Commissioners' Court - Regular Meeting

Brandon, do you want to start? Do you want Scott to talk? Giles?

I mean, this is kind of a concerted effort. I mean, I can get us started with the mechanics of it. There was not enough money in the contingency account, so the budget amendment before you takes the money out of the capital project fund. We had $350,000 in capital outlay that we could Move money from the 91 to 77 covers the, um. The cost of the salaries and the fringe associated with what we would need for the rest of the year. Um, the estimation, because over time is an estimation. I talked to chief Giles. About would the staffing levels be similar to the 830 payroll for the rest of the year? He did say that would be the case. And so I took what we calculated would be the when we would run out of overtime, which would have been about nine, eight. And I calculated daily rate. and then calculated the next 21 days. And so that's what this covers. And so this will get us through the 930 payroll that covers the pay period from 9-9 through 9-23. And then this will cover us on the 10-15 payroll that is split across two different fiscal years from 9-24 through 9-30. And we do a payroll rule. That's why we don't need to Worry, you know, there was a concern about do we need to pay, do any kind of budget amendment for those first eight days in the next fiscal year on the 10-15 payroll. But the new budget year starts then, and we do a payroll accrual on what was spent. So in terms of mechanics, the numbers in front of you, $91,277 is what I estimate what the Sheriff's Office needs for that 21-day period or 22-day period.

Okay, Mr. Giles, would you like to say something?

Yes. Just by way of explanation, 2026 or fiscal year 26 has been a pretty tough year in the jail in terms of staffing and other things as well, jail population as well. We've had a tough year from a staffing point of view, meaning that we haven't been able to uh keep fully staffed the rate at which employees have been departing has exceeded the pace at which we've been able to hire and so we've been consistently over the course of the year six eight sometimes more down just in the jail alone And just when we start to get close to being fully staffed, we'll have another round of turnover and right back down we go. And so we've had a tough year trying to stay fully staffed. We did something this year for the first time. And that is we spent money on advertising to recruit applicants to the Sheriff's Office. And we had mixed results. We did see an influx of applicants. But the percentage of those applicants that resulted in long-term hires wasn't what we had hoped. Um, so, uh, but it was somewhat encouraging that, that, uh, when we started advertising, we got, uh, we got a lot of applicants. And so that's something that we may consider doing in the future. If we, if we feel the need, as we stand here today at this very moment, the sheriff isn't here because he's at the office interviewing an applicant. Um, we are within one higher of being fully staffed into jail. which is really encouraging for us. However, we anticipate promoting four jailers to patrol deputies in the coming month. We have turnover, of course, on the enforcement side as well. We just had four of our jailers graduate the Panhandle Regional Law Enforcement Academy last Friday. Friday before last and so they're ready to get started in their law enforcement career and we Just happen to have four openings coming up in the next month and so That'll put us four more down in the jail. This is something that we're very accustomed to it's just a constant Effort to stay fully staffed One of the other staffing pressures that was uh very noticeable it really moved the needle for us this year in terms of the burn rate of our overtime budget was the amount of hospital duty that we were required to cover inmates who had been admitted into the hospital that require a 24 7 guard there were periods of time where we had as many as five inmates in the hospital We had three in the hospital long term for weeks and months. It was really labor intensive to cover that. So we have seen an uptick in the number of inmates who require hospitalization. And when they're admitted into the hospital, that's when we are really tasked with staffing an additional position. They have to have a guard 24-7. So that was something that was a bit of a game changer for us, was the amount of inmates that required hospitalization. That's something that's essentially beyond our control. And so... So to date, in fiscal year 26, we've hired 29 corrections officers, which is on the high side for a full year. That doesn't include clerks, dispatchers. We've hired a few patrol deputies straight to patrol. just other ancillary nurses, uh, ancillary staff members, that's actual correction officers. So that sort of speaks to how, um, how much of a staffing problem that we've had. Um, that number could be higher if, you know, we were able to hire every position or I'm, I'm sorry, lower if we were able to hire, uh, for every position and that applicant worked out long term. You know, we wouldn't have had to hire that many, but at any rate, that's kind of where we are. We did increase our overtime budget for fiscal year 27 that has been approved thus far. We are really hopeful that due to that increase in our overtime budget and hopefully an improvement in staffing conditions, and maybe hospitalization not being as bad in the coming year that we won't end up in this position again next year. The reason for the request for the budget amendment, though, is primarily due to the fact that because we got contacted, I got contacted, I guess, a couple of weeks ago. by Wes in the auditing office, putting us on notice that we were not going to be able to continue paying out overtime at the rate that we have all the way through the end of the fiscal year. And so we had begun plans to require officers to work for comp time only. supervisors set about preparing their schedules for the coming weeks and quickly realized that wasn't going to work because with an offer of comp time only on the table, officers simply don't sign up for that. They don't want to work for comp time only. And I think this is due largely to just a shift in the culture An offer of comp time only is really an exercise in deferred gratification. I'm going to work for you today, and I'm not going to get any benefit for it for quite some time. Who knows when I'll be able to burn or use this comp time. And officers learn pretty quickly that opportunities to take off and to use comp time that they've earned are scarce. They're few and far between because of the staffing issues that we're faced with. And so when we ask them to work for comp time, they know they're probably not going to get to take that comp time, at least not anytime soon, and maybe not whenever they want to. There are times when officers earn so much comp time that we have to force them to burn it. And so we'll send them home for up to a week at a time. And they haven't planned anything. They just get sent home. Now, they're being paid for sitting at home. But that's not exactly how they would like to use that comp time. And so it's a very unattractive option. It's unattractive to the employees. And comp time is unattractive to us, the employer, because it really only serves to defer the problem. And then when someone does want to take off or we do allow them to take off, on comp time, it exacerbates the problem that already exists. So that's where we are on the comp time only position that we tried to take. The minimum staffing levels that we have to maintain at the jail are minimal. they are the bare minimum that we have to have, uh, in order to, to conduct business and in order to meet the standards, the jail standards. And with an offer of cop time only on the table, we weren't able to meet those minimum standards. So that's where we are. We would, uh, ask, uh, you to approve this this would see us through the end of the fiscal year and we think and hope that things will improve next year you said you hired uh 29 correctional officers this year how many correctional officers do you all have

Normally how many y'all looking at 60? How many do y'all normally have?

Well, we have 130 people that work in the jail. Okay. That that's everyone included.

There are about a hundred actual jailers that work in the jail. So about a quarter of them's new this year.

Yes. Okay. And, and that, That attrition rate isn't shockingly high if you compare that. I've looked at our attrition rate compared to jails across the state and even the nation. And we're right in line with the averages. What we're experiencing is not unique. Law enforcement in general and certainly corrections are all experiencing staffing issues. Some parts of the country are far worse than what we are experiencing here. So our attrition rate is pretty much right on par with other jails around the state and within the nation.

Okay, Chief. We're trying to cover how many weeks to the beginning of the new budget? Is that correct?

Correct, until 930.

Until 930. So we're talking about three, four weeks? Yes. Um, are there any more revenues stream of revenues that you have that you could possibly so at this?

No, he does not have any that he can use for this. Okay.

Not to my knowledge, sir, to cover overtime in the jail, nothing really jumps out now.

He can't use forfeiture funds because those are for his enforcement division. Okay. He could have paid overtime for the enforcement division, but not for the corrections. Got you.

I've seen this happen in other places. When I worked at the state, we were the same way out at the prison. Started running short on staff, started running short on staff. We started running overtime, and at times we were having our people work anywhere from 10 to 16 days straight without a day off. And we weren't even giving them comp time. They didn't want it because they never could take the day off. and we're just having to pay overtime out there. And we've got so bad at the state that we were having to bring people in from other units to work up here in Amarillo. We'd have to bring people from Childress, we'd have to bring people from Dalhart, from Pampa to come in here and work overtime because we couldn't hire the staff and keep up with it. With the city at the fire department, our policy is we earn comp time, but after 80 hours, the comp time automatically goes to pay. Because there again, people, after 80 hours, I've got 80 hours on the book, I can't take it off. So that's what the city did was after 80 hours, it automatically goes to pay. And I think we need to look at this. We've got to assess what is the value we're asking for these people. We're asking for their time. We're asking them to come in and not just work their normal hours. We're asking them to do extra time. And that's very valuable. And that's what we have to ask is, what are we getting for the services we're paying for? We're getting this qualified person doing this job that has to be done. It's something that we can't put off. Well, we can put it off another week. We've got to keep these inmates in the jail. It's something we have to have. It's a requirement. And we have to have these trained personnel to work there. And, you know, myself, I can't speak for everybody, but if I'm working, I want to be paid. I love my time off. I take lots of time off at my city job. But when it comes down to it, especially if you're a younger person, the time off isn't as important as the money is lots of times. So I understand them not wanting to work comp time and wanting to pay for it because that's what they feel their value is worth.

And I understand that. And I understand that. I've been on both. come time and overtime. I'm just I'm just chief. I'm just believing that for less than 30 days we ought to be able to come time. This would be okay. And you got your hiring going on. You got some guys coming through the academy and I think we'll be able to to handle that. I think we'll be able to give the guys the time off. And when you did come time, it's not always the time you want. You make that clear. I've, I've been sent home and things of that nature. But I think in the, uh, trying to help the county as much as we can, I would really prefer If the last 30 days, the last 27 days we have that we can come time that because you've already made adequate. Adequately sure that you won't run into this next year. And so that's what I'm asking of you chief is to see if we just can't come time this for the next.

2020 whatever days it is left to the beginning that was our plan sir and and we did this last year on the enforcement division side we we went to a comp time only policy for the last two months of the fiscal year august and september it worked okay for us on the enforcement side um it but we had a different reaction when we told the jail staff, uh, that we were going to call it time only. And it's a relatively brief period of time. Um, you know, three, three weeks. Um, and the, the staffing situation that started to develop, um, was very concerning to us. Um, because being short staffed in the jail is, is, and when I, When I say short staffed, I'm talking about not meeting minimum staffing levels as determined by the state. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about having just enough people to get by. We'd be happy to have just enough people to get by. That's actually the threshold that we're trying to meet here. We were facing a bona fide emergency. And when you consider things like mandating overtime, now you start running into affecting morale and kind of entering into a realm that we don't want to enter into. These are stories that we hear out of TDCJ regularly. where the officers are working ungodly hours. The schedules that they require of their staff is incredible. I don't know how they manage that, and we can kind of see how they don't. They're having to ship staff in from outside of Amarillo, put them up in extended stay hotels here just to do business. We don't want to get into that kind of a situation. I'm not sure that it would work, to be honest, because you can't actually force people to come to work. But we did do what you suggested last year on the enforcement side. It worked a bit better on the enforcement side. We got through that. didn't have that same problem this year. And so we know this is not an ideal situation at all. But we also think that kind of what has happened is due to Circumstances and conditions that are really bigger than us are beyond our control to a large degree. And we've taken measures to hopefully prevent from being in this position next year. And we'll keep our fingers crossed and watch it really closely.

My question would be, do you have a level of comp time that they reached that maybe after that level that they can go into overtime?

So we try to follow the county policy, and that is comp times capped at 100 hours. So the way we operate today, officers have the discretion to work for paid overtime or comp time. Now, this is only for meeting minimum staffing levels. If somebody earns overtime, if they're in an overtime status and they're going to a training, they're not earning paid overtime. If they have to attend a mandatory meeting on their day off and they're in an overtime status, they're not earning paid overtime at that point in time. They're earning comp time. But if it's a staffing issue, it's the officer's choice. Many of our officers do actually work for comp time and they build up comp time. And once they exceed 100 hours, or once they get close to the 100-hour mark, we start talking to them about, you've got to get that comp time level down below 100 hours. and so sometimes it's just not possible so the the officers who you know there's always uh that that group of officers they're just workhorses they work and work and work and and so they're the ones that end up accruing all of this uh overtime and comp time and you have to You have to send them home, right?

Once they reach 100 hours, then they automatically go into overtime is what I'm suggesting here.

So are you suggesting requiring them to work for comp time only up to 100 hours? And then get overtime. And then put them in the overtime status? That's an idea. I will say this about comp time, and Brandon might be able to speak to this better than me, but... I learned years ago, um, that comp time on the books is actually a County liability. It's not free work. The County still owes that money.

And if I'm not mistaken, that is absolutely right. Um, I, I actually would not like, um, you know, roughly half the County, um, which is, you know, they're, they're our largest employer. As a county auditor, I would much prefer the vast majority of the largest population in terms of employees to not be carrying the maximum amount of comp time on the books because every time one of them turns, it's even gonna put them in a worse spot because every time one of them turns, you have to wait until um, enough times passed to get that off the books. And so if someone's got a hundred hours of comp time on the books, you've got two and a half weeks that you can't replace that position. Well, that's two and a half weeks of, of overtime. They're basically going to have to pull another positions to pay. And so if you've got, um, if you've got as much turnover that we're talking about, I mean, if they had to hire 29 new correction officers, I'm not saying that some of those would even have enough time to get up to 100 hours, but I could see that exacerbating the problem even worse if you constantly have an issue of, okay, this person has 60 hours on the books, and they've left after four months, and, you know, now you've got to wait two and a half weeks, and I... I could see that being a bigger problem, actually, than every single time.

Well, if you're paying it out of comp time, if you're paying it out of overtime, you're paying it out of the overtime bucket of their salary, and if you're paying it out of comp time, you're paying it out of the

The comp time payout is going to come out of the base salary. And so you are extending the time that they can replace the person. There is a little bit of a calculus there. And you're doing it at time and a half. So there's other things to consider than just can we defer this. If you have the people working the time Ultimately, they're all going to get paid one way or the other. The sheriff's in a totally different position than, say, my department. I don't pay overtime in my department because I don't have any emergency situations. The policy talks about... He has to do it for staffing levels. There has to be an emergency type need to be able to have overtime in the first place. That's why departments like mine do nothing but clock time and departments like his because he actually has emergencies that he has to handle. You know, they, as part of submitting the documentation, you know, they submit an overtime docket with every single pay request for overtime to HR. And so it's, there is substantiation on these requests as well. It's like the chief said, it's not just the fact that they cross the threshold. You know, they do do comp time and they do do overtime. Everything that I'm hearing, though, it sounds like the biggest part that I could even see from a financial cash outflow perspective came from the hospitalizations and watching those people 24 hours a day around the clock. And that certainly is not something you can... you know, plan for in the middle of the year when it's something that you've seen for the first time. And so from a financial cash flow perspective, I can definitely see a lot of issues with just trying to say comp this if you're having trouble staffing that jail. That would be the only thing that I can... I can tell you that if you don't staff that jail to the appropriate levels, I mean, I don't know, a concern of mine would be is there any kind of fine or penalty that the county would have to, I don't know that, I mean, there are staffing levels that are required, and I don't know if anybody here wants to have another mark against us, but that's, again, I'm just a county auditor. I'm giving you my perspective, but I do think that there were, just hearing everything, there were some things outside of the sheriff's office's control here. It's not like they were staffing extra people, so... I don't know. That's just my perspective.

If I may real quick, let me kind of bring folks over to the money part of it. So we've got $350,000 in capital outlay. We're going to be pulling $91,277 out of that. That leaves us that $258,723. What happens to that $258,723 if it's not used by I mean... September 30th. It's just going to go into the...

I mean, again, the whole concept of... budgetary appropriation is a is an earmark and so if something doesn't get spent in the capital project fund i mean nothing happens to it um just goes into the fund balance it just stays and you know it stays in fund balance um because as we're we're budgeting for the year we're not moving money anywhere it doesn't go from from like a general fund bank account to a to a different bank account all we're saying is for the year we're going to appropriate this money for for potential expenditures and this was a line item that i saw that didn't have any ANYTHING THAT WOULD REQUIRE US THROUGH YEAR END TO USE. AND SO THIS FUND IS COMPLETELY FUNDED BY JUST TRANSFERS FROM THE GENERAL FUND ANYWAY. SO IT'S REALLY JUST ANOTHER RESERVE. IT'S A RESERVE FROM THE Typically for capital projects, however, you as the court are allowed to move the money between the funds however you so wish. And so that's why this is what I felt was an appropriate line item to move. We would move the money between the two different banks if this is approved today.

so this is basically money that we do have that we did budget for capital outlays we're not using it for capital outlays at the moment so we're definitely allowed to use this money that we already had budgeted for a different item but just move it to where we currently need it yes that is yep that is the entire purpose of the of the budget amendment today chief jaws i want to thank you for explaining it to us the way you did that helps a lot um

This money is okay with you, Brandon, that we do this, and I'm going to make a recommendation that we go ahead and pass this. I wasn't going to do that when I came in, but until I heard your explanation, you explained it very well to me, so I believe it's warranted.

I'll second that.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor raise your hand. Passes 4-0. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Chief, thank you for all the answers. Appreciate you taking the questions so that we can have clarity.

Brandon, thank you, too, sir, for explaining it to us.

Thank you, gentlemen.