Quorum Court - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to the August 10th Washington County Quorum Court Finance and Budget Committee meeting. Thank you, everyone, for being here. Appreciate everybody coming out. First item is prayer and pledge. So if everybody will please rise, we'll do the prayer and the pledge. Bow your head. I had this pop up and I decided it would be nice to use, so I'm gonna deliver the prayer that was delivered at the first Congressional Congress years ago. Oh Lord, our Heavenly Father, high and mighty King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers on earth and reignest with power supreme and controlled over all the kingdoms, empires, and governments. Look down in mercy, we beseech thee, on these our American states who have fled to thee from the rod of the oppressor and thrown themselves on thy gracious protection, desiring to be henceforth dependent only on thee. To thee have they appealed for the righteousness of their cause. To thee do they now look up for that continence and support which thou alone can give. Take them, therefore, Heavenly Father, under thy nurturing care. Give them wisdom and counsel and valor in the field. Defeat the malicious designs of our cruel adversaries. Convince them of the unrighteous of their cause, and if they persist in their sanguinary purposes of own unerring justice, sounding in their hearts, constrain them to drop the weapons of war from their unnerved hands in the day of battle be thou present o god of wisdom and direct the councils of this honorable assembly enable them to settle things on the best and surest foundation that the scene of blood may be speedily closed that order harmony and peace may be effectively restored and truth and justice religion and piety prevail and flourish amongst the people preserve preserve the health of their bodies and vigor of their minds, shower down on them and the millions they here represent such temporal blessings as thou seest expedient for them in this world, and crown them with everlasting glory in the world to come. All this we ask in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ thy Son and our Savior. Amen. So I have a motion to adopt the agenda by J.P. Ricker, seconded by J.P. Dennis. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Okay, that passes. Item number four is Treasure Park, Treasure Hill.

Good evening. 4.1, Treasure Summary. General fund expenditures $3.6 million. Only opposed to revenues of $2.7. The road and jail fund, pretty much revenues and expenditures were pretty close. If you look at the third line, employee insurance, the zero in balance, they went in the negative at the end of last month. So we had to move $408,000 from general reserves. end of this report we began the month with 73.6 million in the bank and ended with 72.3 4.2 i put a little different report together for this uh this is new revenue that comes in compared to the expenses going out and negatives are not a good thing on this report so you see it's not Not the best report. So far this year, we're already $1.2 million under in the general fund and $426,000 in the jail. The jail is almost directly related to the flat sales tax, but I'll talk about that in just a second. Over the last three years, expenses of outpaced revenue in the general fund at $4.1 million. Road 3.5 million in jail at 1.3 million what that does that eats into and erodes the carryover that goes into the next year So we're going to see that coming up during the budget process Carryover figures will be less 4.3 property taxes received general fund almost exactly the same as This month last year, but we're still six point three percent above for the year before 4.4, the ARPA report. About 315,000 come out of the COVID mitigation project. And we still have 1.5 million remaining in that fund. 4.5, the one cent sales tax. If you look at last year, I mean, it's almost identical. That shows you how flat the sales tax is currently. We are in the black just a little bit. I guess that's better than being in red, but we're just right at last year's totals. 4.6, the jail tax. For the year, they're almost 1% above last year, but if you look at that 92,412 figure over last year, I look back at July 2025, and that number was 620,000, so That's how much we're not growing this year compared to July of last year, or compared to 2025. And that's the main reason that jail is in the red so far compared to revenue and expenditure. That's all I have. Any question for Treasurer Hill?

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Item five is the employee insurance report. Mr. Angel?

Good evening. Good evening. Well, our cash flow report, as you all may recall, runs about a month behind. So the month of June was pretty good, but can't sneak anything by Bobby, so he's already told you the month of July wasn't very good. So take this good news with a grain of salt, but we'll take the win where we can get it. June wasn't so terrible. So if we skip over to the middle, We'll see the total funding was $722,007.34. Our total cost, which is our fixed cost, pharmacy and medical, was $662,573. So we went back to another month where we funded more than we spent, which is a good thing. But we did have a rough last week or so of July, so that's where we kind of dipped back down to the other side. will tell you we're currently working on a couple of stop loss claims so at some point just like last year we'll start to see more and more of those come in we met with human resources today i believe year to date we've brought in about 174 000 in reimbursements from our stop loss that will continue to grow as the year goes on because you know as our large claimants hit a larger and larger amount than they hit that 185 000 deductible where the county is no longer responsible for their claims. We do have to pay those claims, but then usually within, I defer to Comptroller Sherman, but I believe about 30 days, we're able to claw back that money and put it back in the fund. So good month in June. We ended up about $50,000 to the good, but just get ready for next month's report because we're going to lose it back in July, unfortunately.

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

Thank you all.

Item six is the comptroller's report. Comptroller Sherman.

Good evening, everyone. OK, statement of operations. We're 58% through the year. I don't see anything that really jumps out at me. The general fund right now is at 51%. And they do have 8% encumbered. When they know that expenses are coming, some departments encumber them for the future. And that's probably the proper way to do it. So right now, we've spent 51%, so we're 7% under. And encumbered, we do unencumber a lot of stuff. When we hit the end of the year, there's a lot of stuff that's still encumbered, and we have to get it. So we're looking good in that area. The employee health insurance, we talked about that a little bit. So far, you guys appropriated $2 million about two months ago or a month ago. We have only had to use $400,000 of that so far. So we're watching that closely. Hopefully, the stop loss will start kicking in, and maybe we won't have to dig into that anymore. But it is important to have that $2 million appropriation so we can move it immediately to pay our bills.

We're going to try to conserve that as much as we can.

But other than that, on this report, I don't see anything that sticks out to me. Does anybody have any questions on that report?

Any questions for Comptroller Sherman?

That's just on that report. Now, the second report, the unappropriated reserve, last month we didn't pass any ordinances that involved money. So they were just normal stuff. And some of them that involved money, it was just moving money within the budget. So it was a zero sum game. It just zeroed it out. So there's nothing on that report. I was gonna talk about the budget a little bit. We're on track with the budget. Everybody has submitted their budgets so far. This week we started meeting with all the departments under the judge, county judge. So we'll be done with that on Wednesday and we'll have gone through them all. I have met with the jail on theirs. And so right now, like Bobby said, the main thing that's affecting us, when you look at the easy raid, which you guys don't have yet, I'm going to have the budgets out to you August 15, just like last year. And then you can submit questions. One of the things I'd like to do different this year is come around to each individual and talk about concepts and different things. The three big rocks that I see are labor, which we've started talking about that a lot. We're going to have a brief tonight. building infrastructure. We've talked about that a lot. And you guys went around on the tour and got some scope of where we are on that. And then the third one is IT, where we need investment. And you'll get the IT brief next month. So the big sections will come in next month. After you see the budget, if you want an additional section come in, you could ask JP Lyons. And if he thinks it's appropriate, then we'll bring him in to brief you. Right now, labor, all the labor requests are only at 4.5% increase. So I like that number because it's below the 5% step plan. So there. On the overall budget, it's actually only 0.17% increase, but you do have to remember that all this COVID money's going away. So one of the things that was in the budget last year was 5.5 million in revenue replacement. I did some math and adjusted to see what the percent increase would be if that was out of there last year. And the percent increase would be about 4.4% on the overall budget. That's what's requested right now. That will come down, because I think some of the departments are going to cut some stuff to try to make it look a little bit better on the unappropriated reserve. Because right now, with all the requests, the unappropriated reserve in county general is negative. Saying that, though, we do have the $15 million in reserve that covers that unappropriated reserve. So legally, we're still good. The jail is 1.5 negative in unappropriated reserve. I think they're going to be able to cut some to get pretty close to making that zero. And then the road is $700,000 negative on unappropriated reserve. Those last two, the jail. And truthfully, all of them are that sales tax. One of the things that I think is happening is we do not collect sales tax on gasoline. Gasoline is a state excise tax, goes to the state, and then they put it into roads. So I'm assuming, we haven't dug real deep into that, but I'm thinking that people may be shifting their money towards gasoline versus eating out, things like that right now, just because the price of everything is up. So the overall request right now at adjusted 4.4% is not bad, I don't think, with the amount of inflation that's happening, the price increase, and all that kind of stuff. But like I said, we'll have the budgets out to you by August 15. So that's Sunday or Monday. And then I will be calling to visit with everybody. Do you have any questions? Any questions?

JP Ackie.

Thank you, Comptroller Sherman. Just to refresh my memory, the interest that we make on the money, where is that appropriated? Monthly?

Well, that's a good point. I guess I missed that one. So the interest, when we were holding all that COVID money, the highest year we had in interest was $4 million. And then it went to like 3.5 and then 3 million. This year, I'm not sure where it's going to end up, but Bobby is projecting 1.7. That usually goes directly into county general. So that would be another reason why our revenue is down. Correct.

That just to balance the budget, understanding that that is from the interest.

Right.

Are there going to be any other funds that are collecting interest on a monthly basis as the COVID mitigation funds were?

COVID mitigation funds will be gone after this year. So they either have to be spent by the end of this year or returned to the federal government.

Okay.

there's nothing else that we have there that can make well we make interest i mean even even with that being said he's still he yeah even with that uh treasure hill still uh estimating 1.7 million in interest because at any one time originally when i got here so that example when i originally got here there was 89 million in the bank across all the accounts that collect interest. And then that dropped to like $83 million, and then $63 million as we started spending. Now the balance that we hold in the banks is around $53 million. So that's partly why the interest income is going down.

Thank you.

JP Rios Stafford. Thank you, Chair. I had a question about the millage. And it might be a question for you, or it might be a question for the treasurer. So basically, the majority of our general fund revenue, maybe 3 quarters or more, comes from the millage versus the sales tax revenue, the general portion of that, is my understanding, just looking at the numbers.

I think that's kind of accurate, to say treasurer. OK.

and you know i'm looking at the millage tax rates and i remember this um back in 2018 at the end of 2018 i think it was like december the quorum court back at that time i wasn't on here yet uh raised the millage from like 3.9 to 4.4 and then it was at 4.4 for many many years and then a couple years ago some i think like a state law kicked in because property values had risen so much or property revenues from that had increased by over a certain percentage. And so our millage was automatically bumped down, like under state law is what I remember. And we've just maintained it at that lower level for a couple of years now. At what point are we allowed to, if we wanted to, bump it back up? Because that is a decision that the quorum court could could make or vote on. I heard that it was like after a year or something like that we were able to... No, I think you could bump it now.

And those figures that I gave before, except Benton County did recently raise theirs to five. I think they were setting it like 4.8%. So I think you remember, and these will be... Of course, when the budget season comes, I'll be giving talking papers and all that kind of stuff. Right now, we're at 4.3, the millage. And you can legally charge five. And when you array all the counties, we're 44th on county general millage. And so all the big counties all charge five and all that kind of stuff. I'm all right if you want to be fiscally conservative and keep taxes down and all that kind of stuff, as long as we're not expected to run like a Corvette on key of money.

If we went just like bumped up back to where we were for many, many years at 4.4, which is just like a 0.1 increase, about how much would that increase?

Every tenth of a mill is about $500,000. $500,000. Yeah, so half a million in county general.

So if we went back to that 4.4 that we'd been at, that's about a half a million.

I would add about a half a million.

$750,000 total. What we would see would be around $550,000. $750,000. Because not everybody's going to pay on time. Oh, OK. We'll get it all, but that'll be in delinquents over the next three years.

And how I came up with the half-million-dollar figure, I just divided our total collection for the last two years, divided by 43, because that's 4.3, 43 mils.

That's about the actual money we would receive. Right.

And then there's actually two millages, right? There's a road millage, and then there's the general millage. Library millage is $1 million. OK, and one mil for the library. So the road? Oh, go ahead. So is the 4.3, that's just the general millage? That's not counting the road millage? Correct. OK.

So the road millage is currently one. And we're like 60th when you array that. You can actually legally charge three. So when you array that, we're at one mil. The other thing to remember on that is we do split that with the cities.

So we get like 35% to 40% of that one mill. The rest would go to the cities.

Yeah, because like Badville gets 80%, we get 20%, Springdale 80%, 20%, and then some of the smaller ones. It's 50-50.

Do you know when the last time that changed, that millage amount?

It went from one to one when that happened.

Oh, when that assessment came down back a couple years ago, that got bumped?

We had to drop it point two, so we took point one from general and point one from road.

Oh, okay. All right. So we dropped them both down. Yes. Okay. And we haven't changed them since then? No, ma'am. Correct. All right. Okay. Thank you.

One other thing that's kind of a push in the assessor's world, too, is there is some chatter about lowering the cap from 5% to 3%. So when Russell Hill assesses all of the properties, If you're an existing property owner, it doesn't matter what they access, you only can be raised 5% each year. It's called the cap. And we basically, when they reassessed last year, it was worth about a million dollars every year extra just on the cap. So if they were successful in lowering from 5% cap to 3% cap, that would affect our revenue too.

Okay. Thank you. J.P. Coker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, I'm hopeful that as we go through this budget process, we can find things that we might could cut back on. I'm not for raising millage right now. And I think I see, looking at the budgets, there's things like a lot of departments, I'm not picking on anyone, but a lot of departments just roll the same amount over every year. So I'm going to be very thoughtful as I'm going through the budget this year to notice that and to ask questions about that. Because I think there are things that we can cut back on without having to come to the people with a millage. But that's just my thought.

And no, I don't disagree. One of the things in this budget season what I'm trying to do is, Even after the labor discussion tonight, we don't necessarily want a decision. I want to educate, educate, educate, so you know the overall big picture. This is all where we're looking, where we need to invest. There's scarce resources. So what are we going to cut? What are we going to put into? And then how are we going to fund it? So that's what all this discussion is about.

J.P. Ecke.

J.P.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Years ago, I had a chart and I wish I would have kept them because I looked at them and I go, well, 2018, I'm sure this information is not relevant anymore. And it was because JP Stafford asked the question. It had a breakdown on the millage, how much, who gets what. I don't know if Justice Pond or Dennis remembers getting that information. But also, for the assessor, he will be speaking at county services next month. there was a breakdown on yes your property tax this is how much we get but we divide you know we have to give out to the schools and i'm going my goodness i wish the schools will consolidate and just have one superintendent instead of 12 or however many making 350 000 each And it was a lot, so I always looked at consolidation. You still have football rivalries, that you don't bring together. But it was always taboo to even say that. But the schools get a lot of money. The percentage of our millage, our property tax, is what goes to our schools, then of course to the libraries and the volunteer fire department.

Well, and truthfully, the schools have their own millage. So when you looked at the total millage that you pay, it's like 43 or something like that. So the schools get close to 80% when you say Treasure Hill. So Treasure Hill collects a lot of money. When we talk about our money that we're talking about now, the 3.4 mills, the one mill, and all the sales tax, that basically is all of ours. But on top of all that, Treasurer Hill collects all the millage for them. And I don't know the number off the top of my head, but I think it's about 43 or something like that. And then they transfer it out of the treasurer's office. It's just a pass-through, basically.

It is. I know somebody has this information, and I'll find out for the rest of the court where we can get this breakdown on. the millage and how much an increase or decrease would cost us. The history, I would say, the last 10 years, where Washington County has been on that, what the percentage is, breakdown on the roads and then breakdown on the jail and what does that mean, but it was a graft. or a chart, I should say, that we were all given. And it was very, very useful. It's out there. I don't know in whose department it is, but we'll find out. Maybe we can get that information. I think I could probably develop that. And it was very helpful. But like I said, it was 2018, and I wish I wouldn't have discarded it. I just figured 18 years later. But hopefully that'll be helpful to the rest of the court. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

J.P. Pond.

Yes. Thinking about years back, you're talking about now each tenth of a mil brings in half a million dollars annually. And not that many years ago, it was more like $330,000 a year. Maybe that's been a few days. I'm going to be one of these JPs that I just want to tell you ahead of time, I'm not interested in doing a millage increase to bring more revenue in when we're already getting a pretty good sized amount of money from the property taxes. The schools receive the lion's share of it. We need to do some cuts where we have to. But thank you. DAVID BURRAGE.

Copy. Yeah, and like I said, this is all just like information to give out. One of the reasons why it's higher now, 300 versus 500, every time the assessor has a reassessment year, that's when the prices go up. So you're getting more for one point of a mil. When, is Russell Hill in here? I think the reassessment year is in next year. I'm not positive on that though. It's every five years and I think it's next year. And around here, the only thing that's happened is the housing values, the property values, and everything have gone up. So it will go up again. I'm pretty confident on that. It's not the same as sales tax. J.P. Burns. Do we keep, oh, there it goes. It's on now, it popped on, it just popped on.

Okay, sorry.

It delayed, I don't know what happened, sorry.

When are you getting old? Yes, I am. But I'm curious about how much we haven't appropriated and how much are we counting Do we have any layover when we're doing an accounting of that?

Well, part of the thing, one of the things that I've been working on here is squeezing the appropriated down, because we've always, since I've been here, have been leaving money on the books. It's not a bad thing, because... And I don't want to get into the old school way of thinking on government, where you've got to spend it that they authorize you, or you lose it next year. That is not the case. That is not the case anymore. Really, it's not even the case in the federal government anymore.

but the appropriation that's why I think that we can get pretty close because we have over appropriated every single year so okay so so if we have let's say this two million dollars in appropriated okay so is that counted as part of what we can use

Yes Yeah, so we you could you could move that appropriation the quorum court could nobody else can But the quorum court can move that appropriation. We have our budget controls where You know, we can't move 20,000 in and out of capital You can move between the personnel money. These days we have it so you can move within personnel, but you can't move personnel money out for normal operations, 2000, 3000 series, and then the capital accounts have pretty strict rules too. But once the money's appropriated, that department can spend it. Now there's an ordinance on the docket tonight intended to strengthen some of those controls.

So the unappropriated can be used, but it takes this body to put it back.

That's right. So what the unappropriated reserve is, is when we say, Treasurer Hill says, OK, this is what's rolling over. This is what we expect. This is the total money that we're dealing with. And then he holds back by law 10%. That's the holdback. And then what pops out is the available funds to budget. Then everybody submits all their stuff. and then what happens is if the requests are less than what's available you have unappropriated reserve to work with through the year and people can come back and say hey we need this we need this right now we're at a point where all the three major missions which i call missions roads law enforcement, or roads, jail, and county general, which covers a whole bunch. Right now, all the unappropriated reserves are negative on the request. Now, in county general, we do have the 15 million in reserve that covers that, just on the general. It does not cover it in roads, and it does not cover it in jail. That's a separate entity. You can only use that money.

Are you saying it's in the negative for next year's request?

Yeah. Yeah, so that's why we've sent everybody back saying, hey, if you can cut anything, cut anything and figure it out. Let's say that the roads in the jail end up with some negative, unappropriated reserves. It will require an influx from county general to make that at least zero. Because the thing that is the law is the 10% holdback. And we have that covered in County General with a 15 million reserve. But hopefully we won't get in the habit of keep digging in that. One of the things is I still consider us pretty financially We're definitely financially solvent. You know what I mean? And most government entities are not. So this county is financially solvent. But I think it's important this year, we're going to have to make some decisions to make sure that we remain solvent four years from now, five years from now.

Well, you say solvent. And I'll be retired by then. I'm sorry. But you say solvent. By how much?

Well, right now we have $15 million in reserve. So let's just use an easy example. Let's say you had to infuse $2 million and $2 million in jail and road, just as an example. I'm not saying this is going to happen. We would take that right out of that $15 million, then we'd have $13 million in reserve. The other thing is that reserve, For example, on the health insurance, we transferred that $400,000. Treasurer Hill's already told me, hey, if we don't have to get in any more of that, we're going to get $400,000 in interest just on that account alone, on that $15 million. It's gonna be back to 15 million. And that's about three months worth of operating capital for the county when you look at it. We talked about that last year, which is the amount that the Governmental Financial Officer Association recommends, like 60 to 90 days in reserve. OK, so we're sitting here with the reserve. If you look opposite to explain it on the federal government, who is already $38 trillion in debt and running a trillion dollar deficit, they have no reserve. You know what I mean? And there's multiple other government entities like that. So right now, our revenue is making it tough on us, but we have money in the bank. We just need to make. tough decisions now so we don't run into a point where we don't have any money down the road. And it could be taxes, it could be bonds, it could be a lot of stuff. That's what this is all about. It's just saying how we're gonna do it.

Now, Paul, I did ask to have an accounting of the stuff that the county has bought for returning home and or see, what is that, CRS? Yeah.

CRI.

CRI, okay. And have yet to even be communicated with it. So is it something your office could provide for me?

Yeah, we can provide that. And I think what we're going to do this year is put it in the budget. There's going to be two pages, just like you see all the pages for each department. I would prefer to put one in there for CRI this year and CAP. And then this is what we would expect that we would have to match. on our side or whatever, whatever happens with the CRI. And the reason why I wanna do that is just transparency purposes and we already have it appropriated when it comes time for needing it. You know?

Thank you.

JP Aki.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Two questions, or one, I guess, a statement. When the assessor reassesses all the property every five years, I want the public to know that if you are 65 years or older, you can come down to the assessor's office, show that you are who you are and that is your property, and they will freeze your property taxes, and they won't go up. My husband hit 65, I said, you're going down there and we're freezing these taxes. And I'm so glad that we did because right after that, it just kept on climbing and climbing and climbing. So I think the public needs to be aware of that. Secondly, the jail infusion, you said is it about two million a year?

No. Right now, the unappropriated reserve is negative, 1.5. But the jail is working on that. So by the time you get it, it could be zero. It might be positive. It might just need a little.

Not to pick on the jail and the operations, but we always had to infuse 3.3 million because the state wouldn't pay their obligations. And we have fought very hard. hard and been very vocal. You need to pay us what we're worth. What are actual costs if they would do that? That would help out our budget. In the past, this is the rhetoric that they'd push back. Washington County, you're a rich county, you can afford it. And I was irate, but anyway. And nobody has an answer down there as Justice Stafford can attest. When I asked the question, what's it gonna take for the state to pay its obligations?

So everybody call your state representative, state senator.

Yeah, and nobody would answer the question. Nobody wanted to answer the question. You're in a room full of JPs, and they kind of got very vocal saying, you're not answering the question. Then our representatives, with all due respect to them, when they... contacted me, they said, but J.P. Ecke, we're only nine votes. It's convincing the other counties to, or legislators, to approve and pass legislation. I know that Sheriff Cantrell's been working with one of our state representatives, and I'm really hoping that the attitude, the state, is a little bit more lenient and they'll help, but we need to put either a resolution together or pressure them one way or another. We need to get paid, and you're sitting on a war chest of how many, hundreds of thousands?

Hundreds of millions.

Hundreds of millions.

Yeah. I mean, they do claim that they run in a surplus every single year and have a decent surplus. The figures on the jail, I think our legislative audit last cost report we did was in 24, and it was $82 a person. And I think the state's reimbursing like $42 a person. $42. $44? $40 a person. So it's basically $40 short a day of what it's truly costing us, which the people that told us that it's costing us $82 a day is the state legislative audit. Like they work for the state legislator. So it is, there are people telling us.

Everybody gets that information because we're getting ready to go to Hot Springs and have a.

open discussion and how about the roads what is it uh the infusion that county general has to give to the roads well you first of all you will have to see their budget on their brief and then decide if you okay we we think everything's good and you can have everything uh it's like 700 000 sitting right now all right thank you thank you mr chairman

JP Rio Stafford. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I remember that story that JP Ecke just told. That was at the Arkansas Association of Counties two years ago in Hot Springs. And yes, I remember that well. And I'm glad you asked that question of the legislators, because folks from quorum courts around Arkansas were in that room, and everybody kind of chimed in. And it was like, yes, we're all in the same boat. The state doesn't pay all the obligations that we feel that it should be paying for services that the state is obligating counties to have. And AAC is happening. later this week again in hot springs so i hope that i won't be able to be there but i hope that that issue comes up again and and my understanding is you got some some pushback for asking that question which i think is you know i'm glad you did um i had a couple of follow-up uh questions so on the on taxes on the one cent sales tax, that split 60-40 between general and road. Is that 60-40 split done by, is that mandated by state law or is that like something that we as a county decide what that split is?

I'm gonna defer to Treasurer Hill. Sure.

That came from the actual, the brochure from 1981 was 40% of it would go to roads. And historically the quorum court has said, okay, we'll do 40%. Y'all can change that.

Wait, a brochure from 1981?

Yeah, I can send it to you.

Yes, I'd love to see it.

I haven't been here that long.

Okay.

We still have the brochure.

Okay.

It put on there what the citizens would vote on and it would go to these places. 40% of it was roads.

Oh, I see. Okay, so once that sales test got voted on, that's what the public was told would happen. Okay, I got it. All right.

It has been tweaked a few times over the years to like 70%, 30%, or something like that. Oh, really?

Okay.

But it's usually always 60%, 40%.

Okay, got it.

Of the 16% that we get. From the whole one cent.

Got it. Yeah. Okay. And then on the follow-up question on just specifically the road millage, if we change that, raise it, lower it, or it gets changed automatically under state law, is that just our part that gets changed, or does changing that millage also affect the amount of revenue that cities get for their roads?

It would affect the amount of.

It affects the cities and mostly the cities, right? Because most of that fund goes to the cities.

Probably. Like I said, I think the road gets 35% to 40% of that, whatever the millage is.

35% or 40% and the other 60%, 65% goes to the cities. Yes. So if the cities came to us, especially like maybe Fayetteville, Springdale, came to us and said, hey, we need more money for our city roads, they would need to come to us on the quorum court and petition us to change that.

I'm not sure if the, I know like city general funds, they have their own millage. I don't know if the city roads can ask for a millage increase or if it's just the county.

Just the county. Got it. Okay.

Okay.

The other thing on the jail, we have that memorandum of understanding with all the cities, so if we ended up in a true deficit, and I'm not sure if it works in the arrears or... in cash when you're at the end, but that memorandum of understanding is about splitting the deficit across all the cities based on population. So if we were in a true deficit in the roads and we didn't want to infuse capital, I'm not sure if we'd have to wait till the end or if we could do it in the beginning, we could put that across cities. Probably wouldn't be a popular Um,

So that memo would kick in automatically, that agreement that's already signed between the county and all the cities?

The memo is already there. We do it every year for $200,000. And that $200,000 originally came from what Treasurer Hill told me back when Fayetteville closed something, right?

It was their jail when we were charging them $200,000. Springdale had their jail. And Fayetteville was paying us. And the city jails, we could just kind of let them use it for free. When this all happened, Springdale closed the jail. Fayetteville, we didn't want to lose Fayetteville's revenue, so we kind of spread that $200,000 amongst all of them. And it's been $200,000 a year for years now.

I forgot I was going to follow up and ask about this. But that $200,000, that's just by tradition. It's not based on any actual deficit.

That's correct.

OK.

I mean, the Springdale chief of staff pointed that out when he came and briefed that time.

We would have lost that revenue if we hadn't done that.

but it's it's not keep that revenue got it but it's not based on like an actual deficit it's just we've always done it that way and so i think and i wonder if some of the cities even know that they're paying this just as springdale does because he said it he said it right he said it at this podium yeah springdale's aware i don't know if everybody in fayetteville is aware yeah um okay i forgot about that i was going to ask about that too yeah but that was the whole purpose of the

When we did that, it was because we were paying jail over $6 million from the general fund over a five- or six-year period. We needed to stop the bleeding, and that was, hey, we need some city help. Then things got a lot better, and we never used that except for that $200,000. It may come into play now.

Thank you. One of the other options, this is just options, I'm not advocating for this at all, okay, because on road millage that we split, you could lower it by a tenth of a percent and raise general by a tenth of a percent, which you do not, that's a split, and you can infuse general into road, which would probably not be another popular decision with the cities.

That would cut into the city's road money.

But it would not cut into ours. We would actually make out better because we wouldn't have to split 80-20. But I don't know enough about road infrastructure. I don't know how they are in their revenue in the road.

They won't be big fans of that.

But these are all options. That's what I want to keep on saying.

Hypotheticals. Thank you. JP Burns.

I just wanted to clarify something that J.P. Ecke said, and I appreciate you bringing that up about freezing the taxes because that's important to a lot of people. However, we need to understand that that frozen tax is, it follows, it does not follow the individual. It follows the person as long as they own that property. If they sell and the taxes are $1,000 more, they're going to pay that higher rate.

Correct.

Okay. And then it's going to freeze. Does that make sense? You're looking at me like...

Yeah, any turnover churn in the housing industry actually probably helps our revenue. Because what happens is when they sell the house, now the new owners go to the full assessed value, which has shocked a whole lot of people. And that's why Assessor Hill, he actually put out a little QR code. And you can do that when you're buying a house to say, OK, how much am I going to pay in taxes? Because a lot of times, it was just passed on before, said, oh, my tax bill is this. And then when they bought the house, it was like, oh, it's not really this. You know, the new person.

That's a contention in closing, I promise you. Yeah. Every time. Yeah.

OK. My point of view, it's going to be a different year this year. It's been the past two terms I've been on this court. I think we're all aware of that. I think the departments need to be aware of that. They need to look at, I'm not interested in raising taxes. I'm also not interested in fusing into other departments that may need it. So I think all the departments need to look at what they need. They need to decide what is their strategic five-year plan of where they wanna go and what they wanna do and what their priorities are. Because that's the first question I'm gonna ask every one of them when they come in front of us. and what your budget needs to be aligned to that. So just forewarn, that's where I'm going as we go through. So I think that's what we need to look at, priorities across the board and where do we need to go for this county to do the best for our citizens. Okay, you have anything else? Yeah, we have, okay, so we have HR, is from a budgeting standpoint we're going to do it here because that's kind of where we've been talking about budget is in this this agenda item so she is going to provide us some additional information that relates to the budget correct did i get that right

I was gonna sit back there, but I think some of these items we may wanna kinda discuss, so I thought, well, I'll go ahead and come up here, and that way you all are not having to turn to see me. So I posted this out, and sent this out last week, Some of these regrades, we've actually already kind of talked through. So for circuit clerk, for collector, I think we've already pretty well dived into those. There's a couple of full-time employee requests that I think you're going to have more questions on. So I'm going to kind of highlight some things that I think you're probably already aware of, and then spend some time on the ones that I think you're going to have questions. But if you want to talk through any of them, just let me know and we can discuss it. So Division III, I've mentioned this a couple of times, high level. The intake officers, they are a grade lower than Division VIII intake officers, and they're doing the exact same job. So when I found this out, I went in, I looked at the job description, we had some conversations with the leaders. I am recommending that we elevate this so that it is the same grade as Division 8. They are literally doing the exact same job, same job description, same work. This is the total cost to bring each of the employees that are in that job PCN, that job description, up to the appropriate grade. Again, not asking for any decisions tonight. This is all just informative. If you have any questions on anything I cover, please reach out to me. I'm happy to go in depth on any of these.

Just to clarify, this is information, but this is what we expect to be in, this is coming in the budget. We're not gonna do it beforehand. This is what's coming in the budget. So an explanation of what some of those re-grades are, we're gonna see. Thank you.

Yeah, so the justification letters are actually already out on the website. I'm working feverishly to get the job descriptions out there so that you can see the before and afters. So that should be out there. Kyle had already kind of covered a lot of the circuit clerk roles. This is the total cost to the county. Actual cost to the county is $100,000. The other part, I think, is coming from recorder's cost. The collector's office, her increases for the grades that we re-leveled, those are all coming from her automated funds. So it's not actually a cost to the county. I'm gonna skip this for just a second. This is kind of the slide that I figured we probably would want to spend more time on. We have not graded this fleet manager role yet. So more to come on that. I believe it will either sit with Angela or it will sit at the chief of staff. for the county judge. So I have not met with Chief Stewart or Angela Delured about that one yet. So I'm not sure what level that's going to come out to. I really don't have a lot of information actually of what that job is going to do. So stay tuned on that one.

So if I could on that one point. For those of you that were on the tour this weekend, she talked about taking the building that is storing all the election money committees information, all their stuff, right, and turning it into the fleet manager. So it's not just management, it's full management, right? It's bringing all of our Washington County cars in to do oil changes, tire, those types of things there versus doing that and paying retail rates out to companies in town to do that. So that's part of my understanding and part of the plan there. If that's wrong, but that was her explanation this weekend.

You have more information about that than I do.

Sorry.

No, that's great, thank you. There are two asks for IT, and I'm gonna spend a few minutes on this. Our IT department right now, they are, I'll speak for one of them. One of the current leaders, he can't even go on vacation. If Central Square goes down, which happens pretty much daily at this point, even if he is on vacation, he's having to call in because there's no one that really understands that world enough to be able to cover for him to be off. If two of our people that are more senior that really have a lot of knowledge for our county systems, which are There's not a diplomatic way to say this. They're antiquated. They're on-prem. I have a bias towards, I like cloud solutions. I came from cloud solutions. So I think, you know, Just the level of depth that that team truly needs. If two of those people got offers from the private sector today, the amount of knowledge that would leave Washington County and we would truly be in a really terrible position. They also are very involved in the cybersecurity aspects. And so I really encourage you whenever you look at the IT budget to approve these two roles. We desperately need some help in IT.

No, I'm sorry.

No, you're good. The one that is in blue, you see that there's a PCN. That is actually a PCN that has already existed. They didn't fund it last year, but they're asking to fund it this year. So I highlighted that one. Also again, this is not technically new in the sense that they didn't fund it last year, but they are asking to fund it this year, so that's 104, that does come from county. Sorry, I can't say that far away. So this is our JDC. We are asking for two new headcount. That is a very tough job, and when you are short staffed and you have a tough job, that leads to turnover, and turnover is expensive. So I think, you know, if you have more questions about this, we do have our director here that could answer any more questions. His justification letter is out there. I'll pause here. Do you have any questions for Director Dinsley on that ask?

Did you send this out already? I thought it came out. Yeah. Thank you.

Yep. And then the appendix is just how we calculate the salary, so it gives you the breakdown on how we arrive at the calculation, because it's obviously more than just the salary amount, it's APERS and all of that. Before I move to the next one that is probably going to spend a little bit of time discussing things, anything on these regrades, questions? I know I kind of walked through the process for regrades last week. I know it was a really exciting presentation. You all enjoyed it. Any questions? Okay. So if we can go to the next one. It's the next presentation, sorry. All right, so I'm going to go through some of these again pretty quickly. You all know what total rewards are. It is not just your compensation. I want to highlight something that is, I think, kind of missed for our employees, and that's just how much we invest in them and the total cost of the county. So if you look on the very left, it shows what their base pay is, and then of that base pay underneath there, that is how many hours, so between holiday, our sick time, our vacation time, if they were to use all of that, total that out, and that's that 9,000 amount of that 62, 9,000 of that is county time that we are giving them. We also, right now, I feel like we go above and beyond to split out the healthcare premiums. I am calling out how much we spend that because based on our utilization and some really high claim, we are going to have to increase our employee premiums for next year. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of how much it's going to be. So right now we're looking between 10 to 15%, which is a significant increase. I went out and grabbed some information just to kind of compare between how Washington County versus like Benton County and versus City of Fayetteville. Right now, in comparison to City of Fayetteville for family coverage, we are significantly lower. Our benefits arguably, if you look at the deductibles, the co-pays, we are very competitive. When we moved to the step plan, really the goal around the step plan was let's make sure that raises across Washington County are fair and consistent. And I hear from employees almost daily, they listen to these meetings, there is a great fear that the step plan will be taken away from them and we will go back to days where some teams are getting 11% and some teams are getting 1%. So that is definitely some noise that is happening across Washington County. I have encouraged them to reach out to you all and voice their concerns, but I also wanna share with you that we have a lot of questions about it. We also have a lot of questions about the position anniversary date, which I'm gonna get to in a second. So one of our budget controls that that we're looking at is make sure I have the right slide, is we are going to request that we receive a performance evaluation for every employee. There are some groups that are phenomenal about getting that information to us consistently. It's a fair and consistent process. The template is the same. That is not necessarily the case for all groups and there are occasions when I reach out and I say I really need the evaluation form, I'm told I'm overreaching. So I want it in the budget controls so that we can say, look, the whole point of that step plan is to make sure we're fair and consistent. And to me, our employees deserve a fair and evaluation process so they understand how they're performing. And so I would like to have that in the budget controls. I am not saying they have to use my template. The assessor's office has their own template that they have used. They actually, I think, do it. I think they do it quarterly, and then they take all of that information and they put it into the annual, I think is the way they do that. But it's clear and consistent. It's the same measurements. They know what those measurements are at the beginning of the year, so they know how they're gonna be measured. Again, it goes back to that clear and transparent process, which I think is really important for our employees. You all have no doubt heard that there is some compression in terms of our compensation plan. Anytime you roll out a comp plan, there's going to be compression. There's really not any way around it, okay? One of the ways that we are trying to mitigate that is actually on the next slide, so I'll come back to that. Another way that we're trying to fix it is the grading and the job evaluation, which I covered last week. We are partnering with some local government entities who are doing market data studies. So we are a part of that. I think once those market data studies come out and we compare it against our data, then I think we as a county need to decide where we want to be positioned in the market. Are we P50 or are we P75? You know what I mean? Does everybody know what I mean when I say that? Okay, so if you are P50 of the market, that means 50% of the market is paying less and 50% of the market is paying more. If you wanna be P75, that means you're paying more than 75% of the market and only 25% of the market is paying more than you. Benefits also comes into that, right? So I think once that market study is done, hopefully by the end of the year, we will understand where we're currently positioned in the market and where do we want to be. I'll definitely come with a perspective, but it's ultimately up to you all to decide how we want to move forward. This is another one that's really important as far as the budget controls is the advanced placement form. Part of the compression that we're trying to avoid is a hiring manager falls in love with a candidate and wants to bring them in at a step seven. And then you've got a brand new person who has less experience than somebody who has been here for 10 years at a step three. So I am a fan of the advanced step placement form. I want to be able to review against the peers to see where they come in. And if they have 10 years experience and it makes sense against the peers, then I'm happy to support a step three placement. Otherwise, the hiring managers can bring in somebody as step one or step two, depending on experience against the peers. I wanted to kind of give you an idea on if you all supported all of the regrades that we have presented and the new FTEs minus the fleet manager that hasn't been leveled and graded yet. We wanted to kind of give you an idea on what that would look like. Here's the other kind of, again, we don't have to decide this tonight, but I think it is something pretty important to think through. If we have people who are at a step 10, currently they would not receive a 5% increase this year. So last year I think we had four or five, this year we have 11, and it would cost us 56,000 to give them the increase. Now, we also have to weigh that against, right? Like, now we're looking at a 10 to 15% increase in the healthcare premiums. Of the 11 people that are at the step 10, seven of those are in job grades. They're gonna be greatly impacted by that percent increase in terms of the ratio of what they're paying out to their salary. So when we first kind of started getting asks about the Step 10 and giving those increase, honestly, I was at first like, we kind of rolled it out, and they knew once they got to a Step 10, like, they're not going to get an increase outside of a COLA, right? But once we've kind of looked at now, okay, well, now we're looking at a 5% to 10% increase in health care premiums, now i'm kind of i'm giving you the information and you all can decide but i am concerned about kind of our grades 1 through 15 in terms of how much that increase is going to impact impact them we are kind of working on a plan for that i hope to have that out in the next week or so and then present it in september The one thing we have to consider about going ahead and increasing at the step 10 is that if we do it this year, we didn't do it in 2026, if we do it in 2027, and the expectation is that we do it again in 2028, we're looking at $206,000 increase just for those Step 10s, because of course, every year we're gonna have more and more people hitting that Step 10. So just again, nothing to decide tonight, just calling it out so you all have all the information. The other thing that we would really like to consider, and I know it's going to be costly, is moving the annual increase effective dates to January. We get a lot of complaints about the position anniversary date process. I have talked with almost all the electeds about this. I have yet to have someone who said, can we please keep the position anniversary dates and the hiring manager folders that we have to fight with every month and all of that. It's also really frustrating to employees in terms of they don't know when they're gonna get their raise, if they get promoted, do they get their raise and then the promotion? And of course, everybody's always trying to figure out loopholes, right? So I think it just makes it a lot cleaner for the employees. It's easier to budget. It is a lot less manual processes for HR and Comptroller, which should be factored in in terms of time spent because that ultimately costs the county too. The rest of these, I won't go through each one of these slides. Like I said, I kinda sent this out. This is just what the process would look like in terms of if we moved forward, the request to make sure the evaluations are given to HR by November. If it's someone who is not going to meet expectations of the role, i.e. they are not going to get an increase, I wanna look at that documentation and make sure we're being fair and consistent across and that it's documented. So asking for those no later than October 2nd. This is how much it would cost the county if we moved forward with moving everybody to a January annual increase. Oh, yeah. It depends. It depends. That's the thing. So if you're hired in February, then your position anniversary date is going to be in February, unless you get a promotion or transfer. And then whenever you move to the new position, let's say in June, then now your position anniversary date becomes in... It's a nightmare to manage. It's a nightmare for the hiring managers. It's frustrating to the employees. Yes.

Yes.

Basically, the increased cost is at $464,000 to make that move. That's what that is, to move everybody forward. Because the people in the end of the year, you wouldn't be paying them the whole time that deal. you'd bite the bullet one time and it's $464,000. Going into the future, it washes out. It'd be 5%, you know, 5% snowing. Actually, it would come out of multiple funds, whoever, like road would come out of their departments, the road fund, anybody who's getting paid out of general would be out of general, jail would be out of jail fund, so that's accumulation of all three of county general, jail, and roads.

If you have a question, please key in and be recognized.

J.P. Bruns. If they request salary raises for a department, they come out of Where?

Well, the ones that are paid from county general, which is a whole lot of different departments. Anything under the county judge, all the courts that have employees that are not state employees. There's multiple others. The electeds, like assessor has some in county general, circuit clerk, all of them have some in county general. The only ones that are not in County General are the people who work for the roads and people who work for the jail. Those will come out of there. But that is an accumulative breakout over those three accounts. And then there's a very small group of people that actually get paid by grants.

Where does that put us as far as the increase in budget this year?

Well, I'd have to do the math. But right now, we're sitting at 4 point something percent increase. I imagine it might bump it to 5% versus. That's just a guess without doing the calculator.

Any more questions before I advance? The rest of this is just kind of our process in terms of how we would handle the rest of the year. I can't see. So all of our December increases, so if you had a position anniversary date in December, we would actually move all of them up to the first pay period in December, and then they would get their annual increase in January of 2027 like everybody else. For anybody that is hired on or after October 1st, they would actually not get an increase January 2027. They would get their first increase January of 2028. Same thing with this in terms of promotions. If you get promoted in May, you would get your increase in January and then every year in January. Same thing with this one in terms of October 1st on or after October 1st. So we just wanted to clearly lay these out so that there's no confusion as to what the process is.

Any questions?

I know I went through some of that really quickly, but I just wanted to make sure if there was any questions for me, we had time to go back and cover anything. And again, you don't have to make a decision on anything tonight. This is really just for information.

JP Bruns.

Yes. If, in fact, somebody comes in and they come in in October, you're saying that they wouldn't get a raise for a year?

so they it would actually be a little bit a little bit longer than a year so if they are hired on or um after october 1st then they would get their first january or their first increase january of 2028. okay is that raise automatic or is it it's the step by it's still the same they go up to the next step

Is it, okay, is that automatic or is it by a merit?

Well, I'm a big merit person, so I prefer an actual performance evaluation every year. But I also, on the flip side of that, I think it's really important to communicate to employees at the beginning of the year what the expectations are. My least favorite conversations are, well, I had a bad evaluation. I had no idea that was even expected of me. So I think it's on the leaders to be super clear about what those expectations are. That's why I kind of like, I mean, I haven't.

But under the current step plan, the step is automatic in January if we go to this plan, unless their performance is low and the director decides they shouldn't get it.

Correct. Okay, so we do have a merit.

We don't do merit right now.

Okay. So how do we know their performance is low?

So right now, the form says with satisfactory performance. So to me, as long as they're performing, they can continue to get their 5% increase. However, if they're not performing in their role, I want to look at the documentation that they're utilizing to make that decision and make sure they're fair and consistent across their work. So that's why I'm asking for an actual performance evaluation each year so that we see this is how they're measured and this is how I know. Why are you smiling like that?

Are you ready for all of that? I am.

Well, you know, I'm getting a new person. We're interviewing this week. But I think it's really important for the employees, though.

Are you done, sir? Thank you. I didn't want to cut you off. I want to make sure. JP Dennis?

Thank you, sir. I don't quite have it prepared to explain what I want to ask, but this is where I got more complaints from employees of the county. Everything I got phone calls on, Inside, outside, from the general public or anything, this is the one that got the most attention. And I can't figure it out, but I think the same people that got hurt on the other one are getting hurt on this one.

Well, this would actually right-size it.

So explain it to me again, but I'm going to use October, just general. Last year, if your anniversary day was in October, You didn't get a raise, or it was 25 and 26. You didn't get a raise until a full year was gone, and you got it in October. Other people got it in January.

Depending on, yeah, when their date of hire.

Where's the fairness of this? Well, that's why you bring it forward to where everybody... Now you're saying that those same people that are in October don't even get theirs this year.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. If they're a new hire. Only if they're a new hire. Only if you're a new hire.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no.

If you are... No, I want to be super clear about this. If you are... If your position anniversary date is any time... between now and the end of the year, you're still gonna get your step increase just like we planned. The only movement is the December group would move up to the very beginning of the December pay period. And that way, that has already had time to process before the January. So I wanna be super clear about that. Yeah, I do not want anybody to be missing out on a step increase. towards the latter part of the year. I don't want them to miss out on something anyway, but yeah. No, no, no.

Does that clear that up for you?

Does that? Okay.

So there's a difference between. That's actually a norm.

It didn't clear it up for me, but I have a feeling it'll be real clear for the employees and we'll hear about it.

Well, the one thing is this will make those people that you're worried about whole from the first time because basically they'll get a double bump real quick. Okay. You know what I mean? They'll get a, let's say they're in October, they're going to get five and then they're going to get five. So there's going to be people on the opposite end that are going to be complaining. It's like, why'd they get 10? But they did on the first go around. Some of them did not get whole. So this would make those people whole.

Come close, wouldn't make them hope. Can't get it back if you never got it.

Does that make sense though now? And I don't know if this slide kind of helps, but this is what I was talking about. If you are, if your position anniversary day is anywhere in the rest of the year, you're still going to get your 2026 increase this year. And then you'll get, with everybody across Washington County, your January 2027 increase, the first pay period in January.

I'm good with that. I'm good with that.

I'm so glad you asked that because I definitely do not want the message, and I know this is posted on the website so anybody can go and look at it, but I do not want that to be the message that in any way, shape, or form, anybody at the end of the year would not get their step increase.

Well, just where you'll know, I like having it. this way versus paying or giving people raises based on their anniversary day i i do too it's a nightmare to manage in the long run budgeting it works better it i've just never seen it done that other way i had never heard of it done that way either yeah it's been lovely i like what you're doing thank you thank you sir jp massengill yeah i think most of my questions were already answered but i do have one so if

Under your plan, someone has a poor evaluation, they're not recommended for a step increase, do they still get a COLA increase, or?

Yeah, I mean, a COLA is for everybody regardless.

If we as a quorum court decide to give a COLA, it's gotta go to everybody, you can't pick and choose.

Yeah.

Okay, that just takes the whole step plan and moves it, I mean, it takes that whole matrix and moves it up by that amount.

Yeah, that's a good question, but yeah. And that's why I also want to review anyone that is potentially getting or not going to get a step increase based on performance. I want to review the documentation before that happens so that I can help make sure that we're fair and consistent across.

Okay. And how long does it typically take to get to step 10? You said we had... 11 employees?

Well, currently you get a step every year, so if you're at step one, in nine years you're going to be at step 10, correct? Comptroller Sherman? You get it every year.

Yeah, and when I say seven out of the 11, it's not where their step is, it's where their grades are. So if you kind of picture our, let me go back to our step plan. So if you look at kind of grades one through five, and then, you know, six through kind of 15, those groups are gonna be the most impacted by the healthcare premium increase. So your grade depends, it establishes your, Thank you.

That's so nice.

Your grade determines where on the pay scale you are, and then your step determines where within that. So let's say you're hired at a step two, grade 10. The following year, you would be a step three. And the year after that, you'd be a step four. So we have some people that, because of how we rolled out the step plan, are actually already at an eight, nine, or 10. It just depends on what their salary was whenever we rolled it out. Does that help answer that?

Yeah. Okay.

And then once you get to step 10, your salary's frozen, or do you still get the, you said do you get the COLA if it's?

Yeah, so the way that we initially rolled it out is once you get to a step 10, unless there's a COLA, you would not get the 5% increase. That's current model. And the question came out, and I don't remember which meeting it was, about whether or not we should go ahead and give an increase for people who are at a step 10. Because, of course, as more and more employees are hitting that step 10, more and more employees are reaching out for better steps in, right? And so the question became, how much would it cost us if? And so that was just, again, this is just information for us to make a decision.

All right, thank you.

Yeah, of course.

Do you have a breakdown of who's the grades? How many in each grade is that set to? Did I say that right?

I do. I have.

If you can just, I don't need it. I'm curious. You could just provide that out sometime. Thank you. JP Ackie, sorry.

Oh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Are the employees aware of the increase in insurance

No, that is brand new. So we're going to start socializing that. We're working on kind of a plan. So one thing that you can do is you can kind of band together, if you will, the different pay grades and spread out the increase across. So in other words, people who are making six figures, we're going to have a higher increase than maybe somebody who's at a grade 10. because it's not gonna be as impactful for us as it will be somebody who's out of grade 10. I think that's a more fair approach because Some, if we just applied the 15% increase across, some of these employees are gonna be paying 22 to 25% of their salary to healthcare premiums, and I think that's wrong. So we're trying to be creative in how we can solution this to where it's still fair. People are going to feel an increase. It doesn't matter where you sit.

in the pay structure but maybe we can minimize how much that is depending on your band i agree i agree and i appreciate you guys being creative because last year the county picked up all the increase for all the employees and i just don't think we can do that this year so we need to come up with some other creative ideas to help them out yeah i don't think we can either to be honest um

I think next year's gonna be kind of a tough year. We've got a lot of high claimants and they're gonna have lasers on them next year and I just don't see any way we can as a county just absorb it like we have the last several years. The math just doesn't work. But we can do everything we can to minimize the impact and that's what we're working on now.

The other thing is, and I wrote this, just silence the noise. of misinformation and everybody getting all upset and I think everybody needs to do due diligence to silence that noise because it can infect the attitudes of people working.

Well, I think one thing that we did really well last year was we had feedback sessions so that employees could ask questions. Really, we were focused on the handbook at the time, but I think this is a great opportunity to get in front of employees and allow them a time to ask questions. We're looking at making some plan changes to try to, again, to minimize the financial impact while also providing them excellent benefits. So we're getting really creative and more to come on that.

But it does need to be silenced. Like I said, it is very infectious and it does nothing but damage.

Well, it's hard. Oh, sorry.

Thirdly, your performance evaluation reports, I am in favor. If you don't have a goal and know what your expectations are, then you're going to perform to that sub-level. But if you have great expectations, you'll be surprised at what you can actually achieve. So I'm a big... big proponent of the performance evaluation reports. And I hope all the other elected officials participate and give this in in a timely fashion. Because it's hard to just go through all the data, as many employees you have. And then your advanced placement plan. I don't have a question on that one. That's fine. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm just going to add real quick. I agree with you, JP, and I think we're not going to give them a choice. We're going to put it as a budget control, which means they will have to do it. So I think that's where we should go at this point. Any other questions?

Thank you.

You good? Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you.

Okay, that takes us to new business, item seven. And item seven is an ordinance appropriating professional development recognition payments. And Comptroller Sherman, I think I'm gonna ask for your help, but my understanding of this is there's, based on state code in the assessor's office, there is development recognition payments that are provided out to them. And that comes from the state? Or does that come from the county? I mean, you read this, it says when it's available, so it sounds like it's coming from the state to me, but I just wanted to clarify.

Yeah, Treasurer Hill said the state. I didn't know they had to answer that.

We've already received the money, the $10,000. So it comes from the state. Again, it says the lump sum payment of professionals of development recognition shall be incorporated into the county-based pay, and it says in here somewhere about once we have it, then it should be provided to them. That's why I was curious, okay? So that's basically, this is putting an ordinance in place, appropriating, that money we got from the state to be paid for this reason to the assessors, the appropriate resources. Okay, so I have a motion by J.P. Ecke to pass this on to the full quorum court with the due pass recommendation, and my second was from J.P. Pond. Discussion? Seeing no discussion, any citizen comment on this item? Seeing none, I have a motion from J.P. Eckie to pass this item to the full quorum court. The do pass recommendation seconded by J.P. Pond. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed, nay. That item passes. Item eight is an ordinance appropriating $22,950 to the quorum court budget for 2026. So what this is for is if you remember, we had a presentation where we had a house that was burned out. They'd been sitting there for a long time up on Knob Hill, Washington County 389. It was bad. You could sit across the street in the parking lot and you could smell it. It was decided that we would go forward with resolving that by raising it. We put it out for bid, we got a contractor, that's been done, it's been all cleaned up. So this is appropriating money to pay that contractor for what they did. So a couple questions I had that I reached out to a number of people, including Councilor Lester, to understand. The intent is to invoice the property owner for that work. to recoup that cost and put a lien on the property so if he goes, because we've improved the property for him, right? You no longer have to go buy the property and get rid of something, we've done that, we've improved it, allows them to get more profit on that property if they sell it, so we intend to put a lien on that property so again, we can get reimbursed if they ever should sell that property. J.P. Eckie.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question is, it says it goes to the quorum court. Okay, I'm sorry. Unappropriated reserves in the general fund. I make a motion that we pass this on to the full quorum court with a do pass recommendation. Because I didn't see that part. Unappropriated reserves is where it's gonna go.

Yeah, and I still don't understand how they decide which department to put it through, but that's fine. He gets paid is the biggest, is the most important thing right now is we pay the contractor.

Okay.

And then we take care of it through other needs to get reimbursed by the property owner, which we should be. Any other discussion? Any citizen comment? So I have a motion by J.P. Ecke, seconded by J.P. Ricker to pass item on to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation all those in favor say aye all those opposed that passes item nine is an ordinance anticipating and appropriating additional grant revenue in the drug court grant fund for 2026 So I have a motion by JP Ecke to pass item nine on to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation. Seconded by JP Washington. Discussion? Citizen comment? I have a motion by JP Ecke and a seconded by JP Washington to pass item nine on to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? It passes. Item 10 is an ordinance anticipating appropriating additional revenue in the amount of $100,000 in the law enforcement grant fund for 2026. I have a motion by J.P. Ricker, a seconded by J.P. Ecke to pass item 10 onto the full quorum court. Was it with a do pass recommendation? I didn't listen. Okay, thank you. Any discussion? J.B. Koger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have consistently opposed Washington County's participation in this state criminal alien assistance program. I believe it's harmful. I started objecting to it in 2019, and here today I'm still doing it because I think it's harmful. It's a federal program, especially based on incarcerating people the government classifies as undocumented criminal aliens. To seek reimbursement, the county submits individual jail records for federal immigration status screening. That choice has consequences for trust between local government and our immigrant community, and for families and children. The county submitted 289 individual records in its 2025 application for SCAP application. Approximately 40% of the people in those records were from the Marshall Islands. Many Marshallese residents are already lawfully present under the compact of the free association. But going back to fiscal year 2024 SCAP money, Washington County reported approximately $10.8 million in correctional officer salaries, and Washington County received $109,455. That's about $1.01 for every 100 in the total correctional salaries reported. Government decisions carry administrative, ethical, and community consequences. In addition, the $100,000 that is shown in this ordinance that we're asked to pass tonight is not the award. No one knows what that's going to be. We won't know that until the fall, late in the fall. The Department of Justice was expecting between 500 and 600 SCAP applications from all across the nation. They have to check every inmate record and all those records and decide what is eligible and what is not. That takes a long time. So I spoke a couple of years ago with Joseph Husted. And I understand he's still at the Department of Correction. And he has confirmed that information. So I don't know why this ordinance is being brought forward now months before the award amount will be known. Also, I found several errors in the original submitted grant application, and I understand those either were corrected or will be corrected, but they were not known until well after the deadline for the grant had passed. So I hear people say, well, when someone says immigrants should just get legal, that makes immigration law sound like a line people simply refuse to stand in. For many people, no pathway to citizenship is available. Money does not make every government action the right thing to do. And not all costs are measured in dollars, but in broken trust, frightened and broken families, and harm to our neighbors. I will always be against this. I'm going to vote against it tonight, and I ask that you do too. There are just better things we can do.

JP Pond. In Washington County, we have various... law enforcement entities who cooperate, work together, and I'm proud that they do. And I can't see how we're gonna have anything if we do anything that divides them, separates them, keeps them from working together to protect the law-abiding citizens of the county, you divide them up, you're going to have chaos. I can't see anything. I don't see how it would be good for any of the law-abiding, tax-paying citizens of Washington County. That's just where I'm at on it. I appreciate what they're doing, and I will be voting for this. Thank you. Jay Piecki.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If our Sheriff, Jay Kendrell, can kind of answer this question for me, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you, Sheriff. It was stated that this grant is harmful. In your opinion, is this grant harmful to people?

Well, that's kind of a hard question to answer. I don't know if I have a good answer. I think that I owe it to the citizens of this county that if I have an opportunity to find money uh... that we can get uh... reimbursed for some of our expenses that we should do it and uh... so that's why we bring this forward dr russell uh... thought that uh... it was good to anticipate kind of what we expect to uh... get in this grant and go ahead and get this ordinance brought forward so

But this process isn't unusual to accept or appropriate, anticipating and appropriating monies that we're gonna receive from federal grants. I mean, we've done this in the past.

Yes, correct.

And this is nothing out of ordinary or standard practice from years in the past?

No, to anticipate revenue and then appropriate it, I think, happens regularly at the county level.

Now, in here it says that it is for associated with the incarceration of illegal criminal aliens with at least one felony and two misdemeanors. In your opinion, are they mostly felonies or just a bunch of misdemeanors stacked up on each other?

Well, they have to serve four consecutive days. In our current jail situation, misdemeanor offenders, misdemeanor convictions don't typically serve very much time. So just anecdotally, I think that those are mostly felons because they're the ones that are going to spend the four consecutive days in the county jail.

That's the way I read it. But to our... immigrant community, and I hate separating people. They're members of our community. They live here. And what we want in every community is law-abiding citizens. You go around the world, I don't think any country says you come to us if you are a deviant, a criminal, or a felon. I don't think so. Not even Cuba wants them. They're sending them here to the United States. But I think that rhetoric that we are against immigrants any immigrants whether here lawfully or unlawfully that we're going to hunt you down and and we're against you that's not it you behave and follow the laws of the land until you get your citizenship or your green card or you know whatever documents you need and then you proceed from there but that's your responsibility but i want the immigrant community to know we are not against them by accepting this. We're here to protect them just as much as you are any other person living in the community, because that's our constitutional duty, is it not?

That's correct.

To protect the public.

That's correct.

So, okay, I thank you very much, and if you want to add something about this CAT grant, how important it is.

I'll have to answer any questions anyone might have.

Okay, I thank you. Thank you. That's good.

Okay, so my point on this, basically this ordinance does two narrow mechanical things. It anticipates $100,000 in federal SCAAP revenue the county expects to receive and appropriates that same 100,000 to the specific jail-related line items, does not change any sheriff office policy, does not authorize new enforcement activity, and does not commit the county to anything beyond what state and federal statute already require of the sheriff's office in booking and reporting. The identification of a person's immigration status at booking does not depend on SEAAP in the first place. Under the Secure Communities Fingerprint Interoperability Framework that has been standard nationwide since 2008, 2013, fingerprints taken at booking are automatically submitted to the FBI NCIC slash triple I for criminal history and warrant checks and automatically forwarded to DHS for an immigration status check, a routine baseline process that runs on every booking in every jail in the county independent of SCAAP. A local sheriff's office is not making a special SCAAP-driven disclosure. The data is already following the federal system the moment fingerprints are taken. Additionally, state law now mandates ICE cooperation independent of this vote. As of 2025, Arkansas Act 654, the Defense Against Criminal Illegal Act, requires every county sheriff who maintains a detention center to apply to participate in ICE's Warrant Service Officer Program, or alternatively, the 287G jail enforcement model. and it bars any Arkansas local government from adopting its sanctuary policy, Washington County signed a new 287G agreement with ICE in July 2025 under this mandate. That means the county's cooperation with ICE on in custody individuals is a matter of state law the quorum court cannot opt out of. Voting against this $100,000 appropriation would not change that cooperation in any way. The only thing at stake in this vote is whether the county keeps or forfeits reimbursement for jail costs that is already incurred. SCAAP pays the county back for correctional officer salary costs tied to individuals the sheriff's office has already lawfully booked, convicted, and held under separate state and local criminal proceedings. As was identified, it requires a felony and two misdemeanors, and I thought what was interesting is correct. Based on our current jail, we don't keep a lot of misdemeanors in jail for a long time. Therefore, most of the people that are in this category will be felonies is what I understood you said, sir.

That's great.

Members of this court, have rightly emphasized our fiduciary responsibility to Washington County and its taxpayers when evaluating how public funds are spent. That same duty cuts squarely in favor of accepting this appropriation. The county has already incurred these jail costs. This $100,000 comes to the county at no additional cost, no local match, and no new obligation beyond the correctional purposes restrictions the county would be meeting anyway. declining reimbursement to the county is entitled to money that would otherwise reduce the burden of the general fund local taxpayers is difficult to square with a fiduciary obligation to those same taxpayers if anything turning down cost-free already earned federal reimbursement is the harder position to defend on fiduciary grounds regardless of how small percentage it represents of the total jail budget as we know to that point our total jail budget for 26 was 29 million 915 thousand dollars and four hundred fifty five dollars given a hundred thousand dollars a small percentage but it's money we don't have today to offset that cost and additional appropriations required the ordinance simply lets the county keep money it has already earned for costs it has already paid and restrictions that money to jail operations the county is statutorily obligated to fund regardless of how this vote goes um needless to say i will be supporting this support the Sheriff's Office in what they do. And I think one of the most important things I learned when I did some deep dive researching on this is this information isn't being sent up just for SCAAP. There are no different booking process for SCAAP or otherwise. They go through a booking process. It gets sent out through the fingerprinting process and goes to the federal level anyway.

Yes, that's correct, sir. JP Koger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I want to address the public safety concern that was brought up. To that, I want to say that SCAP adds a separate federal immigration screening and reimbursement process after the county has already carried out its public safety responsibilities. A person can complete the sentence imposed by the court and still face deportation, detention, and permanent separation from family. That's a lot more than simply someone doing their time. And now I want to talk about the felonies and the misdemeanors. I have asked the sheriff for that information, and I'm still waiting for it, Sheriff. I don't know where we are on that, but I have asked for that.

Yeah, I know. Those of us that are hard of hearing ask you to come forward. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Just a moment.

I want to point out that the sheriff did not say that it was not harmful. Right?

Yes, I don't know if it's harmful or not. I really wouldn't be able to express much of an opinion on that.

Okay. I may have more, but I can't do it right now.

Any further discussion? Citizen comments?

hi yes i would like to know what the person in misdemeanors and the percent of felons are because what i'm hearing is a lot of people convincing themselves that this is a good thing and nobody wants to think about how it might be a bad thing except for jb koger and that's understandable because people tend to go with their biases and their ideas. And so that makes sense, but I think basic information, this seems like this would be very easy information to find. What percent of these people are misdemeanors? What percent are felons? And let's not just imagine we know what that is. I do think J.P. Cogar is right, there's a moral cost here. And that moral cost, at some point, is balanced out by the financial benefit. But to ignore the moral cost by saying, well, we're going to do it anyway, and therefore we'll go ahead and take money for doing it, is not really valid. You can say you believe in it and you believe you're protecting people, but you also have to take into account that you are separating families. Maybe they're not upright families like you would like to have in your family, but they're still families. They're still being separated. And so I think that considering that cost is also important. That's all I want to say. And I would like those numbers.

I need you to give your name and address. I apologize. I didn't ask when you started.

Sure. My name is April Maranto, and my address is 2435 East Bristol Place, Fayetteville.

Thank you, ma'am. Citizen comments. Seeing none, we have item 10, a motion to pass the full quorum court to do pass recommendation by J.P. Ricker, seconded by J.P. Ecke. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed? No. It passes. I call for a division of the assembly. All those in favor, raise your hand. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. All those opposed? It passes. Yeah, it was eight to three. There was eight, four, three against. You're shaking your hand, yes? Okay, thank you for the confirmation. Item 11 is an ordinance amending the building and grounds budget for 2026. JP Burns, would you like to introduce this?

Thank you, Chair. Yes, this, I was really shocked when I found out this insurance money, there was only, 3 million on 3 million that was used to fix a roof. And I think we're all aware, letters and communication that we kind of stirred the pot a little bit. And there were a lot of people that were upset over what this money could be used for. The only thing I am asking in this ordinance is that we specifically take that $2 million, move it back to unappropriated funds, so that this body has total control of what happens. Folks, I mean, $2 million may not be a lot to y'all, but that's a lot to me. And for us to say that we're going to go out here and spend it for this and spend it for that, and I understand that since... all the uproar that there has been a reneging of the use of that money, as far as what was stated. However, the 10 December 30, we could have it back. And My concern is that we write contracts and fulfill that money and dedicate that money to contracts that we have no control over. And I just think that we need to have some say-so in that. I mean, that's a lot of money, $2 million. And here's the other thing. We all had the opportunity to tour. And Angela did a great job touring us. And Sheriff, thank you for the luncheon. That's the best ice cream thing I ever ate. But at the same point, folks, we've got to safeguard this money. Nobody is saying that we're going to take it and use it somewhere else. We can get Mr. Sherman to put it in an account, and if they need it for an air conditioner, by all means, let's get them an air conditioner. I just don't think, We as a body are being responsible, and part of that's our fault, part of it's not our fault, because there was no transparency with this money. Not one ounce. Okay? And I think that we need, and that's all I'm asking for in this, is to bring it back to unappropriated and say, let's let this body have control of it. I'll take any questions.

Do you have a motion?

Oh, OK. Thank you. I'll make a motion that this go to the quorum court with a do pass recommendation.

We have a motion by J.P. Bruns to pass item 11, the full court report to do pass recommendation, seconded by J.P. Massingale. Discussion?

JP Stafford. Thank you, Chair. Could we get an update from the comptroller on whether there's still $2 million in that account since we started talking about this? Or has some of it been spent? Or what's the latest status?

I'm going to allow Comptroller Sherman to answer, JP Stafford's question first, and she has the floor.

Thank you. OK. Since this subject came up, in capital, And I have the budget here, their current budget in 2026. So in the capital funds, the $4,000, there is $2.8 million was the original budget. So far this year, they spent $878,000 until all this came up. Since the time that this came up, The buildings and grounds director basically encumbered this $1.03 million, and these are the items that she plans on spending in it before the end of the year. Some of them are important because they're HVAC systems, things like that. So there's a balance in the capital account of $923,000. Now, there is within... uh i gotta find it again here oh that's included in there so that is the that is the balance so that that that two million is in there so The total in the capital account was $2.8 million. They spent $878,000 so far. When all this discussion came up, when you say encumbered, she ties it up with a PO to make sure that she has the money to spend stuff. This is exactly what she wants to spend it on. So she broke it out by cooling tower, expansion tank, HVAC at the health department. I think you guys experienced that second floor the other day. Fire alarm replacement. So there is a balance still after this of $923,000. So first of all, if you took the whole $2 million, truthfully, there's not $2 million in there. It's like $1.9 something.

And that would be the entire balance.

If an air conditioner went out the day after the quorum court meeting, you're not getting an air conditioner until a month and a half, because it has come through the committee, and then it has come through the quorum court. So that would really hamstring them hard. If you're totally concerned, you might dig into that $923,000 sum. That's the balance. You're still going to hamstring her on normal operations and maintenance a little bit. But Buildings and Grounds could probably make it with that encumbered $1.04 million, which I got these figures here. And basically that 1.03 million of that is, I printed this out so you knew exactly what she's spending the money on. So just my personal opinion, if you, so there's no way right now that they could contract more than 900 and some thousand. That would be a misappropriation of money, anti-deficiency, because you're spending more than, what you have in that account. If you wanted to do 500,000, maybe. But even then, we'd still have to come back and it'd be a month and a half before we'd have access to the account. So.

Thank you.

Yeah.

JP Burns.

Now, I guess you're assuming we can't have an emergency meeting to get that money allocated?

Yeah, that would be, I'm assuming, but I don't know how often you'd want to do that. I mean, that is, yeah, that's the assumption.

Emergency meeting can be called by the judge or by a majority vote of, I believe it's a majority vote of the body, if I remember correctly. Expensive. It's okay.

You know, the day that I called you, or the day that I think I called Bobby Hill and got the amounts and the line item, there was $2 million in that account. So after I did my ordinance, all of a sudden a million of it comes up missing.

Well, it's not missing.

It's encumbered on that stuff. I totally get it.

JP Massengale.

So the $2 million that we're talking about was offered as it was going to get used to start remodeling a building?

Well, truthfully, I don't know totally what it was, the purpose of it was. I mean, it was appropriated, and they could, I mean, technically, it being appropriated, they could have used it for whatever they wanted in capital. That's kind of what I think the next ordinance is about, that JP Lyons is submitting. It's gonna tie up. your ability, let's say you guys say we're gonna appropriate a half a million dollars for this capital account, if that changes through the year, they have to come back and tell you what changed and why.

But I believe the original justification when we did the budget was to repair buildings for store damage, is that correct?

Yes.

Okay. So when they came in and did a justification for that 2.8 million, it was insurance money we got, I believe, to provide repairs for storm damage. So that's what it was. Under what we have kind of today, they do have some control of that. But again, we're working through that. Yes.

All right. But we saw a presentation at Last month it said that there was two million left over from insurance and they were gonna start.

Okay, okay. And these right here is the, because I requested this from her because I knew the question would come.

And this is what she encumbered a million dollars and that's what she foresees that she has to pay for before the end of the year.

Okay, thanks.

So, again, there's been a lot of discussion throughout many months on this topic. Right now, and even if we pass the amendment that we're gonna talk about here a little bit later, even these types of things, they would still have to come back to us. I plan to put, the ordinance I have, I plan to put those controls on next year's budget and decide we need to do it now. But again, she's got maintenance needs. I mean, we saw the building Saturday. She's got maintenance needs. There are other maintenance needs coming up. Where I lean to is we need to let her do her job and maintain the buildings to the point if an air conditioner goes out, we can't have people in that building for a month plus or try to call an emergency meeting to get funds for them to do it. I would rather have the justifications in a manner that if you're gonna use these for maintenance purposes and that's what the justification should be, and then she can figure out when she has an air conditioner go out, she has the money to go repair it or whatever she needs to do. That's my preference. and that's where I would go at this point is, let's pass the one we're gonna talk about here in a few minutes. If she needs to come in and we need to do an amendment to the budget indicating that that 923 that's left would be used for maintenance purposes, and then she could maintain the buildings as we know she needs to to keep them from continuing to degrade would be my recommendation. JP Bruns.

I guess you're assuming that we're going to keep all these buildings and we're not going to try to sell any. Know what? I can't understand your head, Jake.

I'm not assuming we're keeping all these buildings. My opinion is totally opposite of that. But we still have to have the appropriate working conditions for people working in the buildings until we make a decision. And that decision is not going to be made in the next six months, as far as I can tell. J.P. Koger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Maybe I'm confused, but I remember when Ms. Ledgerwood came last month. I'd like to know if anyone else remembers this. I asked her a question. I said, are you sure that $2 million is still there? And she said, yes. And I asked about encumbrances, and she said, only the Paragon contracts. Now, that was my understanding. That's why I'm not understanding exactly what all this is.

She encumbered more since that time, basically, because saying that that's what she needs. Now, you guys could say no right now and nix all that stuff. You know what I mean?

No, I don't know what you mean.

Because if you say no, we're going to take the one point something million dollars, then all that stuff's off the table. Because encumbrance, it's not spent.

So how much of this has actually been spent?

So I think you said earlier that $878,000 has been spent today. I assume that was due to the storm damage repair.

Originally, there was a total of like $3.9 million in capital. She spent like $800 and some thousand, which left close to $2 million. It was like $1.9 something something. Since all this discussion, they encumbered all that stuff with the thing that it's routine maintenance and then there's 900 some left.

Okay, thank you.

I mean, right now, if you said, no, we're gonna take, you can't take two million because it's not totally there, but 1.9 something, something, something, they just can't do anything for the rest of the year. No air conditions, nothing. Now, they could come back and ask you, and you could do the emergency meeting if there's a $30,000 air condition that needs to be replaced. You could do an emergency meeting, but... Additional discussion.

Citizen comment. I have a motion by J.P. burns bruns to pass item 11 the full quorum court to do pass recommendation seconded by jp massengill all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed no i believe that does not pass all those in favor raise your hand all those opposed raise your hand It does not pass. Item 12 is an ordinance recognizing additional revenue in the amount of $55,222.26 and appropriating $55,222.26 from unappropriated reserves to the general fund Line item in the sheriff, budget for 2026. Motion, thank you. Right, I was looking that up, thank you. Got a motion by J.P. Rickard, did I get a second? I have a motion by J.P. Ricker, a second by J.P. Pond to pass item 12 to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation. Discussion, J.P. Ricker.

I'm sorry, I left that on. I was just going to say this was a vehicle wreck and this is a payout from it. Right, thank you.

Additional discussion? Citizen comment. I have a motion by J.P. Ricker to pass item 12 onto the full quorum court to do pass recommendation, seconded by J.P. Bond. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed? Passes. Item 13 is an ordinance recognizing additional revenue in the amount of $278,908.35 and appropriating $278,908.35 from unappropriated reserves to the general fund and jail fund to various line items in this Sheriff Jail budget. Motion to pass the full form before we do pass recommendation. So this is funds from the Sheriff's Office, providing security for special events, basically is what we're getting, and then allocating it into their budget, just so we're all clear. Okay, just wanted to make sure. So I have a motion from J.P. Ricker, seconded by J.P. Pond, to pass item 13, Alden, to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation. Any discussion? Citizens, oh, sorry, J.P. Stafford.

Razorback games aren't cheap.

Sorry?

I said Razorback games aren't cheap. But they pay us for them.

Okay. Any citizen comment? So I have a motion by J.P. Riggard, second by J.P. Pond to pass item 13, the full corn court, the due pass recommendation. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? It passes. Item 14. Basically, item 14 is an amendment to the 2026 budget ordinance, which basically states that, and quite honestly, it states what, in my personal opinion, in reading state code, state code already states that contracts can't be signed when funds aren't appropriated for that purpose. and it's the judge's responsibility to ensure that when we pay funds, it's for an appropriated purpose. But we're gonna make it clear. So what this does is basically for any remaining capital outlay funds, the appropriation is for what the justification basically was when we appropriated it. If it needs to be used for any funds, so we take the example we talked about a few minutes ago, if Director Ledgerwood would like to use the additional outlay funds that they have that they didn't spend on storm repair, storm damage repair, then we need to come into the quorum court and do an amendment to modify that justification to use it for maintenance or whatever it is she wants to use it, and then we get the ability to vote to whether we want that appropriated for that appoint or not, is what this amendment basically does. I'll make a motion we pass this on to the full quorum court to do pass recommendation. Thank you. So I made the motion to pass this on to full quorum court to do pass recommendation as seconded by JP Stafford. Discussion? No discussion. Any citizen comment? Seeing none, we have a motion. to pass item 14, the full quorum court to do pass recommendation as seconded by J.P. Stafford. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed? That passes. So before we move on to citizens' comment, do we have a consent agenda somebody would like to propose? Hang on, hang on.

All right, J.P. Rickard. Ready? I make a motion to adopt a consent agenda of items 7, 8, 9, 12, and 13.

I have a motion by J.P. Ricker, seconded by J.P. Massengale, to put items 7, 8, 9, 12, and 13 on the consent agenda for the quorum court. Any discussion? Okay. Any other discussion on the consent agenda motion? Citizen comment. I have a motion by J.P. Ricker to put items 7, 8, 9, 12, and 13 on the consent agenda for the quorum court, seconded by Massengale, Sorry, I didn't write it down. See, if I don't write it down... All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Aye. It passes. J.P. Wilson.

I guess we could call this a point of order, but really it's something that I have... It could be stated at any time almost, but before we do any citizens' comments, I thought it would be best. Just for the sake of procedure... I know when I first got acquainted with the quorum court, I attended meetings even before elected. I remember a lot of people would state their name in the town they're from in the county, but I don't remember that they always had to state their address, and I don't know if we should require a public statement of a person's address.

The statement is always provide your name and address. I've seen the vary. I'm from Washington County. I'm from Fayetteville.

They give a full address.

I think that's left up to the individual. If they said by name I'm from Lincoln or whatever, I think that's adequate. I don't know that anybody should have to give their address.

I think it's up to the individual how they state their address.

Okay. I didn't know if we had a procedure specifying it.

I don't know of a procedure specifying exactly what has to be included in the statement of the address. It's up to the individual.

I just don't feel good about asking someone to publicly state their address. Yeah, I understand. Anyway, thank you.

Okay.

J.P. Reyes-Safford.

I think when I've chaired the meeting, I've just said, state your name and where you're from. And so it's up to state your name and where you're from.

Where you're from.

And then it's up to the individual to decide what they want to say.

That's probably better phrasing. I appreciate that. Again, I've never seen it one way or the other, and I've seen a lot of different ways. So from my perspective, the individual can state that however they would like to. J.P. Ecke?

This is a public service announcement. that if you're 65 years or older, you can go to the Springdale Water Utilities Department, show your driver's license and that you live, you reside where you reside, and you will freeze your utility, I mean your water rate, and you have to do this by the end of September. If you don't, Water is going to go up in October for everybody, along with SOARD. Let me look at this rather quickly, how much. It all depends. But I'm glad that they have senior exemption. So rate freeze residential age 65 and older can apply for a residential rate freeze to keep rates at the previous $14.80 water in 1955 for sewage minimum levels. And with the price of everything going up, we seniors really need this break. So I encourage all senior citizens 65 years and older to apply for this down at the Springdale Water Department. Thank you, sir. No, it is Springdale. just springdale water because their rates are going up october 1st so they have to do this before the end of september oh yeah please this is spring dale a spring deal thank you sir thank you so next item citizens comment we have a total of 12 minute comment period three minutes per individual citizen comment

Seeing none, thanks everyone for coming. We're adjourned.