Quorum Court - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'd like to call the Washington County Quorum Court Finance and Budget Committee meeting to order. Welcome, everyone. Appreciate everybody coming out. First order is Prayer and Pledge by J.P. Pond.

Heavenly Father, we come before you with heads bowed humbly that that our hearts and our heads mind you as we speak, as we make decisions, do business for the county, that it all be pleasing to you. It's all in you that way what we decide would be Be fair to the people of Washington County. Just all this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, JP Pond. So before we go to the adoption of the agenda, I want to discuss our August meeting. August meeting is currently scheduled for the 7th of August, oops, sorry, wrong month, for August 11th, but there's several of us that will be traveling to the AC conference on that day, so I'd like to propose and move that we have the Finance and Budget Committee meeting on Monday, August 10th. So I got a motion to move August's Finance and Budget Committee meeting to Monday, August 10th and 2nd by J.P. Kroger. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, thank you. Next item is the adoption of the agenda before I get to any other changes. We have an item, which is item 11. which is an ordinance to basically appropriate funds for a new full-time equivalent position. We can't talk about that tonight unless I can get a motion to declare this an emergency per ordinance 2025-076, which is the 2026 budget ordinance. Article four states, The Quorum Court will only consider a request for changes in grades or addition of full-time equivalent employment requirements during its March and July meetings. Should the Quorum Court feel that an emergency exists, it may be approved by two-thirds of the entire body to consider changes in any meetings necessary. So if I can get a motion to declare it an emergency, then we can vote on that. And if it passes, we can leave it on the agenda. Otherwise, we'll have to remove it. J.P. Koger?

Yes, thank you. I would like to make a motion that we add this ordinance to the agenda tonight. Emergency ordinance, an emergency, okay, tonight.

Okay, so I have a motion to make item, declare item 11 an emergency so it can be discussed tonight by J.P. Koger, seconded by J.P. Lopez. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Aye. I think it passed. All right, all those in favor, raise your hand, aye. One, two, three, four, five, six. Yeah, okay, so seven. All those opposed?

One, two, three, four, five.

It passes, so we'll leave it on the agenda, thank you. And the last item I have is I'd like to make a motion to add a new item 13 and move 14 and 15, 13 and 14 to 14 and 15. Basically I have an item that I want to amend the 2026 budget ordinance regarding what we just talked about to add September as another month that we would discuss this in. I'd like to add that to the agenda. September. So I make a motion to add that to the agenda. I wanna add an item to the agenda to amend our 2026 budget ordinance, article four, to add September as one of the months that we will discuss changes in grades and increase in full-time equivalents.

J.P. Koger? Yes, thank you, Chair. I make a motion that we add this ordinance establishing, I mean, for the employment requirements during it, we can change the employment requirements during the March, July, and September. But it does say October here. Does it? Okay, I'm sorry. And September meetings.

So I have a motion. Do I have a second? So I have a motion by J.P. Koger to add this as item 13, seconded by J.P. Lopez. All those in favor say aye.

Aye. All those opposed?

Aye. All right, so we have a new 13. Any other changes to the agenda? If not, do I have a motion to approve the agenda, amended agenda?

Motion to adopt. Motion to adopt the agenda as amended.

Okay, I have a motion by J.P. Lopez to approve the amended agenda and a second by J.P. Dean. All those in favor, say aye. All those opposed? All right, we have an agenda. Moves us to item four, which is the treasurer's report.

Thank you, sir. 4.1, treasure summary. General fund, we got a nice property tax settlement. As you can see, we got 11.8 million in revenue and just right at four million in expenditures. We're down at the road department, 1.9 in revenues and 1.3 in expenditures. And down to 3017 jail. 2.1 revenue and almost 1.9 expenditure, so everybody had a good month for May. End of this report, we began the month with 66.9 million in the bank and ended with 76.6. 4.2, like I was referring to just a second ago, we received 8.4 million in property taxes, and that's compared to 7.9 million same period last year so the first two months of the current taxes were almost eight percent over over last year 4.3 revenue expenditure comparison look at the first column the general fund good news is they had a little over 1 million in revenue growth over last year the first five months Bad news is the expenditures were almost 2.4 million more than 2025. The second column, the road department, they're doing real well, 230,000 more in revenue, and they cut spending by 277,000. Finally, the jail column, 231,000 more in revenue and just 39,000 increase in expenditures, though. Roe and Gell are doing pretty good. General needs to do a little work. 4.4, the ARPA report. We spent about $240,000 on the COVID mitigation project in May. That left us with $2.1 million remaining in that fund. 4.5, the one cent sales tax. Talked about annexation the last, couple of months I did add if you look under 2023 24 25 26 I added the county population and you can see I can't see without readers but you can see that it's kind of not going down by much of course but it is going down some anyway sales tax is very flat right now nine hundred seventy thousand came in and that was about one plus one less than one percent less than last year. And 4.6, I just added this report just so you could see. At the census population, we were at 40,497 for the county. Now we're at 39,666, and that's 831 resident difference. You can see the cities who picked up the county residents there. Is it Greenland and Fayetteville and Springdale? I think so, yes. And that costs about $20,000 a year. So not much, but still, you never want to go backwards on this stuff. But not really anything we can do to make it better. It's just one of those things. Finally, $4.7 and a quarter cent jail tax. We received $1.5 million. $1.5 million. And it's almost exactly the same amount we received in 2025. So again, sales tax revenue is very flat.

And that's all I have.

Any questions for Treasurer Hill? J.P. Bruns?

Yes, sir. I got a phone call this week in reference to the EOC, and I don't know how to answer the question, but they were saying that we ordered shades for the EOC and that there wasn't enough money to pay for it in the phone we had, so it was paid out of something else.

I don't know. Okay. I can try to find out for you.

Would you please?

Okay. Shades that were supposed to be bought for the ELC.

Well, they have been bought.

I will look into it.

Okay.

And I'll send it to everybody once I find out something.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

J.P. Lemming?

Thank you, Chair. This may be a comptroller question, but can you explain a little bit more how the road department saved money?

All I go is by numbers.

That's what I'm saying. That would probably be a comptroller question.

No, that would probably be a road department supervisor question about what they've done differently.

To save that.

I can't really tell you the specifics now.

Thank you.

Any other questions for Treasurer Hill? Thank you, sir. Thank you. Item four is the employee's insurance report. Mr. Angel.

Good evening. Well, the first couple months of this year, I got to kind of take a victory lap and have a good time presenting to you guys. So I guess you always got to pay the piper. These last two months haven't been quite as fun. So I've got a few more data pieces to speak to you guys about tonight. If that's okay, I'll keep it pithy. But first off, I'd like to go over the cash flow like we normally do. Our total cost in April was a little over $988,000. That goes on top of county and employee funding of $717,000. We do have the rebate credit in there. That was pushed forward from last month. But unfortunately, that put us back down in the red again for the year to the tune of just over $49,000. Now, as you guys know, we've kind of beat this horse a few times over the last few years. You guys know that this is probably our third or fourth kind of down year in a row after several good years. And, you know, claims are tough to predict. It's hard to determine when someone will get cancer or when they'll have a baby in the NICU or when someone will need to go to a high-powered facility such as MD Anderson, Mayo Clinic, or the Cleveland Clinic. Those are more expensive. The specific stop loss does help us as we move forward throughout the year. So cash flow can become more of an issue early in the year. And if you recall, specific stop loss is that $185,000 that caps how much we can spend on each person insured through the county. That resets each year, January 1st. So we have to look at that. We do have five employees in what they call a LASER and those amounts are somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000. That's basically the stop-loss insurance company saying, for these folks that are very sick coming in, they're going to have a higher deductible than everyone else. Fairly normal in our industry, we look at having lasers versus paying a higher premium on every one and not have lasers. That's just... uh math problem that we have to do to kind of decide where the where the risk is but we do have those lasers for this year we do have one claim that it looks like we'll hit the stop loss so maybe stop some of the bleeding here as we move forward and more more we'll hit the stop loss as we move forward but i will say this i know there's an ordinance coming later in the evening about potentially appropriating more money i believe our fund is down below three hundred thousand dollars We've we've put more money into this this year than we did in years past We have to and I'll get into that momentarily, but I will say from where I sit as the plan consultant I think it's important to make sure there's enough money to pay our bills that's available Otherwise, we end up possibly running afoul of our third party administrator which is Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Arkansas and if we do that then we might cause some real problems for our employees and their dependents who use this plan because basically what we're talking about here is the claims money and And we have made a deal with our employees that if you have a health concern and you seek care, that our insurance will pay that. So I would never come up here and tell you guys how to do your job. But from a strictly health insurance perspective, I will tell you it's important to make sure that we can pay those claims on a timely manner. Or we could find ourselves having a different conversation up here one month that wouldn't be very fun. So I'll take questions on that if I need to. But before I leave, I would like to go over some of our specialty drug spend and how we've been able to save some money this year. So this is actually an updated sheet. What we're seeing here, this is through April, so the first four months, you look at what we would have paid for our specialty meds had we not implemented the New Sharks program and what we are paying. What we would have paid under our traditional pharmacy benefit manager contract would have been $267,000 and change each month for our specialty meds. What we have been paying on average is $157,000 and change. So what we're looking at is a real win on our specialty meds. Now this is one I've talked about several times. There's more hoops to jump through, things like that. But what I wanted to do was keep this horseshoe updated on what that's meaning to the county and its employees. And what that's coming out to is about $110,000 a month in savings. That's about 418,000 they're estimating now, but if you take it out, and we don't know from month to month who's going to take what meds, but there are very expensive specialty meds out there. If it keeps tracking this way, we're looking at 1.2, 1.3 million in savings, with the employees receiving the same meds from the same manufacturer at the same dosage. We're just kind of playing the games that the pharmaceutical companies have us play, which is part of our job is to kind of track that, It can be frustrating at times, but it looks like this year we were able to get out in front of it and hopefully can save upwards of a million dollars by doing it this way. So I wanted to make sure that you guys saw what was going on here and see that we're, though the spend is high, it is very high. We're doing everything we can to get the right contracts in place, the right systems in place to save that money. The one thing we can't control is sickness, and accidents as well. Those things are gonna happen. And just to give you guys kind of line of sight, and I promise I'll hush, I know you've got a long agenda tonight, but our aggregate stop loss, not the specific, but the aggregate for the whole group, That has moved where that would kick in over the last three years. So in 2024, that was right at $6 million of claims, not fixed costs, but claims, where that would have kicked in and started to pay. Last year, that was right around $8 million. So see, that's a big jump. That's where the insurance companies are telling us, hey, we have some sick folks here. We're going to have some high claims. And then this year in 2026, that attachment point where we meet our aggregate deductible, It changes depending on enrollment every month, but right now it's hovering right around ten million eight hundred thousand so almost eleven million dollars so though this is a Frustrating time. I wanted to make sure you guys were all aware that what we're looking at here is underwriters saying hey, we've got kind of a more at-risk population and These are these are kind of the concerns and and how the how the money has kind of gone and through the roof, and I know that's what you guys have to do, is make sure you're watching out for county dollars. So I wanted to let you know, this is how it's happening. It's these claims, and I don't know what to do about it, because again, we have insurance for if folks get really sick, and we've had some folks get really sick, unfortunately. So I hope that sheds some light on it, and if there's any questions, I'd be glad to take those.

J.P. Bruns.

Thank you, sir. I don't know anything about insurance premiums. So my question could be a clear no right up front. But we're asking for $2 million to be taken out. and put into another fund. Is there not a way we could calculate how much we're going to need next month and remove that amount and put it over this month and then the next month do the same thing and not take the whole chunk out?

So I will leave part of that to HR and the comptroller's office, because I think they have some thoughts on that. I think Comptroller has some thoughts on that.

So Treasurer Hill and I talked. And we found out. So the million dollars that you guys appropriated last year, we never did move it. And we just managed the fund when it got down. This $2 million is a straight appropriation. So we don't have to move it until we need it. I talked to the legislative audit. And there's three funds, the general fund, our general reserve fund, and the health insurance fund. They view as one fund. They call it the general fund opinion unit. And they don't care about transfers within that. But what we can't do is wait a month for the appropriation. So we don't have to move all the $2 million right now into the health insurance fund. We can keep it, and then we can do a court order and move $1 million or $500,000 immediately when we need it. And that usually happens in a day, where if we need additional appropriation, we would have to come back here. That takes a month. So last time on the, on the million dollars, we managed it close and we made it through and we built it back up and we never did transfer any of that million dollars. This time, it's going to be a little bit tougher because there's some big claims out there. But that's the deal. So we don't have to transfer it all at once. But now, with this being an appropriation, we have the ability to do it in a day. So I still watch all the claims or the invoices coming out of HR every day and approve them and tell them, OK, you can pay this amount. It's down to 250 right now around that. Tomorrow we'll put about 360 back in it. That's what we do every payroll. So we're probably gonna make it, I don't know, it depends on how fast these claims come in, but if the big claims start coming in, we're gonna have to cover down on those and move money.

I'm sure that's going to be a little more work for you to do that, but my question was centered around maybe that we get to maintain drawing enough interest to maybe pay a little bit of that.

I'm guessing, and Treasurer Hill can tell me if I'm wrong, we probably get the same amount of interest on each of those accounts. Yeah, so generally speaking, we're drawing interest no matter if we have it sitting in the general reserve fund or the health insurance fund.

It's just a matter of allocation.

Right.

Okay.

J.P. Lemming. Thank you, Chair. On this, you talk savings and savings. Is this just paper savings, or is this true money savings? Does this come back to the county, or is it just paper talked about? Because insurance companies all rip off. We all know it.

If I had the answer to that, I'd be in DC, not here. But somebody might have shot me already, Willie. So this is a legitimate savings because this is what we were paying for these drugs in 25, and then because of this new system that we implemented, the price actually went down. That's where you'll see the Navy bars, we're paying for those same drugs in 2025, implemented this new program in January, and that's where the teal bars are. So I would call that a real savings.

That could change, though, if they quit using them. Absolutely. Not as many employees. So what my question is, though, is this money comes back to us or is it just on paper? It's what we don't.

The price tag for these drugs actually went down. So money didn't come back. We just paid out less to start with. Because what's happened is we're using several different programs, foundations, manufacturers, assistance, 340B, different things to get better prices on drugs than we could just get through a traditional pharmacy benefit manager. Thank you. Yes, sir. JP Ackie.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe that when it comes time for the appropriation, we really need to take care of those who take care of us and the citizens of Washington County, period. I mean, I know that you're doing the best you can and I know this is something that, it's very stressful, but it's also stressful on those going through these illnesses. And when they need it, we need to be able to say, you can count on us to support you all this time.

Yes, ma'am. I couldn't agree more. This is a deal that we've made with our employees that we have this insurance that's going to cover them. And we've also entered into a contract with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Arkansas to cover these claims. So I think on a moral issue, we have to support our employees. And on a legal issue, we have to pay our bills that we're contractually obligated to pay.

The last thing we want is to find ourselves without insurance and Blue Cross and Blue Shield saying, y'all didn't pay your bills on time, I'm sorry we're dropping you. That would be a catastrophic, in my opinion, scenario for all of us to go through.

That would be worst case scenario on the insurance front. Yes, it sure would. Worst case scenario.

So the best case is let's appropriate the money and make sure that everybody's covered and let's just do our due diligence.

I tend to agree, Justice Ecke. And again, to Comptroller's point, this is a cash flow issue. Hopefully it'll look like 2025 where we appropriated the million dollars and didn't need it because stop loss insurance started to kick in and started to reimburse us for those claims. I don't know. It may, it may not. I don't have a crystal ball. I can't see what claims are coming next week or next month, how many NICU babies we might have. I don't know. But hopefully this is just a cash flow issue and we'll be able to leave that money in the general fund, much like in 2025. But if not, we're going to have to pay it one way or the other.

Well, you have my support. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, ma'am. J.P. Koger?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Kind of in line with what J.P. Lehman was asking, could you talk to us about the rebates? Because the rebates, we do get cash back, correct?

Yes, ma'am. And we're kind of getting the best of both worlds right now because rebates traditionally take six to nine months to kind of catch up, right? So we're still getting rebates from 2025 pharmacy spend. We were spending quite a bit more per drug Right? And right now we're spending less per drug because we're getting some of the manufacturer's assistance. Some of our employees on specialty drugs are getting them at no cost to the plan. Because what happens is we help these employees go through and look at the size of their family, what their income level is compared to the federal poverty level, and look at these manufacturers who have programs, some do, some don't. They say, we'll look at your income level, and if you're below X percent of the federal poverty level, then we will give you this drug at no cost. So it will impact our rebates if all of a sudden we're paying zero for a drug. I'll take Skyrizzy instead of $20,000 a month, right? Our rebate might have gone from $4,000 a month on that drug to obviously zero because we're not paying anything for it. But that's still plus $16,000. Back to Justice Lemming's point, that's a real savings of $16,000. Because we're paying 20, and then six months later, getting back four for a net of 16. If we can move that to zero, though, that's a huge win. Will it make our rebates go down? Well, yes, but I don't care about a rebate if I can get a drug for nothing or next to nothing.

Yeah. Well, thank you for doing that and for working with employees to do that. I appreciate it. Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

Any other questions for Mr. Angel? Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Next item is the Comptroller Report. Comptroller Sherman.

Statement of.

I need my glasses. So the statement of operations, we're looking good, I think. We're 41%, 41.6% through the year. Nothing really sticks out to me. And the ones that are explained, if you look at services, it's 55%. But they pay some one-time contracts up front that they budgeted for, so it's not like. that they're going to catch up as we move through this. The health insurance fund we just talked about is 42%. Running a little bit hot, but this $2 million will allow us to cover down on any future stuff that we have a problem. Is there any questions on this? The overall general fund is at 38%, so we are like 3% under budget, so that's pretty decent.

Thank you, sir. The account we're taking this $2 million out of, what's it sitting at today? What's that? The account we're taking this $2 million out of, what's it sitting today?

We're going to take that out of the general reserve fund, and it's at $15 million. So that's actually the savings account. So that's where it'll come from if we need it. So this is appropriation, and then we'll move it out of that fund. I think your packet originally had it coming out of general, but we changed it, and I think we passed out the appropriate one.

Any other questions for Comptroller Sherman?

And then, unappropriated reserve budget, unappropriated reserve report. And there's nothing really bad on that. We did the mental health services for the CRI last month. So that was the $169,000. It was positive before because the year to date changed because we added some money that we got in for a grant, or I forget what it was. We still have $1.8 million in unappropriated reserves, so we're looking good there. $171,000 was the HVAC units at the jail, so pretty good. Any questions on this report? And I'll talk about the budget a little bit after this, too, just real quick.

G.P.

Lemming? Thank you, Chair. Was this, these units, is some they've old and replaced, or is this some they added to that new pod? Replaced. Replaced, OK. Yeah.

And I think that was on schedule for last year, and it didn't happen, and then so.

Any other questions for Comptroller Sherman? All right, before you leave, I want to talk about budget real quick, because Comptroller Sherman provided a, what do you call it, budget process and controls training today at the EOC for a full house of Washington County employees, resources that are just getting there. It's great. This is good. I wish I had this four years ago. It's really good. Appreciate you doing this. The reason I bring that up is two reasons. The first reason is I would like to have Comptroller Sherman present this to the entire quorum court. It took him about an hour and a half today to give it. So the discussion topic I want, and have feedback from the horseshoe here, is do we take an hour and a half of a finance and budget committee meeting, or do we wanna set up a separate meeting to come in and do that, thereby not extending our committee meeting?

My vote's a separate meeting, but I don't have an official vote.

separate well I mean I don't need officially but let's do it just so we're good so we got the motion for a separate second all those for a separate I okay so we'll I'll work mr. Allen with you and try to figure out a time for that we will because we're all gonna be here we'll have to publicize it put it out just like it was a meeting because we're all here you know for you will be there The public can come in and listen. It's a public meeting. But we won't be voting on anything. We'll just come in for that, let him present it, let you guys ask questions, and then we'll go from there. But while we're there, he did publish the timeline, and it's exactly the same timeline we had last year. And hopefully I'm not jumping your guts. So they've already sent out spreadsheets to the departments. They went out June 1st. They're asking the departments to have their budget requests returned to the comptroller by July 15th. July 15th through August 15th, they'll do what he calls the negotiation discussion on those budgets. August 15th, we will see the first draft of the budget. We come in, we talk it, we start looking at it. September 8th, the specific departments in Comptroller will brief the Quorum Court, so the meeting on the 8th of September, they'll come in and actually brief us. We'll probably start looking to bring other departments in. So again, same as last year, if you look at the budget, there's something that you think needs to be answered, they need to come in and answer it. Submit your questions, same as last year, we're gonna submit questions. I'm still along the lines, if it's not real complex and we can get the answers to the questions, through that mechanism quickly, then that's what we do. But when we get into some of the more complex ones, so again, the sheriffs and the jails, the roads, IT, all their capital, their justifications, those types of things, we normally bring them in to help us understand that a little better. October 6th, again, we'll discuss and debate the budget, targeting hopefully to get the first vote on the 6th. And then of course we have November 10th and 8th, and December 8th to follow up if we don't pass it on the 6th. Any questions on that?

Cool. Yeah, one of the departments, so with the change of administration coming, there's a whole bunch of good idea fairies coming to me right now that want everything. New positions, they're talking about building infrastructure, we wanna do this, we wanna do that. What I would like to do is, One of the important things that I think that you guys need to be briefed on, and I talked to Director Ledgerwood, is the status of our buildings and infrastructure, because that's a high dollar item, and there's all sorts of routes we can go. I think you said it might be in the county services she might brief you, but I think it's very important to hear her five-year plan. She has told me potential five-year plan, But that involves significant money. If you want to make that old courthouse livable as far as somebody being in there or change the status of it, this old armory that we own down here, it's borderline condemned. There's been water. We have the UAMS deal. And the list goes on. In here, there's ADA stuff. But I just think it's important to give to you guys, OK, here's all the priorities, buildings and grounds. Here's all the people requesting additional FTEs, because there's a lot of them. and things like that. So you guys just need to hear everything as we go into this budget season, I think.

Any questions? CPI key.

With all those requests, I don't know if it's by elected officials. And I don't mean to sound like I'm disparaging them in any way. But they do have automated funds that they can use. for any kind of capital outlet that they want and they can use it at their discretion. So if they can do that, I would like to urge them to do that. To use that rather than...

Right, to take pressure off the general fund.

Off the general fund.

Mm-hmm.

So, and I know that there's different opinions on that and I'm not in charge of that. That is their discretionary fund. So.

Well, and that's all part of the negotiation and put the priorities out here and say, this is how many FTEs additional that people request in. What's the most important? This is our building problems right now. What's the most important? How can we get at it? There's some buildings, I don't, you know, there's multiple options that we can, that we can go down.

But if we have that money available, then I would just encourage them to use it. Okay, thank you.

Any questions, comments? I don't want to. So I want to encourage you guys to go look at Article 4 of the current budget ordinance, which is the budget controls. I think we need to talk about those. I think we need to maybe modify some of those and be a little bit more stringent on some of those. So take a look at them. I'm just asking, take a look. So when we get into the discussion, we have that background. But I've got some ideas, I've been talking with Comptroller Sherman, because quite honestly, if he tells me it's a bad idea, I'm probably gonna listen. I trust Comptroller Sherman, he's good at what he does, he's good, we see the results of what he does, so, and his recommendations always seem to be right on, so I think we're good there.

I mean, for me, it's kind of a balancing act as far as that goes, you know. I mean, because there are important things, and we just need to weigh it out. And hopefully we won't have to get into a situation where we need to take on debt or something like that. We've been very— Very good up until now, and we're still financially, if you look at government entities, we are strong as a government entity. We want to stay that way. Most of them are in debt, and most of them are looking to take on more debt or whatever. Not too bad, though, percentage-wise. Johnson Controls, that's your favorite.

would you say it was six million six million yeah all right we get all right you're you're out of order you're out of order get control back over this thank you sir um i think we're two new business and our first new business is item seven it's an ordinance accepting an appropriating grant in the amount of eighty one thousand dollars from the arkansas access to justice foundation for the washington county public defenders office counselor houston would you like to speak to this and introduce this for us please Can you hit that button for me, please? Somebody turned it off. Hang on. Yeah, it should be now.

I'm Leanna Houston, one of the attorneys at the Public Defender's Office and the Chief Deputy Public Defender. I'll take a deep breath tonight and smile because I'm not asking for any money. I've got a grant. It's fully funding a position for a full-time social worker for one year in our office. It's not asking for matching funds. It's not asking for anything from you except for y'all to accept the grant. I'm needing the county to help me with posting the job and the employment process, but the grant funds for the benefits, for the taxes, the social security, the grant funds, all of that. It's from the Arkansas Access to Justice Foundation in Little Rock. But I think it's especially exciting for y'all right now because of the discussion you had last week about pretrial services. And there were lots of questions that we all have with that about what would that look like? What would help? How would it help the jail? How would it help our criminal justice system? And how would it help the citizens of Washington County? How would we prove it's helping? How would we get statistics? Those are all questions that we have, and this is a win-win situation because it gives us somebody who can start working on the groundwork for that without us having to pay for anything. We just accept the grant. Since 2022, I've had social work interns from the university in our office who go to arraignments with us and they talk to the out of custody people about what do you need? Do you need drug treatment? Do you need mental health treatment? Do you need a reminder to get to court to prevent a failure to appear? Do you have transportation to get to court or do we need to talk about a plan for that? And so we've had the students doing it and I've got statistics that the three students did this semester. Can I hand these to you? Yes, it's the same thing. These are the statistics that the students took for this semester about the services that they did. And so the grant would provide a person who does this for one year because, of course, with students, you have them doing it for two or three months, and then they move on to their next class. And so there's no continuity. And for the summer, we don't have anyone doing it. And the grant would also provide it to helping the people in the jail and helping the judges because they could talk to the people in the jail and say they need to go to inpatient drug treatment. And it would get them into this treatment and present a plan to the judge so that we could get them out of our jail, get them into treatment, and help them get on their feet. And then when the judge talks to them about probation, they've already taken significant steps to doing well on probation so that they're not reoffending. And so the grant also provides for this person to do statistics and keep track of these people so that when they come back to y'all in a year, or when y'all are talking next year about pretrial services, we will know what's working and what's not working. And if it is saving the jail money, if it's helping the criminal justice system, I have talked to our judges about it, Judge Beaumont, Judge Taylor, and they're all excited about this and in support of it. And it's a win-win. It's not asking for any money from y'all. It's just I'm needing y'all to accept the grant. So do you have any questions for me?

J.P. Rick? Yes, ma'am.

It's my understanding this position will give us information about pretrial services through your department, right? Yes, sir.

Okay, so at the end of this program, after a year, we should be able to, this is what they're doing, and it's working or it's not working, we're going to do something different. And all of this is paid for by the grant.

Yes, sir. I'll make a motion to pass this on to full court. Second.

Figure out who I heard first, sorry. Thank you, so we have a motion to pass this full quorum court to do pass recommendation J.P. Ricker, seconded by J.P. Dean. J.P. Koger.

Thank you, I just was, I was gonna make that motion, but that's fine. I just wanna thank you, everyone in the Public Defender's Office, for all you do, and I know y'all worked super hard on this, and it's really a feather in your cap that you got this, and I'm proud to, I'm proud to see it come, thank you.

J.P. Bruns.

Thanks, sir. Are there any real costs with this, like for training? Are y'all prepared to take care of training costs for these people? Are y'all prepared to take care of office supplies for these people?

Yes, all of that I think will be very small, and we can absorb that within our cost.

Okay, so you're going to try to absorb about everything other than the grant?

Right, the grant will pay for all of that. All right, thank you. Thank you.

J.P. Ecke?

I think that our public defender's office, and I've always supported them even when we were trying to get them additional staffing, pay increases throughout my time being here on the court, and they do, they work very hard. My only concern with this is that according to our constitutional manual, only the county judge can accept Grants. We cannot accept grants. We as a legislative body appropriate the grant. But this grant has to be accepted first by the county judge. Period. Mark Whitmore from the AAC, that's what it is. It's the county judge that accepts the grant. And then you get into and I'm gonna let him figure that out because he was just talking way over my head on, the public defender is not an elected official. He is a state, or it's an appointed position, and therefore the employee status, whether state or county, varies in that office. And like I said, I'm just going to leave that there. But my only concern is this has to go through proper vetting, and that would have to go through the county judge's office first before we can do anything. We cannot accept a grant, and we can appropriate it after it's accepted by the judge. Thank you.

J.P. Cougar.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I very much disagree with what J.P. Ecke just said. This body accepts grants all the time. And I went through, I talked to the grant department. I've talked to the HR department. Nobody, I mean, we went through them. And we're working on a job description. Think about the SCAB grant. How often do I speak against we should never accept that grant because it... of how it harms people, but we accept that. It comes to this court, and we vote on it. That's what this is, and I want to point out that my ordinance says the county judge and all appropriate county officials are hereby authorized to take such actions as may be necessary to carry out the intent and purposes of this ordinance, including but not limited to executing any grant assurances agreements necessary to accept this grant. When I first sent my ordinance to Attorney Lester, he emailed me back, I think you saw that, and said I needed to go to the grant department, and I did. I went to the grant department, and I went to the HR department. We need to pass this on tonight. needed so much, and the people have worked so hard to bring it. Thank you.

J.P. Wilson.

Thank you very much, Chair. Any time that we, if we have an elected official or an appointed position person or any employee of the county who who says they need something. I think generally speaking, I feel like, and as a court, I think we want to support them in any way that we can. Um, but I, I concur with, uh, JP Eckie's comments. It's a little bit of a cause for concern. And also I'm always, um, I'm a little reluctant when anytime somebody says it won't cost you anything, not just in this room but anywhere else I go. Forgive me for being so skeptical, but I had a friend years ago who was a superintendent of a small school district, and a well-intentioned group wanted to plant a tree on campus in memory of something. They said it won't cost you anything, and it didn't. except the upkeep every year was running up a little bill, and I do mean a little bill. It's nothing compared to what we're talking about, but in a small school, every dollar counts, as it should everywhere, and they had to do, I know we're not talking about a tree tonight, but there's a lot of times when people who are very well intended want to do some things, and it may not cost anything on the front end, but as you go, then you find out it does cost some things. So I'm reluctant on that, and I'm also reluctant because it seems like in recent months and tonight also, we seem to have a lot of faith in pretrial services and in social workers, and nobody has a magic wand, and the faith that's being placed And these kind of remedies, I just don't share that faith. So I'm not sure that I can support moving this on. Thank you.

J.P. Bond? Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am taking very seriously what J.P. Wilson and J.P. Ecke have spoken to us about. But... At this point, we've not had anybody brought any reason before us why this grant shouldn't be accepted. And I have enough faith in that. and this legislative branch and the judiciary branch, and I've had members of the judiciary branch come to me in favor of this, if there is legitimate reason why our executive branch of our government any reasonable reason why he would deny this, I have faith that he'll come forward and let us know what that is. At this point, I don't see any reason why this grant money shouldn't be accepted by the state. I realize full well that a year from now, we may not get that grant again. And it'll be before us to decide, well, can we afford to do this out of the general fund if we see that it has saved the law enforcement several thousand dollars in time that they would have been spending chasing after these people that don't show up for court, or whatever, that's just one issue. I just don't see any reason in dragging our feet on this. I would move to pass this on to the full quorum court with a full recommendation to pass. It's come this far.

We already have a motion and a second.

All right. Very good.

So I have a motion to call the question. Do I have a second? But it takes precedence, I believe. I believe the motion to call the question takes precedence. So I have a motion to call the question and a second by JP Koger and JP Lopez. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed? All those in favor say aye and raise your hand. All those opposed raise your hand. Motion passes. So I have a motion by J.P. Ricker to pass this all on to the full quorum court to do pass recommendations.

That was not his motion. His motion was pass this on to the full quorum court, period. And I made a note of it that he didn't say with the do pass recommendation. So that was the motion. That was what was discussed. That was seconded. And that was end of discussion. So he can't go back and amend what he said because discussion is over. That is what he said. I made note of it. Thank you.

Okay. We'll stick with that, but it's not a normal from what happens around this horseshoe in other forums. So have a motion by J.P. Rickard that passes all the full quorum court, the second by J.P. Dean. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Aye. Oh, you're right. I apologize. Public comment on this item. Thank you, J.P. Stafford. No? Okay. All those in favor, move this to full quorum court. Raise your hand. Say aye. All those opposed. That passes on to the full quorum court. Item eight is an ordinance recognizing additional revenue in the amount of $10,292.56 in the general fund and appropriating the total amount, $10,292.56 to the IT budget. This is coming from the IT department receipt, $4,116.30 from their electronic recycling. $1,164.38 from the sale of their 2007 Ford Fusion, and $5,011.88 for the sale of a 2006 GMC Canyon. JP Lopez? Motion to pass the full quorum court with a do pass recommendation. I have a motion by J.P. Lopez to pass this all to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation and second by J.P. Dennis. Any discussion? J.P. Koger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This question is probably for the comptroller, Sherman. So this money that we're getting in this ordinance right here, the IT department just purchased a new vehicle, a 2026 Toyota RAV4. Will this go toward that debt or toward that payment or what? How does that work?

I think they paid cash for it. So all he's doing is requesting it back in his budget. So the vehicle they bought, they actually bought straight out, I believe. They didn't use debt.

And it came out of that budget, and this is going into that budget? Right.

Okay, I just want to be sure I understood that. They just sold some stuff and want it back in their budget. Okay, thank you.

Any other discussion? Citizen comment? Seeing none, I have a motion. by J.P. Lopez to pass this on to the full quorum court, the due pass recommendation is second by J.P. Dennis. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? That passes to the full quorum court. Item nine is an ordinance recognizing additional revenue in the amount of $12,490.60 in the road fund and appropriating the total amount of $12,490.60 to the road department budget for 2026. Similarly to the last one, the road department received $12,490.60 from recycling scrap metal. So that's where this comes from. JP Lemming.

This is probably for Sherman. When they say scrap metal, what are they talking about? Is that old dump truck beds, that old road graders? What is that? I mean, is that just metal piping?

I don't know that answer. I can find out and get with you, though.

It'd be nice to know, because $12,490 is a lot of scrap metal. $200 a ton or $180 a ton, that's quite a bit of metal.

yeah and to answer your question earlier about the savings for where the savings come from i think the new director is very focused on the budget and pays attention and i've talked to him quite a bit he's yeah he seems like he's got some good sense yeah and he he's not just gonna uh spend uh he's he's cognizant of his budget so he's he's in um probably come ask for more next year because the first time in the seat but then that'll fall into what the projections are that the treasurer does and the priorities and we'll go from there he talked like he's going to need more and if he's good to work with him good to work and get stuff done we need to pay we need to get it done for him roger that thank you any other discussion citizens comment seeing none we have a motion

No, I don't have a motion. So I write things down. It was blank. Yeah, state your motion for me.

I'll make a motion to pass the full court with a do pass recommendation.

Thank you.

Any additional discussion with that motion on the floor? Now citizen comment. All right, seeing none, I have a, Motion by J.P. Ricker to pass this on to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation, seconded by J.P. Dean. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed? That passes to the full quorum court. Item 10. Item 10, as we heard earlier regarding the status of our health insurance fund, item 10 is to appropriate $2 million Okay, so just so everybody, there was a new sheet on your desk. What was in the package had the wrong fund that we were gonna take it out of, okay? So this is to appropriate $2 million from the General Reserve Fund, 1001, and appropriate to the Employee Insurance Fund budget. JP Lemming?

Well, our hands are tied, but we've got to do it. So let's make a motion to send it to the full quorum court for a due pass recommendation. Second.

All right, I have a motion by JP Lemming to pass this to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation, and a second by JP Dean. Discussion? Seeing nothing else, I agree with my colleagues. I mean, we are self-insured. We have to pay our bills. We owe it to our employees to make sure they can get health insurance. And again, we're appropriating it so that if it's needed, the funds can be moved to pay the bills in a timely manner, and we're not in default of payment. So I have the greatest trust in Comptroller. Sherman, I've been working with him since he's been here, because he came after I had started, after I was elected, and had not had any issues, had great recommendations from him, and he tends to keep us all on a level ground with our finances and where we're at and where things need to go. So he controls it, right? He's the one that will say, hey, Bobby, transfer this money. So, JP Coker?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to encourage all my colleagues to please vote for this. I think it was Comptroller Sherman who said morally, or maybe it was Mr. Angel, I can't remember, but I think we're morally and legally obligated to do this. I don't want our county employees to come to work wondering of whether or not their health insurance plan is solvent, it's gonna be able to pay bills or not. And this is a lot of money, but there's a lot of discretionary spending that goes on in this county that we could and should be talking about. This is not discretionary. This is something that we're obligated to do and our employees are looking to us to do that and I urge you all to support it. Thank you.

Any other discussion? Citizen's comment? Seeing none, I have a motion by J.P. Ricker, seconded by J.P. Dean to pass this on to the full court to do pass recommendation. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? It passes. Oh, I'm sorry, scribbles. All right, item 11 is an ordinance appropriating $73,865.32 from the Other Services and Charges Fund to the Human Resources Budget for 2026. Director Bennett, do you want to introduce this, please?

Good evening, thank you so much. So we gave back about 170, $175,000 back into general fund last year from the HR budget. We're on track to do that again this year. Instead of giving it back, I'd like to slide it over and get another headcount. We have been inundated, as Director Sherman has also, in terms of new headcount requests, job description updates, regrades, et cetera. We also really need one person who is responsible for processing all of the benefit invoices that come in. As you can imagine, we get those weekly, some are biweekly, monthly. It's a lot to manage. We used to have this position. We also would like to have one position that manages the FMLA, CAT leave, et cetera. So moving that off of our plates so we can do the compensation studies, so that we can focus on the regrade, so that we can focus on the bigger projects. So this would really be helpful to our team. We are kind of drowning. and so I just would appreciate your support and open to any questions.

JP Lopez. I want to thank you, first and foremost. Again, I don't believe that you ever come before this body frivolously. I think you've always been very cognizant of not only your budget, but very aware of attempting to do right with the budget that you do have. So I'm all for this. I would make a motion that we pass this on to the full quorum court with a do pass recommendation.

Okay, motion by J.P. Lopez, pass this on to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation, seconded by J.P. Ackie. Discussion? J.P. Lemming.

Well, I'm not going to say you don't need an employee. I'm going to not say that... I just see a new administration coming, and... I think there's more folks that's going to be here asking this horseshoe to hire several more people, and that makes our insurance go up until we have to deal with it. That makes our costs go up. That makes our budgets go up. And I'd like to see us kind of scale back and keep what we got and run on a tight ship until we get to the new end of the year and start over and let the new administration add more, subtract more. But that's just my thoughts. I'm not going to support it because I think we just need to wait. Thank you.

J.P. Koger.

This is a question for you, Mr. Chair. So is it proper, I mean, I see what this ordinance here is that we're going to talk about in a minute, but this is June. And is that, so is it okay to do that? What about the budget?

That's the vote that we had at the beginning before we adopted the agenda to make this an emergency so we could discuss it today.

Oh, I did that.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you, sorry.

Yes, ma'am. Additional discussion? J.P. Ecke.

I understand that this will be under the county judge's umbrella because HR is under the county judge. However, it's those that work in the office that know it best. I mean, they're there day to day. They know what it needs and they're fingers on the pulse. And if Director Bennett says, I need this person, I believe it and I don't think we should wait. And therefore, there was that emergency and I'm glad we accepted it. And I fully support this ordinance because I fully support and believe our Director Bennett and I've been there and you see what they do and they need help. So I think it's best that we support that and we support our staff. Thank you and thank you for what all you do. Thank you.

Additional discussion? Citizens comment? Sorry? It's not on now. Thank you, Mr. Co-Chair. Okay, seeing none, we have a motion from J.P. Lopez and seconded by J.P. Ecke to pass this all to the full quorum court to do pass recommendations. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? It passes. Item 12. is an ordinance appropriating $506,469.12 from the general fund to the cap budget for 2026. This is basically, we passed the ordinance 2025-58 appropriating $5,006,469.12 to returning homes cap program for funding beginning in May 26, but the funding was not rolled into the 2026 budget. So this funding is unspent for 20. So basically, again, when we appropriate funds for a budget, you get to the end of the budget year, it goes away, right? It doesn't roll over. Grants, I think Comptroller Sherman, grants may roll over. I think we're looking to do big construction projects, that type of stuff. But just a normal budgetary area does not roll over to the next year.

I think when she did her rollover ordinance, she forgot to put this in there.

Oh, she forgot, because this is a grant. Okay, thank you, sir. So this basically just appropriating. Grants director. Just appropriating the money that we had already passed an ordinance to provide to clean up the paperwork. J.P. Ecke.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I make a motion that we pass 12.1 to the Fulcrum Court with a due pass recommendation.

I have a motion by J.P. Ecke to pass this. It's been one of those days, you know? By J.P. Ecke to pass this to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation seconded by J.P. Dennis. Any discussion? Seeing none, citizen comment. Seeing none, I have a motion by J.P. Ecke to pass this item to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation seconded by J.P. Dennis. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed? It passed. Okay, item 13, which was handed out to you, and you know I was going to do this in October, but we're going to be well into the budget, so that's the reason I pulled it back to September. So basically, again, in our budget, budget controls in our budget ordinance for 2026. It identifies that full-time equivalents and grade changes can only be discussed in the March and July. All this adds is that September to that same order of meetings that we're getting close to the budget season, that means they can bring them in to us going into the budget. I figure anything after that should just be part of next year's budget and we discuss it from that. So that was my reasoning. Motion? Oh, I'm sorry, J.P. Ecke.

I'd like to make a motion that this passes. Second. Full court, I mean, to the full quorum court with the due pass recommendation. Second. Sorry about that.

That's okay. Just join the crowd.

It's just, it's a virus that's going out.

Lopez is going to get it next. Okay, I have a motion by J.P. Ecke to pass this on to the full quorum court, due pass recommendation, and seconded by J.P. Lopez. discussion jp stafford i just want to make sure i understand it so it's going to be march july september and october no so by the controls it's march to discuss this march july and september

Okay, because this in front of me says October.

Yeah, sorry. Got it.

All right, that clears that up.

I was thinking about making it October, but since we're going to be well into the budgeting and having these discussions then, I was trying to not get into the budget season with one of those.

Got it. March, July, September. September. Okay, thank you.

Other discussion items? Citizen comment. Okay, I have a motion to pass this on to the full quorum court, the do pass recommendation by J.P. Ecke, seconded by J.P. Lopez. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed?

Aye.

It passes. Okay, the last item is citizens' comment. for a total of 12 minutes, three minutes each. If you have, if Susan would like to comment, please line up. Seeing none, thank you, everyone. Everybody. JP Lopez.

Yes, I'd like to propose a consent agenda with items eight, nine, 10, and 11, I believe. Or we can have, where is it? Yeah, eight through 11? Do I have a second?

Second. OK, I have a motion by JP Lopez to, I'll get there. Let's get the discussion. I have a motion by J.P. Lopez to have eight, nine, items eight, nine, 10, and 11 on the consent agenda for the quorum court, and a second by J.P. Washington. Discussion, J.P. Stafford.

I'd like to remove item 11 from that.

You'd like to remove 11 from that. 11? Yes. Did I hear you right?

Mm-hmm.

Okay. So I have... a motion to amend the motion to remove 11. Do I have a second? Discussion on amending the consent agenda motion. You have it on the amendment? J.P., I can.

Yes, there were eight, so can you recap?

Yeah, so eight, nine, 10, and 11. and the amendment which we're discussing now is to remove 11.

Okay, thank you for clarifying.

Yes, ma'am. Did I get a second? Oh, I did. It was J.P. Dean. So I have a motion to amend the consent agenda to remove 11 from J.P. Stafford, seconded by J.P. Dean. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Okay, back to the motion for the consent agenda. Now is, the amended consent agenda is eight, nine, and 10. JP Lopez, you still have the motion? You made the original motion. You have the second. Any discussion? Okay, so a motion by J.P. Lopez that the consent agenda is eight, nine, 10, the amended and seconded by J.P. Washington. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed. Okay, thank you everyone for attending. We're adjourned.