Quorum Court - Special Meeting

I don't even have mine on, to hear what he's telling the county resources that are responsible for the budget. That way we all hear it, we understand what he's told them, what they're working through, and I think I'd like to have seen this several years ago. It would have helped me out starting out. So that's the reason we're doing this tonight for everybody. Item two is prayer and pledge, and JP Ecke has agreed to do prayer and pledge.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for asking. Will you please bow your head in reverence? Heavenly Father God, we are so thankful that you created the United States of America and formed this government that we may have life, liberty, and freedom, and to pursue happiness. And this is something that is given to all of citizens of this great country. And we want to say thank you. And we invite you and your presence to be with us tonight to guide us in the way that we should go. And we so are grateful that Comptroller Paul Sherman came to be a part of Washington County's team. And we thank you and we bless he and his family. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen.

I pledge allegiance. and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, J.P. Ecke. Next item is the adoption of the agenda. Do I have a motion to adopt the agenda? A motion by J.P. Dean, a second by J.P. Dennis. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Thank you. Our only is the presentation, and he handed out, everybody should have paper copies on their desk. You wanna hit your button there, please, sir? Well, thank you very much, Comptroller Sherman, for doing this. I think it'd be good for all of us to hear this. Do you want questions as you go? Do you want them to hold? Just tell us how you want to go.

Questions as we go. As you go.

So just, if you have a question, just key in like you normally would, and we'll... We'll recognize you, you can ask your questions, we'll go from there.

Does that work? And you know, this is just procedural stuff. This is not like where we're putting money or debates about what we should fund and all this. This is just the process we use to get to the budget and talk about some of the account series and what is the requirements to go in that account series and all that kind of stuff. And the main purpose I did this is one of the things that I've recognized since I've been at the county, there's no training that goes on here as far as new people that come in. A lot of times they get thrown into a position or even if a new JP comes in, they just sort of have to learn by fire. The concept of this to me is when a new person comes in, they can come up to the comptroller section and hear this brief. And truthfully, maybe we might make it a requirement going into the future I call them resource managers within the departments who actually do the budgets. You might need to come every three years and hear this kind of brief or fiscal law or contracting or accounting. So basically, I've talked to purchasing, and the other entities involved and told them, we will be doing training going into the future on contracting, what goes into contracting, bids, et cetera, et cetera. If you get put over the, if a department puts you over you know, paying invoices or doing accounting, you need to come and listen to the accounting brief because I see it all the time. A department will throw somebody in and say, hey, now you're over making sure all the invoices get paid and all the POs are done properly and, you know, get accounted for right. And then what I see is a lot of times people will say, oh, they don't know what they're doing, blah, blah, blah, blah. But in reality, they received no training. So I came out of the military as a comptroller or even as a resource manager within one of the departments. Every three years, you had to go to a fiscal law class that was two days long that you felt like sticking a pen in your eye. after you've heard it once or twice but it's still good stuff to hear uh you know i might say p card might be a future uh training where you go over all the rules of the p card so if you if you're going to be a p card holder you need to come in sign off on that training that you received that training and all that kind of stuff so really it's I have a hard time holding people accountable for what they did when they don't know what they're doing because they didn't receive any training. So one of my goals this year was to do a training program and I said I'll be the first one to show everybody what I expect going forward when you say contracting's up. Whoever is gonna be the POC on that, hopefully it'll be similar to this training.

So yeah.

So basically there on the first one, what we're gonna go over, we're gonna go over the process timeline, the budget process timeline. We're gonna talk about the components of the budget, the personnel series, get into the step plan a little bit, full-time equivalents, and then we'll cover the 2000 series, which is supplies, 3000 series, which is other services, then 4000, which is capital outlay, 5,000, which is debt services, and then how we pull that all together after the departments give us their stuff, and we compare what your requests are compared to what's available. And then we do negotiation discussions to figure out like okay, what are we gonna cut, what are we not, et cetera. And then we'll talk about the budget controls a little bit. OK, so next slide. And I got the clicker. So there you go. You guys saw this last year. We're doing the same timeline this year as we did last year. So basically, we've already sent out the spreadsheets to all the departments. They're working on them now. Our deadline to be back to us is the 15th. And then we have one month to negotiate, discuss. The judge's departments, actually I set up individual meetings with each person that did each department's budget with the judge. They come and brief the judge their budget. And then he gives thumbs up, thumbs down, negotiate, however. The other sections that don't fall under the judge, I have those discussions myself with them. If I see stuff that might be out of whack or big increases that might need explanations, everybody sort of just briefs me on their budget. And where I hear that from all the judges department is in those individual meetings. And then I review everybody's individual budget that comes off their spreadsheets. And if I have any questions, I just go back to the POC. So by the 15th, all those negotiations and discussions should be done. and I send the quorum court a draft. That's the big spreadsheet. I'll try to send talking papers, all that kind of stuff. So then on September 8th, which is a scheduled meeting this year, this is when the big department, this'll be, not necessarily to vote on, this will be a discussion. That's when the big departments come in. If you want to see a department come in that's not on the list that we put down here, then that goes to JP Lyons and he says yay or nay on that. I did put the big ones on there. The other one that might be on there is human resources to talk about labor, too, and lay out any additional FTEs, what's the total cost going to be, et cetera, et cetera. And then outfield questions from a lot of the other departments. Yep.

And we bring these people in. Are they going to be bringing us specifics, such as what they want to purchase us next year, what they have purchased, what they've got in the deal? Let's say, for instance, you've got a department that's making payments on something. Are they going to give us briefings on all that?

Yes, that's a concept. And you will have already seen the budget. You'll be able to look at their department budget and then any questions you might have for them, they can field those questions. Last year, the other thing we did is if you guys had questions, I think J.P. Koger and J.P. Lyons sent a list of questions in, then I send out to the departments and try to get them back to you before the meeting. And then if you still have further questions, we still go from there. And then October 6th, that's the October, that's where I would then see starting to vote on the budget. And if it makes, so.

I'd just like, oh. Okay, I'd just like to add that it's very important, I think, that we add the Building and Grounds Committee to the special, to the ones that we're gonna hear, because they have a lot of money in their budget, and I'd like to hear from them. I think that they should be added to this special list.

Yeah, and that will be.

We'll do like we did last year, right? If you guys wanna see somebody pass it on, we'll look at it. I try to look at complexity. I think with some of the things we're gonna hear from buildings and grounds sometime in the next few months, we're probably gonna wanna hear them anyway.

Well, and one of the things, too, is buildings and grounds is going to brief at the services committee Monday because and it might not be like total budget, but I kind of and I don't want to get too much into the deal. I see what. From the comptroller point of view I got three priorities that I want you guys to make decisions on and I just throw them out there. I'm not saying These are the priorities. They're scarce resources and you guys are the ones that vote on it and say but building infrastructure I think we may need to make some decisions on building infrastructure around here. We got some old buildings Lots things like that IT, I still think IT has not, they're not to the point where they need to be in this world as far as, I think they're behind as far as technology, and all that kind of stuff. So it needs investment, as you know what it means. It needs money. And then the third priority would be labor. Because right now, partly because it's going to be a change of administration, everybody's coming to me and telling me what they want. And I'm like, well, I'll put it on the list, but I'm not the decision maker about what they want. So what I want to do is lay everything out to you guys, and then you guys make the vote and make the decision. And then on November 10 and December 8, it'd be the same thing, further discussion if we need further discussion. So is there any further questions on the timeline or how that works?

I got a question, it's not on timeline. Okay. It's a general question about buildings and grounds. Do we have like a list, and this might apply to a lot of things, you know, like an asset list of every building, every piece of property, every truck that we have?

There are, yeah, but yeah, there is. So that's one of the things that that Monday meeting's gonna be about on services, so yeah.

Okay. But that's a list we could get and look at right now, right? Just to wrap our head around what property we own, what we maintain.

Yeah, what property we own, how many vehicles, all that kind of stuff. Now, the other thing is, is I will say the other thing that the county's not great is inventory. You know, where I came from, you know, we're a little bit better at inventory, but I'm not saying that that's anybody's fault. It's just, you know, that's just the way it is. So then if we want to tighten things up, we tighten things up. So next slide. What is that? What are we on? Okay, this is where we are. Personnel services. So this is one of our biggest, this is where all the labor is. Of course you got full-time salaries you got part-time salaries That's anybody less than 30 hours a week, and then we got overtime other premium compensation And the lump sum vacation when people leave they get paid out their vacation and certification pay. Some people get extra pay based on having certain certifications. Some of the money flows through there too. When the sheriff's office does stuff with the university, it's basically just pass-through because the university reimburses premium and then really they reimburse the rates that the officers are expected that they pay. when they go over there and provide security. So that money flows through there. And then of course FICA. So FICA is made up of Social Security and Medicare. So it's 7.65% so that as an employer you match 7.65% of everybody's FICA. So we withhold it from their payroll and then we also kick in another 6.75% and send it to the federal government. There is a cap on the Social Security, but there's nobody in the county that really makes that much money. I think the cap right now is $185,000. So if you go over $185,000 in payroll, you don't pay Social Security tax after that. You just pay Medicare, which is 1.45% going into the future.

Thank you. You said that university, and I understand that, I've seen that for years, but do they pay the taxes on it? Or do they just pay the?

Yeah, I think the taxes are built in there. Yeah, and the sheriff is the one who sort of does that. When they bill them, they bill all that in there and pay it. Very good, thank you. So the next one is the retirement contribution. So this is big. I mean, I don't know if you guys, I don't think there's too many private companies in the nation that match 15.2%. So that's what we match. And I think the employee is about at 6%. It's changing right now. 6.25 is what they're gonna be, so the employee, we withhold 6.25% of their paycheck, but then we put in, we combine 15.32 And then we put that amount into APERS, goes to APERS for their account. So I mean, that is a great plan if you stick it out for sure. And I looked into APERS as far as their actual fund, and they are cash flush. They're good. Like I don't foresee, they're not in any kind of jeopardy as far as their fund goes. So that's what we pay. But that's a significant amount on top of the salaries of the employee. And then, of course, we've talked about health insurance ad nauseum, really, but right now we're up to matching. We put $12,000 a year for anybody who takes health insurance. So if they take health insurance, we deduct their premium out of their payroll, which I don't know what's the standard. I don't even know, like $250, $260? right yeah so there's tears but you see that we pay a significant amount like so I've never done the percentage on that but that is very good and and the plan is very good too sometimes I think the plans too good as far as you know maybe there should be some more restrictions but that's either here and they're there

Well, I know last year we picked up all the increases. I don't think we increased their, we kept their premiums at a point, and we took that on in our budget.

Yeah, when you say we pay, excuse me, when you say we pay $12,000, excuse me, does that mean it's, Moved into another account and held it's available for the payout, okay. So we're not really paying somebody that.

Yeah, we're not paying anybody that, because we're self-insured, so I manage that account too. So basically, every payroll, we move over about $360,000 a payroll. And what that is, that's everybody's premium that we take out of their check, and then $1,000 for every one of them from county general, basically. And the departments, that's all budgeted into their deal on the top of the spreadsheet. So when they, truthfully, we put in their salaries, and then they check them. because one of the things you have to account for in the salaries is when people are in the step plan and they're moving to the next step, and that could be all over the table. It might be in January, might be in June, it might be in December. So we take into account when that raise is gonna happen and put in pretty much the exact amount that we think it's gonna be. So we might go $5 over and that's it. So we cut it close on that but we never really run into real trouble because of turnover and all that kind of stuff and maybe vacancies. But then, once those salaries are in there, including the part-time, we have in that spreadsheet, the math is already built in there, and then we know everybody that takes health insurance, so we calculate that and put that in there for them.

JP Burns. Hi, Paul. You kind of halfway answer one of my questions, but if we have and we have a lot more than that, but let's say we have 100 employees and at the end of the year, we haven't hired but 90. So there's money left over from the 10 that we never had employed. What happens to that money?

it expires or I sweep it back with the sweep. So when I say expires, the appropriation expires every month, every year, every year.

So it's basically a cost thing. Yeah.

Yeah. And we've been over budgeted for a while. Like when I first got here, it was like 11 million. It got down to like 5 million last year. It's gonna get even tighter this year because of doing that unfunded stuff, unfunded requirements where, We acknowledge that you have a requirement, but you're running all these vacancies. I mean, the jails, the primary example I use, I think when I originally got here, they had 40 vacancies. Well, we're like, well, let's not fund all 40 of these. Let's fund 20. And then if you fill 20, hey, that's great news. Come back to the quorum court, and we can fund some more for you. but let's not just keep year after year funding those vacancies because the other thing that does is it allows people to move money around because you can move 1,000 money around and we'll talk about that in the budget controls later. The one thing about health insurance, though, that's a little bit tricky, and it's something that I did change when I got here, they originally put $865 when that was the amount for every single position, including vacancies, and including people that don't take the health insurance. For me, the whole thing about health insurance is you look at your risk pool. So I only want the people paying in that are in the risk pool. The people that are outside the risk pool, we don't necessarily need to budget $12,000 for them because they're not taking insurance. What you run in there though, we run into some problems. We're usually able to cover down because we can move 1,000 money around, but for a small department, let's say it's two people, because we got a couple people like that, they got a vacancy or they had two people, one didn't take health insurance and that person quits, the next person comes in and takes health insurance, they're kind of in a deficit for the year. So they might have to come back to the quorum court and say, hey, this person took health insurance. But I would prefer to do it that way versus over budget and have the 12,000 in the budget and somebody's not taking health insurance. Because, once again, that opens up, you can move, we have it where now you can move money within 1,000 series, so that opens up where you could do some stuff, you know. so we're the process of the unfunded requirements and that is a process of tightening the budget to true cash flow where we're not over appropriate an eleven million dollars a year you know I think it was down to five million I think it's gonna get even smaller like this year it's gonna be even smaller so we'll see it probably maybe the next finance committee, I'll have a labor report of where we're standing, labor, what we budgeted compared to where we are right now, so.

J.P. Massengill.

Yeah, I was just gonna ask you some more questions about the retirement plan. So you said the employees put in 6.25, is that optional? No. So it's mandatory, they have to, okay.

And then... Yeah, it goes into APERS, so that's just, if you're gonna be in the APERS plan, you're putting in 6.2%.

Okay, and then we add 15% to that? We do. Okay. So really, It's like 21 and a half percent?

Yeah, so every payroll, an employee is getting 21 and a half percent of their salary put into APERS.

Where do you get 15% on your money today?

Oh, yeah, nowhere. Nowhere. And is that like a 401k? Is that a, what do they call it, qualified plan?

Oh, APERS is an annuity, so it's not a 401k. So I'm sure they have their stuff invested in the market and through mutual funds and however they're investing these days. But they are, if you look them up, they're a solid fund. I mean, they

Is that A-P-E-R-S, APERS?

Yeah, it's A-P-E-R-S, I think. It's Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System. Yeah, and the teachers are in there, and some other people are in there.

Okay. And if they leave the county and go somewhere else, they get like a cash balance or something?

Here's the kicker, and I know this because I investigated for myself. If you leave the county, if you leave, you only get what you put in. Even if you're vested after five years, you don't get the 15%. So you vest in five years here, and then every five years it increases. But if you vest and you leave, first of all, you'd be eligible for annuity after five years if you vest. So if you make it five years, you're eligible for annuity for the rest of your life, and it's based on the high three of your salary. So if you left, you could take the choice at that point, if you're vested, to either take the annuity or take the 6% that you put in. I'll tell you the math is better to take the annuity for the rest of your life. But let's say if you don't make five years, then all you get back is your 6.2%. Okay, thanks. Yep. Workers comp, that's actually, we calculate workers comp and put it on the budget for everybody and that is through the AAC and they will hit us every year and say, hey, this is what your experience was, this is what we plan on charging you this year, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, so we put that in there. I'm not sure where that's run and do you have any idea per person? Yeah, so it varies based on your occupation too, which makes sense. Like I'm probably less dangerous as the comptroller sitting behind a computer versus the law enforcement officer that's out there arresting somebody, you know, so. Then the next one is life insurance. Life insurance we cover fully for all employees. It's only $72 a year, so for me, that's close to what I call budget dust, but it is, you know, we put it in there for everybody, and then that goes in there. I think the policy is 50,000. There has been some discussion about potentially upping that policy. But I think it's 50,000 right now. Some companies do three times your base or whatever. I don't think we're gonna go there, but there has been some discussion about potentially upping to 100,000. I don't know how that would affect the premium, but so. And then longevity, so after five consecutive years with the county, you start getting a longevity check once a year, and does that run on a tier or two? So 250 and then 500 when you hit 10 years, and then 650 when you hit 15. You know, it's some sort of tiered system. And we put that in there. So is there any question on labor? I mean, this is probably our biggest expense is labor. And there is a lot of pressure on labor. That's one of my priorities this year as far as I want the quorum court to be briefed on, OK, this is everything that everybody wants. This is how much it costs. have some negotiation on who gets what. You know, so.

Yes, ma'am.

I think the STEP plan is a good plan. I really fought hard for it. And I believe that our employees deserved a plan that they can plan their lives around. Where are we as far as the percentage of the total budget is labor costs? I know that I've always, when I was chairman of personnel, we had a target, Bobby Hill just drilled it into me. You keep your eye on 60% or below and you're doing great. Are we still at 60% or are we getting beyond that?

uh no we're not beyond that yet i don't think uh because when we calculated before it was 54 or something like that 52. now the one thing that's hard for me to judge is like as this covid uh mitigation money goes away as arpa goes away our budget will shrink which will cause the percentage of labor to go up because the percentage of labor is not gonna change, but the budgets are gonna, the budget this next year will probably be less than the budget that we did this year because of this year we put in $24 million of ARPA money, so. 25 and 26, so when we did the EOC and we did all that, and then truthfully, all that ARPA money, the other ARPA money outside of that was being budgeted too, so that money is quickly going away, which will cause the overall budget to go down, which will cause the percentage of labor to go up, which is all right. I still think we'll be below 60%. J.P. Lopez.

Thank you, Chair. And I have a few questions. They're fairly general here. Do we look for trends for unfunded positions? Like if, historically, we have a department who keeps certain positions open and they've never been funded. Well, they've always been funded, but they've never been filled. Are we tracking those things? We do? Okay. Yeah. And then my other question is, I know the STEP program is fairly recent. Have we seen any effect in turnover that you're familiar with? Have we seen anything where that's changed? Any job attrition? Is it lower?

Do we know? HR is telling me that the turnover is lower, yeah, that people are. And we're going to talk about STEP. plan next so some of these questions can come up. And I'll tell you also my thoughts on this step plan on how we can

And if that trend holds, right, if it's true and we can see it, does that translate to less cost for the county if we're not onboarding people as much? Does keeping staff on, does that affect us in a positive way?

Well, I think in general, that's what the business world thinks. Because if you have a lot of turnover, you're not just... just not processing them in it takes a while for them to get up the training and do all that you know what i mean so i think that anything that reduces turnover will create less cost for the county so and some of that i know uh director bennett's putting together some information first that i think at the july finance and budget she's going to present So we can, the next slide we're gonna talk about the step plan a little bit. So, you know, when I first got here, you know, through HR, myself, and I think IT was involved, and then Chief and Judge, there was when I first got here there was seven different plans sheriff had a couple the road had one and for example the roads plan had a cola built into it at I think it was like 4% and they were the only department that had that in there that should not happen like i don't know but i mean but cola cola is for the whole county you know so if there's a cost of living increase this whole step plan right here will shift so if you say if you guys approve uh two percent let's say you approve a two percent cola what we're going to change is that step plan we're going to multiply all those hourly figures by two percent And all it'll do is it'll shift the whole plan 2%. So currently, the step plan is, and I still am a proponent of the step plan, but one thing that I will say is it can be massaged. I mean, one thing I've learned here is an ordinance is only as good as the next ordinance. You guys could pass something one month and then turn around and say, ah, we'll go a different direction and pass it. past something else. So an ordinance is only as good as the next ordinance at this level. 5% seems right now, like I think 5%, this is just my opinion, is kinda high. It'll put pressure going forward when people step out. And there are people that are at step 10 right now, and there's discussion about, well, no, they don't get additional 5% raise because they're stepped out. And the way it works in the federal government is once you're at step 10, you move, you find a new job if you want a raise, unless you get a COLA. So some of the options that I foresee that you could do is you could make the steps less and then rely on Nicola to give people back to five. You know what I mean? If you, let's say the steps were three. And I'm not saying that this is how you do it. I'm just giving you options, you know. This is how, what I'm saying is we should not scrap the step plan if we're not doing it. If you feel that people aren't liking it, we should modify it, but don't scrap it. I think everybody should be on the same plan throughout the county. Because there was a lot of county employees before this step plan that felt like stepchildren that if their folks weren't up here fighting for them and willing to come in front of the court, everybody else got all the raises and then they got the scraps. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but sometimes perception is reality. The other thing that you could do there is the steps don't necessarily have to be every year. Because right now, let's say you come in as a county employee brand new, they put you in step one, in 10 years you step out. What you could do, and this is the way the federal government works, and I know the federal government doesn't do a whole lot right, but I do think that this is one of the things they do right. So you could have the first three steps be every year. The second three steps could be 18 months. The last three steps could be, or the middle four could be 18 months. The last three could be two years. So then if a county employee comes in at step one, they step out in 20 years. So they get a raise. The first three years they get a raise at 5%, 5%, 5%, if you stick it at that. And then it's 18 months before they get 5%, 5%, 5%, 5%. And then the last three years, it might be two years, they get 5%, 5%, 5%. So then you move through the step plan in 20 years and there's not so much consternation when somebody's at a step 10.

I'm sorry, JP Massingale.

Yeah, I'm just I've never fully understood Yeah, so the way it works the current procedures is is

Let's just say you come in as step one. On your anniversary day of when you started, that's when it is right now, that's the rules, the anniversary date when you started in one year, you're eligible for a step promotion. hr sends the supervisor or the hiring manager a form that says this person's eligible for a step do you want to give them a step yes or no if the supervisor signs circles yes and sends it back they get their five percent step If they say no, they're not getting their step, then it requires the elected officials that that person falls under, the elected officials signature, and also description why. And there should be documentation and evaluation that supports that they shouldn't get their step where they hadn't been performing up to par. So basically, when my people come up on their anniversary day, I get a thing from HR that says, hey, this person's eligible for a step. i circle yes and i do send back the evaluation at that time too keeps you on top of your evaluations first of all that's one thing uh and then if if somebody has you know is being treated unfairly and they say no then that supervisor has to justify why it's a no it's not just like the person just takes it so it's they have to say okay here's the evaluations that they've been not performing up to par and then the elected official also has to sign it so yeah so every step is one year right now yeah nine to ten is a one year yeah and they're all five percent all five percent

And I guess the other option is to move up in grade level. Right. Based on other, some other.

Right, so let's just say you're, if I stepped out and I was wanting more money, I would be looking at another job to apply for. You know, that's how. Within, if I wanted to stay within the county.

Thank you.

J.P. Bruns. Oh, I'm sorry, I hit next. JP Dennis was next, I apologize.

He's already started to quit.

Hang on, I gotta find him.

Okay, sorry. Did I do something wrong here? Sorry.

No, I did something wrong.

Are there any concessions within the county that if you have this is going to be totally. Once in a lifetime type deal. But what if you get somebody who's an exceptional can. And they could go and we need to hire them over the limit.

So right now, the current role is if you come in, you can be hired up to a step three. So when we actually budget on vacancies, we say we budget at a whatever grade it is, step three. That's what we put in the budget. And that's the deal. Now, if it was above the step three, there's not a mechanism in place to do justification. And it's also what they look at through HR is, OK, they don't want you coming in and basically at the same, doing the same job as somebody else who's been here for a minute and be, you know, step eight in their step. So they picked step three as the, that's as high as you can go up to.

I get that, but I'm saying once in a lifetime person comes in and of course the county wants to hire the best they can get. We miss out on them because we can't do an exception.

Right. And truthfully, that's the massage that I'm talking about that can be done with the step plan. I wouldn't put it blanket, but I would say, let's just say that that scenario wanted to be in there. There might be some verbiage in the plan procedures that say, hey, if you want to go against what's currently in the step plan, you need to justify it and have the approving official and things like that.

But that's not there right now.

It's not there right now, no.

If an elected official, somebody wants to bring somebody in on a higher step, they have to come to quorum court for it.

Yeah, I realize that, but quorum court has to have something to base it on.

Right, they would have to bring in a justification for doing that, and we would bring it in as an ordinance and vote on it, I believe is the way that goes.

And I think that what would be put out there would be, okay, these are the qualifications, these are the degrees that this person holds, these are the certifications this person holds, these are the need and all that kind of stuff.

J.P. Dennis?

Thank you, Chair. I may be repeating. I didn't hear everything that J.P. Bruns had to say there. I've had complaints, and not often do the employees bring complaints to J.P.'s, but a couple have. And one of the things that they said was, When this was initiated, their hire date had just passed. So they had to go a whole year before they got a raise. And then they were doing training and training a person who was hired. and that person was hired at the same amount they made. And so that was the complaint.

In the beginning, that was true.

How does that person ever catch up? I mean, you've shorted them at the beginning, and since it's based on percentages, not dollar amounts, then you're behind on the percentages the rest of your life.

Yeah, slightly.

I mean, yeah, I'm sorry. Huh? You said yes, sorry?

No, I said slightly. You're behind slightly the rest of the time. Like if you do the math, it wouldn't be like that intense. For me, when we first did this, I was trying to say anybody in the out years, let's say that they, because there were people in that case that their anniversary dates were at the end of the year, and then when they got it, it was like, you know, and we tried to work through it, It was difficult to work through. But that problem should be gone now.

But it was never corrected.

Yeah, never corrected for the individuals that are still here, yeah. Right. Yeah.

If you do the percentages on that, that adds up to be a lot of money over a career.

Yeah.

Thank you.

J.P. Lopez.

Thank you, Chair. Quick question here. You had brought up some other ways that we might think about doing this in the future by keeping this framework, either by delaying it or building in a COLA. Would it be like, and again, this is just me thinking through it. I know that we're not discussing anything at the moment, but I'd love to get your opinion on this. So is COLA just, I know it's for cost of living adjustment and is that just based off like CPI or are we just looking at like a consumer price index and then adjusting it for how we think purchasing power is falling in the year?

We would follow, my suggestion would be follow what the federal government does. Okay. Okay, that makes sense. Lately, they've been coming out with like 2%, 3%.

I know that's the goal. The Fed goal is always around 2.5% for inflation, but I guess the question would be in instances where it's debatable that we're higher, would we still want to implement a cap? never exceed 5% that a step would go. I mean, that's probably not a...

The one thing is, if you do a COLA, the COLA has to be applied to everybody, not just one or two, you know what I mean? So in that case, you couldn't say, oh, the COLA's gonna take you over five, so you're not getting the COLA. Because what happens is, is if you guys vote a 2% COLA, this whole chart shifts. We just multiply all those figures by 2%.

And I think coal is something we decide on year over year through the budgeting process and our votes. It's not something that would be put into the plan in my mind.

That makes sense. Thank you.

Yeah, like this particular last year, like up here, I advised against a COLA because of health care costs rising and covering, and I was not a very popular person the next two weeks. As a comptroller, resources are scarce, and that's just one thing you think about.

I'm in that bucket. I mean, I'm sorry. If it's a 5% step, I won't even consider COLA. It makes no sense. There's nobody I know of in the industry that got anywhere near 5%. If I look at my colleagues that I work with, I think they were lucky to get two or three, just period. Again, if we're gonna consider COLA, and it may be something we need to with some of them hitting 10, which means they won't get steps anymore. But if we do that, then I think we need to adjust it. Anyway.

Is there any more questions on the step plan? Because the next slide, we're gonna talk about FTEs a little bit. So in the budget, I just pulled the jails as an example. But in the budget, The budget that we publish, every single department has this up there. So basically, it tells the count, the number of FTEs, and what the grade is. So if you look down there, let's just use corporal detention. There are grade 13s. There's 59 of them at the jail. uh and you and and so this this kind of fte uh count is broken out for every department so for me the quorum court has control over the amount of money that is uh appropriated for labor and also the number of FTEs that the county can have and it's broken down by department too. That's why if anybody wants additional FTEs, they have to give a justification to the quorum court. So those are the two things that are basically the power of the purse of the legislative body, which is the quorum court here.

Yeah, right now, my understanding is if they want to give a promotion to a new grade, that's got to come here. If they need a new position, it's got to come to the quorum court. And if they want to add a position, increase it, yeah.

If they want to add a position or increase the number of grades, it's supposed to come to the quorum court, yeah. Now, let's say that somebody vacates a 18, and they're going to apply. Somebody within is going to apply. They don't have to come back to the quorum court. That person is going to go into the 18 because it's vacant. If they have an 18, they don't have to come back to the quorum court. Those two mechanisms together, the number of FTEs and the total cost of labor is how you guys control the personnel funds. Is there any questions on? we got we have 20 people right now so there is some discussion about that that's why I just went through that brief as far as it can be massaged it can be however we want to do it I think there's 20 that are at 10

No, I agree.

Sorry. Okay.

So just to repeat that, I think what was said was there's 20 staff members on the county payroll that are currently at Step 10 was the discussion.

I think that's the number, yeah. It's close to that.

You're cued in, go ahead, please.

I think that's actually too, if you guys remember, Jess recently sent out an email to all you guys, and that's what the discussion was, that she gave two options. I was in favor of option two, which was right now, I'm still in favor of if you step out, you step out. and you're stuck, or apply for a new job somewhere else, or massage this plan, you know what I mean, to make it where, let's say you did 3% and add 2% COLA, then those people are getting a cost of living raise, because everybody gets the cost of living raise.

And again, I'm having a lot of fun tonight. But I have a question. So it might be better for budget controls. And if it is, we can save it for then. But in something where you have like 59 positions that we see here, this could be simulated. It doesn't matter. But In those unfilled positions, because all of that is budgeted in that 1,000 line item, things like overtime, would that just be that you can, do you have to get an approval to move something from like another position that's budgeted for to pay for that overtime, or is overtime already budgeted in?

No. Right now, a department can move money within 1,000 series without coming back. So if they got money in their budget in 1,000 series, they can move it to part-time or do whatever they need to do to cover down. That's partly what my push is to shrink the actual appropriation closer to the cash flow. That's the concept. That's why I came up with the unfunded requirement deal. Like, I get it that you got 40 vacancies, but historically you've never filled 20 of them. Why don't you unfund 20 of them so we don't keep over-appropriating money? And truthfully, the jail was willing to do that. They did it. They did it, and it's not.

So. JPMassengill?

yeah just trying to wrap my head around this so this this chart right here for the step plan i guess going back these numbers don't change at all so at some point in the future when maybe we're you know if we become non-competitive with these entry level We'll have to move or adjust it somehow.

You can adjust it. I mean, let's say that in the future, truthfully, I don't believe we're non-competitive right now as far as pay and all that kind of stuff and certain things. health insurance is very good, all that kind of, the pension is very good if you're a survivor, you know, and make it to the deal. But if they were, that's what I'm saying, is this plan could be massaged and changed. But I still am a proponent of let's not go back to everybody has their own plans and let's work with the plan we got and let's try to make it suitable for everybody.

Need to be a consistent plan, I think, one. But again, through the budget process or an amendment to the ordinance is the way we would modify that, right? Of course, if you give a COLA, then it modifies all of them.

Right. But at some point, I mean, maybe 10 years from now, this might be out of date.

That's right.

We would have to, well, you're saying we're bringing people in up to grade three? Are most people hired in at grade three? It depends.

They have to justify it to HR. So if they want to bring them in at a grade three, they do have to justify it to HR.

Step three. Step three, yeah. Step three.

OK.

all right thanks forgive me jp dennis thank you uh forgive me but uh so quorum court has quite a bit of power yeah well i'm going to vote no on your budget all the way through until the ones that were treated unfair get the special consideration of another raise. Gotta have gone, you know. Where you have the power to make an amendment. They went a whole year without getting a raise. Yeah, copy, I'm good. Okay, thank you. And I'll ask others to join me.

Well, and let's just remember, if you don't like it, you have the power to bring an amendment to the table when we're discussing it.

I'll do that too, thank you. Anybody else?

I think we're good, go ahead, sir.

OK, so that's personnel. So that's the 1,000 series. So now we're going to go on to the 2,000 series. In some of this, I'll probably need help from my accountants. So Jennifer and Rebecca are the actual people that do the work.

We're well aware of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. So general supplies, that's basically consumables. Small equipment, that's anything under $5,000, non-consumables. Janitorial supplies. Food. I do want to talk a little bit about food. One of my goals since I've been here was to reduce the amount of food that's bought on taxpayer dime. One of the things that is a requirement, you can certainly eat on taxpayer dime, but it's supposed to be in conjunction with training that the person is missing at lunch or et cetera. And some of that, and I'm not saying that nobody should eat ever. I'm just gonna use the roads example. Let's say that they did that 200 miles of roads, everything was good. They wanna have a safety brief and order barbecue or whatever. I'm good with that. But you have a sign-in roster that says, okay, this is what was taught. And you have some sort of safety brief in conjunction with that. So fire extinguisher safety. And they usually do that. But what you don't do consistently is quarterly... have meeting somewhere and call it team building or whatever so we have slowly been cranking down on that and I don't want to like totally do away with it truthfully but just do it within the limits what I always tell people is if you're comfortable with it being posted in the paper and Have at it. If you can explain yourself of why you ate wherever you ate and da-da-da-da-da, and this was associated with training, then you do that. I'll tell you the senior leader's meeting stopped food. And now every other week we just have a meeting in the morning. If donuts are bought, chief usually buys them out of his pocket. And that's slowly, everybody is getting better at that, I will say that. And I think it was culture when I first got here, and we've been putting the word out, and I've been seeing it get better. That's one thing that we get written up on, usually there's a discrepancy in there about food a little bit. Yeah.

J.P. Burns.

Thanks, sir. You know, $3,000 a year is way too much for food.

Yeah, it depends on what size your department is, I would say.

Well, you know what I'm talking about, and you know it's way too much money.

Yeah, well, I'm not sure what department you're talking about, but in general, hold on, and food is different. This isn't travel, right? Yeah, just not travel.

Yeah, and I don't have a problem with travel, but what's the stop?

Now, I will say, here's the other thing about food. So if the mayors are coming in and meeting with the county judge, I think food's fair game. Things like that where there is... Certain you get certain benefit out of it crosstalk that you know what I mean And there's other departments like that too.

I mean, that's it's just well, I like your conversation except the fair game part I I do believe that Most of those type meetings are going to be pre-arranged And my question is, why can't we pre-arrange the cost and get bids and bring in food and know what it is ahead of time instead of just, I just have a real problem spending $3,000 a year on it. on food, that's, I mean, we got things out here that need to be done, and we can't do it because we're spending $3,000 on food.

Yeah, well, there's a lot of departments that are, there's a lot of food in a lot of departments. So it slowly has gotten better. The other thing in food, too, is if you look in the courts, they do buy food for juries, and they bring food in. So they might get Jimmy John's or whatever, you know, and da-da-da-da-da.

Yeah, that's going to, that can be covered in an ordinance that they can have that ability. What I'm talking about is, you know, not the courts, but throughout the rest of the county I think we need to have a some tighter guidelines on food being purchased yeah well I've definitely been working on just tightening down on food in general so well thank you for your work

So the next one is fuel, oil, and lubricants. That's when people get their anything on the fleet, take it to Grease Monkey, or take it to wherever they take it, and we pay that bill. And of course, we did bring in the fuel island this year, and I think it's close to being complete. There's actually fuel in the tanks already. And slowly people we're going to try to get people moving towards that fuel island versus out and about Computer equipment that's anything under five grand and then parts and repair All that Well, we won't talk about where we need the money. But one thing that you might see pop up in the labor this year is a fleet manager. And I am a fan of having a fleet manager, where people are buying their vehicles from the same place. People are getting their cars serviced at the same place. Because you gain economies of scale and negotiating power. That way and so But that's we won't totally go there, but you might see that on when we talk about labor and FTEs Is there any question on the 2000 series JP Dean Thank You chair

On the fuel oil and lubricants, all of that's going to be kind of watched and monitored, and whoever gets to fuel will have to sign it out and stuff like that.

Yeah, so there'll be, on the fuel in particular, there's gonna be key fob, like a fob that you go and it'll have what department you're in and all that kind of stuff. So when you do it, it'll kick out the report. And right now, the road department covered down on the first load of fuel, but then as people use it, probably, we haven't figured it out yet, we're either gonna do it monthly or quarterly. We'll do accounting for the people, the other departments that go and use that fuel. It'll come out on a report. And then we'll transfer from their department to the roads department. Because the other thing you can't get into, roads money needs to be used for roads. So anybody outside the road department that's using the fuel, that's cool, but they need to pay it out of their department. Thank you. Okay, so now we'll go on to the 3000 series. So other professional services, that's any time you contract out for any kind of service. I think, what goes it? Labor type things that people might do. Is it legal under there? No, legal has some.

OK, legal has some.

So other professional services, I don't know. Painting, would that be one? Oh, okay. So if we need to contract out, like if it's above our technician's ability to fix the HVAC or something like that, so other services, that's what that is.

So the county clerk contracts out to do some of the ordinances online and that type of thing. That would come under professional services. She contracts out to the work to take the ordinances and put them online, as an example. That would be, right, okay.

Okay, did anybody hear that? Like the county clerk, you said county clerk? County clerk, yes. Yeah, so they contract for a company that actually puts the stuff online so the public can see it. Postage, cell phones, pagers, and radios. I don't know who has pagers. I guess there's still pagers around. So now, here's one, though, that gets tricky, and I don't necessarily like how these next three are broken out, just myself. but travel is toll fees baggage fees parking so when you go on a trip and you come back and you give us your whole form that has all the things that you're entitled to be reimbursed on my rap department which is Two people who are very good, who process 16,000 transactions a year. So they are workhorses and they get it right most of the time, every time. And what they'll do is, so when you put in your travel form, any time toll fees, parking, or baggage fees, they're gonna put under travel. And then if you look at common carrier, that's flights, Ubers, and taxis. And then mileage is vehicle mileage on your personal vehicle used for county business. If you drive, and we've had this situation, like somebody wants to drive, let's say if you drive to New Orleans, we're going to reimburse mileage but only up to the standard plane ticket so whatever's less so if you if you fly if you don't fly and you drive to california and you're entitled to twelve hundred dollars mileage you're not gonna get twelve hundred dollars you're gonna get whatever the mileage whatever the cost of a plane ticket out there is so um and then meals and lodging of course is per diem on meals and that is a set deal for every single location metropolitan location we look up and say okay if you go here the it's a hundred dollars a day if you go down here and it's not a populated area it might be 75 a day on the first day you get 75 on the last day on your travel days you get 75 of your per diem so But all four of those kind of are based around people traveling elsewhere. And then dues and memberships, that's all, you know, when people belong to the AAC, they belong to whatever your society is, the assessor probably has a deal, the sheriffs probably have some, you know, that they're members of. A lot of times when you go to those conferences, you gotta be a member or the price is much higher, you know, so that's what that is. Training and education, that's actually the cost of conferences, classes, and continuing education. Leased machinery and equipment, that's copiers, leased equipment. We've recently started cranking down on the copiers, getting everybody consolidated on that. At one time, I think it was more of a free-for-all. And so we're trying to gain some efficiency and purchasing Power, negotiation power, you know, doing that.

And then software and maintenance agreement.

That's any kind of software, and of course, that's high. You know, software is high these days. So that's where your deal is. So is there any questions on 3000?

J.P. Koger. Thank you, Mr. Chair. If I understood you correctly, a while ago you mentioned that they could transfer between line items under the $1,000. What about under this one, the $3,000?

They can transfer within. The last slide on this is all about budget controls on how people can transfer.

Okay. So wait until then?

Yeah, that'd be good. Any other questions? Okay, so 4,000 series is capital. It's anything tangible over $5,000. I think right now the bid threshold is 33,000, is that right? 42,000. So if you're under that bid threshold, you don't have to bid it out. It can be a single source, you can go. Vehicles, machinery and equipment, computer machinery and equipment, we're talking servers, not necessarily laptops, right? Because the laptops are... These days, I definitely consider keyboards and that stuff consumable. Laptops are getting close, but servers and high-dollar stuff is capital. dang okay some vehicles i have vehicles on mine twice but i took it off i think for you guys so um is there any question on uh capital and we'll get into budget controls like on that last page and we'll talk about that a little bit your light wasn't on

Go ahead.

Go ahead. Are there any controls for purchasing equipment and like, for instance, IT and you're buying us computers and so that we can have them for use here. And are they to be shipped here to the IT department? Or can we have them shipped to the individual?

No, everything is supposed to be shipped to a county address. So it should never be to a personal address.

OK. And then how is equipment? checked in? I mean, do we have, like for instance, and I'll stay with computers, do we have computers that are like the serial numbers addressed in IT or in individual departments?

Correct, well IT should be tracking everything and I think we're slowly getting there. I think there was a situation this year where a group bought a whole bunch of HP laptops and I mean basically the IT department's Dell and doesn't service HP. So one of the things that I've been trying to get across to everybody is you need to be talking to IT if you're gonna buy computer equipment. for sure, to make sure that it can first get on our network, this day in cyber security, and then also, if you're expecting support from IT, you need to be buying certain type of equipment. They do have an inventory system of keeping track of all that, and they're flushing that out, and we do have what we call, is it called the fixed asset manager? The fixed asset manager sits in buildings and grounds. So anytime anybody buys any type of capital, it also goes through her and she puts it on a list and keeps the inventory of all the capital around here. That's vehicles, everything.

All right, thanks, sir.

So that's basically it for 4,000 series and 5,000 will be real quick and then we'll talk budget controls.

So next slide.

So debt service, they're the leach purchase principle. And really, the only thing we have in debt service right now is the Johnson Controls contract. And are the graders in there? Are they just straight leased? Yeah. Yeah, so actual debt, even though we still have to report the legislative audit, all of our leased equipment we do put as liabilities. Like every year the legislative audit says, okay, give me all your liabilities and then we look at every leased piece of equipment and it's all on there. But as far as debt service, the only debt service they issued, I don't know, I think it was a company issued bonds on behalf of the county through a bank, and that paid for that Johnson Controls. It was originally an $8 million deal. There's still about $6 million left on that debt. That is the only debt that I consider really that the county has. I don't necessarily consider like the lease graders as debt. It is a liability, but it's not necessarily debt because we would, you know, it's just part of doing operations around here. Any more questions on debt?

I think that... JP Massengill.

Yeah, so where do the graders go? Is that 3,000? It would be under capital, under, what is it? Leased equipment. The account number's 3073. You can see, like, my accountants know all the numbers off the top of their heads. Because they've been doing it so long. And that, like, so buildings and grounds, I mean, the road department, the director of the road department, he'll put in his budget under that line item, leased equipment, 30, whatever it is, that the payment that he has, it's 400 and some thousand, I think, every year that he pays for those 13 graders.

J.P. Bruns? Yes, sir. On that, now that you mentioned the computer for Johnson Control situation, I had a question on whether, when was that bought?

Oh, man. Six years ago, maybe? 2020? You've been on the courtroom court that long? Oh, my God. Yeah, around 2020.

Now Beth, I know you're not older than me.

About six years ago, I think. Okay, so it was bought, and then have we ever used it? Well, what it was was it's a deal where they came in here and changed out a lot of stuff on the thermostats and trying to make things more efficient. I think the, don't hold me to this though, but I think that solar field behind the jail was part of that and all that kind of stuff.

Okay, back to my question. Have we ever used it?

Well, they came in and did everything. Now, whether we're gaining benefit off of it, I don't know the answer to that question.

How can we find out?

Probably dig into the electric bills and all that kind of stuff. Because the concept was it would reduce our electric bills, water bills. I don't know if they did anything with the toilets, flushing less water or whatever. Yeah.

Somebody hadn't installed it though.

So Johnson controls came and installed it.

Yeah, they installed it. They did. Okay.

Yeah. Thank you, sir Yeah So Basically this So those are all the discussions about the different deals of the budget and each individual department. So we send out the spreadsheets to everybody. They send them back to us. And then what happens is we enter them in the master spreadsheet. That master spreadsheet, and you guys have seen this one. This is one of my favorite things to look at and report. So, and Bobby, he gives us the projections. And what he does, Treasurer Hill, he says on that first line, he says, okay, this is the carryover money. So that's what's left in the bank. And then he makes projections of new revenue that's gonna come in. And then that's the total amount of money that we would have to budget that year. So if you look at county general, he's on this particular year, this is 26, 18.2 million rolled over into county general. 40 he projected 47 million coming through the door so we had 65 million to budget basically for county general so that's anybody who falls under county general so there's like I mean, there's a lot of different departments that roll up into there. Then by state law, you have to hold back 10%. And that's them sort of protecting you from overspending. So he basically takes that 10% out, which is 6.5 million, now that's 65. And then he says, okay, county general has 59 million to budget. and when you added up all the budget requests when it was pulling from all those spreadsheets from every department anybody who was under county general came to 57 million and then what pops out of there the difference between those two what's available to budget and the requested budget that's the unappropriated reserve so that is what people can come back and ask for through the year and hit that now one of the things um in legislative audit you'll see that that employee insurance fund has a negative account negative number on the deal those first three uh 1,000, 1,001, which is the reserve fund, and 1,002, which is employee. That is all general money, county general. It's not broken out necessarily. Bobby keeps track, it's a fund, but that money is not sitting in separate accounts necessarily. It's in county general. um and why i'm getting at that is we had the discussion with the aac does like that reserve fund technically functions as unappropriated reserve because it's all the same money um Now, I think we've made the decision that we don't necessarily, we want to keep it where we say, okay, all the departments, you're dealing with this threshold of money based on what we have just in the $1,000, and we take the $1,200 out of it. But technically, according to the law, that 1,002 counts as county money. We wouldn't have to hold back anything on that because we already held back 10%. And we do that for every single fund and it pops out the unappropriated reserve. So last year when we started the year, we were 1.9 million in an unappropriated reserve. What that tells me is departments that fall under county general can come back and ask for money until that 1.9 million runs out. Sometimes when we recognize money that comes through the door, it'll have an effect of bumping up that unappropriated reserve. But usually that's not more than what people are asking for. Usually that's 50 grand here or a small amount there. So this report I'd like because what's gonna happen is, let's say that everybody submits their budget and I don't think this will happen, but let's say that there's no unappropriated reserve, like where unappropriated reserve's negative, you need to sharpen your pencils, you know, and figure something out, unless you guys wanted to make the decision to use some of the reserve money, which that could be the case, you know, we'll see. But for a government entity, we're still doing very good. We have very little debt. We have a reserve. There's some counties like that. But I do think Placid County was holding a bunch of money in the reserves when they had to move money over, and they weren't covering down on their county general. But I do think they had that money in reserve somewhere. Is there any questions on that?

I'm sorry. JP Ackie.

I do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Is interest rate, I mean interest that we gain on our reserves, where is it calculated and where is it registered?

Bobby, or Treasurer Hill.

Treasurer Hill.

Bobby happens to be my friend, so I call him Bobby. But Treasurer Hill, he puts it back into County General, but he does keep track of everything. There's not a separate account for interest.

So it's just put back into County General.

It's put back into County General.

Every month.

Yep, as it comes in. I mean, that's why that projected new revenue, if you see under 1001, the reserve fund is 398,000. He's assuming that that's what the interest is gonna be on that, probably.

That's great.

Yeah.

OK. Just wanted clarification on that. Thank you.

And that's one of the things is, on all this ARPA money we've been holding, we have been getting interest on that, which is totally legal. And you put it back into the deal.

That's just being smart.

Yeah. Yeah. So the interest money does come back in and gets put into the fund. And then where you would see that available for budgeting is the next year because Bobby would put it in his projected care. It would be in the carryover, you know, because it would be in the bank. Money would be in the bank. So that's where that money would show up for budgeting later.

Thank you. Just one more question. Refresh my memory on how often we do a sweep, like on the salary sweep. Is it quarterly?

No. Now we do it once a year by October.

Okay, by October. Okay. Thank you. And you changed. Appreciate that.

Or it does say at the discretion of the comptroller too, but I would have to come, like if I do a salary sweep, I have to come and present an ordinance to you guys saying, hey, I'm sweeping this much money and this is where it's going. For me, what I would like to get to is say, okay, if we wanna invest in something and we know in September that we're probably gonna end up let's say it's before october and we say we're projecting that we have two million extra appropriated in uh the personnel funds what i would like to do is hey we're going to purchase something let's salary sweep out of here and keep it budget neutral like that's truly budget neutral where you're not appropriating additional money the money's just moving from one uh the personnel to whatever we want to buy Yeah, so.

J.P. Ria Stafford.

Thank you. Okay, so something you said raised an interesting question. So the interest that the county earns on the ARPA money that's sitting there, does that become general fund money that we can use for anything, or is that?

It becomes general fund. Okay. It does not become ARPA money.

Okay, that's what I was wondering. Okay, so it doesn't have to be used for ARPA. No. It can be used for anything.

That's right.

Okay. Yeah. Great.

Yeah. So next, we have what you guys want to talk about, budget controls. So budget controls right now is if you need additional FTEs, you need to come with justification. If you have a new capital request, anything over 5,000. So if you're buying a new car, if you're buying new graders, if you're buying a roller, if you're any kind of like, if you're gonna redo a building, that has to have some sort of justification in the budget. So you guys see that usually the tabs for each individual department are the department numbers and then the salaries and then a justification tab for any kind of capital that they're requesting. And that's one of the things when you bring up the big departments like roads IT sheriff they're gonna explain Those capital requests here at the quorum court. I mean, that's that's the concept I Now, movement of funds, personnel funds, you can only move 1,000 series within 1,000 series. You cannot move money out of 1,000 series without coming and asking the quorum court, or you can't move money into 1,000 series. So out of or into cannot be done without asking the quorum court via ordinance.

So in that, so that's really just moving money between like full time salary, part time salary, overtime. Right. Kind of, right?

Yeah, or let's say that you had a vacancy that was sitting there, a couple vacancies, and somebody comes on in the middle of the year and they take health insurance and you need to cover down for that, let's say in June, so you need to cover 6,000. You could move some of those monies off that vacancy to cover down on the insurance.

But because we, I mean, I think when I first got here with some of the plans were, we saw some of the vacancy funds being used to pay for promotions and that type of thing.

That's correct.

But they weren't coming through the quorum court at that time. Now they gotta come through the quorum court so there's a little bit more control on that being done today.

If they're asking for additional FTE or an additional grade, now if they have a vacancy and a grade, they wouldn't have to come back.

Well, a vacancy you're hiring in is something you already have. And again, the way we have it now with what they have to come through us with, even if they have money, they may have money sitting out there in a vacant position, that they decide to use, and that's part of their justification of bringing it to us, because they don't need any more budget, but they still have to come to us to get that grade increase for that position,

If they're increasing the grade on the position, yes. But if it's totally vacant, they wouldn't have to come back, you know what I mean? Let's say that they have somebody that's gonna get promoted, let's just, for easy, going from a nine to a 10 or something, and they have a vacant nine, a vacant 10, they could promote that person into that 10 without coming to the court.

Without coming to us, okay, thank you.

Yeah. and the key here is is getting the appropriation closer to cash flow so gaming of the system cannot take place and that's what we're slowly have done over the last two years and that's what the step plan also helps with jp ecchi i have a question regarding the automated funds that certain elected officials have and

I know when I've mentioned, well, why don't you use your automated fund? No, that's my money. I'm gonna use it for what I want. I'm not gonna use it for anything else. And I think that that is money sitting in the account And under budget controls, I guess we can say, when looking at their requests, no, you use your automated fund. We cannot tell them, we cannot tell them how to use their automated fund. That's up to them, that's their discretion. But we can also say, no, we're not gonna fund that.

That's right. We're not gonna fund that if you want it,

If you want, you can use your own money. And it's time for them to use their own money. Because a lot of times.

I would say that some of them do use their money. Some, yeah. There are people who have like a ton of their salaries in their automated funds or whatever. And we appreciate that.

And we do know who they are because they work with us very well. But there are those that's like, no, my money's my money. And another question is, can those automated funds be used to take out staff members for lunch? Is that within the?

No, because that's taxpayer money too. I mean, everything here is taxpayer money.

I know that. So it is regulated.

That is regulated, yeah. I mean, unless you're having a safety meeting or some sort of training, that's the difference. And if you have a month.

And during the financial audit, that would be disclosed whether they used it or whatever.

That'd be looked at, yeah. Financial audit looks at everything. It doesn't matter what fund it is.

That's good to know.

Yeah.

All righty. Thank you.

J.P. Massengill.

Yeah, I may have missed it. What's automated fund?

Well, there's certain elected officials that have separate funds. I don't want to say they get a cut, but it's a certain percentage. It's fees collected. It's basically the treasurer's commission. So the treasurer actually takes a commission So that's an example of a department that two of his employees sit on the general fund and two of his employees sit on his, whatever that fund's called, what is that fund called? Treasurer's Automation Fund. So he does have two employees that sit in there and two employees that sit in the general. So. So that's personnel funds. So supplies, people can move money within supplies and they can also move to the 3000 series. They can move to capital right now, but it has to be less than 20,000 to move to capital. And that's total, you can't do two 20,000 moves in a year. So let's say you move 5,000 to buy a piece of equipment, and then later you wanna buy 15,000, you could move that. If you wanted to buy something else, you can't move anymore. So the deal is you can move it within 2000 series, you can move it to 3000, but if you wanna move it to 4000, you're capped at 20,000 right now. And then the 3,000 series is the same way. You can move money within 3,000. You can move money to 2,000. And you can only move a total to 20,000. And that includes what you might have done out of the 2,000 series. So the moving money in and out of capital, 4,000 is capped at 20,000 total for the years. no matter where you're bringing it from. And you can take it out of capital up to 20,000 into your 2,000, 3,000. That's the current budget controls. 4,000 series, you can move any 4,000 series within capital, and you can move to two and 3,000, but again, it's capped at 20 grand is the current budget controls as far as moving money around. That's what the departments are able to do. The one thing that I'll say here is I am a believer that the legislative body appropriates money and the executive branch executes money. So I just don't think that You just have to be careful of you guys getting so in the weeds. An example of that was the 1000 series before I got here. It was by line item. If a line item was short by $300 when I got here because of whatever, we would have to come to quorum court and ask for $300 just to pay the person. And me watching $129 million as comptroller and I can't move $300? You know, it's.

No, there's a line. Yeah, there's a line. These controls are based, because we put these in our budget ordinance every year, they're the controls or are they based on other state code, best financial practices or anything like that?

Yeah. I would say that's correct, right? I'm sorry? Quorum court controls them.

We do them. Yeah. But there's nothing, these aren't, so we can add, we can modify.

Yeah, you could.

There's no state, underlying state code says you got to have these. That's right. I'm just trying to make sure I understand, okay.

All right. But the one thing I would say is just what I talked about because you do have to be careful of not bringing normal operations to a screeching halt because one of the things is like there's emergency situations that we might not be able to wait a month or whenever it happened where you come, have to go through finance committee and then wait till the deal and so. And then the salary sweeps we talked about, that's done at the comptroller's discretion. I'm trying to, like I say, one of my goals is to bring the appropriation of 1,000 series personnel money closer to the actual cash flow. And we've been successful with that, truthfully. Is there any questions on budget controls?

JP Wilson. Thank you. On the part at the beginning of that page where you talk about the FTE request, of course we've heard those before. I understand why it's necessary at times. When I think in terms of the growing population in this county, it makes me I don't want to say this. It seems to me like we would be having many more FTE requests. It just comes with growth, which means our budget grows too. And I'm sure there's a correlation there somewhere, but in the future, should we be anticipating Because we're doing more volume of work in every department.

I think you're about ready to see some FTE requests in this budget year right now. So that's going to be, Jess I think is going to brief that at the finance committee, the HR director, either, I'm not sure when, in July or June. And for me, it's one of the priorities as far as when I say, how are we gonna divide the scarce resources? In my opinion, the three big priorities are building infrastructure, IT, and labor. That's just from my point of view.

But I'm thinking, Of course, you said we're gonna have some FTE requests this year, I understand that, but looking down the road, I would think we would have some, I mean, I don't know how many to anticipate, I don't know if anybody does, but should we be building in our budget because we're doing more and more with the people we have. We're serving a bigger population. Right.

I think that it should be looked at every year, and I think you'll see a significant request this year. And then you guys can make the decision.

I mean, that could be any year going forward, I guess, right?

Could be, yeah. It depends on, like, every year on how a department feels or whatever. One of the things that affects this, too, is annexation. So anytime one of these cities annex... something from the county. First of all, our sales tax revenue goes down. It could be the split on the road millage changes because, for example, the 1% road millage we split, Fadville gets 80%, we get 20 because they basically maintain their roads. Springdale, same way. Some of the other towns are 50-50. But in theory, if they annex something, then you don't have to serve whatever you were serving there anymore. So if it's roads, you don't have to service those roads anymore if they annex a neighborhood or whatever.

Thank you.

J.P. Burns.

Thanks, sir. I think this is probably a no-nonsense type of question, but my question to you is, when we get all these FTEs, all 600, 700 of them this year, then are you and your staff going to already have them reviewed to know whether we are where the money's coming from? So if we have questions, you'll

Oh yeah, like we'll know like the number and we'll know the cost and we'll know what funds they're coming out of.

Okay.

And then the decision's yours.

But that'll be before we.

At the same time. I would assume that that would take place in the September brief when we actually brief the big departments and stuff. I think that'd be part of it.

Thanks, sir.

Yeah.

Jay Piecki.

Thank you for hitting a nerve. I am really troubled with annexation. I need to really, really read the fine line on state laws regulating the annexation. In my mind, once a city annexes, I believe that there needs to be a set time when you do that. and it's not until the following year that you can start collecting the taxes, our revenue goes down immediately. And when I joined the court, our percentage was at 24 point, I would say either five or 7% of the pie that we got in sales taxes and whatnot. And now it's 16.2. And that's a lot of revenue that just keeps on going down. And we get blindsided by these annexations. Just boom, there it is, whether you like it or not. And my question is, Would it be worth, in your opinion, because I've got in July a meeting in Little Rock to propose legislative changes that affect counties, and I've been talking about annexation And I guess certain counties just accept it, like, yeah, that happens, yeah, that happens. I said, we build the roads, and once everything is set, infrastructure's set, then they annex and that's it. But we spent the money to fix the roads. Would it be worth our trouble to change the law and say, perhaps we need to just kinda split the sales tax and not you all get 100%. I mean, like you said, we split the roads tax with some cities, but the sales tax, they get it all.

Yeah. I would have to do some research. So I'm not totally educated on annexation, but I do know that it does affect our revenue.

It does have a negative effect.

And I have heard that that does happen, that we might do a road and then all of a sudden that neighborhood's annexed. But I don't know that for sure.

I just feel that it would be prudent. Let's just investigate it.

And truthfully, how you go about that, I don't know.

Well, that's what I'm getting ready to do, is to go about it in July. So I might be knocking on your door, asking you just give me... some feedback on the impact annexation has on counties. And we can't just allow, what happens if they just keep continually annexing to the point where we're down to 9%?

Yeah, I don't.

I mean, how can you sustain your county at 9%?

I'll definitely research it. I can't speak enough to it up here.

I'll be knocking on your door, but it does have a negative impact annexation. All right, thank you. I know it was off topic. My apologies to the court.

J.P. Dennis.

Thank you, appreciate it. Since we're exploring a lot of things here, what about gratuities? What's your policy on gratuities?

Gratuities, as far as tips?

Well, as far as trips, tips.

I don't think, I don't know that there is a policy. I mean, in general, I don't think you can take anything over, like I'd have to research this myself, but as far as gifts, I think like there's a small limit of like $25 or something, you know, on taxpayer, like when you're working for the government. If you're taking a gift, you're talking?

You're saying paying, and I'm saying receiving.

Right, no, I'm saying you can't receive any gift over, I don't know, truthfully, I don't know what the exact amount is, but it's pretty low threshold. It's like $25 or something like that. You cannot receive.

What is it?

Yeah, $25, so you cannot receive a gift more than $25 if you're a government employee from like a vendor or something.

Okay, that's good to hear, thank you. Yeah.

Any other questions?

That is the brief though, I don't know. That's just a summary of all what we talked about, so. If you have any questions, you can hit me up after. If you think it's good, if this was worthwhile. The concept is, is like when somebody's new, they can come get this brief. And truthfully, we'll probably put this link, because this was recorded, on the comptroller page, and then we can go from there, so. And anybody, any new resource, I call them resource managers in the departments, if they get put over doing the budget, they can come and receive this brief. When we did it like two weeks ago, I think it was, there was about 40 people there. A lot of people. A lot of electeds, a lot of directors. And we're gonna have training more often, so the next subject might be contracting. And we'll do it during the week, you know, to the employees. So.

All right, well, thank you, Comptroller Sherman. Thank you for all you do. Thank you for your staff and all they do supporting you. to make sure we get the information we need as we go through this budget cycle and that type of thing. Again, I hope this was beneficial for everyone. I thought when I said it was good. Like I said, I'd like to have had this when I started, because it cleared up a whole lot of information around the budget. Last item on the agenda is citizen comment. We have a 12 minute period, three minute per person. Is there any citizen comment? Seeing none, thank you everyone, appreciate everybody. Have a good evening, we're adjourned.