematic. I know I've said this in court before, but I go back to, I lived in Washington, D.C. from 1998 until 2012. And in 1998, within the first two months of living there, I learned that I couldn't park on the street for more than two hours because every single police vehicle had license plate readers and I was going to get a ticket. This is not new technology. It's not something that came out of nowhere…”
Commissioners Court · Jul 28, 2026
- Play at 1:07:23
“Thank you. Please call the roll. Judge, hold on. To the point that our office, pardon me, not our office of general counsel, our civil division of the district attorney's office, I don't think we need to be directing our county administrator to be developing that policy. We should be asking the office of the district attorney and the office of the sheriff, as those elected officials, They should be, if we have the anticipation of a policy such as that, they're going to be the ones who have to implement it. They're going to be the ones who have to do it. And I'm fine. We just said she would.…”
Commissioners Court · Jul 28, 2026
- Play at 1:09:55
“I just have a question. I mean, before we vote on this, am I wrong to say that this is outside the purview of the agenda item? I mean, we're not posted to. for this. I'm fine with us moving forward with it. I just want to make sure if we take action today that we're not outside of it.”
Commissioners Court · Jul 28, 2026
- Play at 1:33:56
“Thank you. I think that a lot of the comments in the public comment are just not only false but outright outrageous. And I will tell you, as a board member, whenever I was elected to office in 2018, My predecessor, Ray Wisnat, was one of the founding board members of the PUA, and I chose to stay off that board until his term ended in 2020. And the court sought fit to appoint me then. What many people don't understand about the PUA is it is not a sole appointment by the Hayes County Commissioner's Court. It's one of the very few appointments where, once we make an appointment here, the other…”
Commissioners Court · Jul 28, 2026
- Play at 1:41:47
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
Commissioners Court · Jul 28, 2026
- Play at 1:42:27
“Just as you do anything in your precinct, I've got, I think, nine ESD boards, a couple of other boards that we appoint people to. I'm forever asking people, and at times, this is an exception to the rule because there is other interest out there, but y'all know better than anybody how hard it is to find somebody for some of these boards. And my one concern, I completely agree. I think that new blood in there at times is positive. At times, it's hard to get people to serve on like an ESD board or something like that. This one is different. I will say that one of the reasons that I stayed off…”
Commissioners Court · Jul 28, 2026
- Play at 1:45:24
“With that, Judge, if you have any comments.”
Commissioners Court · Jul 28, 2026
- Play at 1:48:55
“I said I believed he was a resident, and I've since confirmed that.”
Commissioners Court · Jul 28, 2026