County Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, I want to thank everybody for coming today to our work session. We've got quite a few things on the agenda today to take action on, and we're going to move as quick as we can to get through the things that we need to do. But a couple of us have got to be, I've got to be in Pell City at the meeting at 4, and that really gives y'all some chance right there. Y'all be home. Time for supper, don't we? Yeah. You've got to be something before 30 or something like that, wouldn't you? So we'll get through this fairly quick today, but we do have some important things to discuss to get on the agenda for Tuesday. So we'll get into that, but let's see. Katrina Henning's here. I don't think you have an opponent on the ballot in November, so. thing in that respect and uh congratulations and we've done already with jeff to keep him from calling the governor saying can you just appoint her today send him a half the check and he'll go home oh baby we're glad you're here and i've met all of you here we got i've got some people here i know that are interested in subdivision regulation we're going to discuss some of that today uh and trying to tweak that thing until it's to work we can get it through the commissioner And glad to have the fire chief here from the city of Leeds. Appreciate you being here. He's working with Freddie and our dispatch program on trying to get our neighbor, actually not even our neighbor. A lot of people don't realize this, and I'm going to take this opportunity to explain it like we did the other day. The city of Leeds is in three counties. And a portion of it that's in St. Clair County, we just look at, that's a little sliver of St. Clair County down there in the corner. By the way, the total... revenue flow that comes into the county coffers of that one little strip down there in Leeds is larger than the revenue stream that comes from four of our other municipalities that are 100% in the county. So not only is it important from a revenue stream, It's also number of people about our fifth largest would be our municipality. So it's not just a sliver of land down there. There's a lot of citizens live in that area of Leeds. And this is our chief for the city of Leeds. And we're working towards trying to see if we can get them pools back in the house on our centralized dispatch program. So we'll work on that. Was Brady coming today? His name's on here. Yeah, Brady, the place you spoke to. If he doesn't come, you'll have to do speech, whatever that is. You've done that before. There you go. There you go. You'll fit right in. You want to be a commissioner? Okay. First thing on our agenda today is our report from the county engineer. So you are up, Mr. Clay Phillips, county engineer.

Good afternoon.

How do you know? You don't even know what time it is. Is it already active? We're going to give you a hard time just naming your taste.

Okay.

I'll say something intelligent. Make me feel better.

Just an update on the crews. Base crews have been working on Kelly Creek Road for the last couple of weeks and will continue for several weeks to get it ready for a federal aid project. It's going to be let to bid September 30th. And that usually takes two weeks, two months, excuse me, from the day of letting to the day that the proceed letter comes out. All the signatures on the contracts and bids, bid bonds coming in and everything. The paving crew is finished with the Old Coast City area and moved on to the Springville area. Been on the Rolling Oaks area and moving on to Camp Road first of next week. So that's about it for the crews and projects. I want to update y'all on the Riverside Bridge replacement. I'm going to hand out some more items we got to look at. I think some of you guys have seen it in text. I've got you on my phone here. They're good.

We can share. We can share. Yeah.

Okay. That says power off.

Do I need to do anything? You sure? There's no place there.

Okay. Yes.

Thank you. There's 2 sheets. Okay.

This is the bridge on Depot street bridge replacement. And what clay has here is a breakdown of the federal funds and local funds that will be in that project. And as you get into the actual figures and all, is that the 1Million dollars we received from the direct appropriation?

Yes, when commissioner Stevens and I watched in DC this past year, 1,020,000 dollars and that's that's the 80% match of federal project. 20%. It's shown there in local funds basically just took the 1,020,000 divided by 8 and you come up with a total figure down there. 1,000,000. 275,000 and then so that minus the 1,020,000 gives what the local funds will have to have to be.

Okay. And that does that include any money for the detour that will be required other than closing that road? So the detour is actually going to be hours. yes the the the state uh has given have already given me a notice that uh none of these funds can be spent on the detour okay none of these can but i wonder if there's an opportunity for us to uh at this point in time in the budgeting process out of montgomery things are going on to possibly get some money for that detour related to this project uh would it hurt your feelings if we asked for some

No.

Okay. We may want to look to the state to help us to do the detour. Because the detour is not a detour that will be built and torn out. It's actually an existing road that's got to be upgraded as a detour. Otherwise, what's the length, how long will that project be there? Get your estimate, Clay, on building that bridge. When do you think it'll start is the question. I guess, yeah, how long will the bridge be closed or the road be closed?

Well, normally a cast in place culvert that size, it's going to be, it could be as much as 120 calendar days. So weather day is not counted.

Weather day is not counted. Calendar days are strictly calendar days. So we're talking about four, five, six months.

Yes, sir, it could be as much as 6 months.

Okay. So whenever that project starts, that's a major road a lot of people on it. So there'll be a lot of people. We'll be getting our talking points together to go to Montgomery to ask for some, some state money to help with the detour.

Yes, sir. I got some figures to share with you.

That would be a good person to ask right now. I'm sure he would like to help out if he could.

Local funds at $255,000, are we paying all that? Is Riverside paying any of it?

That is for us to ask moving forward, figure that out moving forward.

It's got to come from us, however we get it up to us.

Well, it depends on how the agreement's written up. If it's written up for Riverside, then there has to be an agreement.

I guess what I'm saying, they haven't called you up and said, we'd like to pay half that, have they?

They have not.

So it's going to be up to us to find the other half, even if it is Riverside's doing it. Yes. So I'd advise the commissioners to make sure that we communicate with the mayor and council up there to know that that bridge may be costing them $120,000 or whatever over a period of time.

claim that bypass that detour won't work right now as it is as it is it will not it will have to be it's got to be upgraded yes it'll have to be upgraded what's wrong with it now the last time i drove it you need a four-wheel drive really it's rough but it i mean it's gonna take probably a pretty good chunk of money to make a decent road out of it especially you put all that traffic on yeah

And all that road is not ours neither. It's city.

Majority of it is, that route is not ours.

Is it ours all the way on the Riverside side of Huckleberry Pond where they put their barricades up? Is that about where theirs starts?

Theirs starts at basically the north end of the pond.

North end is, well, I haven't got that map with me. North end of the pond is? Church Inn. Pardon? Awesome Trot Church End or the other end?

Awesome Trot Church End.

So they've got the entire dam of Huckberry Pond in the city. Correct. So that's the part that we may have to do some work on. So if you'll give us an idea of what you need to spend on that, we need an idea of what we're going to ask the state for.

Okay.

So draw us something up. Okay. And if you can do that in the next few weeks, we'll take that time. We'll take that time. I've never seen any wood and some other people not getting some funding on that. Yes, sir. Very good. I don't want that to falter after all the work everybody's put into it.

Bill can't.

One more question on that. Is that a we pay for it first and get reimbursed?

No, it's not.

That's a direct appropriation that came straight out of Washington and the money's there.

That's correct.

That's my understanding. Direct appropriation. That was a million dollar direct appropriation on that project. The other million dollars is the one that went to Coos Valley Water. That was $2 million. That's correct. Okay. All right. I'm caught up. Okay. I'm old.

Item number three is rusty. The mayor with Riverside got in touch with me yesterday, and I believe he included some commissioners in an email about a pipe. It's on Sprayberry. It's in the city limits. It's presently 48 inches diameter, the current one, and it is totally rusted out in the bottom. and the road bed is starting to dip down. So to replace that, just the pipe alone is going to be somewhere between 6,600 and 7,100, depending on the actual material pipe we choose to go with. And then, of course, I'll work up the labor and equipment and all that stuff to work up an agreement with the city.

That's just the pipe cost?

Yes.

$6,700. Right, yeah.

OK.

The lower number being? We couldn't pump a bottom in that and save the day, possibly.

Possibly. We've looked at it for 10 or 15 minutes. So we'd have to crawl up in there. It's close to the haunches. It's rusted up close to the haunches. It'd be very iffy. OK. The lower number is galvanized pipe. It lasts about 20 to 25 years. The higher number is luminized pipe. It lasts 50 to 70 years.

If we had a younger commission, we might look at the bigger figure.

Did you say 20 years for the lower?

20 to 25. Okay. It's going to outlast everybody.

Ain't no doubt about that.

It may outlast this meeting.

It's true. Okay.

Item number four is just for informational purposes. We've posted this morning mid-morning for road worker two openings and openings for operator one. And hopefully by the end of today, we'll be able to post for the newly created safety coordinator position. If not, it will be posted Monday. And all three recommendations for the three positions will be brought to you all at the same time, hopefully, Hopefully the first meeting in july if if all the times and dates work out The policy requirements are met Before you move on to the other one, which is subdivision regulations and they take a while I don't want to leave riverside.

I also got a call from the mayor that once we paved uh Broken air creek road We paved the far end why and I don't know who I don't know who decided what why to take we decided, I guess we could just pay 1 part of the 1 side of the way, but we could do the other. But the other 1 has, like, 3 times more people lives on it. So, I don't know who decided that was the why we needed to pay or maybe a reason there may be the 1st, so we thought that was private. That's kind of what I wondered. It appears private, but it's right and goes to. So it goes to. About seven or eight houses down on that side. The one to the left is the one that goes out there where the guy's got all those woods and all that.

And I told him we'd take a look at it. He's talking to you about it. Yes.

Okay. And y'all know what you... Okay.

Yes. Our right of way picks up right there. Out to the end. That's our... We share that other.

Right. Up until just past a subdivision. That's right.

Several houses.

All right. Number five. Discuss subdivision regulations. St. Clair County. Discuss.

You got a copy of it? Pardon me? You got a copy of it?

On my xDrive, I do. With me, I do not. It's a pretty good volume. So... And I'm going to ask Kurt to add to the discussion while I'm up here, if it's okay with you gentlemen, ladies. So basically the subdivision regs is It remains is how we've been discussing it for the last year practically, except for the size of the lots are going to be a minimum 15,000. Also, with the caveat that they must meet health department regulations as well. And then the other item that is different, but we're sewing it up, is the safety clause, being able to grandfather in a couple, at least two subdivisions.

And those are subdivisions that have made a demonstrable, demonstratable, something they can show you on writing that they spent money on. A significant figure. There you go. Okay.

That's the one on Robert Mill Pond and one on 231. Correct. Lakemont.

Lakemont Village on 231 and Mill Creek Crossings on Roberts Mill Pond Road.

Okay, good.

And I believe Kirk's got a description that narrows down exactly where the location of those subdivisions are.

Okay, and we've addressed as much as we can right now the comply with the health department issues on the sewage and all that. And any ingress and egress traffic problems will be reviewed by the engineers department.

Yes, just like, uh, we just, yeah, it's been discussed that way before and, uh, and we'll definitely make sure studies are done when it looks like it's going to create a lane, a lane addition issue.

Okay. All right. Everybody ready to be ready to put it on the agenda. Yeah.

Yep.

Need to get it behind us. I want to make sure we're real careful with the savings provision here. I don't want us to unnecessarily affect people that have submitted flats that may not have been approved yet and things of that nature.

So one of the things about the, um, savings calls is there's aside from the two that will be named and identified as being grandfathered in, um, there are, um, there's a provision. We have a, we've provided a 90 day window, but that could be expanded some if that made y'all feel a little better about the situation, but to allow any others that, um, you know, are in the works or have made a significant investment, um, to make a request, you know, there's a process, an administrative process for them to be considered to have their, their development. All right. Considered to be grant by. And I guess we put 90 days.

Certainly. So we put 90 days. We put 90 days. We put enough time.

Yeah. And so if we need to expand that, we can certainly do that.

And, uh, Clay's got, then we put in there where he can, uh,

And just for y'all's awareness, I know there's been some concern about the I guess ongoing responsibility and the event of failure of one of the engineered package, you know, septic systems. Judge Hill and I were looking at that before I came up here this afternoon. I think we may have some language we can put in there that might take care of of that that could flow back to the lot owners or the HOA or something of that sort. So anyway, we're going to work with them. We'll have something for you all to consider.

So you're saying they'll be held responsible, the homeowner association?

That's the expectation. I think we've got something that will be a workable solution for that.

The one that I have been really hung up on the whole time is there are some that don't have a homeowners association.

There's no requirement law to have one.

So if you put them there, the HOA is responsible, but if there is no HOA...

They dissolve it as quick as they make it. But if their property benefits from being connected to that, they're reaping the benefit, and their benefit is creating the potential exposure And so, I mean, this would not necessarily create a situation where the county would not intervene. The expectation is probably if we've got a problem like that, the county probably is going to have to front that cost. But the solution would be that the responsibility would flow back to the individual property owner. or the HOA.

Mr. Chairman, can I ask a question? Yes, sir. Would this need to be disclosed? Would they buy lots from a legal standpoint for us or in the subdivision?

Homeowner would probably need to know if it fails this sort of thing early on. So how do we disclose that?

So there would be some sort of disclosure that's on the plat that acknowledges there's a system of this sort that's connected in this development. And I would imagine there would be something, some sort of acknowledgement by the buyer that they would acknowledge that they're aware that they're on the hook, you know. Without any dollars, without them knowing how many dollars could be involved.

But for the most part, most of these systems are owned by an entity that charges them a monthly fee. Right. Who's responsible for that. And that'll be the cure as long as that company's still around. And most of them are and are regulated by ATEM, so it seems like almost a non-issue. It probably will be. Just try the belt and suspenders.

We thought that certain standards for constructing the road would be a non-issue and have been an issue several times. We're trying to make sure we close as much as we can.

Understandable. I think a bond would cause that. There's a little more regulation involved outside of the county for septic and sewer that any of us that work on it have to follow and are maintained by that y'all may not even know about that we have to do and are checked in these neighborhoods before we can hook a house to them.

You're not going to create one of those entities that you hold... The utilities, it's like a separate district. No, I think that that's. It was a disaster. Yeah, no. People we won't name. I mean, we can't, not because they had a bond that backed it all up, but then the people that had money ran out of money and it was a disaster for 20 years. So, like, you're not going to make it that restrictive that you can't. Because it was all on people's deed. Everybody acknowledged it, but when it came down to it, people 15 years later had to pay for it and they were unhappy. A lot of litigation. So we're not creating that, correct? It's not...

I mean, it's not... If we're talking about the same thing, that is something that is led by the...

It's a little different, but it's kind of still the same. It's still a homeowner-driven thing.

Yeah. Now, this isn't a separate body that would be responsible for it. I mean, the idea is that either... Well, initially it would be, you know, the cost for installing it would be the developer, for sure.

But as far as... Like the individual stuff that attaches to the house, if it had to have...

In the event that the people, the entity that's responsible, that you were talking about, that's responsible for maintaining it and ownership of it, In the event that that goes away.

Well, that person goes bankrupt, dies. I'm going to have one get killed in a car wreck.

And there's nobody in place to step into their shoes. It's taking over that responsibility. The homeowners. That would blow back to the homeowners, yeah. I mean, that's a path.

Yeah. At that point, if there's not a developer or say we're just referring to the companies because we had so much go belly up before on the road and things. So if they weren't there, it becomes a health and safety. So it would fall on us as the county because we can't just ignore it.

Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine a situation where we would have a problem like that. that's actively occurring where there's not a company that's on the hook for the responsibility that the county could just stand back and watch it happen. You know, I mean, I just, I think there's not a way around that.

But the way I look at it, the simplest thing is make them all put safety tanks in.

Well, if it'll perk. If it won't perk. If it don't perk, then you've got an engineer.

the city where they may have a sewer someday along thanks our county leads one part because we're not we're not trying to say that saint clare county has some even even going out i've been here a long time and i've never seen the county excited ever seen a county commission that i've served on excited about building a sewer system Anybody here want to go ahead and build? I don't think it's going to be a while before the county gets in the sewer business. So this is unincorporated. So if it affects the sewer portion of it, the county is going to need to say, wait a minute here, we put that in these subdivision regulations. Best thing to have done to have perked if it needed a safety thing. If it didn't perk, then you can't build a house there. All right. Now, the Health Department, you may can, but then that's somebody else's responsibility. So that's kind of where we're going to be on this if we end up, I think, in court. Right. Because it's just not, I just can't find a place, and I don't think any of us can, can't find a place in my experience where it would be the citizens of St. Clair County's responsibility to correct that kind of fault. I just can't. Now, if it was an earthquake that shattered the sewer plant, let's part of it we just don't think the county ought to be in a position where we end up inheriting the repairs of a 400 house subdivision with a failing septic system on the county taxpayer fund i just can't imagine a situation like that in the unincorporated area unincorporated that's i think that's something we kind of got away from sometimes is a lot of the developments going on in the cities thank goodness and they have the ability in a town to expand or add on or team up together for sewer. But the county's just not, until they reach an awfully big size to have their own sewer system. Or we could have our own sewer system. We could be real famous like Jefferson County.

I won't go there. But Lakemont, for example, has their own site sewer system. Right. Yes, sir. Okay. If Lyman buys a piece of property and develops 15,000 square feet per lot, and you park it, That's okay. But if it doesn't perk, what do you do? You can't use it. You can use it, but you've got to engineer a system.

That's true.

So let's just play. I buy a lot. I love it. I'm going to build on it. It doesn't matter. It doesn't perk. That's when the health department local is out of the picture. I have to get me an engineer. He has to design that system. And then it goes to the state. He signs on, stamps it. There's a P.E. And it goes with that deed. I know that. I'm responsible. I live there. And if I sell that property, that goes with the deed. The buyers are aware. So it's their responsibility. It's not the county taxpayer. It never will be. That won't hold up in court. I know that. There ain't no way they're not going to get that.

But at 15,000 feet, the money don't work. The numbers don't add up. You can't build the houses. If you have to do an engineering system, you can't. At 15,000 feet, you can't make no money.

It'll be on the builders, not on us.

Oh, no. You're just never going to do anything with it. It's going to be stuck out there forever.

Worth nothing.

That's right. It's going to be a piece of land all over the world together.

Don't you developers call those areas greenways? I appreciate y'all putting in the greenways.

Those are areas that look perfect.

That's the subdivision park. We've got 1 in our subdivisions and the flood.

We can only afford 1 of those subdivision.

So we put a boat ramp down there. I think I think we, I mean, the commission's wrestle with it. I know it's a tough situation. This is the 3rd time I've been through this. And it's hard to do, and it ought to be hard, because it's very important and has a lot of implications in a lot of areas. Land use just jumps right out in front in an unincorporated area. That jumps right out in front. It's your land. You do what you want to with it. It will not if you're going to put a hog plant there, an eviscerated plant for chickens. Well, I'll start getting concerned then so we're going to start bumping into each other's rights out there. No matter what we do, the more we grow. I think this is going to be a big step. So. So we'll move on Tuesday then.

Well, you know, last time we were in this meeting, we chose to table it indefinitely. Yeah, well, we didn't know we didn't until until y'all met with the home builders. and talk to them. Has that meeting happened? Yeah, they've met with us. We have not. We haven't met with them since the 15,000 square foot slide. Pardon? Just let this all slide.

We're going to pass this other bidding regulations, 15,000. We're not voting anymore. I can tell you that right now.

Have we thought about the unintended consequences of what that's going to do to the county as far as job growth, affordability? You know, we live in a society now where affordability is a major issue. What that's going to turn this into is any properties that you have are going to have to be significantly more expensive. You're cutting out a lot of your entry-level first-time homebuyers and your job growth. If it's going to be so expensive to develop because of lot sizes, how much harder is it becoming to recruit businesses to come into the county for job growth?

Well, I'm going out of office in November after seven terms, believe me. I'm old. I'm getting tired. But that's not a bad thing in a lot of people's eyes. Putting 15,000 square feet that restricts the growth is going to shut down some growth. Some people say, thank goodness. Now, if I owned a piece of property I was trying to develop, that's not necessarily a good thing. I'm not being able to do with my property what I want to do. So part of the reason you run into these is because of all this growth bumping into each other and this is an unincorporated area. And our municipalities, thank goodness, have going out there and put in some pretty good subdivision regulations in some of them. But in the unincorporated area, we run into this all over. Every county that has a growth situation runs into this. We've got to place a piece of property in Baldwin County, and it's a huge issue down there every time we have a meeting. Well, this commission will be meeting, it'll be like Shelby County. Next thing you know, you've got zoning and planning meetings every other week and every other day. We're not ready for that here yet. So slowing down the growth deliberately takes on some legal implications about how people use their land. But slowing down the growth from a fiscal and from a quality of life issue is not all bad. That's kind of where we are with this.

I can say that between now and November because I can say anything I want to. So did you guys have the meeting with Homeowner Association's attorneys that was spoken about at the last meeting? We did, but through our attorneys.

Yeah, there was not a, They've got a copy of this. They've got a copy of this regulation.

Is there any exemptions or opportunity to, like, make exemptions when things come up? Because there's always great areas. That's where you talk.

Submit a very submitted up application.

The only thing I worry about, it's like, there's a lot of places, like, say, within a mile, like, all the cities are. They're coming outside of their city limits a mile or two, and they're regulating everything that goes outside their city limits. But like I know on 174, we had the property. We're doing estate lots, but we did have contracts to do a big community there. It just never worked out. So we like the estate lots, but there is places where... But that was in the county, and it was... In the county, but it's still within the city limits of or police jurisdiction of, you know, but we couldn't annex it into the CD because it was trapped landlocked. But we, you know, in certain situations, there might be where it's like, I could foresee, like, if we could get. Odenville sewer, Springville sewer, somebody tried outside of the city limits, but you can't annex it in because it's on an island. There's nothing close you can annex it in. Like, there might be little loopholes and things that, I mean, so I didn't know if y'all wanted to keep that policy way out in the county, but within a mile or two of a municipality, is there some kind of exemption process? Because we might can reach city sewer, you know. But instead of just saying across the board, that's policy.

I believe, like I said, a variance. That's what these regulations are offering.

Because the biggest fear is these package plants and something that, but if the city sewer, one of our cities is going to get the sewer, I mean, then that takes it away, right?

I believe it covers what the chairman was speaking on.

The cities cities, I think they can expand their sewer into the incorporated part of the county.

But if they can't, if they can't pull it into the city limits, like that property. that still we'd have to get a variance or something because we wouldn't be able to divide that.

Most of the cities will not extend it to a piece of property that's not in their city limits because they're not getting any of the taxes off of it. They don't get much average tax anyway. A lot of people missed the point there.

Only five meals. They charge. I have to pay a permit fee. All the fees, just like it's in the city limits, even though it's in the county, it's not even in the city limits. They'll shut you down and take more of their fees and stuff. They can expand with their own rooms, but they'll be outside of the county. It's like within a mile or two of their police jurisdiction, they're treating it like it's city limits. But we're still in the county. We can't even annex it in the city.

What's the... They're building, the inspector's still going out and charging you. They still, I know, I've had a lot of people call me about it. It's a mile and a half out they go out a mile and a half yeah so they're into the county a mile and a half and they're charging you they charge you all the fees just like using it just like i'm seeing the city limits so i'm just saying there's some great areas that we definitely need some exemptions or some allowances when you just go to clay and ask for it for it and they'll look he'll look at it and have them calling asthma we get through this last part of this particular discussion

one of the issues you got now if you go to the city and ask for a variance you go to the zoning and planning board usually county does not have zoning and plantings so this would be a fear if i were a developer or landowner or anything else you come to this body which is strictly a political body that's elected uh we've got elections every two years on this camp on this commission so so you you deal with different people every two years on whether or not they're in favor or not in favor of giving you a variance for such and such so it's still more restrictive than it would be if you went before a zoning and planning board that handled these things all the time because the variance has to come through the county engineer presented to the county commission that would be a little scary to me from a land use rights type thing but i don't know of any other way to really close the door on that hopefully the cities will continue to expand their rights outside the city That will keep a county government from being the 1 to make the decision. Like I said, the, the city still got some rights to extend their subdivision regulations. I don't know how the law change used to be 5 miles and it was 3 and it moved around. I don't know what it is now. Is it a mile and a half with submissive regulation? Because it's awesome. Then there's a three-mile police jurisdiction. Aslyn, you got something?

The city had to determine their jurisdiction before, and it was based on size and how far that they could go, but they had to do that before 2021. So right now, for Clay, I have a map that has the jurisdictions on there, the law jurisdictions, and that's what they do there. That's what they do there. the regulations and everything by their law jurisdictions. So I have that. Cities cannot extend their jurisdictions arbitrarily any longer. So when they annex and they're within the mile and a half or two mile radius that they have, it doesn't extend it another two miles.

They can't go another one and a half?

It is what it is right now as of 2021. So there are several cities that just stick to city limits, like Peel City is one of them. And then there are ones that don't, Odenville and Springville. so that will be actual does that jurisdiction so that would be something that we could put in there really easily and I have that layer I have to maintain that for for our 9-1-1 purposes as well and to my understanding we can't say that anything that a city regulates we can't go less we can't make a city their regulations less just because it's in the county if it's in their jurisdiction you abide by their regulations. So most cities and stuff have stronger regulations than we do. And they will, so this is just a base. But I can get that map.

I think these are questions we've asked in at least one meeting. Not everybody's been in the same meetings, but I think at this point we're still convinced we're ready to move forward and put this on the agenda for a vote up or down next Tuesday. Lose some control as the person with the full bid, and I'll say before we pass these now, we're going to have a meeting with the developers one more time. Well, I'm not keen up here. That's my position. And that position is changed by a majority of the commission at any given time. And once it was something that they felt like they had met with attorneys and developers and all enough, then having another meeting wasn't agreed to. And so having another meeting, that's what we got now. We're going to have that. We'd have that again every time. And we're ready to move on with this. Within the, within the understanding thorough variances, and that this document is a living document and can be changed. Uh, not held her skelter, but it can be changed as we move along. And as the county grows, I think that's a, that's about as healthy a position as we can take right now. Mr. individually and collectively put a lot of thought in this, a lot of heart went into it. Um, the, uh, home builders association actually endorsed the incoming, uh, uh, Republican nominee for chairman. So move on to that then, see what that person wants to do from that position up here, here just a very few months.

It'll be too late.

Well, it'll be too late to stop the adoption, but the criticism I got out of the Home Builder Association is I was holding up the adoption. So obviously, my holding up the adoption of these things was not a positive thing for me with that organization. So that had an influence. It's a complicated thing. I think we've done it the right way. I think the incoming chairman and incoming new commissioner did it the right way, too. There's more than one right way is the issue. And how does it affect people who want to be involved? personal thing we've grown me just especially grown up during this thing so many years as a rural county that over the last 15 years especially maybe 20 it's not a rural county anymore it's really really moving a lot of directions and a whole bunch of it and uh i i still say that the movement of those people out of the urban areas is a real challenge to this And at some point in time, if I feel too crowded down there in the lower corner of Pell City, I'll move to a less crowded county, maybe Green County or something. Yes, ma'am.

If I could respectfully just plead with y'all for just a few moments. Sure. And I mean, if there's any wiggle room for just reconsideration on this before Tuesday. Because it absolutely would affect the livelihood of just not only myself, my family, but just thousands of others if y'all make this change and make this adjustment. And just thousands. And on a personal level, I'm a member of the Association of Realtors at a national level and a local level, but it will directly impact my livelihood. And among with, you know, my work family and all the people that work with me, you know, and just thousands of others, you know, not just the people that are trying to sell homes, but the actual homeowners that are already in their homes and that already own land. But, you know, we all, you know, and as a mother too, you know, I mean, we all have kids and families to feed, you know, and I'm the main sole breadwinner of my family, you know, very personal.

You're not convinced at this point that the document we're presenting is ready to be passed?

No, I'm not.

I feel your pain and I got defeated.

You got defeated?

This is the way it works. So we'll move on from there and hopefully the document and the organization that's approving it will be a live group enough to change it if there are painful places i i'm just a huge property rights person uh and you know my reason i moved away from where i moved in the unincorporated part of the county to pale city was that same thing i was being encroached on by undesirable growth in my opinion my undesirable it's undesirable to me so i moved somewhere where i could go hide out in the city limits in a back corner of a subdivision that can't be approached anymore backs up to the river it took me a long time to find that corner but that's that's i i think the majority of this commission wants to put it on the ballot i mean put it on on the ballot put it on the agenda for next tuesday

Would you consider extending the grace period of projects that are still in place? Why now? Would you consider extending the grace period for projects that are currently in place? That's an option.

That'd be an option to this commission.

As you know, it takes a long time to get a subdivision planted, engineered, everybody going. You spend a whole lot of money even before it makes it to the county engineer. I know of 10 projects that people have looked at that want to come that are good builders, good projects. But if you give 90 days, there's no way that they can come up with $10 million in 90 days. There's just no way. I mean, you can't work out all the, if it's engineered septics, you can't work out all that. Would you consider extending that grace period to 12 months rather than 90 days?

And that's something that's very viable to come up in a work session, because Tuesday, it'll be on the agenda. Tuesday, it'll be, do we have a motion? Do we have a second? And then it'll go to, do we have any discussion? And near that discussion, it might be turned, but not likely. By the time it gets to that point, More than likely it's been vetted enough.

We asked the commission to table it one more month to see if we can work through some of those things.

I think we asked that last time. I think the consensus of the commission is put it on the agenda. Now, I will say this. In dealing with subdivision regulation within the law, isn't there an advertising period about what does pass? In other words, they don't go into effect Tuesday.

Would you address that? It's my understanding that once it's recorded, it's got to sit, I think it's 30 days for it.

Or a legal challenge for somebody to spend $50,000. That's right.

Yeah. We don't do that. We don't spend 50 grand. Or a legal challenge back to a commission meeting to say, here's why we said this, and we'll bring this back up.

This is a far from perfect document. I don't think that anything that we could write would be perfect. Would I like to see more flexibility built in? Sure. But I don't think that's the consensus of...

It's a shame. It's going to shut down growth.

It's going to devalue current property owners' properties as well.

I'll tell you about my two-bedroom trailer at Brock. this is this is tough and we are affecting we are very aware of that it's a painful thing for us to go through from in the positions we're in we know it's going to affect some people in a negative way or a positive way any direction we go here and we we about rung out of all the knowledge we've got up here Except for Chairman Pro Tem here, he's still got some. I ain't got no room. You got a little bit left over, I'm sure. So I understand this will be on the agenda to take action on one way or the other on Tuesday. Unless Tuesday, there's some change of heart between now and then. Somebody says a boasted second, it's on there. And somebody else says, I knew that this would be tabled. And somebody else says, I second that. And if that passes, then it'd be tabled. It's still... That's the way this process works. It works until it's done. And it won't be done until it's voted yes or no Tuesday, first of all. And if it's voted no, you've still got billable hours on subdivision regulations. Okay.

That bill right now, I don't know if we can pay that.

I don't know if we can pay that. Well, we don't pay him a whole lot. Cut his back. Clay, thank you for making this such an easy process and running off one engineer. This retired Dan, he wanted this done so bad before he left. I know he did. But he also lives in an area of Coleman County that's going through something the same. It's happening all around. Correct. Yes, sir. Okay. Any more questions for Clay from the commissioners? No. Okay. Aslan, you're probably the next person that has interest in that. Okay. You good? Thank you.

Thank y'all.

You could go, except you were about, what, 10 minutes late, so you need to stay at least 10 minutes. Moving on now, Roddy Wolfe, property manager, updates the property project. Roddy's going to tell us where we are on building the building for the, uh, uh, the, uh, engineers equipment and the building for the SWAT team and that equipment out of the Sheriff's Department and the building for the new command vehicle. Okay, I set the stage for you. Show out.

You ain't been in but one out in Bell City, so ain't nothing to tire on it yet. There were Getting the forms ready for the sheriff's building over at the road department. I seen that out of the day.

They're going to pour the floor of that before they do the engineers? Oh, engineers scramble. It is a scramble.

I got you. I'm glad I didn't have to tell you on that one because I don't even know who got the job on that one.

Yeah, it's an open building. How about your building, that building?

Hopefully it'll be starting any week. Good weather and they'll start, won't they?

Yes. It's being ready to go, okay? Yeah, I know that. I think Phillip mentioned last time about it. By the middle of this month, they're supposed to have the concrete done and in the middle of next month is when the building's supposed to be brought out. That's where that was at and they're moving along. As far as anything else I got, we've just been doing our routine maintenance. We've got everything around the annex building here cleaned up, mulched out, working on the courthouse now, getting all of our maintenance, regular monthly maintenance done on it. Don't know if you can see them, but we've redone some of the borders around the flower beds. To me it looks, what you see in a picture of our tree, that border there is what I've been putting around the rest of the flower beds. Dressing it up, even though you can't see it for the signs. So hopefully after they get all that done, we'll have all the mulch and everything ready for Get ready to decorate for 4th of July.

They're delivering that generator in it for the operation center next Thursday. I think that's what that says. Where's the gas meter? Where's the gas meter going?

Where's the gas meter going?

Spire gas has not come back. We'll talk about this tomorrow.

When are we going to get back to this?

We know that project. We got to move. We got to have a gas meter so we get a generator set so we get that other generator looked and moved out of the way.

Well, we're waiting on some fire gas. That's all I got to say. I thought you had more influence with fire. No. You find out real quick, you don't have no influence with them.

We know where it's going. That matters.

He's drawing it up for both places to see what the cost difference is going to be. See who's the fire guy?

The Spire engineer. We're paying him for not doing nothing. No, we ain't paid him nothing yet.

We're going to pay him until we decide on which way it's going to go.

We've got to have an engineer that's all gone, so tell them where to sell the gas. That is correct. We've already got the gas line there.

Even though the gas is already there.

The gas is already there. We've got to have a draw in the shutters. We've got to have a draw. So you're going to set the meter right there where the gas is.

And that's for their purposes later on down the road, because that way if anybody starts up, they can say, oh, we've got a gas line right here. On our property. On our property.

Our gas line. If they'll come parallel to that alley, straight ahead, take that bush out and that curb in, they'll just cut across that one little section of pavement. where the deputies pull out. They shouldn't need a drawing today.

I mean, why in the world would you need a drawing? I told y'all four years ago we needed drawings. Believe it or not, other utilities do it.

Other utilities do it too.

Things that we think are simple, other utilities will make it complicated.

Well, let's leave. We've been talking.

When will you be able to get another meeting? I've been listening to this for months with this guy.

I will email him as soon as I get back to the office to see.

Let me know. I'll meet with this guy.

It's been two...

We'll get the attorney to write him a letter or something to get a gas. I mean, we'd want a gas meter every two months.

That could be like throwing water on the fire or throwing gas on the fire. You never know which way that might go. Right.

Let me know. I want to be there. And I want to be there with that generator guy. Keep having to cut up that alleyway. We don't need to do that.

What about the generator?

It hasn't been bedded out yet.

That's not my decision when it has to go to bed or not. That's what I understood. It had to go to bed. It wasn't the fact of me getting the quotes.

Let's do it. And I want to meet with guys, guys, and generators to bid. We already got figures.

You already got us figures from people on the generators.

But was that the, from what I understood, Tina, to say that it was at the amount that we were going to have to push it out to bid by law? No.

What was it? 80 80 grand just a little bit south of 100 just a smidgen.

Yeah.

I don't know. That's not that's not on my part part. I don't understand all the.

When it comes to the auditors and stuff, it's 80 grand. Well, we will, but we need to put it here regardless. But I agree with that. I'll get with Spire.

It's time for Spire to be giving me a notice because that was three weeks. We're knocking on three weeks and he said it would take up to approximately four weeks and he should have me some.

This is the generator that we... wasn't big enough, and we got somebody to come over and do a study.

Yeah, the first time he quoted a 100 kW, and then when he went and done the study on it and got Alabama Power to pull the stats on it, then he said a 150.

And he had the specs and everything on it. You've already given them all that?

I sent all that to the admin box, so it's all on there.

Put her on the list. Yeah.

All right. Is there not a phone number? We can call that gas again.

I'll look on my email.

I think his phone number is on there.

All right. That's all I got. Y'all got anything else for me?

Thanks, Roddy. You're welcome, Commissioner Parker. It sure makes it painful.

When is that bowl coming in going to be delivered? Do we know? Last I heard, middle of August.

They're ahead of schedule. And that building ain't even going to be near, ain't even going to be, if we even let stuff off of it, it's not even drawn good yet.

Because right now you can't build a metal building in Bell City. They are ahead of schedule. Yeah. On the build of the mobile command. Yes, sir.

Maybe we'll have a gas meter by then.

We've got to decide where we're going to put that junk clutter.

We can't start building it until we move to another generator. We can't move to another generator until we get another generator.

No pigs on that building. Y'all know we've already named that command vehicle, don't you? We.

Y'all wasn't here? I did not. I'm anxious to hear.

Just don't go with me on that. It's named Bow Weep. That might be true.

Thank you all for having us here today.

I've got the fire chief from Leeds here today. He's going to explain what the... He's the chairman of the 911 board for Blount County, so he's going to explain what they've come up with on there.

He's the chairman of the 911 board? He is.

It's kind of like church. You didn't show up, and they went, guess what? I'm the only person that doesn't live in Blount County, so why'd they make me chairman? Who knows?

Ready to introduce this other extinguished gentleman back there.

You know, back here, you know, I tried to get convinced. I won't mention no names down there, but, you know, I tried to convince them not to do that and to go ahead and do it with St. Clair County. But... I remember. They had... We was just too high. That gives you an indication of the strength of your leadership there, didn't it? The leadership that I was talking to down there is what I'm talking about.

Captain Morris here is Brady's trainee. Glad to have you today. But he's a quick study from what I understand. In case all of you didn't know, he'll be taking over central dispatch.

Okay, Chief. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you all, Commissioners. Me and you've talked a few times, Chairman Bateman. Yes, sir. We kind of asked for a proposal going back and forth. He sent a proposal through me to the Blount County Communication District, and they kind of countered with the three years of no state money. They asked that we move that to four years and then do the 25% reduction. It's an eight-year plan instead of a seven-year plan. And the reasoning for that was is that when we went to Blount County, we had five years we made no payments. And so they felt like the cushion on them It's going to be a blow to them. The other side is they're going to lose about 21,000, 22,000 calls a year.

Y'all know where we are on this?

I've got to hear some more numbers now.

Okay, the numbers that Leeds pays, the amount of money, whatever it is, that Leeds pays to Blount County towards their dispatch would be paid to St. Clair County Commission to put into dispatch. But the phone line money that goes to Blount County would continue. There's no way to get that unless they say here, we're just going to give it to you. And they do it right off the bat. They're already going to take a big hit on the money they get from leads. Even if they do away with the dispatch for leads, they've still got a whole system to run up there. And that is part of their funding for their whole system, not just leads. So they'll give up the money that leads sends over there to something. We figured it would help us hire 3 dispatchers. Now, the money they get from the phone bills, though. Can't give it up at all immediately. But they, they're suggesting that I suggest what about if we, if we phase it in in 3 years, you start giving it up. And they've come back with the proposal that now they start in four years.

Four years. So to my understanding, it'll be four years before they give us any of their 9-1-1 money. The 9-1-1 money. Four years.

And then year 5, 6, 7 would reduce. They would get 25% less each year of the state money.

So who's going to give us that $25,000? Blount County's going to have to write the check to us, or the state's going to have to check to us? Yes, the Blount County would write the check to y'all. So that first year, we get $25,000. And then the second year, well, I'll call it the second year, but y'all know I always say the sixth year. But the sixth year, we get $50,000. Seventh year, we're

Then it all comes to us.

But then my understanding, because I've talked with some folks about this too, and I've met with the chairman up there at Blount County too, is they're saying that they're still going to maintain the 911 stuff that's theirs. What part are you talking about? When the leads gave it to them, they had to give them their rights. Yes, we dissolved our piece. They're not going to dissolve and give it to us. No. That's what I'm saying.

That's the point I'm getting at. That's the state legislative act. That's what I'm saying. That's the point I'm getting at.

So at no point in time, we would never get a check.

We're going to have to get Ken on Blunt County to write us a check every time. So there, Director Walker had contacted Caleb Branch, who's the state number one director now, who was the Blunt County director. director when we started this. And he went to a private company, then now he is the state 911 director. I'll forward y'all an email that was forwarded to me yesterday from him explaining some things that we can do. When we get to that point where there is zero money coming to Blount County and 100% coming to St. Clair County, Mr. Branch told Derek Walker, the director up yonder, that there can be an agreement reached then to where they send it to the state, and the state will cut that money directly to here.

Good. At what point in time are we going to get the money, but what point in time are we going to get that contract?

You're talking about the district? You're talking about us dissolving it? So my goal would be sometime eventually as we go to the state legislature.

Well, they can move the money, Ricky.

That's what I've been told. Well, no. No, they're not. We talked about that in a meeting this morning. The Blount County Communication District is not going to fight it because they don't want to do the administrative costs. And that show up in their audit. So once the seven, eight-year period goes away and they come to an agreement and notify the state, hey, we want this money to go strictly out of Leeds, was it EIN, I believe it is, or EIN district, the money coming into the state from our rural district that we have will go directly to St. Clair County Communication District, not go through a bypass with Blount County. Because at that point in time, there could be an agreement. What I understand, I'll send you all the email. is that by that time, it won't show up in the Blount County audit that they do every two years. It'll start showing up here, directly from the state.

Well, we can have government legislation and ask for that.

Well, you can. What I was doing, there's a way to do it without going to legislation, the money part. Now, technically, on the state thing, we'll still be part of that communication district. It'll just be contracted down here. But in eight years, you can... come up with a contractor agreement to send to the state 911 board and they vote on it and they go, yeah, we're going to send Lee's money directly to the state.

It's going to be eight years when we need to do that.

The way I understood it, where St. Clair County has centralized dispatch and the 911 entity doesn't have any call takers per se, the call takers are contracted through central dispatch. In the case of Lee's, Uh, Sinclair counties communications people will be the. Will be the call taker from Blount county Blount county will send the information to our dispatch center. Just like they would in mobile county mobile county. You call down there 9 1, 1, they hand it off as a dispatcher to troopers. I did that here last year. They hand it out. to the city, Saverland. Oh, Saverland's out of business right now.

So I've learned that if we do an agreement, we reach a contract, we notify State 9-1-1 Board, they will send our 9-1-1 calls directly. They'll send them directly. They won't go to Bunn. They'll go straight to here.

They'll go straight to here, but the point I'm making is they'll go straight to here, but we're not getting any of the 9-1-1. We won't get the money. And we ain't going to get it. for four years, and it's going to take us another four years to get to 100% of it. It's going to be eight years before we can ever apply legislation. Even get it transferred.

Is Aslan on board with all this? She's going to be.

Somewhat, somewhat. But now, before, and we'll call on Aslan right after this, if you don't mind, Aslan. The legislation, let's clarify it. It won't be local legislation. It'll have to go through the legislature as a statewide bill because it's two counties.

I think that they're going to be That's going to be a hard sell to do, a statewide legislation on that, because you're going to have... What the state wants is less ECDs. Creating more is not going to be what they're going to go for.

They wouldn't be creating more here.

Well, if we open it up to this situation, the fear is, this is the talk, the fear is that you're going to have... You mean with legislation? Yes, you're going to have... Are there entities wanting their money?

Gotcha.

Because everybody thinks it's their money. So that may be some hard work for us to get that through legislation. I'm not opposed to it. If they would do something local, maybe. I don't know how that would work.

We'd have to do a local bill.

So right now we have, the ECDs right now have the ability to contract. We have, there's a law pass that we can contract with each other. For instance, you have Hoover, Vestavia, Homewood. Those are all ECDs that maintain their ECD status, but they contract with Shelby County. Shelby County answers all of their phones, all their 911 calls, and dispatches for them. Only thing we would really have to do right now is we would have to contract with Blunt. to get the 911 calls. Dispatch is a whole different animal. But for the 911 money, we can contract with Blount County to answer that portion of 911 calls for them. But if they're not willing to give us any money for that, that's something that y'all have to...

They're only willing to give us the money in this breakdown right now. They're willing to do that contract and start giving us money, but not immediately. And then after a period of eight years total, we would...

So there's additional things that we need to consider.

You know how much... How much leads is getting from the state, their portion of Blount County? Oh, it's about 205 now. Because I went two years ago. I went two years ago. When things changed up there, we went down to the state and asked them how we could get out of it. And I asked that question, how much is our 911 money? And a guy said, I've been hitting the computer. Pulled up, he said, you're getting about $140,000, $150,000. Director Walker called down here last week and they told him it's like 205 now.

Two years has gone. Had an 18% increase or 19% increase.

Yeah. So, how much have we agreed, Fred? How much you told him we'd do it for? If we're just for dispatching, how much? How much you going to get from late? 230. 230,000. All right. If you get 230, that means you can only hire three dispatchers, probably. Because if you're going to hire three dispatchers, so it's three dispatchers that are going to be able to cover that. You're actually going to have to have four. You're going to have to have four. You're going to have to have four. You're going to have an A shift and a B shift. Plus a 911, so we've got to ask them to put CTs. So you're going to have to have at least four. But you're only going to be getting enough money to pay for three.

I'm not going to buy in that. We've got to have at least 4. we've got a staff now that we have some overlap and we, we, we've already measured that we could dispatch what we could start dispatching with for leads tomorrow by adding 3. Now, do we need forward? Sure. Uh, Freddie just got hired a couple a couple of years ago. So we're always going to have to have more. Uh, but we can start today with 3. Uh, and and then leads them would be in the rotation of we, we increase it each year, depending on call volume and depending on the volume of the entire system been averaging about 5% a year. So that would go up 5% from the city leads. We talked to the mayor. I think there's somewhat into it. They've got to be a vote there when we agree to this, but hadn't been that yet. Uh, we can start according to what we've looked at with the staffing at central dispatch. We'd start off with three for a while. Now, somewhere within that eight years, we're probably going to have to have four for handling that volume. Not handling, we don't assign four people to leads or three people to leads. We assign leads calls comes into our center. So it ought to remind, we've got four leads dispatched. necessarily counted that way we have dispatchers and dispatch center that handles the call moody bell city margaret leads so forth but we've got to be careful not to overwhelm the people be careful not to overwhelm them with these calls probably between us and the police department both they are about eighteen thousand and we're like twenty five hundred now look at Leeds as a foreign country. As I mentioned earlier, Leeds is a considerable part of St. Clair County's revenue flow. If I were the mayor of Leeds, and we talked about that earlier, I'd say, now, we're not asking you to do this for free, just like we're not, Supreme Court didn't ask you to do it for free either, but they do produce general fund budget that helps finance central dispatch.

So that what y'all paying, y'all paying bunking now? That's right.

I'm with you, Ricky. I didn't wind this clock up. Well, I tried to help out years ago when we met.

First year or two was on.

You know, that's a side point, but the...

The only thing, the only point I got, the only thing I want to say about it is I'm fine. I'd love to do it for them. I want them to come to us. But I don't want us losing any money neither. I mean, we can't be losing money taking this on. I mean, if they're giving us $230,000, that's going to pay for three people. Three extra people. So it's going to be another four years when we're going to get that other $50,000. If they get $205,000, that means that we're gonna get 25% of that four years down the road that's $50,000 so then that's gonna bump that up to 280 roughly then you can add another then you got enough money to add another one but it's gonna be four years before you do that or we gonna be losing money it's gonna be the way I'm hearing this and correct me if I'm wrong it's gonna be eight years before we'd be made it's an eight year plan to be made eight years before you make

Yeah, but don't look at it as being made whole. That money from the 9-1-1 money combined with what Leeds gives us would be one of our major funding streams into our central dispatch. It pays for the whole package, the radio system, the dispatchers, the insurance. So we won't ever be... main hole as such. Well, what would it cost us today to start dispatching leads? Three dispatchers. We can hire them for 230,000 or so, at least. We could get exact figures by figuring all that up. How far out in the future we can look and see how the growth of leads is going to increase the volume and how much would it take? Well, they're going to go up 5%. Let's just say that they actually increased 10. So we're not going to be losing a whole dispatch. We're going to be losing 5% a year that the whole system's got to support. And I'm thinking that we can, if we choose to. It's up to us. We can choose to. Do we want to bring Leeds as part of our community, as part of our revenue stream, part of our voters? Do we want to bring the city of Leeds back into central dispatch? And I do. I'd like to figure out a way, and I know all of us would. But I'm not looking at it as that total cost. Leeds joining the team softens the blow for the whole team as another contributor. So I think we could do it. I think we would literally be dispatching for, you know, I don't know, two, three years and not even know that we picked up leads. Then we're going to start looking and saying, does it start being more?

What happens then? Well, my point is can you get by with three for just three for the next four years, next three or four years?

I think we're going to have more dispatchers besides leads. We're going to need to increase at least one more ourselves already. Uh, because I mean, Phil city alone when at 13,000 calls this last year. 13,000, so the calls are Tony, the calls are coming in here for a year for a month. 13,000 calls for a whole year. Okay.

1000 per call per month. Addition 13,000. Every municipality has gone up.

That's where we came out with 5%, but we're not really charging. Some of them are going up 8% or 10%. Some of them are going up 3%. So we rounded it off so all of them would be hit about the same.

I think some of the smaller cities got in so low when it started, but they're not where they need to be yet.

Some of them, like I told you last year, some of them survive whack. It's unreal.

So we need to increase the bottom a little bit more. You know what I'm saying?

To make it clear.

I was here when we started it. We're already starting with leads paying more than lots of ours did on the volume.

I ain't going to mention the name of one. We got one right now. It's paying about, it's probably got, probably close to the same volume as Pell City. And they're about $70,000 less a year than they are.

That's what we've got to adjust.

I would recommend a new commission taking that on as something to tell those municipalities they need to increase their contribution. That's something you're going to have to do.

Yeah. I'm working on it.

Brady's working on it. Yeah, leaving in September. Matt's really going to have to work on it.

I guess the question is, y'all's question is, When do y'all want to try to do this if we agree to it?

When do I want to do it? October 1st.

And that being the case, we're going to have to hire some help. I mean, because we can't start them October 1st. New people coming in, they've got to be trained. And it takes, the last one we trained took 10 hours.

That's what I'm saying. That means if they go on October 1st, we ain't going to start collecting no money to them until October 1st. So that means we've got to pay for three additional employees, benefits and everything.

Oh, dear.

I've got to have an employee too because we already topped out hiring employees.

Everybody has increased except for 9-1-1 and GIS drives 9-1-1. Well, mine's a necessity. There's two of us and everything has kept growing. So I think that doing for leads is like Totally doable, and I think that we should. But we're growing, and our department has to grow too. So it's not just a call that we need. We're going to have to have additional help in our business office as well. All of this stuff has to be mapped. It has to be put into the CAD. It has all of that, and then there's the radio stuff and all that too. But I do think that it's totally doable, and I like the idea. We already have the information in our side of the county. It would be more current. It would be better for everybody. I say it, but we're going to have to grow in our 911 Department as well. So it's not just dispatchers.

Chairman, I'll give half the salary to dispatchers.

We'll have them in our radio. They're already programmed in our stuff. You commissioner, give half our salary to the dispatch center.

You chairman, give half of theirs. Whatever y'all got to do.

What have I got myself into?

so we're going to start working on budgets and i've looked at some of these numbers and the payroll is eating us alive right now i think i think we're another step closer and i think we understand it better than we did before this meeting today

I'm doing it.

You know, I'm going to do number three, but I can't right now until we look at the budget. When I start looking at the budget numbers, I don't know that I can tell you we can hire three more right now. And, you know, I'm fine with October 1st, but as far as us hiring three more employees right now and paying their benefits and all that, I don't know if we can do it. So we need to work on budgets, and I'm looking at some of these numbers in the payroll right now. I looked at them, too, and...

He's going to check with leads and see if they'd be willing to.

Let's see if we can do an early payment. We can do an early payment.

Cover three dispatchers from now on.

It's budget time for everybody. Don't get me wrong. That's what I'm saying.

It's budget time. So, I mean, you go back. You know you may come down here and talk to us.

I don't care who you talk to. I'm always doing work. One way or the other, if we can help cushion the blow on the dispatch center, I'm not speaking for Chief Irwin, but me and him have talked, and he's talked to Moody's chief. I'm going to talk to Chief Horton about maybe cushioning the blow a little bit and kind of at night patching together, doing something like that so you don't have to have two separate dispatchers. Something like that. We'll try to do what we can to help cushion the blow.

We charge the municipalities for dispatch. We don't break it down on how much the municipality says that it costs them to do fire dispatch or police dispatch. Are we still dispatching at night some for utilities? Very rare, but we have some breaks. We've been doing it for a while, so we'll cut that out. But we are, hypothetically, we started off saying we charge nothing to dispatch fire.

Volunteer fire.

Yeah. Which a lot of municipalities have volunteer power. Most of the municipalities have now grown to the point where they're not volunteer. Some of them are. So that's not out of line, what I'm getting at here, is to raise a little more money to do this. It's not out of line. I'm not sure you'd have as much keep back as you might think if it'll make this whole system better. I mean, first of all, I think the system's better by investing $8 million in a new regular system. So already made it better. And the county commission invested a lot out of their budget into that because they knew it would make it better overall. It's one of our responsibilities. I think we're getting closer to making it happen. If we start off with three and we get a good idea that three will be able to be that budget figure for three years, some figure, then that's the next step for a city where we go. Does that sound good?

And I'll find out about it. If you want to make a phone call, Phil, more than free to make a phone call.

You want to come down here and meet with them? I don't care.

Come on, we can sit around the table.

We need to do it a little later than July, sometime in July. If they'd be willing to pay it from July to October, let us hire the threesome and get them trained.

Yeah, if anybody wasn't going to pay, you know.

You'd be able to talk to them.

If anybody wasn't going to give us the $230 starting July or September, I'm fine with it. And then we start handling their costs 1 October. But we can't afford to hire three people to pay all the benefits. Right.

But that's what he's going to try to get through.

I'll find out about that. You want me to call you? Call me and I'll come down here and meet with you.

Let's make sure I'm going to jump out here and protect leads a little bit. If it does start getting strained and there's just three, it's not all Eden's fault. That system's growing to that point. We're having trouble now keeping dispatchers. It's a high-stress job, and they come and go a lot, and we're forever having a group being trained. That's the nature of that business. So next time we have a shortfall of six that we're having in training all at one time, it wasn't all Eden's fault. That system is that way. It's not your fault because you need it. It's just that kind of growth. And I realize that, and I think the commissioners did.

It's just that, you know, this can is one fast-growing can around.

I'll try to get an answer on the money quick, because it'll take from now to October 1st probably to get the contract done, the state to approve it.

You still got to get... The state's got to sign off on it. Blount County's got to. We've got to have a paperwork agreement between Blount County and us.

When you talk to the mayor, you're missing a real opportunity. You know that, don't you? See Phil and X-Trail. Make sure I understand.

They ain't that far up. They would never come in. We used to police all that when I was all the way up.

I believe if y'all agree to this and we agree to pay early, I don't believe you'll have any problems up yonder. I don't think you're going to have any problems up there. I think they're ready to make some changes.

I think we should just buy Blount County. Will Blount County just sell out? Then we can just get all of it and have two centers.

As much as we want to come here, I believe they would really love for us to leave. Oh, yeah, because I've talked to him. He said they wouldn't file us.

They're waiting for it to go, but they wouldn't file us on it. My thing, like I was talking to him, is... You're going to be keeping their 9-1-1 money, but yet we're going to be doing all the work. Me and him talked about that.

Not that it matters on this end of the money, but the reasoning for that is that we got five years free up yonder. We got five years free up yonder. They just feel like, you know.

I understand. I don't blame them. They got five, you know, they got, they done it five years free, and to see the That's the problem I had when I met with him down there. He didn't want to give us 9-1-1 money. He wanted to pay us X number of dollars, but he didn't want to give us 9-1-1 money. He said, I said, well, we can't do it. What are you going to do with that? So that's when I went to Blunt County and made that deal with Blunt County. Blunt County done it for KIPP. They've got to keep their 9-1-1 money. Actually, they took that money and used it to pay the regular bills. Okay. These things are not easy to run.

I'll get an answer as quick as I can.

But anyway, Joe, you know, anyway, we can help. That's what we can do. We want y'all to come. We want to help, but, you know, I'd love to see it happen more.

I understand. That's why we started here.

We just need to work out these numbers.

No problem. Thank you, Rick. Thank y'all for your time, y'all.

Thank you. Thank y'all. Appreciate you.

Okay.

Aslan's up next.

Did you have a particular report to make for us? And have you got our generator, by the way?

Yeah, sure. So on the note of the call taking and all of that kind of stuff, I sent all of you an email to give y'all access to our analytics. So y'all can look at that. It's a real neat tool that we have at our disposal. You can look and see how many calls Pell City is receiving, and you can look and kind of compare all of them. I know that right now we're at an average of 357 calls per day. I mean, so just so that y'all know. So the couple of things that I had that I wanted to talk about is the state, well, the Alabama, what do they call it, the public examiners. For the state, they released a law They released the standards for us and one of those standards, it called for the certain policies that we need and pretty much they're basically the same thing as what the county commissions have to have. So my question to the attorney is going to be is if my commission is my 911 board and we are there doing our kind of financial portion of everything, which most of the policies have to do with finances. Do we need another copy of them that say the St. Clair County Emergency Communications District or us being up under the county commission? Does that kind of cover us? We don't need to create any new policies or do we? That says ECD.

I was hoping to ask one about this.

We don't have anything separate.

It's always been a struggle. We just assume, okay, the county commission is the 911 board, but the 911 board is not the county commission. So, it is a separate entity, and we've already started trying to keep the money separated as such. And Michelle's already doing most of that anyway, but it's a different company. The county commission, the way I read the law is we just serve as the board of directors of this emergency communications district. Yeah, so those that are at least in our policies for employees and things. Are they the same physical classroom for the county commission? Are there some things we need to take action as a communication? I just need to take a look at that. Yeah.

Okay. So I'll get those. Uh, I think I did email it to the administrators didn't include you on that email. I'm sorry. but anyway that's what just to make sure that we're good with the audit next year going forward so they just released it so i just wanted to know if we need to do something about that um secondly since we're on the topic of uh subdivision regulations and all that kind of stuff and then we have leads possibly joining us um we've addressed just to kind of give you an idea what we're doing all day long um so far this year we've addressed 224 subdivision lines So that's going to be new lights that are in the development phase. We have assigned throughout the county an additional new 317 addresses that's across the county. So that kind of gives you a little bit of idea of growth. We are verifying addresses daily for the probate office. We're up to 657 verifications. this year so that that's kind of what we're doing so we are addressing all of these things and we are doing it um right now currently because we don't have an addressing policy we're doing it because i said so that's the way we're doing it so i do follow a standard there is a standard for addresses that we have to use so that the 911 calls are received and dispatched properly so i have generated um and i didn't ai this i actually uh i actually ripped this off from baldwin county so and i took out all the baldwin county stuff and stuff that doesn't apply to us but um this is what we do and this is this is how you are to address according to the national nana standards um so i sent this out i would like this policy right here this addressing standards policy to be adopted We do have some municipalities that do their own addressing. Springville likes to do their own. Moody and Pilsie and they do a good job that they have to run everything by me first to make sure that it's, you know, that it will work with our system and that it's not a duplicate road name or duplicate address range. So this would be something that I can give them and pass out to all the municipalities. And also when somebody comes up and wants to name their driveway War Eagle Lane and I say no, And you're going to ask me why according to policy. So I want a policy for our addressing. So when we have to change people's addresses, we need to be able to refer back to this is the policy and this is why.

I'll get the digital copy to you.

It's really, it's a bunch of language, kind of explains things. Why we address, how we address, and the standard that backs it up. So, you can just look over that and let me know. Nothing life-changing in there. It's what we do currently. Second thing is I have a big list of inventory stuff that I'm going to request that we remove from our inventory. It has not necessarily been disposed of. I just want it removed so that we can. It's stuff that's the old radio system stuff. There's just a ton of it. There's old repeaters and antenna stuff that's been on there since 2005 that's probably been replaced. It's been gone, but it's been on a tower and nobody's been able to audit it or look at it. But it's been past the end of life. um i talked with freddie um all this stuff with the old system it doesn't work with our system we're not using it so it's it's gone it's obsolete so i just want to remove it um and then there's going to be a list of inventory in there that i would like to transfer the old um the old pcs that we just replaced this year from dispatch um it has already taken those into service and there have been parting them out and you get all the parts that they can, which is what we normally do. I'm just going to officially request that those be transferred to IT. There's a couple of things in there that the sheriff's office has up on the dispatch floor that are no longer under any kind of maintenance or anything from us. Some televisions from 2010 that are hanging on the wall up there in dispatch. Just stuff that I don't want to have to keep up with, basically, because they're out of date and they're really not in our department. A shredder. A copy machine that I don't even know if the copy machine is still there. I think it died, but it's just been on the list forever. So stuff like that that y'all can look over. I'm going to ask for approval for that. Also, we have, there's the new Southern Software agreements. These are the same. They're the basics. I was going to say if we can go ahead and get these approved, that way come October 1st when we can write the bills together. We get them paid. Nothing new in those. It's not going to be anywhere as expensive as it was last year. Our budget's looking really good, actually. You got any extra? I do not have any extra, but I will not have to spend extra this year like we did last year. If y'all didn't know, this year there was a 9-1-1 bill passed. It is now Act 2026-371. This is going to go into describing new statistics and stats and stuff that we have to keep up with now as a 9-1-1 board. how long it takes to answer a 911 call, how long it takes that call to get into the CAD, and how long it takes that call to get dispatched. They're gonna be asking for any call counts that relate to a possible crime. They're trying to do crime statistics. This is stuff that the Attorney General's, this will be a report that we have to report to the Attorney General every year. So you can familiarize yourself with that. um we do have a 9-1-1 summit coming up it is july the 30th through the 31st if any of you are interested in registering for that it's nowhere fun it's incredible um but we will have a lot of discussion about this particular bill and how it's going to affect all of the acds so it would be good if somebody would like to to come and listen to that um maybe even kyle You know, if he is interested in that, just how the legislation is going to affect us. The board, the state board right now is in the rulemaking process. So the rules haven't been established yet. They are deciding what standards. We have to have a best practices and a standards for each ECD. And the point of this, y'all, is like leads coming to us. I've had Talladega, I mean, Lincoln reach out. They're kind of interested in being dispatched to us, but the state is really pushing for consolidation. So they're putting out, there's going to be rules that we're going to have to follow and you're going to have to, your district's going to need to have those standards in place and they'll be checked. And if you get a you get a complaint to the ag's office they're going to come and they're going to audit all of our records and look at it and they're going to tell you what to do and it's getting serious so this is a we're good we're amazing all of our stuff looks really good and that's another reason why y'all have that analytics you can look at it you can see what what how good we're doing and we're doing great i mean they're they're amazing they have a really good really good system going on so and finally the in-digital quote for the new telephone system. We were talking about that, and y'all were looking into the general fund possibly doing, having to do a budget amendment. If you'll, and I've got my balances here, and every year I put in our 588, which is a data processing hardware software installation program. It's a capital purchase. It's $588. So what we need to purchase for our phone system is some hardware to work with the new system and 911 call taking. I have in there $15,000. We put that in there every year for a repeater or anything that breaks with a system like that. So we do have money available that you could get it out of 911 without having to make any kind of budget amendment. That money is there if y'all would like to approve that.

We would appreciate that.

I'm trying to find you some stuff. Yeah, I mean, we're doing good in 911. We got it. That's that. Do y'all have any questions for me? If y'all didn't get the analytics or if you just ignored it or thought it was junk mail, just let me know and I can resend you that. I mean, it's really neat. You can do all kind of ask it all kind of questions and it'll get you some information. I've got Brian and his team working on a dashboard for y'all right now for just simple things so that you can you can pull up your district, you can pull up the county, you can look at the call counts, you can do heat maps and see where your highest density of calls are. You can also look and see how many new addresses are in your district, where they are in your district. So we're working on that to get you more information so y'all can be better informed. I know when Freddie says things like we need four more people, we really do. Everything has grown and it's getting noisy out there. But we'll look for ways to make that happen. Okay.

Any more questions for Aspen? Thank you. Thanks for keeping up with this Blunt County thing.

Also, the 9-1-1 conference in October is open for registration. And since I'm on that committee, we have a special where we can get into the rooms first before anybody else. So if anybody's interested in going, y'all need to let Jeannie know. Because when that block opens to the regular people that are not on the committee, they go that day. The rooms do. So that's in October. At Perdido. So, and there'll be a lot of, a lot of good information there. Robbie is over all of the education and she does a fantastic job. So if y'all couldn't come for, she's condensed it down to kind of like where y'all can be there one day or two days and get all the education that y'all need as a board. So lots of information coming your way. It'd be really good for y'all to come.

Don't let them get you too bad, Katrina. They'll set you up. I'll take care of you.

I'll watch them. Look who's talking. I learned from 24 years. I learned in six months. Thank you so much.

Okay, Brian Price.

Brian, GIS manager, has a proposal on the MOU on flow forward initiative.

Yeah, we're going to get the county commissioners on computer. I know y'all were waiting to see. if this computer thing was really going to pan out. It's panning out. We're going to get you a dashboard. What's dashboard? You got to start at the base. One on my car. Right. Either that or get you an assistant to have your computer. I have one item only. And I had emailed to each of you, actually, The second one was the corrected version of it. Kurt, I had sent you as well. So this is pending the attorney's approval for the language and stuff in it. But what this is, is once again, in regards to the flow forward project initiative, which is a compilation or an assimilation of the waterline information in GIS form. And just to give a quick summary of what what this is The goal of this project is to provide information a whole county view for four Specific purposes one for County Commissioner normal decision-making process so that you can have information in front of you and on a dashboard that as it pertains to the infrastructure of water systems for York decision-making purposes second for economic development purposes and Having him to do the same to be able to as employers come and make present or as he makes presentations to attract employers so that he can have some base information to answer some base questions as it pertains to the water system third is for the EMA so that they'll have a common operational picture of the water infrastructure for their emergency operations plan and for for the highway department because For their planning purposes, on the planning side of things, they will be able to have that infrastructure where it is, where it lies for avoidance so that they can, when they go to dig, insert a culvert that on the planning side, as he gives his planning out to his field teams, that they can say, all right, we have a water line that's crossing right in your work area. You want to watch out for these valves. So for these four reasons, now, obviously, the resistance from the water systems is that the water managers working in under the um under the authority of the board the various boards um they are uh they are very uh very protective and they should be and they um they are uh curious as to why we're wanting this information and and i believe that they need assurances from the county that says We are putting this together. It's in a lockbox. It's in an inside secure infrastructure. Only these four elements is who's using this information. And so we will keep it confidential. But we do need this information for decision making. And so that's the base of it. The language, I believe, is in here to let them know that we are being compliant with the recommendations of EPA Clean Water Act. They have recommendations. for that these water managers are holding as now we have federal guidelines that they are guides they're not laws but we want to honor that so in essence we're asking for them to participate in this we're giving them the option that if they if they choose not to then they choose not to you know after after we attempt to persuade them but uh the tie to the county is we are i don't you don't want to use the word family but i'm going to use we're we're government family and there is no nefarious reasons that the these four reasons we're going to be using this information but we have to convince the water managers who then in turn convince the boards who then in turn

Possibly sign this agreement and if I could interject there, but 1 of the things we ran into years ago, but we had water boards say, we're not going to give you all that information and comment back on some of it. We didn't push the issue back then, but it's public information. You have to. Well, since 9 11, part of the issue is the security of public utility systems. And from that standpoint. standpoint of security. And I know that the water systems say, well, you know, the Russians are going to find out where all of our valves are. Well, they probably don't know. It's kind of like somebody said, well, if we put all this information about the Logan Martin Dam, they're going to know where the dam is. And that's if you put it actually on a map, you know, that shows. But the same situation is there. There's some reason for us to protect this from a security standpoint and i think that's one way we can protect it if they give it to us we'll have it on in our arrangement with them it will be secured based on the water systems saying that's the reason we didn't give it to you last time well we can secure it just like you can i know it's on your list here you ain't got leads on there uh leads is

Birmingham water?

Water systems, they got a lot in St. Cary Canyon. Moody, Seedgate Highway, 411. Okay.

That would be one addition. That was an oversight. I did speak with Central Alabama And he said they have a sharing agreement. They don't have a big problem. Right. And so I'm waiting on documentation that you'll probably have to sign on their data sharing agreement. But I've tried to outline the language in here. so that it addresses the concerns that I've been made aware of from the water managers. And yeah, if you need something secured, give it to a water manager and they'll give you.

I've got a copy.

Yes, sir. Okay, great.

I appreciate that.

Yeah. And moving forward, if I could just quickly say, I have a concept. I know that this project is not the biggest thing in the world, but if I'm going to do it, I want to do a good job at it. And that is that I would like to address this in two more stages. One is to meet with possibly whoever the kind, and this is, didn't even plan on, but if the commission, I don't know if you want to all be privy to this or assign somebody, but I would like to meet with a representative of the commission, EDC, EMA, and the highway department, and then let us talk amongst ourselves, and then the next step, or in an effort to prepare a discussion with the board members and the managers. So I know sending an email out scares people, oh man, they're trying to get our data. All right, I understand that, but a face-to-face, let them know, hey, there's not but five, six, seven, eight, nine people who are in this authority chain here. So which one of these ones is the nefarious that you have a problem with? And that, I think, The unknowing of the managers and their advice to their boards is, if in doubt, don't. But trying to soften it up, say, hey, we are inside the same. These board members set you up. When you need money for a grant, these are who you come to. And those sorts of things, just saying, let's lower this a little bit. It has been 25 years since 9-11, and nothing has—we've not had any sort of breach.

Yeah, and another way we probably need to address it, which is— about it since the day we started getting federal grants for water systems which is all the way back before new london started and all that uh and that is many of the grants we get are based on uh certain criteria such as low to moderate income if you have a certain percentage of low to moderate income people in a community then you would qualify for a grant well we found out in washington dc Maybe a direct appropriation, not a grant we're going after, but the direct appropriation has to meet the same standards as the grant would. So we'll need information. For instance, any of the commissioners that go to D.C. looking for money for a water system in their district, it would be good if they could go before the elected official staff, especially elected officials in there every day. get down in the gravel that much, but their staff does. And by the way, within this community, we're asking for money, 42% low to moderate income. We need that information, and it could be on the same mapping system that you're talking about. And it's not something we can say, we will get you the information on low to moderate income. It takes a while. Now, when we're in D.C., we need to say, here's what, this is a percentage of things that would meet the requirements if it were a grant. But we're asking for direct money. We miss out on millions of dollars of direct appropriation money because we hadn't got the data before them up there of it meeting the criteria for it. We had to wait a whole year on the bridge money. I learned a lot of lessons out of that one. What's that thing called? Wasn't on the tip program. Tip, yeah. So we learned, okay. Don't go looking for bridge money or road money unless it's on that.

I don't, all of you, I don't have to explain. You guys actually explain it to me. that level of potential animosity between here and there. I've always thought that technology can be used as a tie to bring folks together. And this is a good example because when you have this particular issue and a realm of animosity about water boards and these things happened and I even, I had the highway department put my flags out there and they still came out there. and dug it and broke it, and then because it was on there right away, they said we still had to, so there's all these things out there, I understand, but having this sort of dialogue can ramp it down a little bit, get people back face to face explaining that we're not against you and we're not putting this out to public.

Many times we're kind of the reason you're here.

Yeah.

Okay. Any other questions for Brian?

Well, in the defense of New London, they just simply got a letter saying you want all their information. And they said, well, they'll be okay. Let's see. I'll be there. They just didn't need to. They didn't know. That's the way a lot of them do. And I'm glad they did that. Oh, yeah. They just said, yeah, there it is. You know. Yeah. All right. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Brian.

Tina wanted me to let you know that Ashley has a request for the commission to consider that East Central Athletics, a home school sports organization, is requesting a discount to use the event center to host their basketball games. The discount they are requesting is the same we issued to the St. Clair County Board of Education, which is 25% off the rental price, and they are anticipating four events for the basketball game. Okay. That was what Ashley would have said if she had been here. Okay.

Y'all ready to discuss that? Okay.

All right. You ready?

High school basketball discount. See, I'm putting that on you.

High school basketball discount. Okay. And Tina wanted me to let y'all know that we are still working on the pay cards.

Okay.

Not ready yet, but.

Can't go in fact. Anyway, don't go in fact. Until October 31st.

Okay.

Payment and procurement.

Yes. Yes. Sorry. Procurement cards. So that we can.

Just to be clear.

Make purchases and.

You should be able to have them ready by October 1st, I would think. Yes.

And then Michelle Layfield, put a financial report in your.

Yes. You want to speak on that?

You want to speak on that or you want to.

That's just two things I wanted to get together, put together for you today. So you would be ready for Tuesday when we have our meeting then for discussions. the budget draft budget I just just got revenues estimated updated payroll numbers based off current positions but since we knew what insurance is and we got RSA's percentages in so I knew all that so that's updated in those numbers but that's as far as I've got so that's a very basic draft first draft particular questions for

Or today, we'll dig into the weeds on Tuesday. We'll begin the weed digging Tuesday. You may want to be there, and we'll make sure Dave knows too. I'll get her. I appreciate it. She's going to come.

Dave does that? I think so. We need to get that. Yeah, I told them they're supposed to take.

I've got it written down to send them. I don't know where my list went.

the well, considering the pressure you were under.

I really don't have anything to report unless y'all have some questions about anything. I'd still be working on that.

Have you heard anything?

I'm sorry? I have not. So I'm I think probably I need to obviously send him some sort of correspondence. Well, I have left a couple of voicemails, and he has not called me back. I can't make him. That's he and his sister. It is, and I spoke with his sister early on, but I have not gotten back in touch with her. She lives out of state, but I'm happy to make contact with her as well. Yes, sir.

Try to keep reaching out to him to see if he's going to give us, see what he says. Yes, sir.

And if he needs another meeting, we'll meet with him. Right. If that's necessary. Yes, sir. All right.

Good talk.

Thank you so much. That's good.

That's a good one. Thanks. That wasn't a whole lot of hard questions, but it was. Okay. Item one, discuss subdivision regulation. You got a way to start over? No.

No, that'll be on Clay's report. That was just to make sure we had it.

Okay. Make sure we don't leave it off. Yeah, we don't forget about it. Okay. Item two, discuss revising employment contracts for the engineers due to recent changes in personnel. Yeah, we had, Dan was under a separate contract because of his, We had to pay him off to make it stay a little longer or something like that. It wasn't exactly what it amounted to, but it was sort of that. Well, it was sort of that. We got held up and we were robbed. Now that he's gone, we say that it was worth every penny while he was here. Now that he's gone, we can balance the budget. That's exactly right.

That's just to clean up our record. I'm just kidding.

So we do need to look at the... Are the engineers under contract? You're not a contract employee, are you? I am.

Mm-hmm.

Who who lost contract employees him and him and, uh, like, Phillips and Blake Geller just the 2. The 3, the 3, the 3. Okay. And as, as in commission minutes. Who else is under contract with the county? What other employees? So we look at all these went down. Do we have any other under contract?

Well, in engineering, that's all.

No, but I mean, out of any other contract employees that we got working, the sheriff's department, we know we got a couple. Sheriff has several.

We have Jeannie, right?

Okay.

Sheriff has probably two or three that I can think of.

But he is full-time.

Paul. Paul. Is it Randy? Randy Hurst.

That's right.

Freddie was one.

Freddie will be a full-time until we get him squared away. Okay. I wanted us to look in, as we're looking into the budget, not just look at the contract employees, but who and how we made the determination that certain employees were exempt under the wage and hour law. I'm not sure we have many. The engineers are under contract. They probably are exempt. You wouldn't be paid overtime anyway unless we agreed to it. We can pay them overtime. On a wage and hour, we don't have to if they're exempt employees. We've got two or three more that are that wage. Tina? she's not contract she's not contract but she's exempt employee yeah you got ema director i want us to revisit that for instance uh and they've not said anything to me but i do know that uh the trees turns out to things like the truck wreck the other day where they're got a spill if you're an exempt employee there's very narrow thing you can do outside of strictly administrative or you're you can't be exempt you're gonna have to be paid overtime now we understand we pay Patrice overtime if we choose to but what I'm saying is I'm not sure we could deny her overtime if she filed for it I'm not sure she fits the category for an exempt employee and I want to be sure we have any others that way We can't just declare somebody exempt because we want to. We declare them exempt under wage and hour because of what they do or don't do. If they're doing administrative work, they can be exempt. If they're doing anything outside, for instance, if our county administrator does some of the work that I see Tina doing, for instance. She jumps in there and does some of the same things some of y'all do that you're not exempt. A big percentage of it.

She just someday...

Some days y'all just become another worker because you're helping the other ones. You're just another worker bee. There's only a certain amount of worker bee work you can do. and still be under the you could the ways in our law is to allow you the right to get your own your your overtime if you qualify for it we can't deny by using the wage in our law but you use the wage in our law well understanding to get your benefits so if you're doing work that's not administrative and you're listed as exempt you're doing work not administrate if you're doing worker be work sometimes We might want to look at that. You may be automatically. There's not much of it. It's very little. I'm just saying that I'm not sure we meet the criteria for exempt employees on some of them that we say you're exempt. Well, if you work overtime, we're going to pay you. It only would come up on something like the probate judge just had the other day if you're working. If you have employees that are working the election. So we'll look at that as we get into this budget time. Because it may be something we want to budget. Are there any instances of any significance for overtime? We want to build overtime into the budget if there is. And the main one that comes to mind is Patrice. But we fixed her.

We fixed her.

But she still isn't there.

She'll pay what she's going to pay. Right. We fixed it so that she says that she is fine with being exempt.

And she wouldn't do it at all, but if I was her, since I'm going out of office, I can say this. If I was her, I'd give me a lawyer and I'd sue y'all for making me exempt. She is not exempt. She does too much worker bee work. Now, you can tell her not to. You'd sue the county? Oh, yeah. If I was her, I would.

Yeah.

I'd sue me. I know. The employee has that right under the wage and hour law. The wage and hour law is not to protect the employer. It's to protect the employee. And I'm not sure. I think we kind of dented a little bit to protect the employee. I don't think it's significant money. Now, the other part of that is you can control somewhat overtime pay and time off. That comes in how many hours you work. First eight hours is, what is it? First eight hours is the employee can demand overtime. The next eight hours is up to the employer. That's in there, too. Somewhere in there. I've done this. You lawyers have done this before.

I stay away from employment law.

But there's somewhere in there, there's some control. In other words, a person that is not exempt can't wear out your budget. They can't just work overtime when they want to. They can only work overtime when you authorize them to. So it's not a matter of spending money. It's a matter of whether or not they're being compensated when they should be. And some of that would be time off. We fix debt with trees, but we give them time off and all that kind of stuff. Do we give our money more pay? We just gave her an increase in pay. But the wage and hour law has to do, she works overtime, she gives time and a half. Or double time and a half. It's a holiday and we close the building.

Okay. Okay.

That's all. Tomorrow we're closed. Okay.

Holiday.

Yep, it's a holiday. All right. That all falls into this contract stuff. The engineers and other employees will address all that one time. Item three, discussion during the BSP contract, county employees' vision insurance. i go get me a deal on glasses i've never done that before what did i do no i'll order yourself okay all right i just need to bring you the prescriptions okay i'll do that all right we've got that on the item four discuss request review employee abigail braxton for approval declaration of emergency sick leave we're ready item five discussion is for contracts central dispatch ema fees adult inmate contracts renew in 2027 Current fee is $40 a day for that particular inmate contract.

I'm waiting on Frady. Okay. He's working on those numbers.

Do you want to discuss any of those at this time?

It'll probably be July.

He ain't going to have it ready for June. No.

We'll have to move this to July.

We'll take that off. Yeah. Item 6, that's wording 3D laser scanning system bid. Bid opening on Monday, June the 22nd.

We'll know after Monday.

We'll know after Monday. Item 7, discuss request public transportation for Eric J. Smith's surplus two vehicles. Yep.

In the works.

All right. Item 8, discuss request GIS manager Brian Price to approve MOU. Just talked about that.

Are you ready to do that?

We can take that off. We can take that off.

It's going to be with each individual municipality or water board, right?

Just like the ones are individuals municipalities on dispatch.

Do you need to add rim lap to that? I didn't see it on there.

You need to add leaves to it. Rim lap or pine mountain? Out of nine, discuss 9-1-1 policy spending review.

Talk to Aslan about that.

Item 10, discussing digital proposal for one-time cost amount of $12,901. You said you'd take that out of that other account.

That'll be on the 9, we'll just clear it up on the 9-1-1 meeting.

I got you, yep. We're doing a 9-1-1 board meeting on Tuesday. We want to do it right at the meeting.

Are we going to call 9-1-1? We did.

We've already posted it.

Item 11, discuss posting called work session for FY27 budget review. Y'all ready to discuss that today? We don't have to. Take action on Tuesday.

After the meeting. Okay.

Item 12, informational item, the FY27 budget review work session on Tuesday, June 23rd. Following the commission meeting. Okay. In Pell City. Yes. Pell City. Now, Mr. Engineer, it takes a little longer to drive over there. It does over here when he's in the bus. you might want to get a room right there yeah you can you can get a discount there nine o'clock commission meeting and then budget meeting work session budget work session you and him are always late we're not even gen z or whatever this is always late Item 13, discuss travel request. You've got those in your files. Some of you I heard mention you might be going to that travel thing, which would be good. Item 14, discuss board appointments. You've got your board appointments.

I'm going to need to step down from the piece of valley.

But whoever takes that needs to be acclimated. I mean, it's just throwing everything in. Acclimated.

I already told the coach about it. They already hit me up about it, so I told them I'd do it just when Jeff stepped down. I'll get a letter or something.

Well, wait a minute. It ain't got to be a commissioner. I was going to run for that.

Well, they say you got it right here.

It pays good. Yeah.

They're going to pull me August 1st, but I say you're going ahead now.

Are you going to Washington in August? Want to go see the congressman so we get money?

We need you up there if you're on the board. Ricky needs to be up there negotiating. Yeah, I'll be somewhere.

Back up.

Okay.

Where are we? All right.

Uh, 1 thing I have left is to adjourn.

Okay.

Okay. And, uh, yeah, don't go over the phone for anything like that. You got all kinds of little things in your files.

Turn this off.