Planning & Zoning Board - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I call to order the September Finance and Budget Committee meeting tonight, second try. Welcome everybody back. We'll start with our prayer and pledge by J.P. Dean.

Everybody, a vow. Heavenly Father, I'd like to take this time to thank you for everything that you've given us here to experience and to have. And I ask you for your wisdom and knowledge for us all through this time of setting the budget for Washington County and see that we get it right. Amen.

Thank you, J.P. Dean. The second item we have is the adoption of the agenda. Do we have any additions or subtractions from the agenda? J.P. Lenning?

Yes, I'd like to add a couple. One item is item 2026-0-058. It's an ordinance amending the sheriff's Office jail budget 2026.

Do we want to put that as item 15?

That'd be fine. Put it wherever you would like. And I'd like to add another one here. It's item 26-0. It's for the grant for the drug court grant, participation of getting it.

We'll make that 16. OK. OK, I have a motion by JP leaning to add two items to the agenda. We're going to miss 15 and 1615. Is item 2026 oh 058 from the Sheriff's Office. And then the second item. Where to go? Oh second item is from. Judge Beaumont regarding the grant for the drug court grant fund and allocating that appropriately. Although, there's not a number on it, sorry.

Everybody should have them though, okay.

That'll be 16, yes ma'am. All those in favor for adding those two items, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, nay. The agenda has been amended. So I have a motion by J.P. Ecke to adopt the amended agenda seconded by J.P. Dean. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, no. We have an adopted agenda. Item four is a Treasurer's Report, Treasurer Hill.

4.1, treasurer summary. Not a banner month for revenue once again, but again, the summer months are not very good as far as the county revenue goes. See the general fund, 4.3 in expenditures and 1.6 in revenues. Road and Jail pretty much brought in what they spent. If you look at the bottom of this report, Began the month with $72.3 million, ended with $69.9 million in the bank. 4.2, the revenue expenditure comparisons. As you can see, the last 2024 and 2025, we've been kind of living off some carryover revenue. Looks like we're doing the same in 2026. However, that's just through August, and we probably have Sixteen to eighteen million coming into the general fund between now and then between between now and the end of the year So hopefully that three point nine will shrink a little bit 4.3 Property taxes were down just a little this month four hundred seventy two thousand came in Compared to five hundred twenty seven thousand last year. We're still up for the year five and a half percent As you can see that bottom number it's Got in $11 million, and I projected $24.6 million. So we still got a lot of revenue to come in here. 4.4, the ARPA report. Less than $100,000 was spent in August. We have just over $1.4 million remaining in that fund. 4.5, the one cent sales tax. Very, very flat still. 963,000 came in this year compared to 967,000. And for the whole year, we're just almost identical to last year. 4.6, the quarter cent jail tax, about the same story. They're up less than 1%. Almost 1.5 million came in, and just about the same as last year. If you see that current month over under just at 98,000, If you look back at last year at this time, that number was $700,000. So the growth is pretty pathetic right now as far as the sales tax goes. That's all I've got.

DAVID BURRAGE- Any questions for Treasurer Hill? Thank you, sir. GREG HILLIARD- Thank you. DAVID BURRAGE- Item 5 is the Employee Insurance Report. Mr. Angel.

I can break a lot about it when I talk about it.

DAVID BURRAGE- OK. We'll move on then to item six, comptroller's report, comptroller Sherman.

Good evening. Well, tonight starts the fun of the budget process. Which one do we have first? OK, the statement of operations. OK, right now we're 67% through the year. Nothing's jumping out to me. We're sitting pretty good. If you see, county general has spent 58%. So I'm estimating that we end about $5 million, again, over-appropriated on county general. And we'll talk a little bit about that later, how we are consistently over-appropriating. And so I think that County General will end between five and six million under budget this year. So the health insurance fund, everybody knows that we've been watching that real close. It was like about a negative 400,000 in the account. The way Treasury Hill's working it, he'll let it run negative until the end of the month and then make it whole at the end of the month. partly why we're doing that is we're trying not to use all of that two million that you guys appropriated so far we moved four hundred and thirty five thousand of the two million over to the account and right now the stop-loss has kicked in in full effect so that's really is what's saving us this year we're probably we got I think a hundred and seventy five thousand today that came in Tomorrow, we'll move 360 on the payroll. And then I think we're supposed to get another 700,000 the following week. So we're in a situation now where we're getting everything back, basically, that we're spending on health care. Now, as we talked about in the past, when we go into next year, they'll put lasers on individual people, and you will be liable for whatever they go next year. But that's something that we can't really control. Is there any questions on the health insurance fund? So hopefully, one of these years, we'll have a good year in the health insurance fund. But it's a must pay. I don't think we can do much to get around that. Road is sitting at 56% executed, and we're 67% through the year. So I'm estimating that they probably will end up at $1.5 million under budget. So that's a good thing. And the jail is currently at 54.9%. And I'm estimating to end up about $3 to $4 million under budget. So as we go through the talking paper here in a little bit, as most of you know, the unappropriated reserve on all the requests is negative right now. some of that you know where where we're over appropriating there is probably room to cut or we could feel that you know we would be safe in our actual cash flow and that's up to you guys to tell us what direction you want us to go is there any questions on statement of operations we're looking pretty good though through this time of the year The next one is just the unappropriated reserve balance. Right now we still have one million in unappropriated reserves in County General. So we're looking all right there. Jail has 563,000 left. And let me see if I can find the road up here. The road has 59,000 left. But as I said before, they're doing pretty good budget-wise, so hopefully we won't have to get into asking for any more appropriated money. So far this year, we have asked for an additional $3 million, basically, in the budget. When we come back for ordinances, we've added $3 million. Two million of that was at health insurance, so we've only used $475,000, and we're going to keep on trying to be conservative in that action of moving money over. Any questions before we get into the budget real quick? I'll give just an initial brief. Basically, we have sent it out to all the departments. All the departments have come back and give us their request, and we sent it out to you guys on the 15th of August. And there's some questions we're still working on, so we still need to go back to the departments, giving you guys' direction, what we wanna do, and then hopefully we'll come back next month. and see where we're sitting. Can you pull up the budget real quick? J.P. Lemming? No, never mind.

Okay. J.P. Coger?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, Comptroller Sherman, I'm wondering about on the American Rescue Plan Fund, 3046, and it says you changed the name on that account this month. It changed from just American Rescue Plan Fund to RPA-Social Services. I'm just wondering what that means and what that's about.

Where was that? Well, initially, where that social services come from, that was a legislative audit deal. We had it mislabeled. That grant money was, when you look at the way they tell you to label it, the state accounting system, it's supposed to be funded as social services. I think we might have put like safety or law enforcement in it or something. So I can get with you offline, though, and talk more about that. I don't know exactly off the top of my head.

I'm having trouble. Maybe I still am having trouble hearing a little bit. So it was a legislative audit that told you to do that?

Correct. Yeah, we had it mislabeled. Like, they have stuff like sanitation, social services, safety, law enforcement, and social services is where ARPA money was supposed to be under specifically. OK. Thank you. And we labeled it common sense-wise what we thought it was going towards, like if it went towards law enforcement at the jail or, you know, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so I just wanna review this real quick. slide that I usually look at. So what Treasurer Hill does is he says, okay, we have our projected carryover. So he's always watching the money and says, this is what we think is going to carry over into our money in the bank. Then he projects new revenue going into next year. And then that's our total projected revenue. And then required by law, you have to hold back 10%. And that kind of saves you from yourself. So that's the holdback. and then you have available what the budget everybody submits their request and then that's where we're sitting um we put all the requests together and then what happens is unappropriated reserves pops out so we'll talk about it in the talking paper a little bit we're negative pretty much on all the missions that we do in unappropriated reserve We do have money, though, in general reserve that can cover down on that if that's the route you want to go legally. If you don't and we need to cut, then we need to hear that and go from there. So just looking at the overall budget, right now it's $130 million. It increased less than 1%. But I adjusted that for ARPA and revenue replacement, because really that was an anomaly. So there was $5.5 million last year that was revenue replacement. If you take that out of there and look at the true growth, it's uh 5.34 percent over last year is the additional request and then we have it i have it broken out by county general request that's a 7.7 percent increase uh road fund request is 5.85 percent increase and then the jail is a 6.9 increase The reason why the overall increase is small because all the other funds, including ARPA, revenue replacement, all that kind of stuff, it has 24% decrease, which we knew was coming because we were spending the money. You know, we had that money set aside for doing the COVID mitigation project, the EOC, and we got to expend all that money by the end of this year. So we've been clearing all that money out. So our budget, you'll see our budget actually shrink because we've been sort of living high on the hog on COVID money. And some of the articles I've been reading, a lot of counties and cities are going to struggle with that a little bit, because they've been fat as far as the cash flow goes and what they've had in the bank. And now they're going to have to learn on pulling back a little bit. So total labor request is $73 million. That's a 4.7% increase over 26, which makes sense to me because the step plan, if you just think about it purely, if everybody got their step, it'd be 5%. That puts our labor in this request, in the overall budget, at 55.8% of the total budget is going towards personnel. Now... That's one of the areas that we over-appropriate a lot. Last year, we over-appropriated $4.2 million, or 3.5%. And partly why that occurs is if we have vacancies funded, in those vacancies, we have to account for appropriating FICA, which is 7.65%. We account for APERS, which is 15.2%. So that's basically adding 22% right there on the overall salary. And then what happens is there's a lot of other little cats and dogs that are pretty small, like life insurance. It's really not that much money. Health insurance, we don't actually appropriate that money unless somebody gets into the plan. So if they choose to be on the plan, then we have to appropriate. Right now we're doing $1,000 a month per beneficiary. So we spend $12,000 a year per employee. That signs up for the health care plan.

But the budget has the amount for the health insurance that the county would pay in the budget. We just don't appropriate it month to month until somebody's in the position.

Well, and what we count on a little bit is enough turnover and you can move 1,000 money around. So, you know, we've been over-appropriating by, five or six million every year in labor, so there's room there where we haven't had to come back and ask for, if somebody comes to the county new, they sign up, and you need 12,000, most of those departments have it and they can move stuff around in personnel. Now where that'll get you is a smaller department with only maybe two people, three people, one comes in, they need health insurance, that's where we might have to come back and ask for you. But that's one change that I made since I've been here The way they used to do it, it was $835 per member per month. And they did it for all slots. They did it all the vacancies and everything. So we were really over-appropriate. And I think when I first got here, it was like $11 million that we were over-appropriate. J.P. Ecke.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Comptroller Sherman, at what point do the unfilled positions get swept back into county general, where they just or year after year after year after year?

Yeah, we could do, we've been working on what I call the unfunded requirement, so we keep it on as a requirement, the FTE and the grade, but we don't put any money against it. Okay. If there's excess, we have it now where I can sweep it at my discretion, just pull back, and it just goes back into the fund. Because truthfully, you gotta remember the difference between appropriation and cash flow. When you guys appropriate money, what you're doing is you're giving them the authority to spend it, and then it expires at the end of the year. So let's say that we don't sweep that money if we don't need it, the appropriation just expires, the money never left the account, it never got moved around. So then every year you gotta request it again. on appropriation all right thank you yeah thank you mr chairman so um if you go back to that uh summary and it's in the talking paper here currently the unappropriated reserves for county general which is all the there's a whole bunch of different departments that hit that one uh is negative 3.1 million road is negative uh 734 734 000 is in jail is negative 1.1 million Like I said earlier, we do have the General Reserve Fund, which is $14 million. That would allow us to say, OK, if we want to cover down on that and make it zero or make it even a million. We don't actually move the money, though. Because that $14 million counts as holdback. You can use county general money for any county service. You can't do that with road money, though. You couldn't cover down on something else. You can't cover down with jail money on something else. But the $14 million reserve that we have, can function as holdback, and then let's say that you, if this were the case, I'm not saying it's the case, but if you say, hey, we're gonna pass this with no cuts, we would still be legally on acceptable ground because we got that 14 million covering down on holdback that we already held back. So when you look at holdback, county general is 6.5 million. Roads, we hold back 1.8 million. And jail is 1.3. So when you add those figures to our $14 million in savings or reserve or however you want to call it, We got about $25 million that we're basically holding back that we're not considering for budget purposes at all. So the only reason I'm telling you that is because last year I was preaching, and really since I've been here, this county's fiscally strong. And truthfully, it's still fiscally solvent and all right. We have money in the bank. What we have experienced, though, is a reduction in revenue. So we've had the growth in property tax. The last two years, it was 11% and 9%. The housing market slowed. So when somebody sells their house, usually the cap comes off, and the next person's responsible for the new assessed value. The housing market slowed, so I don't think that people are selling their houses as much, so those caps aren't coming off. and people are just sitting tight because of the economy, I think. That's just Comptroller Sherman's opinion. Now, 2027 is another reassessment. So the assessor will go out and reassess, and then everybody will have new caps. Depending on what happens in this market, you know, in the past we were preaching like, oh, there's 40 people moving to Northwest Arkansas every day. It's just going up, up, up, up, up. Well, the economy has hit a little stagnant and it's not going up, up, up. It's still going up, just not as fast on the property tax side. Now, on the sales tax side, as you saw, it's totally flat. So we were running at 5%, 6% of growth, and now we're sitting at zero. And I think you heard Treasurer Hill. We had like 53,000 in there, and last year it was sitting at 700,000. So in my opinion, that's partly why we're seeing those negative numbers. We were assuming growth rolling into this, and it has slowed. Is there any questions on that?

JP Lopez?

Thank you, Chair. Comptroller Sherman, my question is really about our unappropriated reserve. The monies that we dedicated towards the insurance, will that go back into the unappropriated reserve once we close out?

Well, it expires. Right. Yeah, so I mean, and the insurance is a little bit different because we do that appropriation, but it's already been appropriated to by the departments. To answer your question, it truly expires. Like a lot of people say that to me, well, the money rolled over and we didn't use it last year and the money rolled over to next year. No, you didn't use your appropriation, which expired, you know, and you have to get a new appropriation. Thank you. Cash flow and appropriation is different.

JP Dennis. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My question is, you mentioned the assessment. And I'd like to ask this question. How is the assessment company, the ones that do the assessment for the county, how are they paid? Are they paid a percentage of what they assess, or are they paid by an individual account?

That I do not know the answer to. I can find it out, though, from Assessor Hill.

I'd like to hear that, because if they get paid a percentage, the likelihood of assessing high makes them more money.

And I could be wrong on this, but I think a lot of our county employees in the assessor's office do a lot of the assessment. I do think that they have outside help from consultants that help, that they pay. I'm not sure how, but I'll have to get you that answer. I don't know that answer.

Well, the ones I'm interested in are the ones that are outside the county employment. And I've met them at my own property before, so I know that they exist.

Okay, yeah.

I thought Russell or Assessor Hill's staff did the reassessment to get the data and all that. That's what I think. They actually do the assessment themselves.

I think they do a lot of it, but I do think that they have outside help.

There may be some outside inputs and whatnot.

But I don't know, I just don't know all that process. Okay.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it. The other thing that's happening just in revenue, we've had all that money from COVID sitting in the bank, and we were getting interest on all that, which was totally legal. You put the interest in county general. In our heyday, it was $3.9 million. Then in 25, it went to $3.1 million. And we started spending the money because we have to spend it by 26. So this year, right now, it's 1.7. And that's about what Treasure Hill's estimating next year. So we've experienced a decrease there, too. And then, of course, I always bring this up. I'm not a proponent of anything. But as far as right now, our millage is 4.3. And on county general millage, where you can Legally, charge five. We're 43rd across the state. There's 36 counties that have county general at five. Road millage, we're at one. Legally, you can charge three. I think we're 63rd when you array the counties. 36 counties have millages of three. and then of course road millage as you know uh we've talked about it before we split uh any anything in fadville we split 80 20. uh springdale 80 20 and then the other municipalities might be 50 50 there's there's multiple different scenarios so So that's the overall status of the budget request right now. Just the initial request, so we don't have to solve anything tonight. We can think about this, but you can give me instruction. And then we do have sheriff briefing today, the jail, and law enforcement. then we have roads briefing and then next week we'll have next meeting we'll have IT and buildings and grounds I believe is there any other questions or direction thank you you said that was illegal doing the interest what do you mean by that

said it was totally legal we knew this day was coming where that money and all this thing was going to get hard right and and all these ones it's running into negative the people out there in my district want to hear the millage they don't even want you to think about raising the millage whatsoever and in all these areas where we're behind on money before we start they want to cut copy we want to cut we don't We spend enough, let's make it work. Yeah.

So before we go on to the sheriff, just a couple of opinions from my point of view. I think we need to look at the budget by removing the funding for all open positions. I think we should go look at it, remove the funding for all open positions, see where that puts us, and then as we get ready to hire, then we can come back through the appropriation process as required. The other items, I don't like, well, I'm gonna say this first. The general reserve is off limits, in my opinion, unless it's an emergency. Medical fund needs money. We have an emergency we need to do. That general reserve fund that's 14 million, that's the last stake for me. It's gonna have to be something really, really bad for me to support tapping into that fund. I just think we need to hold tight on that. I don't like the negative unappropriated funds. I personally would like to target, it's a target, for the general fund to have $3 million in unappropriated funds when we approve the budget this year. And then the road and the jail to have, each of them to have around a million dollar unappropriated funds. I mean, if you look at that compared to last year, general funds, the unappropriated reserve balance as of 1-1-26 was 1,899,506, right? We did okay, but again, I'd like to have more of a safety net in there. The roads was around 9,000, and the jail was around 819,000. So I just think I'd like to have a target of those numbers in those unappropriated funds when we finish up and get ready to vote, and we'll see where we're at. I think there's other things we need to talk about. I think we need to go back and look at priorities. There's a lot of things I saw in the budget that a lot of things want to be purchased this year, and I just think we need to look at the priorities and see what we gotta have this year and move stuff off into other years as we go out. That's my end, and I'm along with my colleagues of, I right now won't even consider a millage increase. I don't think we need it. I don't think we should be looking at that. I think we can pull the budget down into where it needs to be to give us those targets or close to those targets and be able to fund what we need to do next year.

JP Lemming.

I know, Paul, since you've been here, you're working on the paid field positions, the money that's in the positions. How many are you working on right now that's still got money in the account sitting there, and then they roll that money back into their account? Do you know how many is out there?

They don't roll it into their account. What could happen is if they, let's say, and the STEP plan did away with that a little bit. We're getting better. But in the past, what I think they would do is budget for vacancies that they know they're not gonna fill, and then they can move that money for promotions and stuff like that. That has slowed down greatly. I think that we've cut, vacancies by half you have to have some vacancies because you got to keep on going getting people there's turnover sometimes and so you can't tell I don't think you could probably totally unfund them all but there are still a decent amount that we could unfund and come close these cuts well I think I believe that that money does not need to go and I'm not picking on the jail or anybody

I know whenever they rolled it and bought furniture and done other stuff with it, I think that ought to come back to the general fund, and then they can ask for it again if they need it.

Well, they're not buying furniture out of that.

I remember last year we moved.

They would have to come ask for that specifically to the quorum court. And sometimes they do.

Yeah. But I just think that that needs to go back into the general fund instead of going back into roads, circuit court, or wherever. It needs to come back to the general fund. And then the general fund, we can come and ask for it again.

Copy.

Any other questions at this point? So I think the next item is to review the sheriff's budget. Sheriff Cantrell.

Good evening, Mr. Chair and members of the court. We're here tonight to talk a little bit about our budget and primarily to answer any questions you might have. I challenged our staff at the sheriff's office to come up with a realistic budget of things that we thought we needed for 2027 to operate with. Obviously, we've prioritized those. We have a priority list, and if the funding is not there, then we would try to take care of the things that we've prioritized. We would just, I think, ask the court if there are cuts that We get the opportunity at least to tell you what our priorities are and what we think are the important things. Captain Leon Friesard is newly promoted into the captain's role, but he's been intimately involved with our budget. We've got six different budgets, and so there's a lot of moving parts, and his primary responsibility at the sheriff's office is to help us manage that and oversee it, so I've got him here with his data. and I'm gonna kind of let him come up and work with me to answer questions or to make any presentation.

Well, I'm gonna start with agreeing with you. If we're gonna cut, you need to figure out what your best place is and help us understand that. I'm not, and I don't believe any of my colleagues are gonna sit up here and say, we need to cut this, we need to cut this, we need to cut this. That's not where we're at. We're not on the front lines like you guys are. That's where you're at. So we're looking for your expertise and your prioritization. What's gotta be done this year, what do you gotta have? And sharpen the pencil a little bit and then see what we can push into the outer years.

So thank you. As far as the open positions, we're the ones with the most open positions, I'm sure, at the jail. And we struggle. You know, we compete with Fayetteville, Springdale, and Rogers, and Bentonville, and Arkansas State Police, and the University of Arkansas Police Department, and the 10 small law enforcement agencies within Washington County for that small group of people that want to be in law enforcement. So we struggle to fill some of those jail slots. But I will tell you that... And they won't all get out of background. We've got 20 people right now in background investigations. So they won't all make it through. But... Mr. Sherman alluded to the fact that maybe the economy is cooling just a little, not a lot, but it may be cooling a little bit, and we've noticed through our time in government work that when the economy gets a little tough, government jobs are a little more favorable. People will look at those, they know they're more recession-proof than maybe working at some national retailer somewhere. So we're hopeful that some of those in the background will get through, and so we'd like to not eliminate all our open spots, but certainly we've got 12, I think, unfunded currently, and we could look at maybe picking up some more of those if we needed to to try to help get us into a manageable number. I'll turn it over to Captain Freezard, or we'll answer questions together.

Do you want to start, or do you just want questions? How do you want to do it, sir?

It's a chair's pleasure. Yes, it's new to me also. You may have questions on the chair's budget. You've seen our packet. You've seen what we've presented. Hopefully you have our justifications and why we think we need these particular things.

And actually, I'm gonna, Comptroller Sherman, I'm gonna ask you to come back up, because I think you're gonna have the best answer for this. They're the first budget I'm seeing it in, so it's kind of a cross. The judge's budget has the fleet manager in the budget. It's a brand new position, there's no justification for it whatsoever in writing. Little disappointed in that. What is it, what are they gonna do? I've heard, The intent was for them to start doing oil changes, rotations, some of that minor stuff. Do we know? And if so, then we got not just the sheriff's budgets, we got a whole lot of budgets, got a lot of that in there funded for. Is that what they were supposed to do?

Yeah, so the concept of fleet manager the way I see it, and the way they have it in the budget right now, I don't think it's a high enough grade. But a fleet manager would answer, you would have to go through the fleet manager to buy every vehicle. and you would have to you know so there you gain economies of scale or if you're going you know you might have a route to buy vehicles but let's make sure that it's the most uh cost advantageous route and then the second would be getting into actual who gets vehicles uh who gets take-home vehicles and then in the long run would be uh maintaining those vehicles i think that's You know, maintaining is far out.

Further down the road.

Further down the road. Getting a handle on who has vehicles, how many vehicles, where we buy them, and things like that would be the concept of the fleet manager.

That's fine. And again, given nothing in writing, it just needed clarification. Appreciate that, sir. J.P. Lenning.

I think we need to wait for the new administration to worry about a fleet manager. But one of my questions, Sheriff, is now that we've got a new fuel island, And I know fuel's tripled and quadrupled, and fuel prices went up a bunch. And the fuel island is the road department's, and the road department's in charge of buying the fuel and putting the fuel in it. How are we gonna reimburse the road department through your department to buy fuel from the new fuel island?

I think they've got a program in place that will track our purchases with our employee numbers that we use for each individual officer, each unit number, and then the gallons that we use, and we'll just be billed for that monthly. And then Comptroller Sherman or Jennifer will roll that money out of our account and back in to pay the bill.

I was trying to understand that so the road department's budget is going to have to be a lot more for fuel to carry the note for everybody while they're waiting on. Paul, am I reading that right? What are we thinking on that fuel island situation?

The initial fuel up, you're right. The road department's paid for it all. And then sheriff's also right. I have not seen the program yet, but I'm assuming that the program can keep track of everything once a month, and then the comptroller department, we can do the accounting and move the money and do all that stuff.

We had com data stuff that whenever I had fuel islands that we took care of, and it will do anything you want it to do. But still, yeah, the initial, I guess my question to the sheriff is, are we going to buy 90% of our fuel there? So he's got to be able to figure out how much fuel he's got to buy to keep up.

Right. Well, I think that the fuel company that's going to supply the fuel will carry that note month to month.

I hope we don't have one. I hope we did that out like this is what the purpose is.

But they'll have a monthly fuel bill, and as that monthly fuel bill gets paid, some of it will get paid from the road department, some from the sheriff, perhaps some from other. entities that have vehicles that use that fuel island but um we'll we'll try to get the bulk of our fuel uh from the fuel island a couple reasons one it'll be cheaper uh and two it'll be safer for our deputies perfect thank you gp koger thank you i just want i'd like to mr chair thank you i'd like to remind people that

When this fuel island thing came up and it was presented by the chief of staff, Stuart, I asked him in that public meeting if it was going to require a new employee, and he said no. And also the bid itself says it will be a fully operational fuel island. It mentions nothing about hiring someone. I was going to bring that up later, but since it came up tonight, I want to bring it up. Thank you.

What did I miss? What's the new hire for the fuel island? I apologize. Sorry.

I thought that's what you were talking about. The fleet manager? The county judge has it under his budget.

He has a fleet manager, but again, they're going to manage the fleet. They're going to be responsible for purchases of the car or at least go through them or whatever. near term, long term, they will start doing oil changes, tire rotations, some of the minor maintenance, versus going out into the city and having city companies do that for us. I don't think they're managing the fuel island, are they? Or maybe that is part of it, but I don't think that's the primary reason they're bringing them on.

Currently, we have not thought about that, but it's not a bad place to put it. Might be a good idea. Not a bad place to put the management of fuel. But we have not thought about that. So we weren't thinking that we would hire anybody. I mean, because they go fuel up. All they need to do is be educated on their key fobs and all that kind of stuff. Keeps track. It'll work just like it does now, but probably about 1,000 times better.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. J.P. Stafford?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to turn, if we can now, to some questions about the COVID mitigation project in there. I wanted to thank Chief Deputy Tabor last week for giving me a tour of everything. Brought Bob Stafford, Fayetteville City Council member, along. He's my husband. He has a background in construction. And, you know, kind of... Remind me, I guess, there's things that need to be fixed, right? Some things that need to be adjusted that maybe weren't done quite right the first time around.

There are some things on the punch list that we've discovered that needed to be addressed before we get final possession of the building. I think the contractors are currently trying to get some of those things fixed and repaired. There are some things that that were designed into the building that probably were designed, maybe I won't say improperly, but maybe not to the best benefit of the county. And some of those things, like we've got water infiltration under one of the exterior doors into the electrical room based on the way they brought the downspouts off the existing building. So we'll have to reconfigure that, figure out a way to mitigate that water infiltration. But it was built as designed And so that may fall upon us to get that corrected.

So we have to eat the costs with the subcontractors, basically, to fix things like somehow.

On the things that were built as spec'd out in the plans. OK. Yes.

Because somehow people didn't understand that water runs downhill in some cases. I mean, I saw it where all these downspouts come together into this one channel. and they had to build a wall, basically, because otherwise the water would just come down this little hill. It goes across the little... And straight under the doors. It was crazy. And an electrical room, so... Yeah, and then they built a little culvert, but then it gets to the street, and the water has to run uphill to get to the drain.

Right, and in heavy rains, it overruns... that little channel that they built and still comes into the room. So yeah, we'll have to mitigate that at some point.

To do things like that. And in the medical, the new expanded medical facility I saw, there was, there's an outdoor area behind that, you know, for folks to have some outdoor space if you're in the medical facility. Yeah, that was one of our. And that door has some, like it had, you know, to keep water out basically and that drain didn't, drain the right way and it's still not done right.

So we're finding a few of those little nuances that happened and I guess with a project this large you're going to have some of those little things but the contractors have been agreeable to work with us on some of those things and try to get them corrected but it still remains to be seen. how much they're going to fix and how much we're going to have to and some of that's going to be maybe in next year's budget yes yes okay yeah because we don't know exactly what we're going to be left with until we actually get the building and they say this is this is as far as we're going to go the rest of us on you then we'll And some of those things, little things, maybe we can do in-house. We've got concrete professionals that actually work for the county, and we've got detainee labor. Some of those things we might be able to take care of with our in-house resources and not have to go outside. okay we're hopeful okay yeah it was just some of the things I saw was just like this doesn't make common sense like a drain you know drain that sticks up above the level of the floor like how is water gonna jump up and go down the drain jails and hospitals are very unique buildings to design and to build and so you know I think we have a reputable architecture firm but I think our The one that was assigned to our project had probably not had a lot of experience with jails. So I think just some things that would probably work fine on a typical residential or commercial building don't work as well when you're building a jail. It's kind of a unique animal.

Got it, I see. Yeah, I just wish somehow that some of these things could be not on us. There were mistakes that were like things that obviously defy common sense when they were built.

We agree.

Yeah, okay, thank you.

That built by design is a magic word. My life, I'm on the other side of that. It's built by design.

Yes, yes.

J.P. Koger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Sheriff, for answering all the questions that I submitted about the budget already that you've answered a lot of them. One of the things we were talking about, though, about hiring new personnel and everything, before we move forward with this, with that as it relates to the coven mitigation project i think we need to have a complete projected annual operating cost all personnel costs which you gave the personnel cost and benefits and all recurring expenses like utilities maintenance and things like that i think we need to know that we spent over 21 million dollars already on the coven mitigation project and we kind of did that like it was like somebody who might buy a big house and then think, I'm not sure how I'm gonna make the house payments, but I'm hoping for the best. And now the ducks are coming home to roost, so to speak, and we're gonna have to come up with what, around 1.4 million is my figures. That you're asking additional for the COVID mitigation project. And I'm counting the $474,000 that you got last year for it. So that's a lot of money. And it costs money to operate a jail and maybe a bigger jail.

It costs a lot of money. And that's not lost on us at the Sheriff's Office that we're the biggest consumer of the county tax revenue.

Yeah, the jail maintenance and operation budget in 2023 was just over 20 million, and this year it's over 30. So I just think that those are things that we need to have a discussion about before we consider those. Thank you.

Any other questions for the sheriff? I guess you get off easy tonight, sir.

And certainly we're available via email or phone call if anybody has questions as you work through the budget and have questions or concerns that you'd like answered, please let us know and we'll push those out.

JP Lemon, late to the game.

Yeah, sorry. Are you gonna be all right on your fuel cost for this year? Do you have enough in your budget for this year?

This year, I think we're gonna be close. I think we're gonna be okay this year, but who knew we were gonna be paying 650 for diesel? That's right, that's right. I'll tell you who I'm worried about, J.P. Lemming, is our rural firemen who are, putting their own diesel fuel in their own pickups to go to these fires to help people out you know they're gonna you know they're gonna feel that and i'm just worried that you know if it comes to feeding their kids and getting medicine for their wife or putting fuel in their truck and going out and fighting these fires which one are they going to prioritize i i kind of know what they're going to say it's going to go but it's sad to say i've done it for 48 years there's a lot there's a lot of people that

thinks about helping their neighbor more than they feed their family. Absolutely.

I don't know why we think that way, but that's what happens.

But we're going to continue putting gas in our truck and go help.

We need to think of them. Anything we can do to help them out whenever they come for their budget, the Rural Fire Association, I think the county ought to step up and try to help them. As we all know, government's first priority is the safety of its citizens. And, you know, our rural firemen are at the tip of that spear. Along with our law enforcement. Obviously, I'm going to tout our law enforcement, too.

J.P. Wilson. Thank you, Chair. I was just going to say, before we moved on to the next item on the agenda, if there's anything that Sheriff or Captain wanted to emphasize that hadn't been touched on, I'd like to hear it. what you might like to add to the conversation thus far. So that was my question. Anything, Captain?

Well, like Sheriff said, I mean, we put a lot of things in the budget. Some of those are, you know, we feel like are really high priority.

Thank you.

There we go. Can you hear me now? And there are other things that we could definitely use. But when it comes down to it, we want to be good stewards of the taxpayers' money. And as I said, if we have to remove some things, at least give us that option. And that's really big for us to go back and really put pen to paper and get you a better number. I don't have what I could tell you. I know one of our big-ticket items for us is on the sheriff budget, not the jail budget, is our tasers. That contract will end at the end of the year. And the tasers that we're currently operating with are going to be out, and we have to upgrade to a newer taser, which is going to require probably another five-year contract with taser, which we're just finishing one in the fifth year right now. We have what they call the Taser 7s. Now they have the Taser 10s, like cell phones. I mean, the latest and greatest is out now, and it would actually, for us to keep the Taser 7, would cost us more money to keep the Taser 7 than to upgrade to the Taser 10. But it will be an increase for that. i mean whether there's alternatives to that uh i'm not really sure i mean i'm sure there's some but i don't think it's anything that our agency wants to go down that hole with for alternative weapons um anything you think of on that i think that's one of our big ones jumps out at me that's unusual or out of the ordinary okay but we're definitely open um you know get with us and let us know what you guys need from us and we'll definitely get those answers J.P. Dean?

Just a FYI on this fuel price stuff. Mobile, one of their largest refineries, 275,000 barrels a day, blew up today. Another one in Indiana, which is as big, is half shut down as of today. So, I don't know, I keep an eye on fuel prices.

Well, and that was another thing within our budget, trying to anticipate what fuel's going to be in a year and a half from now, right? I think Comptroller Sherman and I spoke to try to come up with a national average, and I think even our fuel budget that we presented was at $4 a gallon. Yeah, $6.20 a gallon. And that's what's in there right now. What you see for our request is at $4 a gallon, and What you're saying is? Diesel, $6.20 a gallon.

Yeah, you're almost at $4 a gallon already.

Already? Yeah. And again, that's saying that this time next year, a year and a half in November, that it's, I don't think it's going to be any lower.

Right. Okay. J.P. Lemming? Chair, if I'm going to kind of put you on the spot, but I don't mean to because I'm going to ask all elected officials, do you think a... fleet manager would benefit you, or do you feel like your department does a good enough job and saves the county money buying your own cars and controlling your own stuff?

Well, we've got an in-house fleet manager. That's what we call this person that oversees our fleet already that's trying to make sure we get the cheapest prices on oil changes, that's making sure that that we get the best bang for our buck for our vehicles that we get and equipment that we put in them. I think we did a pretty good job of managing our fleet. But certainly if we can save some money by doing more work in-house, then that's a good thing. But we'll have to hire more mechanics to be able to do that. And we do some with inmate labor. We do have one detainee that's assigned to our mechanic that helps him with the small tasks and washes the parts and carries the oil out and all those things. But he's not a real mechanic like Craig is.

Well, I thank you for that. That's good information to have. I can kind of see the judge wanting to put all the fleet managers, because he's kind of the owner of all the cars. Absolutely. But I still think that there could be some politics playing in places that don't need to be, sometimes with the cars and stuff, too. And like the jail situation, there's, you know, just because you can build a basketball arena don't mean you can build a jail. And there's more knowledge to be known there. It's kind of like buying a police car. It's kind of like buying a fire truck. There's special stuff for special things. And so thank you. You're welcome. JP Eckie.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Along those lines, perhaps he needs to apply for the countywide fleet manager position, seeing that he has the experience and knowledge of your department and has insights to how that works, that maybe he can branch out and be the county's fleet manager if he so desires to apply for it.

Sure, we'd be happy to visit with the... whoever the county judge is going to be. The next administration. Certainly. If that's something that they're agreeable to.

Because you all seem to be the ones who do this on a regular basis.

Sure.

And have more experience doing that. Okay, that's just my bias. Thank you.

Going once. Go line twice. Thank you, sir. Have a good day.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Comptroller Sherman, before we bring roads up real quick, I want to go back and talk about these fuel costs a little bit more. We really didn't provide direction on everybody to use a standard price for fuel. They pretty much picked their own. Were they standard? Do you remember or?

Correct, no, I haven't really looked at it, but everybody did establish their own, with the exception of, I did talk to Captain Fazar about.

I think we should go back and establish what we think everybody should be using across the county for estimating fuel, unless I'm missing something.

Copy.

Okay, thank you. I think next is the Rose Department to present and talk about their budget. Welcome, sir. Thank you. New superintendent of roads. Thank you. Would you please introduce yourself to the horseshoe?

My name is Brent Curtis. I've been the director of roads for the county for about eight months now. So I didn't really know what I was getting into when I walked into this job, I promise you. So it's been interesting, to say the least.

Welcome, sir.

Yeah, everybody wants to talk about fuel. We don't spend any fuel on the road department, I promise you. Not at all. Good lord, help us all. J.P. Koger, I got your questions. I've got them here printed. I'm going to address every one of those this evening. I decided not to respond to email because I thought, well, most of this is going to be covered during our brief. So being new to the county, I am trying to learn how the systems work. County government is definitely different from federal government where I spent the vast majority of my career.

Okay, so I'm learning.

Mr. Sherman and back there and I have had multiple conversations regarding budgets. So I was like, how am I supposed to operate on a declining revenue? He goes, welcome to the county.

So that was the answer I got.

So anyway, long story short, you guys got the brief from Mr. Sherman. We're about 700,000 over. I think what they have projected revenue is what our request is, okay? And I'll be happy to go through everything line item by line item for you if you need to. But I want to address some things on, if I can find Ms. Cogar, J.P. Cogar's questions. Here they are. So let's talk about personnel, because that's where our budget starts. And this is the actual slide show. Can you bring the budget up? Do you have the budget up? So this is the actual, this is for equipment stuff. I would rather them see the budget than anything right now. On the salary side, we're at an overall percentage change, 2.69%. That's it. Now, there's some reasons behind that. There was one position that we funded with the IT department that was removed from our budget, and Mr. Dozier took that under his umbrella. The other thing is that we have... We have done some, with our flex positions, I have tried to create some hierarchy within my crews this year, okay? We had a lot of, we didn't really have stair steps in some of these crews. We had a lot of crews that were, you either were, you came in, you were at the top or you were at the bottom, okay? So we're trying to create a system within our own department where you can promote within our department. So if you're a new hire, you're coming off street, you come in, you start out as an operator one, then you can go to a two, to a three, to a four, and then on to master operator someday with county. So overall, our overall percentage of increase is only 2.69%. I'm sorry, I have to get my eyes. Got to get the eyes. 2.69%. We are asking for the refunding of the road department, the bridge supervisor position. That's the one position I'm asking for that position to be refunded. And the reason is quite simple. Justice Koger asked me in an email question is, what are we doing currently? Well, currently we're using one of our current employees who is not a supervisor. He's an acting supervisor. He's doing all the duties for the job. He's fulfilling the duties, but we're not paying him for it. That's bottom line. He's not being compensated as a supervisor, but he's acting as a supervisor. To me, that's unfair. We're asking a guy to do a job that he's not being paid for. That's the bottom line of why I'm asking for that position back. I don't know why it was unfunded. I wasn't here, but I will tell you that I don't feel like that's... We're being fair to the, whether it's our guy that's in there, we advertise, we find somebody else. He's got a leg up, he's been doing the job. He'll obviously have a leg up if we get the position funded. But that's why I'm asking for that position back. And that's the bottom line. I don't know how else to say that one on that one. That's why I'm asking for that position to come back. Personnel-wise, that's pretty much the crux of what we're doing on the personnel side. There are four unfunded positions that are out there, Justice Koger. My understanding is I cannot come back and get those funded unless I come back to you and say, hey, I need these positions and here's why. So we could not turn those into full-time equivalents without coming back to the quorum court and asking for those to be specifically funded. I can't ask for those back. That's my understanding.

Is that correct? That's what you understand that?

Unfunded positions?

Yeah, I would say it differently, but I think you're right. I would say.

Yeah, if they're unfunded, and then you fill everything up, and you need that, you've already established the requirement with you, I need FTE, and then they have to come back and ask for the funding. For the funding, yeah.

But again, there's someone in the process, just like, I'm gonna go back, Sheriff was an easy one that I heard, I'm gonna use his. He's got X number of positions going through a background check, right? He probably knows, based on trends, some percent of those are gonna come through. It's at that point you can come back and say, well, we're starting the process. This is where we're at. We'd like to fund these positions, right? So that's my mentality right now.

Okay, yeah. My unfunded positions, I can't even get what I've got filled right now, I will tell you. So we're having a hard time filling our current positions, okay? We're advertising. We've done some creative things this year trying to increase our visibility. We've put magnets on the back of supervisors' vehicles. I've got a sticker on the back of mine that has a QR code that says Washington County Road Department we're hiring. So we're trying to get the word out that we've got positions out there. So we are just.

You can put one on my truck if you want.

Okay. I'll give you one. I've got some at the office.

So come on by.

I'll give you one. So anybody wants one, come get one. So we've got extras. So. I appreciate that. So we are working diligently. to get those positions filled. I will tell you that I did change the hiring processes in the road department. I don't feel like I'm the person that needs to be hiring the individuals on the crews. Those supervisors are conducting their interviews, they're deciding who they want because that's their person, and they're the ones that are making the decisions on who they're hiring. So I'm not hiring every person in the department. So those are some of the changes I made on the personnel side. Any questions for me on the personnel side?

J.P. Massagel.

Yeah, just one real quick question. Yes, sir. So you're asking for an additional position to be a bridge supervisor, so you're adding a position, but you've already got a guy.

No, it was unfunded this year.

Oh, okay.

The bridge supervisor was an unfunded position. We're asking for that to go back into funding and let us fill that position. That's what we're asking for, just the bridge supervisor position.

Okay, all right, thanks.

Okay. Okay. All right, let's move on to the fun stuff. We took a really hard look at this budget, my admin assistant and I did. We went back over two years' worth of data to try to figure out what this department has done. And we did a lot of sanity checking about each individual line item. And where we felt like we could make cuts, we made cuts. Because there were some areas where we just weren't, we were not executing funding like It was just money, and it was getting moved around, but it just wasn't being executed in those line items. So we did make some significant cuts on some of these areas. We've talked about fuel this evening, so we might as well get into the fuel island all right so Quick update on the fuel island just so everybody knows The tanks are in the ground all the lines are in the ground everything's covered up we are waiting on the new canopy to be installed and it's supposed to start next month and The company's fabricating it now. I hate to tell you this, but I will tell you we've got about $100,000 in the ground right now holding the tanks in fuel. takes that much fuel to hold those things in the ground. You can't let them sit there empty because if it rains, which I don't know that it's ever going to rain again in this county, but if we get enough rain, those things will float out of the ground. So we had to put 80% capacity into those tanks in the ground. A little over $100,000 just sitting there. We'll get to it eventually. I'm sure the Sheriff's Department will be real happy to take some of that fuel when they get their chance. I mean, it has to be held in the ground. So we are really hoping that that fuel island is up and operational really soon. But we still have to get, it still has to be finished. So once we get the canopy up, then we can put the concrete in, we can get the pumps put in, and we can get the asphalt laid down, and then we'll be operational, okay?

You have a projection?

I don't. No. No.

I'm kind of waiting on, the canopy's got to go in first.

Okay. And then after that, we got some concrete to pour around the islands. And then we've got to, we're going to pave that parking lot where it's going to make it to where it's not just a big gravel parking lot. So make it nicer for all of our county employees. So, but that's kind of where we're at. We didn't know how to do this budget this year. I mean, I'll be honest with you. I was at a loss because we don't know what this is going to look like. So what I did was I took Comptroller Sherman's presentation that he went last year. He came and presented and said, if these departments give us 40% of their business at the New Fuel Island, then we'll save this amount. So what I did was I went to last year's budget to every department that had a line item for fuel. And I pulled those budgets. And then I went down through there. I tallied it all up. And I took 40% because that's what he based his numbers on. And I said, OK, if they give me, if 40% of their business comes to the new fuel island, it's going to equate to this much money. And it was $256,000 and some change. All right. So what I did was I increased our budget request by that amount because I don't know at this point what's going to happen. I don't know how this is going to work. We can take that out by all means. I'll be happy to get rid of $256,000. But we left it in there. When I presented this to my leadership, and I was like, which way do we want to go? They said, leave it in there. We'll let the quorum court make that decision. But that's why that line item budget is in there for $256,000 additional dollars for next year.

And that's the only thing, I'm gonna leave it to Comptroller Sherman to figure this out.

You and me both.

He'll get me back. But that's the only thing I don't understand, right? You've increased $265,000 in your fuel so you can buy fuel for other departments, but the other departments, all have budgets for their fuel. So when they use your fuel line, that money is going to come from their budget into your budget, is my understanding.

It should.

I hope. I don't know if there's – we talked a little bit about who's carrying it and who's not carrying it. I'm like you. I don't understand that whole thing. But just face value, right? It seems we're double budgeting for fuel right now. Okay, so I'll let you figure it out. You're closer and you got these amazing people that work with numbers all the day long, right? That can figure this out for us.

One of the things I think we need to see is we need to see the software and exactly what it can do. and how the bills get split out, or do we need to transfer money?

And if we need something in there to get us by until we do, that's fine. That's what it seems like right now, which means we have a little bit of kush somewhere.

I totally agree. I have no issue. Whichever way we want to go, that's fine with me. So we just need to know which way to go. Going down through the rest of our budget, The big heater is leased machinery and equipment. We got some big balloon payments coming this year. The truck lease, the five dump trucks that were leased five years ago, that balloon payment is coming due this year. The crusher, the new crusher that was leased five years ago, that balloon payment is coming due this year. Those come to a little over $800,000. between those two payments. I just inherited. I'm just the messenger, so don't shoot the messenger. That's where we're at on that. But the good news on the crusher thing is that when we make that payment, it's paid for. It's ours. So we don't have to make lease payments on that crusher anymore. And everyone Everything we produce out of the quarry is now ours. We're not making payments on it anymore. So I did some analysis. I had them pull the reports out of the crusher through July the 28th. And we have pulled out of that, through the July the 28th, we have pulled... 5,000 tons of riprap, which is big rock. We've pulled 28,000 tons of just what we call SB2. That's the normal rock that you see on gravels. At that time, we had pulled 2,743 tons of chips out. And that's what we put down when we chip seal. And that doesn't count. Things I can't buy, which is shale, which we're using a lot of. But market value of those, of that, what we had pulled out at that time was $415,000 if I had to go buy it from a supplier. So that's where we were on July the 28th, and we've been pulling a lot of rock out of there since then. So is it an investment that the county has made? It is, but... you're probably going to save yourself close to $600,000 or $700,000 a year now that you would have to be paying if you had to buy it, if that's on the market, if you had to go to Hutchinson or APAC or anybody like that, which we do business with them as well. But that's what those costs would have cost you. So go ahead. I'm sorry, did I hear a question?

G.P. Lemming? I'd like to know a per ton cost, what it costs to create your rock. And that machine is burning how many gallons of fuel a day?

It's electric.

This one's electric? That new one that y'all just bought's electric?

That's what I understand.

I don't think so.

No, maybe it's not.

It's not.

No, it's not. I don't know. I don't know. That's a good question. I've never run those figures.

And Patrick hadn't been here five years, so how in the world is that five-year lease already five up? I don't know. I mean, he leased all of that stuff, and he ain't been the commander-in-chief for five years.

I mean, I voted on the drop truck lease, and I'm in my fourth year.

I don't know.

So how are we hitting, well, so in 27, we'll hit the five year lease.

Yes.

If we bought it at the first term.

Yeah, but the crusher ain't that away. The crusher was just bought two years ago.

Well, so were the dump trucks. That was, I think, my second term we bought those, right? Anybody remember?

We was paying $30,000 a month on that. But go back to the crusher just a tad. Is that a jaw or a hammer crusher? Because we've had trouble with our chips and the chips has not been clean. We saw that this year. Did you put a washer in?

I let Randy, I turned my quarry supervisor loose. I was like. What do you want to do? And so Randy came up with a solution. Instead of crushing from straight big rock, he's running it down to four inch. And now we're running the four inch.

Double crushing.

We're double crushing it, but we're getting clean chips. That was a huge success for us. So we are getting clean chips now. I will tell you that. It was a problem before.

But I again would like to know the like to know the cost of our chips is being made and I'd like to know the cost of trucking from Morrow, Arkansas to Goshen, Arkansas or the other side of the county. And I'd like to I'd like to put them numbers together and see if we can't buy chips. 303 are our base material at 303 cheaper than we can produce it ourselves because I just it's hard for me to believe that we can be in the crusher business and make that flow.

So I can run those numbers.

I appreciate you.

I will be happy to put them together. It may take me a little bit, but you know, because we have to count.

Don't hurry today.

I'm not going to get it today. But we, we can run a cost analysis and try to figure that out because we've got labor involved. You got machinery involved. We've got, we've got all that. So we'll try to figure it out. So there's a lot of moving parts. So, so, um, So we've got those lease payments due, and then under the lease machinery equipment, Justice Koger's question, we are asking to lease five additional new dump trucks this year, okay? After we pay these off, that's one of the things we're asking for, okay? And I'm basing this on what my staff is asking me for, okay? We are asking for, and we'll go through this equipment slide deck. I've got a printout I will be happy to hand out to everybody so you've got this for you. I just didn't want to cross the line. I was afraid I might get in trouble. I don't know protocol, so I'm a little bit worried.

If you'll just get that to Mr. Allen, he can email it to all of us, whoever doesn't have it.

There's a print out there of our five dump trucks. These are things, I will tell you, I have not asked for anything equipment-wise that my staff has not, that my employees have not asked me for. Can you bring that slide to it? Okay, thank you. The five dump trucks, the reason we're asking for these five dump trucks is that we're asking for a life cycle of five that we have, the five worst ones that I have in the fleet right now. They have a combined total mileage of a little over two million miles. Their repair cost over the past 24 months has been a little over $92,000. And their estimated fleet consumption right now, based on the age of their vehicles, is around $66,964 a year. That's those five vehicles. If you can flip to the next slide. Or do I have control of that up here? I do. Thank you. The first unit is 10-352. It's a 2004 Model Mac CB713. It has 498,000 miles on it. We've spent 28,000 in the past two years. And right now, one of the things that we're waiting on is to rebuild a bad cylinder. Question? I'm sorry. Sorry. And these are just some pictures so that you can kinda see, sometimes a picture's worth a thousand words. So you can kinda see the status of these trucks and what we're dealing with. The next unit is number 53, 10353. It has 477,000 miles on it. It's also an 04 model. We spent $18,540 in the past 24 months on it, and we have a steering gear that's pending repair. that I know of, and these have been a while since I put all this together. 55 has 368,000 miles on it. We spent a little over 18,000 in the past 24 months, and it's got a pending transmission repair because the transmission's out on it. 56 has 331,000 miles on it. We spent $22,000 on it in the past 24 months, and it's currently pending a rear assembly. When I took the pictures of 56, it was in the shop with the bed up and getting worked on. And the last one is 59. It has 356,000 miles on it. We spent a little over 7,000 on it, and it has a pending repair of a transmission. Those are the ones we're asking to recycle, I mean to life cycle, that's why we're asking for that. On those particular dump trucks. Moving on in the budget itself, I'll get to the work trucks here in a minute, but we're not to that line item. Justice Koger, you asked us a question about why we are budging for Judgments, which is 3098. Line item 3098 is judgments. It's never been budgeted before by the department. They just paid it. Because we've had broken windshields because rocks have fallen off the back of trucks. We can't prove it's ours or not. We've got citizens file a claim with the county. Broken windshields. That's not the biggest majority of it. This year, the county settled a lawsuit with an individual out on Weir Road that came out of my budget a little over $12,000 that we had to budget for. So we went back and we looked at the past two years on that particular line item. We've been averaging around $20,000 a year that we're having to pay. And so what we're asking for is simply for the quorum court to give us the budget. We're just wanting to put that money in that line item because we're having to pay it anyway. I'm just having to steal it from somewhere else. That's what's been done before. We're having to move money from another area. So instead of do that, let's just say we'll budget for it. It may be higher than $20,000, so we're well over that this year, I can tell you. But it's just a line-on that's never been budgeted for before me, and I just was like, well, that doesn't make sense to me. So I feel like if we're having to make these payments and these things are happening, we need to budget for it. So... And then the other new line item is right-of-way circuit clerk. We have to pay the circuit clerk. If we go get right-of-way on a road, if we're going to improve a road and we get a right-of-way, we have to pay the circuit clerk fee to file. So we're just, we need to, we threw $500 at it because we have to pay that fee. And so I have to pay for those every time I get a right-of-way to improve a road, so. That has to be done. And then the capital outlay. So one of the things I identified and that my staff has told me about is that they don't feel like our current direction with our right-of-way mowing is the correct direction. We have gone exclusively with boom mowers, which is a tractor with a big boom out it. And that's all the county has, okay? My people don't feel like that's the way to go. They've told me we need, they're asking me to ask for one tractor and one, what we call a half batwing, okay? So you've seen the big mowers that have two wings, looks like a big batwing. We're asking for a half because they make a mower that's a half a batwing that sits on one side so that way you're not on the concrete with the other half. you get off and you're able to, it will make us a lot more efficient with our right-of-way mowing on the east, so we're asking for one for each side of the county, one on the west side of 49, one on the east side of 49, and we expect that to, we're not really sure what, I mean, all of this is our best guess on cost, but we think it's gonna cost us around $185,000, for those two pieces of equipment with the brush hogs. And then the last thing we're asking for is the life cycle of some work trucks that we have in the fleet. And we'll go back to the slide show now. But we have, you can see up there, Those five work trucks have 1.3 million miles on them. We spent $31,000 on them in the past 24 months, and their average age is 24 years old. The oldest we have is a 98, and the newest is 26. Number seven has a mileage of 342,781 miles. And it looks pretty good for a 2002 model. But it's got a lot of miles, and they're just wearing out. Number eight has 278,000 miles on it. And we have spent $3,700 on it the past 24 months. The odometer's out on it, so we're really not even sure how many miles it's got. To be honest with you, we're guessing. It went out at a certain mile. The transfer case and fuel pump, and they're just, I mean, they've gotten old. 21 is a 2005 Chevrolet with 267,000 miles on it. And we've dropped 7,500 on it in the past 24 months. And it currently needs a front end replacement. 28 has 205,000 miles on it. It's currently inoperable because of EGR codes. And we're not even sure if we want to spend the money to fix this vehicle because of the amount of cost it's going to cost to fix it. And then the last one is 59. It's a 1998 Chevrolet Cheyenne with 233,000 miles on it. And we have spent a little bit of money on it as well, a little over $4,000. It needs a new transmission, a front end, and some exhaust work. I mean, so what we're asking for is not Z71s. I'm asking for plain old single cab work trucks. That's what we're after. I'm not asking for anything fancy. I need work trucks for my folks, not for supervisors. I need work trucks for my folks. Let me go back and look through your list, Justice Coker.

J.P. Dennis.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On leasing versus buying, is there any cost analysis done on that? Because it doesn't look like to me that leasing is very good. They're worn out by the time the release is up, and then you've got a lump payment. And so the cost is not actually... occurring in the months that it happens. So you're waiting and then hitting this up all at one time. And then you don't have anything. They're wore out.

The biggest problem I see with not leasing is the capital outlay up front. So let's say dump trucks. Let's go to the dump trucks. If we were to buy five brand new dump trucks, you're looking at over a million dollars. Write a check, a million dollars, to buy them. That's a lot of money, capital outlay, up front. Now, is it less expensive in the long run? Absolutely. It absolutely is. And you own them, but you've got to understand that you've got to turn around and write a check for a million dollars. whatever our purchasing department can negotiate in a bid process. But I mean, I got a direct quote on a brand new dump truck from Bruckner's, and it was $224,000. So you're looking at a little over a million dollars for five of them. They're expensive. So that's the biggest problem is coming up with that capital for the county on the front end versus you have a lease payment and it's $185,000 for a year. Now, we're doing a budget so we're asking for a year, Reality is, if we were to prove it and we bid it, we probably wouldn't even get those dump trucks before April, if we're lucky. So then you're looking at 10 months worth of lease payments in that first year. So same thing with financing. If you finance them, you're going to incur financing charges. So in your lease payments, you're Decreases your annual cost until the very end it does so that's that's the benefit of leasing that I see versus buying them up front, so That's my opinion so because I did I did do a cost analysis on the on the justification memo and It that's what it came up with.

So So my next question is I'm throwing a bomb out here, but at the same time, it needs to be said, those contracts are very large. We never see those contracts. And I'll just call it like it is. Who finalizes the contracts and what kind of kickbacks are involved from contractors? Being new, obviously. What kind of hunting trips are out there? What kind of... What kind of paybacks or kickbacks or anything? How do we know this is all in the up and up every time we have a contract? It doesn't affect you any, but you've been in the business and you know. So how can we be assured that the taxpayers aren't getting...

Well, I can tell you from where I stand for it, okay? Having been a military officer for 20-something years, retired from the National Guard for 20 years, I worked for the federal side, okay? There is no kickbacks on the federal side, okay? You go to jail. You go to Leavenworth if you do things like that, all right? And I will tell you— For me, I know no other way to operate than straightforward and honest. So if we initiate a contract, it's going to be done through the purchasing department, who controls the contracts, who sets them up for bid so that we get a competitive bid, because we all know that we've seen with our health insurance, Or is it health insurance? One of our insurances, we dropped tremendously by going through the competitive bidding process. So when we go through that competitive bid process, okay, then it's a bidding process, and then that contract is awarded to the low bidder, as far as I know, because that's how we operated in the military. Low bidder gets the contract, okay? And then from there... The county judge will be the one who executes the contract, not me. I don't have anything to do with it other than saying, here's what I want. Does that help? So that's where I'm at. So I can tell you, I'm not going to live worth for anything. Nor am I going to the new jail in the county for that.

Well, the county salute looks like this. I understand.

That's what we call the logistical sloop in the military. So.

Well, it needs to stop. And the county is holding us on this table responsible for it. And there's too much of it going on. Too many rumors. Too much fact. And it needs to stop.

Well, I cannot attest to that. Because, like I said, I've only been here nine months. I'm not blaming you.

I understand. Now's the time to talk about all this. Because we're in between. administrations and we got new people in a lot of places that we need to go forward with this and say listen we we need some honesty and i know we couldn't agree we need to restore the trust and the trust needs to be with us right here and when we hear it we need to stop it so and my my next one is when do have we ever done an analysis on what it costs for us as a county to do it versus someone contracting it out to someone who does the work.

as far as what uh whether it's mowing whether it's paving whether it's hauling gravel you know there's a lot of people in the business in this part of the country i don't know i don't i can't answer that i don't know that there's ever been done a cost analysis done on all like like paving chip sealing and mowing everything else don't know that that's ever i don't know if that's ever been i've never done i haven't done it since i've been here i'm just trying to get i've been

I think sometimes we need to ask and find out what the cost is. I mean, let's face it, we've got AI. AI can tell us even. And so we can't put our head in the sand anymore. We've got to get better pricing, and we've got to take better care of the money that we've been given to spend. Thank you.

sir not blaming you at all no i i am i'm blaming somebody i'm blaming some that have let it go that knew it was happening so thank you i understand so um jp lemming sorry i'm just going to add a little bit more to that whenever some of these vehicles was bought for the county a lot of them was bought used with 100 150 000 miles on them from family members buddy buddy systems and I would love to see you get three bids. And the county says we've got state bidding we can go through. Just get three new bids for whatever you buy, trucks, for the graders, for trucks, pickups, lawnmowers, whatever. In reality, I don't understand why your mowing crew wants to buy half of a batwing brush hog. I brush hogged for 13 years for Arkansas State Highway Department, many, many miles, many, many miles. And I understand the boom mowers, you cut four foot at a time. We got 1,100 miles. It's going to take you a long time to get around this with a four-foot cutter. You're absolutely right. And, you know, they always throw this out there, hey, we're out in the middle of the road with that 15-foot. You ain't any more than that boom cutter. He takes the whole road. You're right. And there's a lot of areas that a 15-footer will make one swipe, and you're done. You're going down the road. And that half mower, you just, and it costs you more money to buy a half mower, half brush hog, and it doesn't hold because it's special built. So I'm not a fan for the half mower. I'm a fan for a full 15-foot, a four-wheel drive tractor, and let's go. and I'll help you get that done. And I would love to see bidding done – Three bids on everything you do, because this stuff that we've been, what Robert's been talking about's been horse crap, been going on a long time.

That is the process. It is the current process that anything we bid, anything that has to, if we buy anything, which I haven't bought anything this year, because we didn't have any money, but it will be a bid process. I mean, everything will be bid.

Can I ask one more question, Paul? Sure, sir. If we got $16 million in our reserve, can we not buy the dump trucks for that and then take the tax money and lease it back to ourselves somehow, make that work? And we don't have to lease. It costs us $200,000 or $300,000 every time we lease that.

Yeah, if you bought it straight out, you wouldn't even have to do the lease back to ourselves. We'd just own it then.

I know we'd own it, but to recover that money. We're saving that money.

Oh, I see what you're saying. So you would want to put it back into the reserve. That could happen, yeah.

Would that not make good sense? I mean, I would just soon, instead of waste $200,000, $300,000 and pay the interest, I'd just soon take our million dollars we've got over here, just write the check and be done with it. And if you write a check to, when you do your bidding, you write a check, they're going to get you a better deal.

Yeah, that's an option.

$200,000 might be $180,000. I know when the last Mack dump truck was bought. They give a lot more than that for it. And Madison County bought five Kenworths, and they paid $180,000 for them. We paid $280,000. We paid $100,000 more for Macs, which Mac ain't nothing but a dang little Volvo anymore. So let's put it out there to the real world so everybody can bid it.

I totally agree with bidding. I mean, I'm on board. We bid everything we had to do in the military. I mean, that's just what we did. I mean, everything was bid.

All right. Thank you.

Yes, sir. The only thing I did not cover, I'm sorry, there was one thing I did not cover. Last winter, I identified the fact that we have some really, really old snowplows. And I did ask, I am asking for 10 new snowplows this year because the things that we are using currently, we had to weld one of ours a chain to it just to keep it operational. So we have some really 1980-something model snowplows that just aren't very good. So that's, you know, the Sheriff's Department's got priorities, so do I, and if we have to make cuts, I understand. I don't expect us to go through a budget process without making cuts, but we'll be happy to help you. We'll prioritize as needed.

Okay. J.P. Massengill.

I just got a simple question. I'm just trying to get an idea how big our fleet of trucks, dump trucks are. How many dump trucks total?

13, I believe. 13.

So this would be roughly?

About half. A little less than half.

And there are work trucks?

You got me there. I got a bunch. I'm not exactly sure how many. What I brought up here was the worst of the worst for you. We've probably got 30 or 40 work trucks. I'm guessing. I'll be honest with you. I am guessing on that. We got a bunch. What I brought you was the ones that I went to my shop manager and I was like, If you're going to life cycle, tell me which ones you want to life cycle because what's the worst you got?

That's what I asked him for. Okay. And we have an idea how many good work trucks do we need?

We've got a lot of good ones.

I mean, do we need 40 good trucks or?

Now, we've got a lot of really good trucks, but these are some of the really old ones that are just about dead. I mean, we're just limping. Some of this stuff, we're limping along. You know, one of those dump trucks, when I went out, I'll tell you all a quick story. I've been up here longer than I need to be, but I'll tell you a quick story. We went out, had a rock, came out of the back of one of our dump trucks, had an upset citizen, so we run out there and we see it. And I pull up and I get up to this dump truck, and the first thing I see is I see a bungee cord holding the light on. I went, oh, Lord. So, I mean, it's like, oh, wow, you know. So, I mean, that's the things we're dealing with. So, you know, just trying to keep the fleet running. Okay, thanks.

J.P. Lopez.

Thank you, Chair. I'm not sure if it's more of a question really than a statement. Just as we're talking about going through these procurement processes, my understanding is that per the state of Arkansas, every county, whenever something is above $40,000, goes to an open bid process. So I think all of these are going to go through an open bid process no matter what we're considering. yeah i i i do trust the the purchasing program that you all have going on and i trust the uh procurement department as well um but those are really just my two cents on that thank you well and the director of purchasing i know you were there as well made us made a point that i heard somebody over here was because there's a state contract we need to go ahead and bid it out

Because a lot of times we get a better deal than we do on state because we're bidding it out. So definitely a known item. JP Ackie.

Thank you. I had to ask my colleague here, what was he talking about? He said snow plows. And I said, oh, I didn't hear that correctly. You said they're really in bad.

They're old.

How many?

I have 10 and they're old. And they're really old.

And all 10 of them were bought at the same time?

I don't know how old they are. We can't even find a date when they were bought. I can't find any records on them. Some of them we can't find cylinders for anymore, the cylinder that kind of holds it together. They're all fixed snow plows, so they don't move, they don't articulate, okay? They have no ability to change directions, so you put it on the front of the dump truck and you go one direction.

So no wonder we had one that turned over the other. What was it that Tad Sowers took a picture of and said, no wonder it flipped over. Everybody stay in.

They're just old. They're really old. Yeah. I mean, some of them look pretty good because they've had some paint put on them, but they're still old.

It's like a woman. You put lipstick on her, she looks fantastic, right? Yeah. I should not have said that. It's getting late. I apologize for that comment. Reel it back in.

Now, what would happen if I said that?

I don't want to know. I don't even want to know what I said. Anyway, the point is, how many does the department need to... function well for any kind of snow hazard, snowstorm that's coming up, because public safety is our number one goal.

Agreed.

So how many of these snow plows is it gonna take to provide that service?

10. If we have 10, if we had 10 new ones that were operating correctly, we're 1,000% better than we are now. And we did a pretty good job last year, in my opinion. on the one snow event we had.

You did. You really, really, really did.

I thought we did a really good job. All credit to my folks, because they're the ones who executed it. I just gave them the plan and said, here's what I need you to do. But I think we could be more efficient. We can do a better job with 10. If we get more than that, I don't know that I'll have enough dump trucks running at that point. Because it's just hard to keep this fleet running right now. So I think 10 is the right number for us right now. Okay. And let me get through another winner, and then if I feel like that's not enough, I'll come back next year and say, well, I was wrong. I need five more. Yeah. I'd rather start where I know where I'm at because that's what I've got, and I think 10 is the right number.

Well, I know the employees that work down at the roads department, I don't want to just say men because there are women that work down there as well.

That's exactly right.

We've always looked after their safety and passing their step program that they wanted and making sure that they were well-funded and protected, I should say. And so safety is important to us that they are safe when they go out to clear the roads for everybody else. So thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Real quick, sir, so you said we had 13 total dump trucks? Did I hear that correctly? I believe that's correct. Okay, I just, I'm one of the hearing impaired up here.

Don't quote me on that, I may be off at number two.

Well, if you find differently, just let me know. So 13, we got five that's coming off a balloon payment, which I think when you look into that Comptroller Sherman, because that's not making sense that we're five years into a lease that happened partway through my first term. And then you have 13, and you have 10 snow plows, then they all need replaced, right? Okay. And on the work trucks, this is something not just for you, it's across the county. I've asked for an audit of all of our vehicles. Outside of emergency vehicles. I got that request. Dump trucks, et cetera, right? I mean, we've got a lot of them out there. What are they being used for? What are the justifications? Are we using them correctly?

Correct.

Or do we have it in a manner that... we decided to do it sometime, we just need to come back and, like you said, you're new here, great new set of eyes, let's reanalyze, not just what you're doing, but I'm looking for this across all of our cars and everything else, right? And if we're assigning to a dedicated person, Why? What's the justification for that? Not just for you, it was a blanket request I made of Comptroller Sherman that, and I've seen some stuff starting to flow through, so I know we're doing it. I just think we need to do a real good look at that right now, so.

I got that request and we are beginning to work that.

The best snow plows you got some brand new graders. You got 13 graders, you don't need no dump truck.

Well, as long as we don't pull up the chip seal. That's the bad thing about the gas.

That's a bad problem. But all the plow trucks normally do is just make it slicker. If you're not going to put chips behind it, you're defeating the purpose. Well, we're slicing in front and behind. One question Lisa brought up, a little bit of safety there, and it bothers me that last week Ted was here and showed a picture of a dump truck turned over in a ditch. snowplow truck the sad thing about that is that truck had two chains on it on outside towers there is no way a county truck going to plow snow or leave that yard with two chains on two tires that that need that policy needs to change we didn't do that last year i'll promise you so so

We didn't turn one over last year that I remember, so I think it was the year before that.

And I brought that to the attention of the judge, and I said, this don't need to happen like this, because we're going to give $220,000 for a new plow truck, and you're going to give, how do you give for a plow? And then you put two chains on it, and you turn it over in a ditch. You just as well throw your money out the window. They make chains that's double-chained, and everybody that knows anything about plowing snow, that inside tar picks it up off that, and that chain does nothing, absolutely no good. So you need to change both tires, at least four on that truck, at least. And maybe one on the steer axle, if it's bad as people say it is. So safety for the employee's good and safety for the equipment's good. So we need to push that.

Agreed.

Thank you.

Any other questions? I think you need to just go have a conversation. I agree.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Comptroller Sherman, are you good, or do you want anything to wrap up on the budget before we move on? Okay, now item nine, we're going into the new business. The first item is an ordinance anticipating and recognizing additional revenue in the amount of $857,715 in the DEM grant fund and appropriating the amount of $857, $515, sorry, from the DEM grant fund to various homelands and security budgets for 2026. Yeah, sorry. Okay. Okay, I have a motion by J.P. Ecke to pass this on to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation, and a second by J.P. Dean. Any discussion? J.P. Pond.

Can we say what this... what the equipment is or whatever this money's gonna be spent on. I know it's grant money, but do we have any idea what it's gonna be for? I do not, sorry. I don't mind going ahead and passing it along, but I'd like for somebody to speak about.

Cut it on down.

but it doesn't say why. It's divided out between, I don't know, I didn't perceive your question to be this, so if it was, I apologize. But it's got 10,000 going into other professional services, 36,000 into training and education, $102,415 into machinery and equipment, $360,000 into vehicles, $16,600 small equipment, $32,000 in small tools and equipment. What exactly they're gonna buy in each of those categories, I do not know.

Oh, okay. I just thought it ought to be mentioned. even that much. People watching this on TV. Okay, no, that's right.

I appreciate that if I misunderstood. Thank you. That's in the ordinance itself is how it's being split out by line item.

Thank you. Any other discussion?

JP, I give you. Okay, thank you. Citizen comment. Any citizen's comment on this item? JP Lemming.

I was just going to help Butch a little bit. Butch, that... Whenever the DM fills out them grants and he's got it in the ordinance, a lot of that is like the bomb squad, and it's like the search and rescue team, and they're just numerous things. And it'd be nice to know exactly when it tells you which it is, but it don't tell you exactly where it's going. A lot of it will go to Springdale, some of it will go to, Worcester County itself won't keep a whole lot of that. I mean, yeah, we'll get services from everybody, but

We won't use purses about that to the other. That's where that's grand.

And then when they feel the grand out, they fill it out and tell you everything they're doing with it. But but that's what they're doing for us. Thank you.

Other discussion. Citizen comment. I have a motion by J.P. Ecke and a second by J.P. Dean to pass this all to the full court to do pass recommendation. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed. That passes. Oh, and I missed JP Pond. There's more down below. I didn't scroll down, so if you look at the ordinance, there's other things. Item 10 is an ordinance prohibiting the use of county funds for automatic license plate reader systems. JP Rio Stafford, would you like to introduce this?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. So I brought this forward because I have been hearing and we've been hearing a lot of just concerns about these camera systems among the public. They've been in the news a lot. You know, there's upsides and downsides. In some cases, we've heard they've been used to solve crimes. In other cases, they've been in the news because the data has gone into the wrong hands. People have used them for stalking in some cases. I've heard concerns from women about are my movements being tracked and things like that. Washington County right now, just to be clear for the public, we do not own or operate any flock cameras or any other automated license plate reader camera systems as a county government This ordinance basically says that Going forward. We're not going to spend money to buy these cameras lease them install them maintain them on County property I tried to Narrowly focus this ordinance on spending because If there's one thing that I know that we have jurisdiction over as the quorum court, it's county spending. And I tried to spell it out and make sure that It was very clear that this does not have any sort of impact on the operations of the Sheriff's Department, on their day-to-day operations, on their investigations, on their salaries, compensation. Anything like that. I've talked about it with the sheriff and with the deputy sheriff about it. They have told me, and they can say it themselves, the sheriffs here, that they don't have a position on this for or against it. And that the sheriff's office right now doesn't have any plans to get these ALPR systems. The big concern that I've heard from the public, unlike an ordinary traffic operation where there's a human being there actually looking at cars, noting down license plates, these camera systems note the license plate of every single vehicle that comes in front of it. The vast majority, 99.9% of them are innocent people. The location, time, movements, and the license plates of these vehicles get eventually stored in a database. The problems that we've heard in some other jurisdictions, not ours, have been who gets access to this data. And in some cases, there's been unauthorized access to it. Can this data get hacked? Can it end up in the wrong hands? Where does it eventually go? What kind of safeguards are there around it? Just a lot of different concerns that I've been hearing from the public, which is why I brought this forward. I basically felt like the best time to set a policy about something is before it becomes an issue, which is why I'm raising this. We don't have any cameras right now, like I said. And of course, technology is always constantly changing and evolving. It's possible that technology will evolve. There'll be more safeguards around this that will alleviate uh people's concerns around it and i'm open to that um and of course a future you know if we pass this it can always in the future be amended or repealed i don't see that it necessarily obligates the future quorum court to anything like that here in our county farmington has recently ended their contract with the flock cameras over privacy concerns and they got some false alerts involving stolen cars and concerns about cameras that were viewing private property. Centerton ended their contract and Pea Ridge ended their program too. So I wanted to open this up for discussion and so with that I move to, Pass this to the full quorum court with a do pass recommendation.

Second.

Thank you. Sheriff, would you like to address this at all? I know I reached out to you. I know JP Reed of Stafford reached out to you. So I know we've had discussions, but I didn't know if you wanted to.

provide your your opinion thank you mr chair um as uh jp real staffer stated uh you know we don't really have a position at the sheriff's office you know there are times where it's a good investigative tool and there are some uh cases that uh it's helped solve but the washington county sheriff's office does not use them we have no uh plans to get them you know i think that License plate readers are particularly beneficial if they're gonna be used in the larger cities. Our jurisdiction is the rural areas of Washington County and they just don't have much benefit out there. But I can tell you every time you go to Tulsa or Oklahoma City, they're gonna read your license plate and send you a bill in the mail for your turnpike fee. But we don't have any here and we don't have any opposition to this ordinance.

Thank you. J.P. Lopez.

Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I think to piggyback off some of the sentiments that my colleagues have made here, the nature of how data is being extracted from us as people is changing. There's more and more about us out there every day. And whether you live in the rural parts of the county or an incorporated portion of the county, that data is likely out there. but as these technologies change I do think it incumbent upon us to think about you know what is right how much of that should be accessed and and I do think this is the right vein of action to take I think that there is certain privacies that people have that here at the county we should make sure that remain private, and not in fact that anyone's doing anything wrong, more so that why should anyone have the right to know? And I strongly support not only the sentiment behind this, but I think this is the right action to take. Thank you.

J.P. Lemming.

Well, it's in the county side. I mean, all these cities, Lincoln, Prairie Grove, Farmington, everybody can get their own and there's nothing we can do about that. That's just, that's their business. And the county, we all support this because of the fact it's just gonna, it's really gonna do nothing for the county. But on the other side of that, when you drove on this parking lot of this courthouse, they know exactly where we are. They know exactly whose office you go into. They know exactly what bathroom you use. They're watching you every second you're on this courthouse in this place. When we leave here, the state of Arkansas has got a camera on 49 from here to where you go out of the state on the south end, where you go out in Missouri. They're watching us every moment of the way. I don't have a problem. If they want to watch me scratch my ear and play with my toes, that's fine. I don't care if they watch me all day long. But it's a good tool, but yeah, it gets abused. Police wear the cameras on their chest. They're good tools, and they're bad tools. So you're going to have bad with everything that happens in this world. So we don't want it to be bad, but it's going to happen. I'm going to support this because it ain't doing nothing for the county. But if they want to have cameras up, they can put them up in my eyes because I don't see a problem with it. Thank you.

Any other discussion? Well, I tend to agree. And quite honestly, if we decide we want to use it, we can come back and talk about it and put safeguards in place. I mean, that's the whole point. I mean, we talked about that, the county services call, another subject, right, that we pass on. need time, new technologies, we need new guardrails, new processes, new procedures, new rules, and he gives us time to do that and make sure that we're protecting our citizens as well as using the tool in the best possible, if we decide, not we, if the sheriff decides, because that's his role, right? That's something that they need to do, then we can come back and have that discussion and look at that. So it doesn't turn it off, it just kind of puts it to the side for now. JP Pond.

Yes, sir, as long as everybody knows we're not setting a policy for anybody. We're not setting a policy for the sheriff. The sheriff has not chosen to have any of these cameras anyway. I will tell you they're very practical and convenient in the proper place. I haven't had to stop and pay a toll on a toll road in a long time. You just run through the gate, and they send you a bill, what, six weeks later? And everybody's happy. They don't slow you down at the gate. But anyway, thank you.

DAVID BURRAGE, And you don't have to have change in your pocket.

DAVID BURRAGE, No.

JP Wilson. Thank you. On this issue, I'm like anybody else. I don't like invasions of privacy. We probably would all say that. On this issue, like all of you, I've watched this nationwide discussion unfold. And I get amused at some of it. I guess I don't have to get into that. Or maybe I will. The sheriff's already stated we don't utilize this tool and don't have a plan to implement it. That makes me wonder if we need to go ahead with anything at this point. kind of like if you look around in the county government and you don't see where this is a concern, we're not really violating anything at this juncture. It makes me wonder if we need this, but like I said, I prefaced my statements tonight by saying when our freedoms or our right to go about our business is infringed upon, I would be like anybody else and say, You know, that's not what we really want. However, I mean, everybody that goes to the University of Arkansas, that's how they will write you a parking ticket now. It's all license plates. They scan every parking area. And they run it through legal before they set that up, too. Not that that's the same thing, but we got technology that's here to stay in our lives in so many ways. What I do get amused by, like I said, and you've heard it too, everybody, I'm talking about nationwide, a lot of people have just gone berserk concerning flock cameras, and I thought, okay, I understand your reaction, but I didn't hear people very much go to berserk at the same level if we're talking about Facebook or Google or Apple. My phone knows more about me than a flock camera's ever gonna know. And we all accept that. Those are private companies and we say well that's different and we just accept it for the sake of the convenience. But the part where I get amused is We got all this technology in our lives. They know almost everything about us. And if some police entities start to utilize the scanning of license plates as a tool, I don't understand why people get freaked out over that when they're not freaked out about everything else by comparison. Having said that, I'll say again, I'm not in favor of any intrusions into our privacy. I think it's the third time I've said that now. And really, there's a lot of entities that could track my whereabouts or your whereabouts all the time just because we have this on our person all the time. I don't know if I find this necessary, but... I'm like some of my colleagues. I don't see a big problem. I'm not alarmed. But this is not the end of this discussion. There's going to be many discussions like this in the future. I think we all know that. But right now, I'm not one to be alarmed. And I don't want to be alarmed on this proposal tonight. And I'm not alarmed over the possibility that some Police departments in different places throughout our country have utilized this. If there's ever any abuse of this or any other tool, that's just grounds for termination. That's the way it works everywhere. And I'm glad that we have that expectation in place just about everywhere you go. If you're working in an office anywhere in any city in this county, if you use the computer in that office to do something that's unethical, you'll probably be terminated when it's found out. So I'm saying that... J.P. Wilson, just a minute, please.

J.P. Washington, your point of order. Hang on. Yeah, can't find you. Oh, I know why. Is that you? That is you.

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My point of order is that we've heard a lot of commentary tonight on how we feel about the flock hammers and all of that. And I feel like that discussion may be necessary, but it's just not germane at this point. This ordinance is about prohibiting the use of county funds. and so our comments really should be directed towards what's on the floor, which is the use of county funds, not debating the merits of whether or not we should be using flock cameras. So that's my point of order, to please keep our comments germane to the ordinance that we're discussing.

Chair, I would contend that all of my comments were germane to the conversation, but I was done anyway, so thank you.

Thank you, sir.

J.P. Dennis. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just want to go on the record. A lot of my constituents got with me, and they don't want us to spend any county funds on flock cameras or other brands either. And so at the wishes of my constituents and my own wish, I'll vote for it. Thank you.

J.P. Madison-Gill.

Yeah, I'll keep my comments brief. Yeah, I think we need to protect privacy of our citizens every opportunity we get. I appreciate the effort J.P. Stafford put into doing the research and putting this ordinance together, and I support it.

Other discussion? Citizen comments? Please state your name and address.

Richard Coger, 4310 South Thompson, Springdale, Arkansas. I mean, I think people don't understand the technology exactly. It's not so much about our local police and what they're looking at or license plate readers. The license plate readers is like the foot in the door. It's a flock operating system that connects the cars, the cameras, the telephones, and all of this data is being fed into third parties. If you look into the contracts in Bentonville, Siloam, Springdale, looked into all of them, they have one or more third parties that FLOC can associate with and give data to at their own will. And you can look at the July 14, 2025 committee meeting in Springdale. They're already working with the feds. I mean, they've admitted to it that they're working with federal police. ICE is using this for a fact. There's 43% of Springdale is Latino. I mean, you can want deportations or not. The bottom line is it's not going to be the people you think coming back to these jobs. They're going to deport the Hispanics, and the robots are coming in. And Flock's main investor is Palantir, who makes the software for the robots. It's a common sense play if you're a trillion dollar company. But I know I'm going off on too far into that. Let's see. What do you guys need to know about this technology? It's an operating system. So it's much bigger than license plate reader. I mean, you need to look into it and understand it, because they're going to gaslight you and make it about license plates. It's much, much bigger than that. And the data is able to go worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable license. So all the data we've already lost is gone. Imagine your Tyson's chicken in Springdale. They have a map of your entire operations. They have a map of where your employees go home, who they are. That data can go worldwide, to Brazil, to JBS, and it's legal in these contracts. It's completely legal in the contracts. It says, or other flock offerings. Who defines what a flock offering is? Wednesday, at the committee meeting in Springdale, they're gonna attempt to pass something that allows them to use AI for reasons of efficiency. You have to understand, when you tell a robot to focus on efficiency over human rights over these other things. It is going to take it so literal. You're talking to a robot, not a person. So the first thing it's going to do for efficiency is delete the city council. I mean, because that takes two weeks to get a law passed. I mean, that's what they don't understand, is that you need to put first your constitutional rights, your bill of rights, and these other things above efficiency when you tell a robot. Because it's like a calculator. When you put in 4 plus 4, you get 8. When you put in 4 times 4, you get 16. So the parameters that you put into your calculator is going to decide the outputs that you get from the calculator. I don't know how else to explain it. It's a system, like a farm. Your barn has the tractors, has the hay. Your server has the data. Whenever you call on the server, it pulls the data that you need to process the information. Whenever you're at your farm, what do you do? You go grab your tractor to bale the hay. Your storehouse is the server.

Your time is up, sir. Thank you.

I wanted to submit these packets. I don't know if that's a thing I can do to the record. That has a lot of information about this kind of thing. I don't know if you guys want one for yourself, or I should submit one? I brought a bunch. I'm trying to fit in a lot of information in three minutes, so I'm not trying to be rude. I'm just trying to get people to understand what's going on. Here's the one I wanted to submit, by the way. But this goes into the neural data.

Thank you, sir. Public comment?

My name is Dana Durie. I live at 223 East Prospect Street, about six blocks from here. Ordinarily, I would be very cautious about speaking about anything that had the potential of restricting investigative tools impacting public safety. But I have very strong concerns regarding privacy, civil rights, and data security involved with this technology. And so I just come before you in strong support of Justice Rio Stafford's proposal, with the main point being we have already seen abuses right here in our region, and once you lose civil liberties, it's very difficult to get them back. Thank you.

Hey, y'all. My name is Michelle Meecy, and I live on Wheeler Avenue in Fayetteville. So thank you very much, J.P. Rio Stafford, for bringing this to the table. I am absolutely in support of it, and I share many of the concerns she echoed from constituents and agreed that it is best to stay ahead of needing an ordinance rather than retroactively creating them. So budgetary concerns are clearly a good reason to not buy or use funds to install or use them, but there's also little foresight or insight as to how the systems can be used, abused, and hacked. So the information provided by the readers can be incorrect. It isn't clear who all can access the information transmitted with the systems, and with all that in mind, these cameras could ultimately prove to be costlier than planned, Y'all could get sued, like there could be, people would maybe get fired for abusing them. So I think that that's also a concern to think about what could the consequences be of in the future installing something like this. So I appreciate that this proposal does exist, and these devices are most likely to be used against those who are already profiled, but as you consider this ordinance and consider voting on it in the future, I do ask all of you to think about how this technology could be used against you as governments, ideals, and communities might change over time because civil liberties are very important, and like you said previously, they are very hard to get back. So thank you very much for bringing this to the table.

Hi, Andela Hines, District 7. I just wanted to read into the record the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated. and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. And so that's exactly what we're discussing here today, and so I hope you keep that in mind.

Thank you. Citizen's comment. Okay, so I have a motion by J.P. Rio Stafford to move and a second by J.P. Lopez to move this to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed. That passes. Item 11, an ordinance anticipating and recognizing additional revenue in the amount of $206,288.25 in the DEM grant fund. So to finish it, appropriating the amount of $206,208.25 from the DMN grant fund to the hazard mitigation generator grant budget for 2026. So it's a little bit more specific on where this is going. I have a motion, I believe by J.P. Lemming, if I heard the voice right, and a second by J.P. Dean to pass this all to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation, is that correct, J.P. Lemming? Any discussion? Citizens comment. So I have a motion by J.P. Lemming, second by J.P. Dean to pass item 11 on to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, no. That passes. Item 12 is an ordinance recognizing and appropriating grant funds from the Administrative Office of the Court's Court Improvement Program, CIP, to the Juvenile Court Division III budget for 2026.

I have a motion by JP Ecke to pass item

12, on to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation, seconded by J.P. Washington. Discussion? Citizens comment? I have a motion to pass item 12 to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation by J.P. Ecke, seconded by J.P. Washington. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? That passes. Item 13 is an ordinance recognizing appropriating grant funds from the Administrative Office of the Court's Court Improvement Program, CIP, to the Juvenile Court Division.

I move that we pass this to the full Court of the Court with a do pass recommendation.

Motion by JP Washington, seconded by JP Dean to pass item 13 all to the full Court of the Court with a do pass recommendation. Discussion? Citizen comment? I have a motion by JP Washington and signaled by JP Dean to pass item 13 all to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed say no.

It passes.

Item 14, an ordinance amending the juvenile detention center budget for 2026 and for other matters pertaining thereof. Basically, they're transferring funds from various line items in the budget in order to maintain appropriate staffing levels. I have a motion by J.P. Ecke, a second by J.P. Dean to pass item 14 on to the full quorum court, the due pass recommendation. Discussion? J.P. Ecke?

No, Director Tinsley gave us. Sorry? Director Tinsley at the County Services Committee meeting gave us an explanation of what he was going to be asking for. So if anybody needs to find out, go to YouTube and listen to his explanation of what it's for.

September, September. Yes. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Other discussion? Citizen comment? I have a motion by J.P. Ecke, seconded by J.P. Dean to pass item 14 on to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? It passes. Okay, the first item we added to the agenda today is item 15, is an ordinance recognizing appropriating grant funds from the administrative office. Hang on, sorry.

Yeah, the sheriffs, thank you.

It's an ordinance amending the sheriff's office jail budget for 2026 and for other matters pertaining thereto. So basically, quorum court approved an emergency appropriation ordinance 20260045 on August 20th, which requires additional quorum court approval on certain capital expenses. And this is given that approval for those capital expenses for $143,712 for acoustic sound dampening for the firearm range. Have a motion by J.P. Ecke, seconded by J.P. Dean to pass item 15 onto the full court. Do pass recommendation. Discussion? Citizens comment? I have a motion by J.P. Ecke, seconded by J.P. Dean to pass item 15, all of them to the full quorum court that do pass recommendation. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? It passes. You have 16. Sorry. Too many papers up here. Item 16. is an ordinance anticipating additional revenue $399,999 for other federal grants revenue line item, the Drug Court Grant Fund. Judge Beaumont, would you like to speak to this, please? Since you've been patiently waiting, thank you.

I so appreciate y'all adding this. So we got a SAMHSA grant, yay. So it's basically $400,000 for five years. So it's a $2 million grant. asking nothing for the county to pay. It's gonna help us expand our drug court, enhance it, allow us to get a case manager, another peer recovery support specialist, and get a part-time law student to help input data and help with probation. And it's gonna try to incorporate a lot with working with our participants' families because you can help the participant but if you don't help the situation at home gonna go right back to what they were doing and we wanted to walk this in because you have some staffing limitations one of our case managers right now is on maternity leave and so we're drowning so we're trying to get this done as quick as possible so that way we can go ahead and hire the case manager

Rio Safford, okay. All the above.

I love you guys, thank you.

So I have a motion to pass item 16 on to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation by J.P. Ecke, seconded by J.P. Rio Safford. Discussion? Citizen's comment? I have a motion by J.P. Ecke, seconded by J.P. Rio Safford to pass item 16 on to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed? That passes. Okay, so because we didn't have the meeting last Tuesday in quorum court is Thursday. Right now, nothing we did today is on the agenda for quorum court. So any of the sponsors, Judge Beaumont, we want to get this in, let me know. we'll walk it in and add it to the agenda given we had technical problems, et cetera. I just need to know, okay? But given that, does anybody want to give me a consent agenda motion?

Yes, consent agenda. Yes. Like my consent agenda for nine through 16?

To all of them.

Yep.

You don't want that in the consent agenda, is that what you're saying? There was one negative, yeah, okay. So we won. I think that was 10. So I have a motion by J.P. Dean. Did I hear a second? Second by J.P. Dennis. to have a consent agenda for the quorum court consisting of items nine, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16. Discussion? All those in favor say aye. All those opposed say no. Okay. So I'm gonna walk the consent agenda in, so all of those except for 10, I'm gonna try to walk in. I think they'll let me, okay? To put it on the agenda for the quorum court. You can bring yours in and add it, okay? All right. That's what I was trying to, that's why we brought it up is because we're, I mean, that's why we have the meetings, the times we have the meetings is to facilitate that. So we unfortunately had technical difficulties last week. Citizens' comment. We have citizens' comment, three minutes per person, total of 15 minutes. Any citizens' comment? Thank you all. Appreciate your patience. We're adjourned.