Quorum Court - Regular Meeting

Would the Washington County County Services Committee please come to order? Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I've asked Robert Dennis to please lead us in the prayer and the pledge. Justice Dennis.

Our most gracious Heavenly Father, we come to you. We just thank you for the many blessings that you've given us. Pray that you'll be with us, be with our families. Pray that you'll be with our country. Bless it. Bless our county. Keep our employees all safe. Pray that you'll just give us wisdom for this meeting tonight. Let us do your will. These things we ask and pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

We salute.

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

Thank you, Justice Dennis.

You're welcome.

Next on the agenda, do I have any motions? I have Justice Bruns. Yes, sir.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. For the adoption of the agenda, I would like to request that we move a number 10 to number 8, if that would be OK. Put them together.

You'd like to make an amendment to the agenda?

Yes, ma'am.

Do I have a second? Second. I have a second. Do you have any questions? OK. Justice Lemming?

You want to make it 8 or 7A? You want it in between 7 and 8?

I want to make number 10 go to number 8. And move it. I mean, if you want to call it 7-1, then that's fine.

Whatever. Move it together. I understand what you're doing. Thank you.

OK. OK. I have a motion to amend. Second. And a second. Multiple seconds by Justice Rivera-Lopez and Justice Ricker. All in favor of the amendment, say aye. Aye. All opposed? The agenda has been amended, now is there a motion to adopt the agenda? I have a motion from Justice Ricker and a second from Justice Dennis to adopt the agenda. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? The agenda has been adopted. Rather quickly, several of us went to the AAC state meeting, and I would probably say this is probably one of the best ones. I gleaned quite a bit of information from them, things I didn't know, things that made me feel very proud of Washington County, that we're ahead of the game in a lot of ways than other counties, and other counties are struggling. I mean, keep them in their prayers right now. really, really struggling, especially with the drought and the farmers and the corn and whatnot. But if anybody wanted to make a comment of what they felt like they liked from the AAC and what they took away, I know it's spur of the moment, but you're more than happy to, we can do this at the end also. Not at this time? Okay. We did have Senator Tom Cotton speak. It was a very good speech and also Attorney General Tim Griffin gave his plan for safety, public safety, and law enforcement, I thought it was great. We are still asking the state to fund our jails at the rate that isn't taxing on general budget, and we'll see where that ends up. But anyway, moving on next to 5.1, it's a juvenile detention program. report with Director Tinsley. Good evening, sir.

Good evening, Madam Chair, and good evening to the County Service Committee members. I'd like to share our juvenile detention center monthly report for August 2026. This report is covering 25 days of data. In August, we had 18 intakes and the average length of stay was about 19.78 days. Our average daily population came out to over 12.04 residents. The most common charge for intakes was domestic battery third, misdemeanor at five cases. Of the 18 intakes from Washington and Madison counties, 10 intakes were from division three, excuse me, Excuse me, I have an error in my paperwork. I'm sorry about that. One moment, please. Okay, so we had ten intakes from Division III and eight from Division VIII. We had nine transports during the month of August, which four were done by the Washington County Sheriff's Office, one by Benton County Sheriff's Office, and four by the Washington County JDC. That concludes the 2026 report for August. Are there any questions that I may answer at this time?

Any questions? Justice Coger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Director Tinsley, I just have some questions. First of all, thank you for your report. It's so always so thorough. But did the Youth Reporting Center move from the Jones Center?

From my understanding, it did, J.P. Koger. Now, just from what I've heard, and I don't know this to be true, so I just want to kind of set the table that they wouldn't renew the lease to Division III, and so they had to find somewhere else to have the youth reporting center, from my understanding.

Okay, but both Division III and Division VIII were using the youth reporting center, correct?

Not to my knowledge. I believe it was just a Division III program.

Okay.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. Did the grant, the Title II grant, did it not get renewed or?

J.P. Koger, from my understanding, I have no idea about whether the Title II grant for Division III or A got renewed. I have no idea, no matter.

I'm sorry. No, it's fine, it's fine. Okay, I have one more question. It's about the Teen Action and Support Center that worked with you on the youth. Well, the youth program was kind of an alternative to the detention center, correct?

The Evening Youth Reporting Center, yes ma'am, I used to be over there a few years ago, so I'm pretty familiar with that program.

So do you know if we're still working with the Teen Action and Support Center?

If I could email you and get some further clarification. I'm sorry. No, it's fine. And, you know, J.P. Kohler, I just don't want to overstep my lane by answering a question that, you know, from hearsay. That's fine.

You have an excellent report, and we can just talk then maybe.

Absolutely. I would like just my professional opinion. I would love to see that, you know, TAS and the Youth Reporting Center report you know, joint forces again because it was a force to be reckoned with for the youth of Springdale and Northwest Arkansas. It was just a place for youngsters to come out to school and learn so many cool things from poetry to working on computers to robotics. It was a nice setting for a long time. That's just what I heard, that they didn't renew the lease. I don't know who they is as far as the people, the powers that be, but if I'm understanding correctly and if I heard correctly, I'm kind of sad about the outcome of this, but that's just hearsay. I don't know.

Okay, well, thank you so much.

Yes, ma'am.

Are there any other questions? I have Justice Lemming.

You kind of answered it. You don't know who would sign the contract. Was this a state deal or is this a county deal?

I could find out for you, but again, I don't want to get an email tomorrow, hey, you said the wrong thing. It's happened before.

If you find out, just send me a text.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

My apologies, are there any other questions for Director Tinsley? Seeing none, thank you, have a good evening. I'm gonna have our Vice Chair take over the meeting for just one moment. There is a life and death phone call that I'm gonna take real quick and I do apologize. Here you go. You can sit in the big chair.

Six years. Number six is the Sheriff's Office Jay Cantrell with his monthly activity report. Hi, Jay. Yes.

Really, this doesn't matter to me anyway. I'm not a stickler for detail. But just to be official, do we have to take action to change temporary chair of this meeting?

I don't believe we ever have. Whenever you have a vice chair, I am the vice chair.

And I have no objection to that. If there was a rule we overlooked, I just wanted to ask.

We can do.

I'll make a motion. I'll second. I think we're good. We're going to have the vice chair and committee chief step out.

OK. OK. Thank you. Thank you, Jay. Go ahead. Who keys the?

I don't know how to work it.

Somebody else's.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My activity report should be in your packet. I'll try to be brief. I know you've got a lot of good presentations after me, and I'd like to give them all the time they need. The jail and the sheriff's office report is not much different than last month. You can see from your report that our calls for service are down. From this time last year, jail intakes were up just a little bit. But besides that, it's just business as usual down at the county jail. I'd be happy to answer questions should there be any.

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. Thank you, Sheriff Cantrell. Also, thank you for including the bed days that I asked for. I just have my regular questions, like the number of people sleeping on the floor.

Last night at midnight, it was 166 without an assigned bed.

All males?

Yes, all males, no females.

What about any COVID-19?

No COVID. No COVID since June, thankfully.

June 10th. Okay. And how many federal beds were there last night?

We had 79 U.S. Marshal, and that was this afternoon when I looked. 79 U.S. Marshal and 14 for Immigration and Customs.

Okay, and finally, could you give us an update on the COVID mitigation project, how it's coming along, and when it might be finished?

You know that we've done a walkthrough with the contractor and the project manager and identified some issues that need just minor corrections, but the new part of the building is coming along really well. They're just fixing up those little minor things. The old We call it the Work Release Building. It's Building D. We're in the process of rehabbing it. We'll paint it and redo the showers, get new epoxy in the showers, and that's happening right now. So we'll have that done here in hopefully a couple weeks. We're doing that, the epoxy of the showers, we're doing it with the contractor, the painting we're doing with the in-house inmate labor. So it's coming along good. We're excited to get in it.

Okay, thank you very much.

We went on a tour of the facility at the beginning of the month, was it, Justices, something like that?

Yeah, August 8th, I believe.

Yeah, Justice Heyer's birthday. It's amazing what y'all have done and how you've repurposed the space that you have. And the forward thinking, I guess this is just who you all are, the forward thinking in public safety. the officer's safety. It's always at the forefront of your mind and you can tell just by walking through there and your officers talking to us that they are very aware of where you all are and what you're doing. And I was very impressed with how you repurposed the areas and the expansion that's going on at the jail. But also, law enforcement does a lot of good things out in the community. Is there anything just that you can share, the good things that are happening out there?

Well, we got through the county fair. You know, the sheriff's office provides security at the county fair, and we have for years and years. And there were no arrests at the county fair this year. We were happy for that. We had to escort a few people out, but nobody got arrested. There were a few medical calls, but nothing serious. So it was a good event. University of Arkansas football is going to start this weekend and the Washington County Sheriff's Office helps the University of Arkansas. In fact, we probably provide more any other agency, we'll send about 50 deputies between 45 and 50 over there to help with crowd control and with security and to assist our partners over at the University of Arkansas with that 80,000 extra people on campus. And so looking forward to a good season. Besides that, we've had a good month. August was a good month and no serious or major crimes to report.

That's great. That's terrific. Thank you for a good report. Oh, one more. Justice Lemming.

I just want to make it clear that you will be reimbursed for your officers being there. Oh, absolutely, yes, yes. We don't want the county thinking you go down there and work for free.

Yeah, yeah, the university athletic department reimburses all of the agencies that go down there and help provide security, so we'll be reimbursed for that. We were reimbursed by the county fair for that security.

And we'll do the appropriations through budget and finance, and it'll go back to that way.

Yeah, back into that line item.

Yeah, that line item. I have one more. Justice Brens.

And who started that program?

Hold on. But an old captain back at the university that thought it'd be a good idea to bring some of these local law enforcement agencies in to help with the football. And that was back when they had 30 or 35,000 people there. Wow. Yeah.

It's a heart that keeps on giving, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah. But it's good for Northwest Arkansas. The folks that come in spend a lot of money here. And, you know, they're avid supporters of the Arkansas Razorbacks and of Northwest Arkansas. So it's a good thing.

Yeah. For the public who didn't see that, that was Captain then, Justice now, Brad Bruns.

Yes. Thank you. One of my mentors when I first started.

Thank you, Justice Bruns. Okay, is there any other questions? One more. Yes, sir.

I just want to make mention, one thing we did learn down at the Arkansas Association of Counties that Tim brought up, the fact is, The jails, he really said we need to get more jails built, and we need to get them built fast across the state of Arkansas.

Prison, yeah.

Prison. And also, they talked about, they're talking about, just like you mentioned, 80,000 people in northwest Arkansas, and they come and pay sales tax, and they do a lot of stuff. They're talking real heavy about trying to do away with sales tax, and that would kill all of the county government and kill a lot of cities and towns. There's no way we can do without sales tax. I don't see it. Thank you. Thank you.

Yes, and we are working hard, and I'm sure as you are trying to get fairly compensated by the state, if they'll only meet the obligations after the Arkansas audit that they did on the sheriffs, it's $83 and I don't know a few cents, what our daily costs are.

Yes, I talked to any legislator that will listen. Yes. Talked to Brian King today. on the phone about this very thing. So, yeah, anybody I can get an audience with, we're ringing that bell.

We're fighting hard behind the scenes. The executive board and the legislative board at the ADAC, which I'm on both of them, are working really hard. I mean, all across the state, this is impacting county generals' budgets, and there's so much more we can do with that money if the state would pay their obligations. I have Justice Lyons.

Thank you, Chair. I just want to clarify, my colleague. I think I heard you say sales tax, but I think you meant property tax. They're trying to get rid of property tax across the states. They already started in Texas and it keeps moving on. Is that what you meant?

It was property tax. That's a lead-in to the reason why I invited Assessor Hill to do a presentation on why we are collecting sales tax in Texas.

Gotta have a revenue stream to pay the sheriff, pay the jail, do the roads. You get rid of property tax, everybody's sales tax is gonna probably quadruple. It's the only way we get revenue. So just, we need to think about it and figure it out.

Well, the statement that Chris Valines from the AAC made, he's president, if the national movement to get rid of property tax, what it would do is it would eviscerate county government. we wouldn't have a revenue flow. I mean, it would just utterly eviscerate us. But not to worry, we're gonna have a great presentation. Sheriff, thank you so much. Oh, Charles Dean, here we go.

Sheriff. Well, I don't know if Jay can answer it or not, but I was on the understanding that this property tax deal was for senior citizens.

Oh, there is a... a freeze once you become a senior citizen like me and you.

But I thought to eliminate it. Oh, to eliminate it. That they wanted to eliminate it for seniors. For senior citizens. Yeah.

I did not hear that.

Yeah. Thank you. That's what I was to understand.

Oh, okay. I haven't heard that. Okay, moving on. Next on the agenda is... Director Bennett from Human Resources updating us on HR and also talking about an ordinance, maternity leave ordinance. Good evening. Good evening. Can you hear me?

Okay. So just a couple of quick updates. Hopefully you all saw the email. We are doing a challenge coin contest. We want to switch the employee recognition from kind of we have lunch boxes right now and some other just kind of miscellaneous. We wanted something a little bit more um washington county culture-esque um and so one of the team members myra came up with the idea to do the challenge coin and so we decided what a better way than to open up as a contest so we've gotten a ton of designs in we're really excited so voting will start on that um in a week or so Open enrollment, October 26th through the 30th will be the sheriff's office. No, I'm sorry, the courthouse. And then sheriff's office will be November 2nd through the 6th. We are working with JTS on the healthcare premium. I kind of let you all know we are going to get an increase. What we did was we took worst case scenario and decided to kind of look and see what that would look like as a percentage of overall salary based on the different pay bands. And so... We're looking at doing an incremental increase so that pans one through five or one through six may not see an increase, and then the next one may get a 5% increase or seven, depending on how it comes in. So that way people aren't spending 25% of their income on health care premiums. So we're trying to kind of spread that out and make it a little bit more affordable. We've heard some noise in terms of, well, if we're at bands 24, it's going to take up X percent of our overall salary increase. It's going to take away our salary increase. It's not that dramatic of an increase. So we we will build all of that out and show you in the October finance so that you can see exactly what those percentages and breakdowns are. So once we kind of have that laid out, I'll send it to you just for awareness. We have also had some great leaders reach out and say thank you for thinking of all the employees and not just doing a 15% increase across the board. Like we have a lot of employees that are struggling to make it right now. And if you add a significant increase to their premiums, we're concerned. So we are working on that. Hopefully we should have the final numbers about halfway through September so that we can let people know ahead of open enrollment and they can plan accordingly. So more to come on that. Shameless plug for the annual increases. to be moved to January. We've heard from employees, they want this, leaders want this. We've encouraged them to reach out to you, I hope they are. So shameless plug on that, that should be in the budget controls when we submit the final budget. We did hire our generalist. She actually, instead of the September 14th, she started today. It was her first day. She has over 20 years of experience. So she is coming in and adding value day one, and we are really excited to have her. So thank you so much for your support on that. We are feeling that relief already. And then, I don't know, can I go right into the ordinance? Is that okay? Or is it two separate items? It is a separate item.

Okay. And I don't know what the rules are. Let me get this real quick. So next on the agenda is item 7.1. And this is an ordinance establishing a paid parental leave policy for Washington County employees and for other purposes. And do I have Justice Wilson?

I just had a question.

In order to have a discussion, we need to get a motion.

No, I mean a question on the previous item.

On the previous item? Yeah. Okay.

And it's not a big deal. It's not an end of the world type thing. Well, no, go ahead and ask. I was very curious. That challenge coin, is it going to have that emblem on one side of it, perhaps? Or has anybody decided that?

There's all kinds of different designs. I'm really creative. I am not creative. And so when Myra had the idea to do a challenge coin, And I tried. My team got really quiet. I was like, okay, I think that was really ugly. I'm sorry. Why don't we just do a challenge coin contest? So there's a lot of different designs that people will vote on. But I don't, I mean, we'll see what ends up being the.

I just think it's a great idea no matter what you come up with. Thanks. Thank you.

It's been fun. I have Justice Lyons.

Thank you, Chair. How are you going to do the voting, online or is it?

Yeah, same thing we did for the annual awards, so through our website.

Thank you. Yeah. I have Justice Lopez.

I wanted to move that we pass item 7.1 to the full quorum court with a do pass recommendation.

I have a motion to pass 10.1 to the full quorum court with a do pass recommendation as second by Justice Hiers. Now, is there any discussion on item 10.1? I have Justice Coger.

OK, thank you. I just want to point out, I want to make an amendment on line 46. I think it's 46. Line 45, I'm sorry. Line 45, the next to the last word. And I did point this out to Attorney Lester and Ms. Bennett. And Ms. Bennett agreed that the word should be changed from Paternal to parental.

So that can just be a Scrivener's error.

I thought it was gonna be updated for your packets.

Okay, well I have an amendment. I want to change it to make it say parental, that one word.

Thank you. That's all I have. And that is in line parental. I have a motion and a second to change on line 45, article five. It says process for requesting paid parental leave. All in favor of that amendment and changing it to parental? Say aye. All opposed? That amendment passes. Then article five will now read process for requesting paid parental leave. Mr. Allen, will you make a note of that for the, thank you. I have Justice Massengale next.

Thank you. Can you cue your mic again?

So do we have an idea what this is going to cost?

Well, we already pay for the salaries. The salaries are budgeted anyway. So we're already paying the employees. I think the only operational cost that you're probably referring to is probably most felt by the sheriff's office when he has to cut and cover shifts. But we are still talking about, I mean, maybe... 12 people across the county a year, maybe. I think last year we had six. So we're not talking about a huge population in terms of how many people actually utilize it.

They're not gonna go the therefore and to populate all of Washington County.

Okay, and let's see. So we're saying eight weeks?

Yeah, and the reason for that, what we find is a lot of people aren't getting released to go back to work at six weeks. They're getting released at eight. And so why not just go ahead and make it eight weeks instead of six? And that way they can have a full recovery. You know, with short-term disability, the way we have it now, whenever they run out of their second vacation, they have to go unpaid for two weeks before short-term disability kicks in. And that's if they signed up for it. You know, what if they didn't sign up the year because they didn't know they were going to have a baby, right? And then now they're going to be out. So it's really impactful to those families.

Okay. And just for the mother or the father also?

Both.

Both. And, okay, and they don't, they don't, they still keep all their vacations? This doesn't eat into vacation?

It doesn't eat into their vacation. It basically runs concurrent with FMLA. So FMLA is 12 weeks of job protected leave. That's the legal requirement, right? What we're saying is those first eight weeks, instead of you utilizing your sick and vacation, we're gonna pay you for that. And so now they can take that time and when they come back and they have doctor's appointments for the child, doctor appointments for themselves, they have sick and vacation time that they can utilize.

Okay, do we know what most other companies are offering in terms of paper only?

Between six and eight weeks. So we're a little generous on the, but again, I feel like so many people are not getting released on the six. I feel like those extra two weeks are worth it. Let's just take care of the employees.

Is that a national average or is that? We know what the.

I mean, I don't wanna, I mean, I don't, I can't speak to Tons of companies, but certainly local companies, it's six weeks. Yeah. I actually think one of the Fortune 500, I think they do eight weeks as well. I want to say J.B. Hunt does eight weeks. But I have to, I could confirm and let you know. But it's between six and eight.

Okay.

Yeah. And I do... I do have a letter from your elected supporting this, from Assessor Hill, Collector Wood, Treasurer Hill, Sheriff, County Clerk, Circuit Clerk, all signed a letter requesting your support for this. So they've definitely had a chance to look it over, get feedback, and are supportive, which I greatly appreciate their support, so.

One more question. So when we hire an employee, is there a probationary period before they're considered full-time?

We don't have a probationary period. There is, as far as this policy goes, a prorated. So when Fayetteville passed theirs, they just said that they were going to do a prorated amount if they didn't qualify for FMLA, so they hadn't been there a year. I wanted the prorated amount called out specifically and clear and transparent on what that prorated amount would look like. So I wanted that part to be super clear. Yeah.

OK. But when we hire a new employee, there's no probationary period where if they don't work out, we They get evaluated like 90 days or something and make sure.

I mean, I don't think we have one across the board, but I think there's certain departments where, you know, people are either going to acclimate and learn or maybe it wasn't the right fit or whatever. But we don't really honestly see a lot of turnover at the 90 days. It's very rare. And if they do, it's for attendance. Yes. um so it's it's i mean honestly our turnover except for one department um has really been pretty good and the candidates that we're getting are strong like when we posted the hr job we were getting 20 15 10 years for an hr generalist one job and most of them cited our benefits and french benefits I mean, it's working. We're getting really, and our turnover's going down. So to me, like any operational cost that may be associated with taking care of our employees, we're getting that and not having the turnover. That's my perspective.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, of course.

That momentum is what... so many of us on the court for years have been pushing towards hearing the elected officials saying, I can't hire anybody, I can't pay anybody, you know, I'm short staff, you know, they're double timing. And it wasn't until we passed the unprecedented policy change, structure change, did it finally start moving in the right direction. And I'm very proud of what this court has done in the last two years to really keep this moving forward, and these are the results. I mean, the elected officials are able to hire good. Really quality. Quality, yeah.

And the years of service for county or city experience, like adding that into our vacation accruals, that has been another really big win that you all passed that has made an impact in terms of who we're getting into these positions. So it's kind of exciting.

I have Justice Lyons. Thank you, Chair.

Did you say earlier, I'm not sure I caught it all, that the moms are usually released at eight weeks? Is that what you said? Okay, so they're medically recovered through eight weeks, okay.

That's why I just kind of defaulted. Sorry, I didn't interrupt. I'm sorry? I said that's why I just kind of defaulted to eight weeks. I'm like, let's just go ahead and not have them have to use two weeks of their sicker vacation if we're going to have it. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

And you said this was for both the mother and the father slash partner?

Yep.

And they both get eight weeks?

Yep.

So the back filling and making sure we're operationally can support the citizens during that eight week period, has there been any,

input or thought around are we gonna bring in part-time people to do that people's just gonna be asked to step up and and do more or no one has brought that up as a true concern again it's not like we have 40 people go at the same time so you know what i mean but i i get what your your your point so no one's really brought that as a concern okay

So the one question, and again, you had them ahead of time, which I'm glad, and the email you sent back to me, you referenced Title, we basically have to give it to both because of Title VII, which is the discrimination law. That law, I think, breaks down some categories of medical recovery versus

My bonding leave.

Bonding, thank you.

I got you.

I just read it three minutes ago.

It's all good.

Bonding. Is there been any consideration looking at that and breaking that down between the mother? Did they give the mother six weeks of medical, two weeks of bonding, and the father slash partner two weeks of bonding?

So I'll give you a little perspective from a mom. So I worked at a company that had a very nice policy. And while you are trying to get better from your medical events, it is nice to have your significant other there taking care of said child while you can actually rest and get better and have that kind of support there. I'm a big fan of both parents need to be available and bonding, and it's a life change, and to me, I think this is a really big statement in terms of Washington County takes care of the employees and their families, and that loyalty that I think that when you take care of people and you take care of their families, I think it goes a long way with people. So to me, it's worth it.

Thank you. Yeah. So what do others in the area do? Fayetteville gives six weeks flat, no probation found. Little Rock, Pulaski County, again, I looked at that because Pulaski, Benton, Washington are the three big counties in the state. So Little Rock, Pulaski gives 12 weeks at one plus year, six weeks at less than one year, full-time city employees. Pulaski government specifically gives no dedicated pay, parental leave was found. Benton County does not provide any, Springdale does not provide any. Arkansas state government employees get up to 12 weeks that are employed one plus year. Arkansas public school employees get 12 weeks, University of Arkansas provides six weeks to two plus years, 10 years, four weeks for one to two year tenure. Walmart, getting over into the commercial a little bit, gives 12 weeks for salaried employees, six weeks for full-time hourly associates, such as associates and truck drivers. Tyson's gives eight weeks to the birthing parent, two weeks to the partner spouse. J.P. Hunt does similar, six weeks to the birthing parent, two weeks. to the father slash partner. So that just gives you a little bit of a insight of what others in the area are doing.

Thank you, ma'am.

Yeah, you're welcome.

I have Justice Coker. Thank you very much. I just wanna say, sitting around the horseshoe, some of you here haven't needed to take maternity leave, and you never will, okay? I'm talking to the guys here. But as someone, having a baby is a major event, a major event, and I was very fortunate when I had both my children. I got 10 weeks paid maternity leave, and back in those days, that was pretty much unheard of. I don't care what the other cities aren't doing. I know what we can do, or the other counties. I know what we can do, and I think if we pass this, others might follow suit. We might be starting a good thing for everybody. But I don't know how to explain to you just how important it is to be home with that baby as long as you can. And eight weeks is not long, not long at all. And personally, when I first heard of this, I thought we should make it 10 weeks. But I'm very happy if we can at least make it the eight weeks. And I urge all of you to please vote for this. Like Ms. Bennett said, I know that it's going to make Washington County a more not lackable, but desirable employer. Thank you very much.

And all the women said, hear, hear. Justice, I'm sorry, Justice Bruns.

Thank you, Chair. Our love is false. The The question I have is that I heard you say something a while ago. And it's been 20 years since I've dealt with the personnel matters. So my question is, when you speak about FMLA, and you just told me a while ago that you had to be here a year before FMLA even takes And when I was doing personnel stuff, FMLA was not paid leave. Is it currently?

It's a job-protected leave. So by the bare minimum of the law, we have to allow them the time to be off, and they can come back to their job.

Right, but do they get paid during that time?

No. That's what I was— If they don't have—unless they use their sicker vacation time.

Yeah, so they basically don't get any pay at all, but they get the time off.

And they also have to pay in to keep their insurance benefits going. So all those deductions, they still have to.

Retirement and anything else.

All of that, they still have to pay that in. So imagine you're not working. You have all these medical bills. You've used up all your sick and vacation time. You've got to wait two weeks before short-term disability kicks in.

Mm-hmm.

That's a lot. And you're still having to pay in for your premiums.

Right. So it could be a burden for them.

Absolutely.

That might be a good thing that maybe we try to do a voluntary sick leave. uh fund for employees for washington county at some point so um that we could draw from to help out if if mla would allow it you mean like a donation bank like that people would donate their time like catastrophic lead bank Yeah, go fund me or something like that, you know. I don't know the legalities you're going to have to.

I think you'd have to be really careful with the guilt-finding me's.

I don't know that I want to be. Just to stay on point right here, and there's several behind here that would like to speak also. Maybe that's a discussion, Justice Bruns, at you and Director Bennett can have, and you can bring that to the court on what you all talked about.

OK? OK. The FMLA, though, how long does it go after the eight weeks?

So employees have 12 total weeks, and it runs concurrent. So the eight weeks of parental, yeah, that takes up the first eight weeks. And then if they wanna continue on to that four weeks, they can, but then they need to either use their sick or vacation time.

Yeah. Okay, thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you, Justice Brennan. I have Justice Lemming.

Thank you, Chair. You said no cost to the county, correct?

We're already paying the salaries.

I know, but when they're on leave, like you said, we gotta pay the insurance. We're gonna pay them their check and all that, and we're gonna continue paying their insurance and all that. They have to pay in for their insurance. Their portion.

Yeah, they have to write a check for their insurance. And if they don't have any sick or vacation time to use, that's just coming out of savings, I guess?

just wherever they can get the money. OK, thank you.

I think that's Justice Bassingale.

Yeah, I just had one more question. So since this applies equally to the mother and the father, is there a requirement that it has to apply equally to the father?

No. I mean, if they choose not to apply for the leave, they don't have to.

Yeah. But I mean, could you make the father four weeks and the mother eight if we wanted to? Would that be legal?

If... I'm not 100% sure on that, and I don't want to lead you wrong. From what we were looking at, it looked like if you offered parental leave, it had to be equitable.

Yes.

So I don't, according to Title VII, so I, from my understanding and perspective, and in all things being equal, my point of view would be that it would be eight weeks for both parents. That's my point of view.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah.

I will say, along with what Justice Coker said, I only got two weeks back in the day. And that was tough. A lot of tears. But what can I say? So I'm very proud that we've brought this forward. And we're going to take a vote. All in favor of moving this to? Oh, I'm sorry. I looked and nobody did. Justice Dennis.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I want you to qualify for me. Parental means both, male and female. OK, what about significant others?

Yeah, a legal partner? Yeah.

Pardon me?

Like a legal partner? You mean significant other? What do you mean?

I mean significant others. Otherwise, you know, many times I'll hear, oh, no, this is not my... Husband, this is my significant other.

We pay them? The way other, when we were researching, the way other counties and municipalities have handled it is if they are in real estate agreements together, because Arkansas doesn't recognize common law. You know what I mean? So if they are in real estate agreements together, if they are living together, they file their taxes, you know what I mean? Then I... That would be something that they would consider.

Well, that would be significant other. So my question is still the same, which is it? Yes or no?

Yes. A legal partner, yeah.

All right. That makes me less likely to vote for it, I'll just tell you. So on the road department, it works four days. Is that considered, is it five days considered a week?

We would, it would be based on whatever their schedule is. So if they're like, take law enforcement, for example, they're 12, Rhodes is 10, my team is eight, right? Like it would be based on whatever they're, it's kind of like we run it like FMLA does now. That's exactly how we do it with FMLA now. It's based on whatever their schedule is.

I didn't hear you on most of that.

I want to make sure I answered your question.

I'll just assume what I want to then because I didn't hear you.

Okay. Do you want me to repeat it? Sometimes I mumble and sometimes my words aren't very clear. Get a little bit closer to the mic. Oh, yeah. Sorry. So it depends on whatever schedule they work. Just kind of like right now when we're calculating FMLA, if they're on a 12... hour shift then it's calculated on 12 hour 10 hour or eight hour does that answer your question yeah it still would come out to 80 hours that answers my question okay

That's all, thank you.

You're welcome. OK, I have Justice Hiers. Thank you, Madam Chair. As someone that was working a job where I got zero paid leave, what I had to do is I had to leave the workforce. And then I had to wait until I was OK enough to go back into the workforce. And so I lost all of that time in my work history. But in addition to that, the places that I was working for lost me as an employee. By the way, I'm kind of great. So that was bad for them. So I think that when we're thinking about the alternatives and we're worried about spending money and we're worried about unmarried partners getting the benefit as well, at the end of the day, I think that what we want to do is to support families. We want to support our employees. And this is an amazing tool to do that. And I know that young women... and young men that I work with, the students that I work with, this is one of the things that when they're looking for jobs out there, they're gonna choose the job that gives them this benefit if they're planning to start families. It's one of the reasons that the public school system is offering it now. And so I think that if we wanna support families, we wanna support our employees, that this is a great way to show everybody that we're doing that. Thank you.

Thank you, Justice Hirsch. Justice Dennis.

very much madam chair i'll say that i do support families and i do care i'm just as compassionate about it as anybody else i just don't think we're buttoned up on the verbiage of all of this i don't think that we've answered the questions completely and we're going to vote on it and then we're going to say oh we should have thought of that and so that's that's my concern and then also you you approve something and you made it law, we make it law, then it sticks. And then how many times have we been sued because we didn't have our I's dotted and our T's crossed? And I don't, you know, I'm all for, I've got four, you know, I've got four kids. I've got 16 grandkids and two great grandkids. I'm pretty much a family man, I'd say. But of course, I asked my wife what she thought. She said, I had to do it all on my own. And then now... I'm a senior citizen, quote unquote, and I've got to pay for someone else's. And so there's going to be some of that resentment from older people when they feel like their taxes are going up and up and up, and now I'm going to pay for something else that I didn't have or we didn't have. And does it affect you? Yes. She stayed home with the kids and didn't make very much Social Security, pay much in, and she doesn't make enough to pay the light bill. electricity bill is higher than what she gathers but you know she's expected to pay four or five thousand dollars on property taxes to support all these other things and so that's part of a family too is being able to exist and now how many times do we take someone's house or someone's farm because we keep spending and spending and spending. And so I get it that we need to keep employees, but I also get it that it needs to be equal and thought out and done very well in order to avoid those things, those lawsuits. Thank you.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Thank you, Justice Dennis. I have Justice Pond.

Two or three times it's been mentioned that we're doing this. We're supporting families. But what I'm zeroed in on is we're supporting newborn children of families. And I'll be in support of this. Thank you.

Thank you. Justice Coger.

Madam Chair, I move that we call the question.

I have a motion to call the question. All in favor? I have a motion to call the question. I have a second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? The motion carries. The question has been called. All in favor to pass this on to the Fulcrum Court? Yes, we should. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Let me get this timed. One moment, please. One moment, please.

I'm waiting for the chair. She's not ready.

OK. Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Bryson Austin. I am one of Chandra Washington's constituents. Oh, Lord, I've heard this quorum court talk so many times about how much they care about children and families. And when it's time for you to put your money where your mouth is, it becomes a bit of a stuttering contest. It's become more expensive than ever to have children. I don't know how my mom did it twice years ago. And I don't know how many of you have had small children in the house that you've had to take care of. in the past 10 years, but my sister's 13. And I can tell you that was one of the hardest times I've ever seen my mother go through. And I do remember your, I mean your story, your story's always kind of tugging my heartstrings. But I remember when we took my little sister to daycare after two months of having her. And it still brings up emotions for me because There was just something that didn't sit right with me that she wasn't home with us, that we weren't changing her diapers and making her bottles. So I want to give parents too, because usually there are two parents involved, I want to give them as much time with their children as possible. This county has seen the county judge explode his income and a number of salaries go up.

Excuse me, keep that relevant to the maternal leave or the parental leave. This has nothing to do with the county judge. And we need to stay focused.

Comparing his salary to what the employees get. That has nothing to do with it. Employees deserve more. They do. And the county needs to set a standard for the state and for other companies. And I wish that you all would speak out against these corporations that we're always touting not giving all of their workers paid leave. When my grandmother had my uncle in the 80s, She was an hourly worker at Walmart and she had benefits and my uncle was taken care of because he was premature and had a ton of health complications. This is an easy vote. I don't understand why this is even a discussion. You've had much less nuanced discussion about much more important topics and shoveling money out the door. Do your employees right, thank you.

Public comment. Seeing that it is none, we'll take up the question. Yes, sir. You may call for a division of the assembly. No, because that is out of order. Yeah. And all in favor to pass this on to the full quorum court, indicate by raising your right hand and saying aye. Aye. Hold it up. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. All opposed? The ayes have it. And this will just be passed on to the full quorum court, not do pass recommendation.

Okay, going on, the next item on the agenda is, dun dun dun dun.

A communications department presentation done by our director, Tad Sowers. Court, I want to let you know something rather quickly. A lot of times, people have an objective to make others look good, and they work in the background, and nobody knows what they're doing. or how they're doing it, is all they know is they see the final production and they applaud saying, wow, that was great, that looks wonderful. But not knowing all the people behind the scenes that worked so hard to make it so. And I know it was mine and my husband's objective when we had our company to always make Cargill look good with everything that we did, every business meeting, every plant-wide catering, when their executives would come in worldwide. People wouldn't know, they would just sit there and go, wow, this is fantastic. That is what I like in Tad Sowers too. He does a lot behind the scenes. He works with a lot of directors. He does a lot and nobody knows that he's doing it. And so I felt that it was time for him to come and I invited him to come and give a presentation on exactly what the communications director does and the work he does so that way we will gain understanding and insight to his position. Good evening, Director Sowers, how are you? Oops, one more time.

Good evening. Thank you, Chairman Ecke, for inviting me. Thank you to the quorum court for giving me the time. So I put together a short presentation tonight just kind of talking about what the function of county communications is, just a kind of a history lesson. Some of you are on the court, some of you are not. In January of 2023, at the behest of Judge Deakins, this position was created by this body. Now it's been 40 months, and I was brought on in April. So a lot of the numbers you'll see tonight are from April of 23 to today. So why does Washington County need a communications office? It's about transparency, and it's about simplification. Washington County is a large, complex organization serving more than 265,000 residents. Statewide, out of 75 counties in Arkansas, five of them, five of the top six population counties have this position. Pulaski County has a team of six. All of the others are, like myself, solo. So just a few numbers. In that 40 months, we've generated over 500 news stories. We've handled over 800 media requests. distributed 120, over 120 news releases, coordinated, ran, or participated in 40 plus news conferences, given 200 plus media interviews, that's either myself interviewing, or in a lot of cases, some of you, or the judge, or other county directors. We've seen over 4,000 social media posts, We've grown our social media following, specifically on Facebook, from 3,000 followers when I started to over 14,000 today. And our monthly engagement, when I started, our very first event was Tunnels to Towers. That month we saw a jump to 14,000. That was kind of the benchmark. As of today, we're reaching 180,000 monthly. That's an average month. During our winter and spring storm seasons, we've seen that jump up to 800,000 some months over a million. And our highest reaching post, and we'll talk about that in a minute, is we've actually had one post that went up to 2.1 million.

That's incredible.

So currently, we are primarily on Facebook. Oh, wait. Sorry. I jumped ahead.

Why is it doing that?

Sorry, I'm trying to keep this to where I'm not leaning over trying to talk to you. All right, there we go. Why does it exist? So to inform, and that's about translating complex government ease into language that citizens can understand. We're here to respond, especially during emergency situations. We're here to coordinate so that we as a county have one communication strategy. Right? That's a large part of my job is being able to bring in directors and be able to run that messaging through our communications strategy, also through our legal department, and through our county judge. Promote. That's a huge part of what we do is shining a good light on what our employees are doing, protecting the county, specifically when it comes to disinformation and misinformation. One of the best things I've ever learned is bad news will get out all on its own. Good news needs help. And to connect the residents directly with their government. My role is not about publicity, it's about public information. So there's four main... realms in which county communications works. But in all of them, the communications officer works as a trusted advisor. So you have public information. That's a lot of what you see. That's interaction with the news. You have strategic communications. That's talking about our programs. That's talking with judges, with elected officials to get the word out and explain what we're doing to the public. It's about reputation management. for the county and it's about community engagement. Third and fourth is crisis communications. And this is where the job gets kind of interesting because, did it go back, yeah. There. Crisis communications because the communications director is such an odd role for the county. I am a director in the county. I work for every other director in the county. I am a named PIO, and PIO is public information officer that works for John Luther as a stated position in the Emergency Operations Center. I work for Ben Dykes as a public information officer, public affairs officer for the Washington County Veterans Services Office. I field phone calls from directors every day. asking for advice. So it's one of those positions where I work for everyone, including you. I've had several JPs call and say, what can we talk about this? How can we frame this? So it's one position, four functions, one mission. To inform, protect, connect, and promote. So a little bit about me. When I came in, this was a position that we built from scratch. And so in researching it, I knew that if we were going to do it, we had to do it right. And since this wasn't just an emergency management function, it wasn't just a law enforcement function, it wasn't just a fire service function, I decided that I needed to be rounded in all of them. So I have pursued national accreditation on all three sides. So through FEMA, I am a advanced public information officer. Through the FBI Law Enforcement Executive Development Authority, I am a master public information officer. And through the Center for Public Safety Excellence, I hold, in fact, I was the first person in Arkansas to hold their PIO credential, and now I serve as a peer reviewer for CPSC. So in that time, in those 40 months, I have accumulated over 312 hours of continuing education. This is something that Justice Ecke was very, very interested in, is she wanted this position to take Washington County to a state and national level of recognition. So through membership and organizations like those listed on the screen, we're actually getting attention for Washington County on a national level. I have spoken at state conferences for the AAC. I have spoken at national conferences for the National Information Officers Association. All right, so social media is what everybody sees, right? I've been told that people think this is all I do. It is not. But just so you can see kind of where we are, these are simple numbers that we went over before. We've seen massive growth. We do have other channels. We are on Twitter, X, Instagram, YouTube, and Nextdoor. I would like to see us grow on those channels, but we have to have more bandwidth as a department. So if we're really going to grow those channels, I am going to need to hire more people. Here are our viral moments, our first viral post we ever had. was the owl there that was taken by one of our road guys on a snow day. And then during flooding, that was the video of us removing debris from a bridge that got almost 2.1 million views, or over 2.1 million views. Traditional media. This is a part of my job that I am particularly proud of. We have developed in-depth, trusted relationship with all local media. In fact, people ask a lot of questions. These stanchions exist because a member of the public approached members of the media and made them so uncomfortable that they actually called me personally and said, we don't know if we can come back. So I talked to Mr. Allen, and that's why these are here, is that a member of the public made members of the media so uncomfortable that they didn't know if they could cover us anymore. So this is part of developing that relationship with our local media partners. And it's not just the news stations, and it's not just the Democrat Gazette. It's the Fayetteville Flyer, it's the Washington County Enterprise Leader, and it's the radio. So before my time, we had never had a single press conference. Washington County had never given a single news conference. And Judge Deakins was actually the first county judge in Washington County to ever be asked to come on a podcast. So we're developing kind of those new inroads. So this is just a couple examples of ways that we've shown outreach. I'll start at the top. So at the top, that is the Greenland tornado, where we actually sent our road crew into Greenland and Prairie Grove on a mutual aid to help clean up after that tornado came through. Next over, that was the news piece that we did about the first all-female driving crew. Next to that, that was the reinstatement. We worked with the Veterans Coalition for the reinstatement of the Fayetteville Veterans Day Parade. Moving down, that picture of Mullen's library, I'm particularly proud of that. So that was the hoax, the shooting hoax at the U of A. I was in Florida at a training when this happened. And this was the first time that I was ever involved in what's called a joint information center. It's a thing that's done through FEMA. And we all piled into a room. It was University of Arkansas Police, Fayetteville Police, the Washington County Sheriff's Office, North Little Rock PD, Little Rock PD, Springdale Fire, Springdale PD, Washington County and a number of others who came in and set up and started running all of the media for that entire event was all run from a conference room in Florida. So Steven Mock was running the jig, and he was feeding everything to Natalie Uchi, who was the officer on scene. And it was brilliantly done. It was seamlessly done. Next, obviously, our snow and ice. There's Judge Deegan's talking about the innovation of our road department to be able to slide those ice slicer beds in and out.

And then I'd also like to skip down to the picture right below that.

I love that picture. It's one of our plows turned over in the snow. That could have been negative media. That has all the markings of negative media. But I got it. And I sent it immediately to our media partners. And I said, hey, this is a great picture. Please put it out and say, if Washington County snowplows can't stay on the road, please don't go out. So it's a way that we use spin to put a positive light on what could have been a very negative thing. Of course, you have the joint, the first ever joint quorum court meeting that we covered. We have Christmas at the Courthouse, which is the event that benefits the Children's Safety Center of Washington County. And then finally down in the corner, you have the cyber attack that our IT department beautifully handled. But IT people aren't necessarily the ones you want representing your county on the news. So I got to. And again, this is going to the statewide. We've had several articles. I've had several articles published in County Lines, which is the magazine for the AAC. Obviously, you guys remember we got the cover for that, and I took all of the photographs for those articles. So these are ways that we are showing the state that we are leading. This is the slide that I think I am absolutely the most proud of. This is a sampling. This is not an exhaustive list of organizations that we have partnered with that have approached us. We haven't approached any of these organizations. They have approached us and said, hey, can we partner with the county for exposure? Can we partner with the county for X, Y, or Z? So this is just a small sampling. of some of the work that we've been able to do since having a dedicated communications department.

Can you read just some of the names so that way the people out in the audience will hear?

So when I was hired, Judge Deakins told me, gave me a mandate. He said, Fayetteville and Springdale are fine. They have PR people. They have communications professionals. But the other 11 communities in Washington County don't. So he said, I want you to go and build relationships with these mayors, with these chiefs of police, and with these fire chiefs. So that's what I did. So for 4th of July, I will go out and shoot video with Mayor Falk, with Mayor Cottle, with Mayor Reid, to talk about their Fourth of July shows and all of the great things they're doing. We share a lot with the volunteer fire departments. for their fundraisers. Washington Regional, we shot a lot of videos with them for their 75th anniversary. Beaver Water District, we've done some public information, public education with. Some of the work that y'all have done with Ozarks Electric, Ozarks Go, the pinwheel events with the Children's Safety Center of Washington County. Take your pick. We do the wreaths across America every year with the Fayetteville National Cemetery. We work very heavily with the Veterans Coalition of Washington and Benton counties for a lot of events, including the Veterans Day Parade. So let's talk about legitimacy. It's the power of presence. This is a 24-7 job. Some days, most days, I start at 8 AM. A lot of days, my first call comes in at 7. Some days, especially in severe weather, my day starts at midnight or 2 AM. And when 8 AM rolls around or 9 AM, whenever the news has finished up their coverage, I don't get to go home. I go to the office because I still have a job to do. So this is one of those jobs where you need to have a trusted advisor to the public, to employees, to elected officials, to judges, to the media, and to our employees. I act as a spokesperson for the county, someone who is non-elected and can be seen as someone without bias. I'm a morale booster. And this may be the best part of my job, is getting to showcase especially what our road department does. I remember after one particular storm cleanup, I actually printed off every positive, it was about 600 of them, every positive review and taped them onto a poster board and stuck them up in the break room. at the road department, because those people need to know that it isn't just the negative comments coming in. It's the positive as well. And finally, I'm a media monitor. I have alerts set up. I monitor social and traditional media. I do a scrape every day for what stories are affecting Washington County, especially with misinformation and disinformation being the problems they are, so that if it does get out, we can talk about strategies of how to deal with it. And then this is a tagline that FEMA gave us. FBI leader used it as well. It is the Bible for anybody in public information. The purpose of public information is to get the right information to the right people at the right time. So what do I do? Inform. in simplistic and transparent ways tell the public what their government is doing and how it affects them. Protect. Provide accurate information, especially when it's dangerous or difficult. We connect and we promote. I'll take any questions you have.

That was an outstanding presentation. And I hope this court now has a better understanding of what Director Sowers does every day. And like he said, he's not Republican. He's not Democrat. He's not liberal. He's not independent. He's here to represent Washington County the best way that he can. And I felt that his story needed to be told. And we needed to be informed of what did we finance, what did we, when we approved this budget, what are we getting for it? And looks like there isn't any questions. Justice Stafford.

Thank you, Chair. So I worked in local television news for 20 years, first in Texas and then in California. And I went to Emmy Awards. And I worked with many local governments in both those places with communications directors and public information officers and it is a completely normal and expected job position for a local government to have and to be honest I think the unusual thing is that we waited so long to have this position, considering the size of our county. Just from the perspective of someone who worked in news, it's hard to overstate how difficult it is to get a hold of information and get a hold of the right people and figure out who the right people are to get that information. without a PIO or a communications officer because that person can reach across departments and get that information for us and be that point of contact, sometimes show up at the scene of you know severe weather events or disasters or fires or floods or any number of things like that and uh... you know be able to to be able to answer questions to to speak to us uh... confidently because a lot of department heads are not trained media professionals they don't know how to you know they they know how to do their jobs but like this is a whole this is a whole other separate job in itself, basically. I got an email, actually, today. I wasn't expecting to get it. from Katie Hamner, who's the Assistant News Director at 4029. And she said, hello, Justice Rhea Stafford. 4029 News works with Washington County Media Communications Director Tad Sowers during breaking news, severe weather, and other events affecting residents of Washington County and Northwest Arkansas. During breaking news, Sowers is often one of the station's first county contacts. He provides timely, verified information for public reporting. When another county official is better positioned to answer a question, he connects the reporters with that appropriate person. During severe weather, Sowers provides live, recorded, and virtual interviews about road conditions, storm damage, and other public safety concerns. He also coordinates information and interviews on county government topics, including the Washington County Emergency Operations Center, the quorum court meetings, we see the 4029 here all the time, and burn bans, to name a few. His role gives reporters a direct point of contact for obtaining county information and identifying appropriate sources, and communicating time-sensitive updates to the public. And so to me, part of this position is if we want transparency and openness and open government, this job facilitates that and facilitates the public knowing and understanding what is going on and how the tax money that they're paying is being spent. And so thank you very much for everything you do.

Thank you, Mayor Stafford. I have Justice Lyons.

Thank you, Chair. You may remember last year we had AAC and Rogers. They had a gentleman come in and talked about crisis communication. I don't remember his name, but I bought his book.

Yeah, he actually gave an excellent training at AAC.

It was a great training. I enjoyed it. Actually, I took it because It was focused on the county and what they did, but for what I do, which I work for a cloud service, we provide telecommunications equipment to contact centers in the cloud. We have outages, that's our crisis, and it can get ugly if you're telling them, like he said, if you're telling them the wrong things and you're backing, okay, it's the whole nine years. Anyway, if that's all you did, based on what we heard there, It's money well spent, but looking at what you've done, the accomplishments you've made, the extra education you've got, you've went out and done to benefit Washington County in the long run, it's way beneficial, in my opinion, to what we pay to have you here and do what you do, and I appreciate all you do for Washington County.

Thank you.

Thank you, Justice Lyon. I have Justice Lopez.

Yeah, I'd also like to take this opportunity to appreciate the work that you've done. I think coming into this role and being very forward-looking, understanding that the nature of how people are getting their information has changed and that there's not a rigid hierarchy on who's getting information. There's not just one point of contact. There's so many ways that people are getting their information changed. specifically with social media and so to get ahead of that and be forward-looking I think is was not only the right approach but I know that that's that's going to pay dividends as those things continue to evolve I think the work that you've done is phenomenal and thank you thank you something that I'd like to mention on that is when you lead a leave a vacuum in information someone

is going to step in and fill that void. Whether it be a self-appointed expert on Facebook or someone who is willfully disseminating miss or disinformation, someone is going to step in and fill that void. So it's really important that we have a trusted source that we can get that information from.

Very true. Justice Stafford.

Thank you. Before you go, if you had one more position in this department, a second position, what would the communications department be able to do that you're not doing today?

So I love that question. It's content creation. After not this last NACO event, but the one before, Justice Ecke visited me in my office. And she said, we had all these sessions about how are you telling your county story? And she said, why aren't you out there creating original content about the great things that are going on in the county? And I said, because I do all of this. I don't have the bandwidth. to do a lot of those things. So an extra position would allow us to create more content, and it would allow us to really expand our social media footprint across some of the other channels.

Telling the stories about the good work that the county's doing. Exactly. Instead of just responding to crises.

Exactly. And telling the story of some of the small towns. Like, I'd love to be able to talk about Cane Hill, about what people in Lincoln are doing, Farmington, like all of those things.

and tying it into education and civics for the next generation, for the kids. When I went to NACO, they have this great elementary school coloring books, this is my county. I was able to go to Benton County at First Academy and talk to them about this is your county government. And the first graders are like, wow, who knew? And I thought of Justice Hiers, here she is in high school teaching these seniors about civics. what if we could reach the kids? And I know the 4-H does a great job engaging their 4-H'ers in civics and helping them understand. So all these things were just kind of bouncing off my head like ping pong balls all over the place. And he was the recipient of all this stuff being thrown at him. And he says, whoa, whoa, I'm just one. I'm just one and this is what I'm doing. And I go, well, you know what? We need to find out more what you're doing because nobody knows exactly what you're doing.

And to go back to this slide for just a second, I have to talk about my absolute favorite partnership that we do. And it's an internal county thing as well. But one of the greatest resources we have as a county, it's not just Glenda Audrain, but I will say Glenda Audrain, is I have a very, as a former educator, I have a very, very, very soft spot in my heart for the Washington County Library System. And it is phenomenal. And I don't, like, we have done a lot of work. I have done a lot of work specifically in outreach with the libraries to get more patrons in. because to have the level of libraries that we have uh i mean all of them are just their personnel are phenomenal their uh facilities are phenomenal so i just wanted to give a little shout out there specifically to the washington county library system

So imagine what more we could do with extra staff. Are there any other questions for Director Sowers at this time? I appreciate you. I appreciate the job that you do. And thank you for coming to county services and letting everybody know what happens behind the scenes.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next on the agenda, we have the assessor's presentation. Does anybody need a five minute break? No, everybody's fine, okay. Oh, you do? No.

I need a Red Bull.

It's got wings, it's fluid. Good evening.

Thank you for letting me come and share tonight. Speaking of information and disinformation, there's a lot of it out there when it comes to property taxes. It's been a very popular topic lately, especially in northwest Arkansas. Having spent over a decade in the profession. I can safely say I think I have a pretty good understanding Especially more than most of some of the stuff that's going out there I do want to say so I titled it tonight property taxes in Washington County because we do have 75 counties that make up the state of Arkansas Each county has its own unique makeup and and so and and each has their own market and So we're gonna first look at one of, this is one of my favorite things that I like to share. So this is the total market value of Washington County starting back in 1974 going up to 2025. And so each horizontal line represents $5 billion in market value. So each line going up is a $5 billion increase. So going back to 1974, Washington County, the total market value was at about $1 billion. And as you see, it's slowly growing up there. You get to 1985, and you see a jump. So that small growth is just new construction that is being added each year to the county as houses are being built and properties are being built. Then it looks like in 1985, they decided we need to do a reappraisal. It's been a number of years. Back then, there was no state mandate. We weren't on a cycle. The schools would get together. They would pay for the reappraisal to take place, which is rather expensive. And so that's why you see that jump from 84 to 85. They did a reappraisal of the entire market of Washington County and said, oh, we're behind. We need to raise the values. Since then, the state legislature has passed a law that we are now on a cycle. Each county will have its own cycle. From one time, it was either three to five years determined on the market. In 2023, they're putting everybody on a four-year cycle. So once every four years, the county will do a reappraisal. Interesting thing to know as you're looking at that, you see the real estate bubble that took place in 08 and 09, where the market took a downturn for a little bit. We did not get hit like the rest of the country did, especially in the coastal areas, and so we did take a small downturn, but then rebounded quickly and started coming up. If you look, the first big jump from 2019 to 2020, That was our 2020 reappraisal. We set a record that year, and we grew $5 billion in one year. Now compare that to 1974 to 1996. It took us 22 years to grow $5 billion in market value. Not to be upstaged, we broke that record three years later in 23, and we jumped... almost 13 billion dollars in market value in one year now i don't make these numbers up this is all data that we collect from all the information from every property transaction that takes place in the county and looking at the sales and everything i'm simply holding up a mirror and going this is what's happening to the real estate market in washington county and that's probably why there's a lot of discussion and topics about property taxes and how It is affecting everybody that lives here because we've seen such an increase in the market. So I'm going to go over our agenda. So we're going to talk real quick about what do property taxes fund. We're going to talk about the cost of services. We're going to talk about protected groups. There are actually groups that we protect. with property taxes, and then who owns what. So, what do property taxes fund? Well, your property taxes, first of all, and I don't like you, I don't like taxes any more than the next person. But when it comes to property taxes, they don't sting as much as other taxes because All of that money stays in the county. It's reinvested in the county. They're not going overseas. They're not going to things that you may disapprove of. They stay and it's reinvested in our county. Roughly 82%, depends on the millage rate. We have 32 different millage rates with inside of Washington County based on school districts, cities, and of that nature. 82%, seven for cities, nine for the county, libraries about 1.5, and then you got some miscellaneous there, but They go to fund largely schools, county services, sheriff's department, jails, our libraries, sewer, water, electric, all the stuff that the cities provide our residents here. It's all reinvested back into the county. I would like a show of hands, if you would. How many of you, I'm just curious, attended public school? Did you attend a public school? By everyone? Nope, not one, had one, okay. Anybody have their children attend public schools? Okay, still, all right, vast majority of that. Anybody want to take an idea of what, anyone want to guess what the operating revenue is per student per year in the Washington County School Districts? 34? Huh? Well, according to the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, operating revenue per pupil per year, depending on what school district you're in, The cheapest is $11,065, and the most expensive is $15,500. So yeah, so it's kind of up there. Yeah, and I had five kids. And you imagine that, per kid, per year, 13 years. That adds up to quite a bit of money that I will never pay with the property taxes on my property, as long as I own it. So all again. reinvested back into our community. So like I said, there's been a lot of talk about doing away with that funding. Well, let's take a look at Washington County. So we have over 120,000 parcels. When I started in 2015, we were at 95,000 parcels. So in about a 12-year span, we're approaching 121,000 parcels. The total property taxes paid by property owners is almost $300 million. Now, this is just real estate. Non-homestead properties in Washington County make up 60% of our parcel count. That's completely different than other parts of the state. But it's probably reflective of Benton and Pulaski, maybe Sebastian, but Those four counties make up one-third of the total population of the state, too. So we have a lot of non-homestead properties making up 60%, and they're bringing in almost $200 million. Now, when I say non-homestead, these are income-producing properties. These are properties that are making money. They're industrial, commercial, large housing properties. any kind of rental properties, Airbnbs, things of that nature. This is not where somebody is living full time, OK? Compare that to our homestead properties make up 40%, which is about 48,000 parcels paid by the owners. That's bringing in about almost $96 million. Paid by the state, we receive $31 million, a little over $31 million. That's the homestead credit. That's the $675 that the state pays to each homestead. So that's what that homestead credit, that's the amount of the homestead credit money that we receive to help pay for those property taxes, bringing the total paid taxes to almost $327 million. And again, that's not counting, I'm just doing real estate. That's not counting personal property and business personal property. That's gonna add to that. And this number is growing pretty rapidly every year. We are adding a billion dollars of new construction. This is our fourth year in a row to add a billion dollars of new construction into Washington County. So this number is great. So we're looking at, real close, we're gonna be at almost a half a billion dollars per year. So my question is, how do we replace that? How are we going to replace that, that half a billion dollars that we're on the verge of coming to? Well, there's a couple things, a couple ideas that are being kicked around. One is sales tax. I don't even know what that number would be, but I don't know. I guess, top of my head, maybe... 20 to 30 cents on the dollar? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what that, and again, each county's different. I don't, the sales tax here is a lot greater than if you go to Jackson County or you go to Yale County or anything like that. Income tax, that's another option. We know the governor will veto that. She is not for income. She is She is advocating the reduction of income tax, not increasing it. She wants to do away with that. So I don't know how we can do income tax and property tax unless we go 100% to sales tax. We are not Florida. We are not a tourist destination. Florida's talking about doing away with property. There's a lot of states. I mean, it's a very popular topic because the real estate market went global. and everybody started buying and everything went up. So Florida, I'd heard at the AAC conference they talked, Florida was talking about doing all types of special fees, toll roads, fees for this, fees for that, even to the point that they're saying it's no longer the land of the free, it will be the land of the fee. And so we need to take a good hard look at what we're fixing to do. Let me tell you somebody who would be. I want to show you a couple of groups of people that would be very excited about ending property taxes. And those are the people that own some very nice properties in Washington County. Let's say we went to a sales tax. These people would love you, would love us for that. This is the locale, Fayetteville. This is right behind the harps on Garland in Weddington. Their property tax bill every year right now is $425,000. They're out of Chicago. They would love for us to pick up that bill. And here's what happens. We get rid of property tax. We're picking that up. They get off the hook. So these millionaires living in Chicago are off the hook. This is the atmosphere. This is right over by Fayetteville High School. $451,000. We're going to pick up their tab. We're going to put that on us. The union. They're $673,000. This is right off of Dixon Street. They're out of Austin, Texas. They could go Longhorns, huh? Right? They could go out. There's your Neal money right there. They could turn around and give that to the university. Let's look at this one. College Park at Frisco. This is right across from the Union. They're out of Pennsylvania, $560,000. We're going to pick up that tab. We're going to put that on us. The Marshall over there by Chick-fil-A on Razorback, $628,000 out of Chicago, Illinois. Uptown, this is across from Razorback Malco, $516,000. They're out of Houston, Texas. This is the big one, the cottage is $732,000, Hillsdale, Illinois. They would love for us to pick up their tax bill for them. And the Hill Place, I am not related. They're out of New York, but if you were to pick up that property tax bill, I would gladly be their family. So $665,000 on Hill Place. So if we get rid of property taxes, We've got to pick up what we're giving them the break on on these properties. Now, who's going to pick that up? Well, we do have some groups that we currently protect with property taxes. There are some measurements taken into place for that. But if we go to a sales tax or some sort of a fee or an income tax, these groups are no longer protected. But they're currently protected with property tax. Of course, that's our seniors, 65 and up. You turn 65, we freeze your property tax for you. About eight years ago, well, eight or ten years ago, when we started doing our homestead credit, when you apply for the homestead credit, we got a copy of your driver's license. We put that into our CAMA system, and then we flagged it. And then when we thought we had groups of people that were turning 65, we would mail them a letter saying, you need to apply for this. A couple of years ago, we're like, you know what? We don't. We now have a record that they're 65, also looking at their voter records too. So if we know and we have a legal document and we know that they are 65, we freeze you automatically now. That saved us from having to mail out 1,500 letters, and we might get half of them back. So there were a lot of people that weren't getting the freeze that they deserved. So that was something we changed in our office a couple years ago. Now, if we've got a legal binding document that shows that you're 65, we just freeze it for you. We haven't had anybody sue us yet for freezing their taxes, so that's good to know. But this is a protected group, seniors 65 and up. Those on disability, you too also qualify for the freeze. If you're 100% disabled and you're on disability, we freeze you. And I think, again, this is what the legislature did back in 2000 when they passed Amendment 79. It allowed for that. The idea behind it is you're on a fixed income. Let's not increase your taxes and tax you out of your home. Okay? And so we've done it. Matter of fact, if you've lived here lately with the increase of the homestead credit in 2024, we rode back millage rates on the schools and the cities and the county. A lot of people got a tax reduction that were frozen. They saw their taxes actually go down. Another group that we like a lot and that we rely on, that's our farmers. they don't get a freeze. What they get is what's called use value. Now, my job as the assessor is to put the fair market value once every four years. There's another value out there called use value. The state actually applies that value to it. We refer to it in our business as ag value. Up in Washington County, it's about one-tenth the price of market value you get a really good deal if you have past your timber or cropland you've that people people that feed us shelter us and clothe us they get a break on their taxes it's written into the Arkansas Constitution so they're protected they won't be off a sales tax or fees or income tax so and then The ones that will get the biggest disenfranchised out of this, the ones that will get hit the most when we're picking up the property tax bills of all these big city millionaires that we're going to pick up their tax bill is our disabled veterans. They're exempt. They don't pay property taxes. But they're going to have to help pick up the tab if we do away with it. Because, again, we've got nearly half a billion dollar bill every year that's getting bigger. The question, is my property actually mine? The short answer, it may feel that way. I'm sure it feels that way when people come to the quorum court and we don't let them build what they want to on it. Just saying. The short answer. When you purchase your house or land in Arkansas, you acquire private ownership title for the real property. The government does not own your property simply because you pay property taxes. In fact, the Arkansas Constitution gives property rights unusually strong protection. Article 2-22 says the right of property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction and provides that private property cannot be taken, appropriated, or damaged for public use without just compensation. But ownership isn't absolute and has never meant unlimited sovereignty over a piece of land. There are three important limitations. Arkansas has a constitutional power of taxation. Article 22-23 expressly recognizes the state's power of taxation. Property taxes are therefore not rent to the government. They are tax imposed on property ownership to fund government services. But if property taxes become delinquent, the tax obligation can eventually result in a property being sold through the state's delinquent tax process, which approximately takes about a four-year process. We got to look at property taxes for me. When I look at it, it's like a large homeowners association. I lived four years. I lived in Harbor Meadows. I lived where David Wilson lives, same neighborhood. Very desirable neighborhood. I mean, when we got the place, we had people looking for something to come up for rent or come up for sale. And then you've got to jump on it in a hurry because they go like that. And in Harbor, they've got walking trails, they've got parks, they've got fishing, they've got a pool, they've got a gym, they've got a ball field, they've got Frisbee, they've got community events that they do throughout the year at special times. beautifully landscaped, everything's, I mean, it's a place people like to live and raise, it's a great place to raise a family. There's also an HOA. You pay the HOA and it provides these amenities. And when you go to put a property up for sale, you get a premium price in Harbor Meadows because of all those amenities. You gotta look at Washington County like a large homeowners association. I remember a long time ago, I had an evangelist friend of mine, he was in town, and I'll never forget what he said. He said, if you teach people their rights, you'll have a riot. But if you teach people their responsibility, You'll have a revival. And I think too much in life, we see so many people out there wanting their rights, but we don't see anybody standing up going, I'll be responsible. I'll pay my part. I'm taking a share of that. We all have a responsibility as a community. And until we come up with a better idea, I mean, I'm for it. I would love to do away with property taxes. Someone give me a better idea on what to do and how to do it. The second thing, government can regulate how you use your property. Ownership doesn't mean you can do absolutely anything you want with your land. Zoning, building codes, environmental regulations, easements, subdivision regulations, and et cetera can limit the use of what you do with that property. Again, we're a community. We need to be responsible and respectful. We're all living here together and raising a family together. We need to be respectable to each other. Number three, government can take private property under eminent domain. This is probably the most important distinction the government or certain entities authorized by law can acquire property for public use. But Arkansas law provides significant protections for the property owner including the right to just compensation my mail could not have been better timing than today this is today eminent domain eminent domain eminent domain eminent domain and these are multiple parcels now they're all from rdot arkansas highway department We're a growing area. I get these every week. I mean, this is pretty common to get this. I mean, not this many in one day. This is usually about what I get once a week. We have to accommodate for the traffic flow and the growth here. We all complain about the highways, not enough roads and a lot of things going on. I mean, they're widening 412. I mean, I bet if I looked this up, a lot of this might be along the 412 widening corridor. So egress and ingress. I'm sure those people didn't want to sell, but The government didn't take it from them. They bought it at a really good rate. They're getting top dollar for that money. So why? Why? Because they own it. Why did they take it? Because we as a society need it. We need it. We need to get to and from work. We need to get to and from our services. So. You own the bundle of property rights. So you gotta look at it this way. The legal concept is closer to this. You own the bundle of property rights subject to the limitations imposed by law. When you own real property, free, simple, you generally hold the most complete private ownership interest recognized by American property law. Think of it as a bundle of individual rights rather than simply the statement, I own the land. So we teach this. This is actually taught at the state level that all of our assessors go through. And we use the call. It's called Slugger. We actually call it Slugger Pete. If you think of Pete Rose, great baseball player and hitter. Slugger, S stands for sell. You have the right to sell the property that you own. Lease, you can lease or rent it to someone else. Use, you have the right to use and enjoy the property. You have the right to use the value to secure a loan on that property. Give, you can give it as a gift or transfer the property to someone else. E is for enter and exit. You have the right to enter and leave the property. R is for refuse. You generally have the right to refuse others access or refuse to do anything with your property.

Just choose not to do anything with it.

Now, the important distinction is that ownership gives you the slugger rights, but those rights aren't unlimited. They're not unlimited rights. You have...

A responsibility.

I told my kids when they were 16 years old, or as they were getting older, I said, as you get older, you're going to get more freedom. You're going to have more rights to do this. You're going to get to stay over and spend the night with a friend. Your curfews are going to get longer. You're going to get to go on different trips. As long as you don't break the trust. As long as you are responsible. You break that trust, you're not responsible, you can't be trusted anymore. Your rights, your freedoms will be taken away. I will ground you. I will take away the PlayStation. You will not have your phone. You will not get to go to cheer camp this year. You will not get to go to band camp this year. You will be grounded from your car. You will not be going to dance. So with those rights, same thing when you get a right, right? There's a lot of people sitting in jail that couldn't figure it out. They get their freedoms taken away. So with those rights come responsibilities. That is Pete's. So the other acronym is P, the four governmental powers that can be restrict, that can restrict those ownership rights. Police power, zoning, building codes, health and safety regulations. Eminent domain, government can take private property for legitimate public use with required compensation. Taxation, government can impose property taxes. And as cheap, Property can ultimately revert back to the state under certain circumstances such as dying without legally recognized heirs. So if someone passes away, we actually had a situation that years ago, there was a lady that had what, 800 something thousand dollars for a long period of time, couldn't find any heirs and then at the midnight hour, somebody showed up and claimed it. So those things do happen. In closing, you own the property. But, and it may not feel like it at times, the government retained certain powers over it, including taxation, regulation, and eminent domain. So, come up with a great idea to replace property taxes. But before we do anything, let's do our homework and make sure we're gonna let off the hook and then who we're gonna put that burden on before we do anything. So let's make sure we're smart about that. So thank you for your time. I will gladly answer any questions to the best of my ability. And again, I feel your pain, but it could be worse. If we're not careful, we might make it worse.

I wanna say thank you, Assessor Hill, for coming and giving us this presentation. And I think everybody needed to hear that. So we have, first on the docket is Justice Lemming.

Thank you. That's what, that property tax is what I was talking about earlier. Yeah. With the Argos Association of Counties. It'd be, I mean, only way that you can do a personal property tax is there won't be no more volunteer fire departments. There'll be one school, federal school's going to have everybody in Washington County coming to it. And I mean, you'll have to just, it would trash everything, to be honest. Now, when you go back to your slide 74 all the way to the, you know, there's elderly folks that's been in their house since 1974. There's elderly people that hadn't made an improvement since 1974, but y'all raised your tax. I'm not saying you, the state has raised and raised and raised. And these elderly people can't even afford the tax on it back in 74, let alone today, 2026. And I hear that cry every day, and there's so many of them that's losing their houses. Come out in the rural areas, and I'll show you around.

I'm not on that side of it. That's more the collector side. I don't know that there are that many people losing it, and you can put it up and sell it. And make a lot of money before you would lose it. That's what I, I mean, if it got to some point.

Yeah, but there's a lot of elderly people that they didn't save good in Social Security years. They didn't save good earlier days. And they can't afford to sell it. They can't afford to keep it. Because when you sell that house that they lived in for all their life, and then they come out and have to go rent a house in Petville for decades. $3,000 a month, and they can't even pay the taxes on the mortgage they've had since 74. They don't work. I mean, that's why homelessness is happening all over. They're pushing everybody out on the street. It's cheaper to live out on the street than it is to try to live right.

I would say I don't see the elderly that have been in their home for a long time. What I am seeing, here's what I am seeing. This has been a problem. We tried to address it with some legislation. It got shot down. I was the only assessor. the state I mean and the others were about to run me out when property changes hands so you get an elder couple older couple they're frozen maybe they've been frozen for a while they've got a big house they need to downsize they just can't take care of it they got a big yard they need to downsize they buy something smaller maybe in Harbor Meadows they bought a nice little you know small yard lot then that the property tax bill, see that prior owner was protected because of Amendment 79, there were caps on it, so they weren't paying the full amount, especially with the increase that we've seen since 2020. I mean, values have jumped up over 120%. Well, when that property changes hands, as long as you're in your house, you're protected, because you're only going up 5%. I will freeze before I hit the 23 value if I stay in my house. But if somebody else buys it, that next year they get hit with that full 120% increase or whatever that increase is. And it's a tremendous amount. And we have seen some couples come in that we were just downsizing. We thought we were helping ourselves out. And it turned out. The taxes, you know, on the Zillow, it said taxes were $1,000, and now they're $4,000. You know, that's because that was the seller's taxes. They were protected by Amendment 79. They were only going up a small amount at the time. But then, you know, and so... Representative Lundstrom and I worked together on some stuff, but it died in a quick, fast death. So that's why we created, actually first step was that property tax estimator, and I gave that out to realtors and mortgage lenders. You can go on our website, you type in how much you're gonna pay, and it gives you a range from the lowest millage rate in the county to the highest millage rate in the county, and we're gonna be really close. You cannot trust Zillow. Because they're going off of the seller, not the buyer. And the way that the laws work here, you get the full amount the following year. And I've seen them go up $6,000 in one year. And they came in, they go, we're not arguing the value. We just want to know why our property tax bill went from $7,000 to $13,000.

The schools and the county needed more money.

Well, it's just the way that it is. And it's the millage rates and all of that, and the way that the market has gone. None of that I control, but I do have to be the bearer of the bad news a lot of times. And there are some solutions getting kicked around. There's talk of when you turn 65, don't pay anymore. You're done. You're done. I'm not arguing that. If the BLR says that we can financially do that, that's great. I'm all for some ideas. I'm just saying, let's don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and completely do away with it and then switch it with a sales tax. then our groups of protected people won't be protected. And they will really be hurt because then they can't afford food or medication. But right now, we have a lot of people that are protected that are not paying the full amount. I know my dad's saving $3,000 a year because he's frozen. And I know there's a lot more people like it.

Justice Dennis, we've got several questions, so let's just go ahead and you're next. I have several questions? No, there are several questions.

I just have one, and he came close to answering it, but I'm going to ask him again. Okay. So thank you, Madam Chair. You're welcome. And thank you for all you do, Russell. Approximately how many people lose their homes in the last 10 years? You're close to it, you know. Oh, I don't know.

No, I don't know. I don't keep up with that. I'm not on the collector side of things, and I don't go to the, I'd have to check with the commissioner of state lands, but I don't know. Would you know? Yeah, it's not that many. There's more in this stack of mail here than the last 10 years of commissioner of land sales that have lost their home. Now, They might have bought a property on the side of the hill that they didn't know about that was worthless and then just said, I'm not dealing with it. But not their home.

I have Justice Bruns.

Yeah, I just want to say with all due respect, don't let him come out to the car and get the cards from me and I'll get those people out of trouble. You got a home you'll buy, you'll sell for them?

I can sell it.

Oh, he can sell it. Yes, he can. I will ask this question because this is what I hear my neighbors and whatnot. When is there going to be a reality check on the market values? Everybody sees them as very inflated, which causes your insurance to go up, which causes your deductible to go up, which causes, you know, it's just on and on and on. Is there ever going to be just a market check on the pricing of the homes because we know that all the people from out of states are moving in and it inflates the market and you have two people in this one neighborhood that was built in 1968 all of a sudden that hundred thirty seven thousand dollar home is now four hundred and eighty thousand dollars and they're going you've got to be kidding me so is there well kobe did it had a lot to do with breaking that record

Because the cost of materials and everything went up 30%. Everything. And then, of course, the cost to build new, which is what you're insured for, that raised the premiums for all the homes as well. So your question...

Is there going to be a market reality check?

There is. Now, that's actually happened. If we went back and look at that chart, it's one of the first ones we did where we had the bubble from the real estate in 2009. The assessor at that time was Leanne Kazar. And so Leanne Kazar went to the Board of Equalization. And on behalf of every resident in Washington County, petitioned and she stood in their place and said our values are too high she couldn't change it but the board and went in and dropped everybody's property values across the entire county so if something was to take place and we were to see a downturn in the market after reappraisal I promise you I will go before the board of equalization and we will make that right. There's a lot of times because the way that we do, we do mass appraisal. I was talking to a guy today and he bought he bought a property off the state land commissioner's thing. And he's like, man, this is way high. And I looked at, oh, yeah, this is crazy high. You know, it's on the side of it again. It's on the side of a cliff. And, you know, but again, I said, you need to go before the board and lower that thing. You know, at the end of the day, I just, you know, we want to be as close as we can. Actually, we're typically lower a little bit. We cut mustard enough just to pass from, for the state to pass us. But, you know, I try to come in as low as I can and still get a passing grade from the state.

Thank you. Justice Lemming.

Well, just, I mean, if the regional planning is correct, there's 200, how many thousand people did you say on your slide a while ago?

You mean 295 million?

No. How many people? If we're bouncing around 300,000 people.

Oh, I think Tad mentioned earlier about 275,000 people.

Yeah, so if by 2030 we're going to have a million people here, it ain't going to get cheaper.

If we keep building like we're building, it ain't no way going to get cheaper. I did hear a statistic, 2031. The world population, that's not too far away. For the first time in history, the population of 60 and older will be higher than 60 and under. We will have a higher population of older people than we do younger people. And so I could see a population reduction, and then over to now it's, I will not be assessor then, I hope. But I could see where we could have, you know, because people aren't having kids like they used to. And so in 2031.

Lincoln used to be made up of 84, 85% elderly folks in town. I mean, but that's all changed now. I mean, we're not that way anymore.

And there is a lot of building going on, and we're not seeing the increase that we saw in 23.

Let me ask this question. Ben, you just mentioned we've got a lot of building going on. What is your real take on Amendment 3?

I'm going to keep that to myself, will you?

I'm not letting you get me in trouble. Well, the reason I say that is the fact is Every corner you look on, there's a building being built. Every where you go, there's a house being built.

Here in Washington County. Not the rest of the state. Look at Texarkana. If you want to see a picture of what Issue 3 can do, I would say this is what was done. Look at Texarkana. Look on the Texas side. And then look on the Arkansas side.

That's what Amendment 3 does for us. But if we take on the industrial development and bring that into here, do we really need it? Right here in Washington County.

I didn't run for your office. There you go. Thank you. I do market value. I do market value, and I stay in my lane.

I have one more question. Justice Dennis.

Thank you. Real quick, on the seniors and the over 65 or older, They have to do something? What is it? Read to emphasize that. Yeah. So when you turn 65. They're going to be listening to this, and one of the questions will be.

Part of Amendment 79 is you get the homestead credit. You get the cap rates. And then when you turn 65, you freeze. Now, you're supposed to apply for it. You need to apply for it, just like you apply for your homestead credit. that you need to apply for the freeze now what i started doing two years ago is we started getting comp for made legal confirmation of people's we have legal documents showing that they are sixty five so what we're doing now is we are automatically freezing it for them once we have death we have definite information that they are sixty five so they don't have to worry about that If you turn 65, just let us know. Let us know just in case. But you need to let us know. You need to let us know. But more than likely, if we've got you, if you're a registered voter, we're going to have that information. If we've got your driver's license on file, we have that information. We're going to freeze it for you automatically.

Well, thank you. I'm wanting that for our citizens out there.

Amen.

Thank you.

So register to vote. Thank you so much for this information. And thank you for taking the time and putting this together as quickly as you did. And I hope everybody has a better understanding of why we need property taxes. All right. Thank you. With that, is there any public comment? Here's Dan the man. Will you state your name, please? DAN CYPERT.

Yeah, so I'm Dan Cypert. I'm actually Russell's chief of staff. So usually I'm the guy behind the curtain doing the numbers. I love being number two. Let him be number one. But this is for our office, and this is dealing with our staff. We have 14 employees in our office. We have 38 total employees. We have 14 staff members that have state certifications. They get a bonus every year from the state. I'm just going to real quick read you this email that I sent out this afternoon. And then if you have any questions, I'll answer them. So this email went to county judge, both county attorneys, and the chief of staff. And the subject is appropriation ordinance 2026-0-037, professional development recognition payments. Is this ordinance going to be signed by the county judge so that the 14 employees it affects have these payments added to their paychecks this Friday? the ordinance was passed by the Finance and Budget Committee at their August 10th 2026 meeting and Forwarded to the quorum court as a whole who in turn passed it at their August 20th meeting These payments are usually processed and added to the employees last check in July The state this year redid the way they did their payment processing and so they were late getting the county the funds to the counties and And so we were told that it would occur in August this year. This morning I inquired upstairs if they would be included on the upcoming paychecks this Friday and was told that it would be. However, later this afternoon, I was told this afternoon that these amounts could not be added to their paychecks until the county judge signs the ordinance. What's the holdup? These are not county funds. The money comes from the state, and the county acts as a pass-through distributing it to the eligible employees since the passage of Act 357 of 2023. Prior to 2023, the state sent the checks directly to the employees. The county has had these funds since August 5th of 2026. So I'm just, we're not the only office that I've heard dealing with issues of getting ordinances signed, but I'll let other offices speak for their self, but I'm just trying to take care of our staff. So that's about 40% of our staff that gets these bonuses from the state. And it's not county money, it comes from the state. So I just would want you guys to.

Public comment time.

Bryson Austin, resident of Fayetteville. key point to why Patrick Deakins lost this election. Just not a nice guy. I will also say, not to make a joke at Assessor Hill's expense, but I love seeing a Republican defend taxes in public. I get a kick out of that. Just quick to the point about the jail. I mean, people are, again, they are presumed innocent until proven guilty. We can't say whether or not they deserve to be there. They're not people that deserve to sleep on the floor. Most of them, at least 50%, are pretrial. But I will go to my next point just, again, on a personal note. Studied economics. I'm going to bring that up as much as possible. People not being able to afford their property taxes is not why we have an unhoused problem, a homelessness problem in the United States. After the 2008-2009 recession, construction never picked back up. We never built enough housing to match our population growth and the housing needs of the nation. Also, the Fed bailed out a bunch of banks and continued to give the market money, and banks for years refused to lend at the rates necessary to continue that kind of construction. The cost of living is going up. I don't know if you saw a new report that came out. About 40% of Arkansans are food insecure, which means four in 10 people. Four out of every 10 people you see are hungry or will be in that day and won't know where they get their next meal from. So that's a big part of why. Food prices are going up. Fuel prices are going up. The price of everything is going up, college, car insurance, everything is going up. Meanwhile, our government is prioritizing cutting taxes. Now, we can debate about not liking taxes, so on and so forth, but when real people, ordinary people who are not making more money than they did in the 80s, when adjusted for inflation, are suffering, We need to take a different tact. Maybe we need to build more housing, get people more money, make sure that they're taken care of. Then we wouldn't have this problem with the unhoused. That's probably the first time I've heard this committee talk about unhoused people in Washington County. There's a tremendous amount you can do for them. There's a lot that you could do to contribute. to solving that issue and pushing the leaders in the cities that you kind of see over to do more. But again, property taxes is not it. What we need is a government that is going to protect people and going to do what we did after World War II, which was invest in our populace so that they could afford homes, could grow families, could go to college, could get around the country, that sort of thing. Thank you.

Thank you. Public comment time. One moment.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Kate on Tannehill Oxford. I live in Washington County. Can you hear me?

Can you hear me now, Lisa? Okay.

Thank you guys for having this meeting tonight and having all these guys come and talk about what they do. Our library director, Amber Turnbow from Elkins, was gonna be here tonight with me, but she is sick. I'm the president of the Friends of Elkins, and we came to talk about Tad. He's wonderful. We have loved having him be in the communications role. I don't know how Washington County made it before we had a communications director, I don't know why we haven't had one before, Tad, because he keeps everybody informed, the whole county, the public, everyone. And working with him as an entity affiliated with the county, it's just been great to have such an experienced and a responsive person in that communications role. We can reach out to him. He gets our stuff on the website. He lets us know what's going on in the county if we need to know it. So it's just great having that responsiveness with him there. So I hope that he can stay on. That's the main thing why I'm here. We need a communications director in Washington County. We need communications and hopefully we can add another partner in his department because he does need help. It's a big, big role. Yeah, it's just totally normal for a local government to have, especially this size of government in Washington County. It's abnormal that we didn't have it before. So I'm really excited that he brought that presentation before you guys tonight. Communication and transparency in our county government and have it easily accessible for the public to see it on the website, that's really helpful. And with the social media that he's been doing, we know what's going on. Like when the truck did turn over, we knew, don't get out on the roads, that's great. And that's all I have on that one. And I want to thank you guys for passing the parental leave on to the full quorum court. That would be an amazing opportunity for any of our Washington County employees to have that benefit. So when it comes to the full quorum court, I hope you guys all vote yes for it there. So thank you very much.