I'm going to do it. you you you you you Good morning ladies and gentlemen, Denton County Commissioner's Court for Tuesday, December 22nd is now in session. This morning I am vacationed given by Dr. Bing Burton, Director of our Health Department and our pledges will be led by Beth Plenty, Director of Purchasing, will you please stand. Would you pray with me? Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace. Good willsward men. That was the message of that angel choir so many years ago Lord, we thank you for your gift that night the gift of your Son and we praise you for your continued enduring love for the world throughout all generations. We ask your blessing today upon this commissioners court and on all that come before it today We pray that all that will be said and done here would be pleasing to you For Jesus sake of the United States and America and to the Republic of the United States. The God, the Intervisible Liberty and Justice for all, honor and Texas flag, praise Jesus for the Texas one state, under God, one in indivisible. Thank you. Thank you. Well, good morning and Merry Christmas to everyone. This morning, I, well, first of all, public input is item number one. If there's any member of the public that would like to address Commissioner's Court, we ask that you please complete a public comment form. It would be glad to hear from you. I want to remind everyone to please turn off their cell phones and pages. We're gonna go first to item 3A. And item 3A is approval of resolution honoring the R central Texas College on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the college campus. The Corinth campus I should say. We have Leon with us this morning. You'd like to come up first and then we'll do the resolution. Good morning. But thank you all on Commissioner's Court, especially the Hugh Coleman, who's precinct that the campus resides in and he's been a great friend for the college and each of you have been vocal supporters. We appreciate that very much. We are celebrating our 10 year anniversary. So this morning, before we do the resolution, I just have a brief presentation I'd like to show you to tell you how NCTC is making a difference in our county. Make sure my screen comes up. While I'm working on this, I want to introduce, just briefly, our president of the College for the entire system. Dr. Eddie Hadlock is here. While I'm working on this, I want to introduce, just briefly, our president of the college for the entire system, Dr. Eddie Hadlock is here. Eddie, and then Roy Culverson is our dean of the current campus. And he just walked in in a timely fashion. Jerry Mezzler, who now works for the county, was instrumental in getting the current campus opened. So it's fun for him to be here this morning. It's great. You can say people can give you credit for that now, Terry. Thank you all for being here this morning. Here it comes. Add it up, but we waited too long. OK. North Central Texas College is your community college in Ditton County and we're very proud to be associated with this great county. We are one of 50 community college districts in Texas. We also have the unique designation as being the oldest continuously operating public to your school in the state. We have the historical marker in Gainesville to approve it and we're fully accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. We've actually been serving Ditton County for more than 40 years, however, and because of our existing presence in Ditton County back in the 73rd legislative session, the legislature assigned service areas for community colleges and designated Cook, Ditton and Montaille County as NCTC's service area officially. Little bit hard to see from the back, but this is just a scatter plot of where most of our students who attend the Corinth campus come from. From your screen, you can see that most of the students, the clusters are up and down I-35E Denton, Louisville area primarily. We have five campuses and we're growing. We have our home campus in Gainesville, the Corinth campus which we're celebrating today, our E campus which is our online campus, our Buie campus, and we just opened a new campus in Graham. In November the citizens voted to pass the maintenance tax to support a campus there, so we're very excited about that development. We also have in Denton County the panel square annex right across from the Corinth campus, about 12,000 square feet there because our main campus, our building on the Corinth campus is full. We also have open satellite campuses at Little Elm High School, Northwest High School, and also at the United Methodist Church in Lake City. So you can see we're trying to find space anywhere we possibly can because of the great enrollment we have in the demand for courses. Why NCTC matters? Our system went head count over the years. Since 2000, we reached 9,123 this fall. That is system went throughout all those campuses. I just showed you. Back in 2000, it was 4,845 so we've practically doubled our enrollment in that amount of time. The black column represents the Corinth campus or Denton County enrollment and of the 9,123,58863 are enrolled in Denton County. Now this number I hope is as impressive to you as it was to us. Since the Corinth campus opened in January 2000, the number of different people, single head count, so have taken an NCTC class in Ditton County since January 2000, 42,298 people, almost 43,000 people, we've impacted their lives and exponentially through the lives of their families as well. Additionally, our continuing education or non-credit program since fall 2000, another almost 7,000 people. So combine that with the people that have taken credit courses and you can see in CTC is making a difference in Denton County. High school dinners and seniors who take dual credit. They get high school credit and college credit concurrently since fall 2,000, 3,860 students. We have dual credit partnerships with all of the high schools in your county. We also offer discounted and free tuition for dual credit students because that access to higher education is so important to our mission and we want to make sure that students are able to start early. We are the local institution of choice of the College of Bound Hospital Seniors in Denton County. We enroll every year historically 10% of those students. That's the highest percentage of any other public institution in the state of Texas. So we have a very strong relationship with the high schools and those graduates aren't using NCTC for lots of reasons, cost and location, primarily. While we matter, since 2000, we've trained 751 nurses who are working in our local hospitals system wide. We have trained 562 associate degree nurses and the rest of the information is there almost 160 cosmologists, 139 EMTs, computer scientists, surgical technologists. That's one of our newest programs. We've graduated 118 surgical technologists who are working in the hospitals. One of the newer programs too is Associate of Arts in Teaching. This is two year degree for teachers because of the teaching shortage. 47 graduates, we just had that program for about three years. Since fall of 86, our foundation has awarded 2009 scholarships to Denton County students along valued at $641,000. And system wide since 2000, we've received as an institution over $28 million from federal and state competitive grants for workforce training and for incumbent worker training and for other student service programs we couldn't do without that federal funding. Annually our economic impact on our three county service areas over $192 million. Or is that, yeah, that's $19, little over 1,900 jobs. This date is about 10 years old. We need to update it and get that as a statewide economic impact study. So these numbers would do nothing but increase because when this study was done, we had about half the enrollment. So we can look at that as improved number of years. What sets us apart? As a community college, we're very fortunate that we can focus on two things, teaching and student success. Our faculty members have all the credentials required for accreditation that is a master's degree and 18 graduate hours in the discipline already or they have their doctorate in the field. We have a heavy emphasis on workforce education as you saw the numbers of nurses and teachers that were training. But we also try to keep our class size very, very manageable and maintain that one-on-one relationship with students. So our average class size is about 23 students. When you think of all of the numbers we've trained, you can think of or have gone through our doors, you can think how many classes that takes to keep an average class size of 23. Our tuition for out of district, that means if you don't live in Cook County, it's $77 a credit hour. If you live in Cook County, it's $77 a credit hour. If you live in Cook County, it's $45 a credit hour. So we try very hard to keep that in affordable cost for our students. So a little over $200 they can take a class. And all of our courses are fully transferable to the universities. Our challenges, we've had a great 10 years. We've got 10 years, a bright 10 years ahead of us, lots to accomplish and these are our challenges over the next 10 years we have to address. The CRIMPH campus is overflowing, we're at capacity, we simply cannot see any more people in that building. We've got to expand. In the economic times, there's always more demand for higher education, people want to start over, they want to go back to school. Students who may have gone to an A&M or a Texas Tech just can't and so they choose NCTC. So we're seeing even more demand for classes. We have access issues at the current campus. What that means is there's no rail stop and so parking and access to that campus continues to be a challenge and we're having difficulty adequately serving all of the areas of Ditton County. We've got a strong presence in Corinth, East Soc where our satellite campuses are, those are an attempt to try to be accessible to all parts of the county because we don't just serve Ditton or just Corinth, we serve all of Ditton County. We want to continue to maintain a low tuition rate for our students. We could double our tuition and use that money to build another building, but we won't do that. We're going to keep our tuition affordable. We have a very low ad-valorn tax rate in Cook County. That is our Taxing District Community College. It can collect property tax for physical plan operation and maintenance. But that for NCTC is only in Cook County. We don't have that tax elsewhere. Now Graham with the passage of that branch tax will add an ad blorm tax of five cents to the property tax there for the school district. And it's like most institutions and all are facing state funding as declining. Just as a point of interest, especially for us at NCTC, I hope you find it interesting as well. In 93, our total operating budget was $10,801. In 2009, it was $37 million. That, to me, is an incredible reflection of the growth this institution has experienced. Back in 93, the percentage of the budget that came from state funding was over 50% now it's less than 35%. So our growth is a double-edged sword. It's keeping us getting more total dollars but we're not percentage wise able to keep up with the amount of state funding. Again under challenges I just wanted you to see that where our revenue comes from as an institution. State funds, I just showed you just a little over 13 million tuition fees, about 13 million. So it's a very, this looks very different depending on different community colleges. Our challenge is sitting around a colon and a tarant in the Dallas County system, serving one county with a phenomenal tax base. We're serving multiple counties with a very small tax base. That's a real challenge for NCTC. While we matter, we provide a high quality education and affordable rate. We've done that for a lot of people over the past 10 years and that number is only going to continue to grow. We do provide opportunities for students to change their lives and we improve the quality of life in Denton County. We're very proud of the 43,000 students that we've educated and then some and we look forward to doing that over many, many more years. We're celebrating our 10 year anniversary where we cannot absolutely believe it's been 10 years. It seems like just yesterday it opened. I'm in my element here at the college. Spent the last eight years or so over the current campus now as VP of instruction for the system. And with Roy Colberton's leadership over the campus now and Dr. Hadlock's leadership over the whole system, the next 10 years in NCT, you're going to be fantastic. So thank you all for letting me talk about a place that I love very much and thank you for your support of NCT. Any questions? Are there any questions? Dr. Knight, you do a wonderful job. You really do. And we're very proud to have you all in our community. That's an amazing presentation if you think about all the statistics We appreciate your being here this morning Right story it really is come share common if you'd like to read the resolution please. Thank you I have a resolution for you Dr. Not Whereas the current campus of North Central Texas College located in Nanton County is celebrating its 10th anniversary during the 2009-2010 school year. And whereas the Corinth Campus opened its doors in 2002, approximately 2600 students and enrollment has increased over 6,000 students this year. Led by Dean Roy Colberson, the school is making its anniversary, is marking its anniversary by offering many activities promoting a variety of interest, including a lecture discussion of Abraham Lincoln's decision-making process and a chili cookoff for the entire North Texas community and whereas NCTC, Corinth has greatly expanded its program and services to better meet the needs of its students and the surrounding community. The school has partnered with 16 local high schools to give their students opportunities to earn dual credit, has established a student success center to offer mentoring and tutoring, and is working with the Denton County Transportation Authority to improve transportation options for students, and whereas the Corinth campus has committed itself to promoting, to providing high quality post-secondary education area residents. And it is a tremendous honor to join in commending, it is a tremendous honor for us to join in commending the school on as many achievements as it observes this milestone. Now therefore be it resolved that the Ditton County Commissioners Court in Ditton County Texas commemorates this 10th anniversary of the founding of the Corinth campus of Norse Central Texas College and extends its sincerest wishes for the continued success of all those associated with the school. Some moved. Second. I have a motion by Commissioner Coleman, second and by Commissioner Marchand. I'll not favor the motion. Please say aye. Aye. Opposite any? Motion does carry unanimously. Thank you very much for being very precise to you all. Great information and Merry Christmas to all of you. Thank you for all your hard work. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Good to have that information pointed out to everyone. And then you see the campus all the time. You see all the students coming and going and have occasion to be in that area. The statistics are staggering. You ever try to go down there and, you know, to that office down there and try to. Can't get in. Yeah. They only had a train. They got to figure out. Yeah. Well, I can do it help in ridership. Yeah, the ridership's there and. I think we'll drive right by. Yeah. And it's not going to stop. All right. I need to withdraw right by. Yeah, and it's not going to start. All right, let's go to item number two, which is a consent agenda. Members, I need to pull item two B. There are no intro departmental transfers today. So, do we have any questions on the other items? You have a approval. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner E. Seconded by Commissioner Marchion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Oppositing. Motion Motion by Commissioner Ead, seconded by Commissioner Marchand, on favor please say aye. Aye, a post in a motion. Ms. Kary, consent agenda today consists of 2A, which is approval of the order making appointments. We have a new hire in the county clerk's office, two new hires in the county jail, and a promotion and adult probation. UC is approval of ward of bid for Canyon Oaksaks Drainage Improvement Project, precinct 4. This is bid number 1109 2005 to Sabre Development Corporation for $104,370. 2D is approval of specifications and authority to advertise for plumbing remodel B side, main jail, bid number 1-2-09-2009. To E is approved of specifications and authority to advertise for corrugated galvanized metal pipe. This is bid number 1-2-09-2010. And we'll go to item five, which is approval of the bill report. Payments from CSCD, Community Corrections, T-A-I-P, Shares, Training Shares, Forfeiture, V-I-T, Interest, D-A-Check-P, and D-A-Forfeiture funds are all presented for recording purposes only. Good morning, James Wallace. One judge, commissioners, as the commissioners court to prove the bills as presented with the breed deletions and four editions as no one separate page. One major addition is on a trip O8 road project to the contractor when they ask to get that expedited. Thank you. Are there any questions of our auditor? Do we have a motion for approval? Motion by Commissioner Eans. Second. Seconded commissioner Marchand. Any questions on favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed, aye. Motion does carry. 7A is approval of budget amendment request 100320 for prior year purchases for various county departments in the amount of $532,853. I'll just do some cleanup. This is such a big amendment. I think it requires a little bit of an explanation. Each year, we roll over funds that were committed in the prior fiscal year through valid purchase orders or contracts. And these actual purchases you see today will not pay until after November. In order for the auditor's office to close out your end, it's important that we go ahead and do that and then roll the funds over into the 2010 budget. So this will replenish those funds that are paid out of 2010. It's actually left over money from 2009. We have questions from members of the court. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Marchant, seconded by Commissioner Eads. On favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed to the name? Motion carries. The 8A is approval of 2010 public employees' benefits cooperative budget. We'll call on any Philips. Thank you Judge and members of the Court. As Judge Horn said, this is the 2010 budget for the PEDC. It does not reflect or it reflects no pay increases for PEDC employees, consistent with what our employees had this year. The big ticket item in there I I guess, is $48,000 for software to allow them the PEDC to comply with new requirements under HIPAA. I know HIPAA's been around for a while, but they're different security requirements that come into play with different deadlines. And there are some new ones that are requiring encryption of data. And so they need some software to be able to do that. Also the dependent audit was moved from before enrollment until after enrollment. So it was moved from the 09 budget to the 2010 budget. There are not other, there aren't any other real significant increases in this budget and more requesting approval today. Thank you. Other questions from Mary McCord. All right. The motion for approval. Some move. Motion by Commissioner Marchandt. Seconded by Commissioner Eads. Under discussion. Go ahead. I just heard, of course, we're all in the midst of the, we aren't, but our governments in the midst of the healthcare debate and it's so unclear, I'm not here to make a political statement, but it's so unclear what that is in the connotations of the passage of that. But I did hear one thing that my question is how aggressive is PEDC and their membership and their administration looking at the new healthcare bill. For instance, what I heard this morning was that in order for PEBC, let's bring it home to increase rates throughout the state of Texas on its membership, it will have to get approval from the federal government to do so. Okay, I don't, I mean that's just an example. I just wonder what PEBC, how aggressive are they even looking at some of the suggestions in the new legislation? That's a very good question, Commissioner. And actually, we had quite a bit of discussion about that at our last two PEBC meetings, especially the one that we had last week. They are looking at it very closely. We did talk about comparison of the two bills as they stood last week. I'm acknowledging that we don't know what the final thing will look like. There will be recommendations coming in the future as a result of that legislation should it finally pass. Because they are looking at it real closely. You might remember when we set our administrative rates when they were negotiated last fall, they were negotiated with the idea that they would the administrative rates were negotiated for three years because we didn't want to make any big changes before 2013, which is when we expect most of everything to change. So they are looking at it. We are considering there might be dramatic changes to our plans. There's been lots of discussion about rich plans and about retirees. And there are some provisions in one of the bells as it stands today that might make it very prohibitive for us to continue retiring insurance. And certainly we want to continue retiring insurance, but that's one of the things that may change. So we're looking at it, they're looking at it very closely. Yeah, it's just very interesting. You know, we hear things at the national level and it's all trickled down to us and where it applies to us. I mean the state of Texas, their insurance plan for their employees is state-funded just like we are. We're self-funded. And if the federal, I'm not here for debate. If the federal government is going to enact those restrictions through the legislation on and having approval at the federal level for what we do at the state level, then we enter into an issue of state's rights. And I've been thinking all along trying to read as much as I can to see how it's going to affect us at county level because that's where it all trickles down to To the actual users of it and I again apologize for taking that Thank you. We have a motion is second on floor Is there any other discussion in none on favor? Please say aye aye discussion. Any none on favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed to the name. Motion does carry. And eight, these to approve the stop loss premium and keep the stop loss limit at $350,000 for the 2010 benefit plan year. Should approve. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Marchant. Seconded by Commissioner E. Is there questions or is the discussion? Any none on favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed to any? Motion is carried. 10A is approved of the change order number 9, inclusive of PCO number 38 in the amount of $130,579. Good morning, Michael. I'm going to go to the meeting. Morning, Michael. Is there any specific questions in regards to this? I'd like for you to give us a general thumbnail. What's going on? Or are we having to change order for this much money? Sure. I guess standard county policy is that when a project is getting ready to be completed, we meet with all the building officials and all the different departments to utility companies. Work out every issue you can imagine ahead of time. Get the documents finished and put it out to bed for a contractor. Once they're selected, the contractor then applies for the building permit and we move forward with the construction process. This was kind of a transition time, if you remember back. The economy was right at that edge and at that point material escalations were escalating on this project about 6%, which was about $80,000 a month if we wait to bid this project. Our architect had been in contact with the city and the water company and all the other departments worked out the issues. There were some small issues at the time that we thought that were not worked out. But because of the state of the economy, we decided and it was approved by court to go ahead and bid the project. We bid the project and these issues took a lot longer than we thought they would. So Tom says burn was selected as the contractor. Our contract with them requires them to have a full time superintendent from the time they're selected. They did that. They did do work that helped benefit the project in the long run. We've negotiated with them about that time and some of that time was taken off the initial change order. So basically we were being charged for the time that they spent on the project when they could not move forward, but they were ready to move forward. And that's the history of it. I understand them. So what were the obstacles that were in the critical path that delayed us proceeding? There was, it was mainly in the site utilities. You know, I'm gonna have to get some help here, but there was some water line issues, some road improvement issues, fire hydrants, things like that that they were looking to be taken care of before they issued the permit. The city did compromise some with that. For instance, the more road package that we're getting ready to bid now, they allowed us to put that off until the building was started construction. So there was some back and forth and that took a lot of time with the city on what improvements had to be done before we got a permit and what could be done during the project itself. So this is a result of delay due to lack of permitting? Basically, we were ready, we thought we were ready for a permit but we had some issues that were not resolved. So because we could not get the permit, Thomas has burned, could not start construction. I'm just going to ask you, so who is responsible for getting the permits? In the end, it's the contractor's responsibility to go and apply for the permits. It's the Architect's responsibility to work out all the issues ahead of time, and it's the county's responsibility to kind of oversee that process. So it's really a team effort in that sense. We read his email that did a whole lot of explaining them. And you put that in real good format. It was good to track and understand and I appreciate Bennett Hall and certainly others meeting with the city trying to ensure that you don't run into this kind of problem and get in the future with phase two and phase three but I don't really think we will since we've got the utility and road issues pretty well figured out I think. Do we not? Yes. For one day's day it's pretty much worked out. You know this is something that could affect us on other projects. So we're working on that with every municipality that we're working with and making sure we meet with them ahead of time. Talk about when we can actually apply for a permit and when we can't. Making sure that we have all the meetings with them well documented so that way there's no questions. Unfortunately, just because the nature of it, when you do an informal review, it is just that it's informal and all the information you get from that is very useful but when an actual formal review of documents is done, that's when some things are looked at that may not have been looked at ahead of time and some things can change and sometimes at the latest things. Part of the issue too is the city has development guidelines for individuals. They have development guidelines for developers. But they don't have development guidelines for governmental body not just the county but the school district with their construction of schools all over there. And that's something I've talked to mayor Mark Burrows about and I think aren't they developing a special government track so that we can proceed with a lot of these. Talk to Mark Burrows, talk to city manager, talk to the mayor, pro-tam. And this, these conversations are going on for literally months. I guess mine is coming together. It's not coming together as fast as I would like it to but it is coming together. I have to give him credit for that. I think you're doing a great job. I'm really glad we got you hired because we've now got you you know kind of had your thumb on this to make sure this doesn't happen. You know my only concern is it seems like the city gave tentative okay. It didn't. And then pulled the rug out from under us and now we're having to pay for it. That's the correct amount. I think that's part of it. It's taxpayer amount. I mean, those people live in the city of Denton and pay county taxes. I mean, the one with the city of Denton, I just. On the other side, I from understanding there was some issues that came up that even they didn't foresee as being as big issues it was So they they thought it was taking care of I guess they could look into a lot closer You have a plan for that to correct that Yeah, we have several avenues that we're trying to pursue to take care of this You know just because of nature of the process. I don't think you can ever say there's never, ever going to be a delay, but we're doing everything possible to make sure that there isn't. That's all we can do. That would be bad policy to make sure you guarantee that. That's pretty sure. We will not ask you to do that. Yeah. But the project is coming one nicely. And we're actually right on track, are we not? Ron schedule, we're under the overall budget that we had established way back with the CIP. So the project looks great. Moving forward, it's been very smooth other than some issues like this that come up, but I'm generally speaking, it's going really well. Well, in a Beth entry, you were part of the negotiating process here. And I want to thank everybody that was because it took a lot of work to go over item item. And it would have been a lot more than $130,000. If you had not gone through that effort, we appreciate it. Commissioner Eans. I'd like to thank the staff for other efforts on that as well. And in particularly you judge for helping to break the log jam over with the city. I know you kept us informed on all the multiple meetings with staff and and elected officials are there to break that log jam over there in the bureaucracy. I appreciate your your attention to that. I did it. With that, I'm going to move for approval. I could. You know, the second by commission, you need to have the further questions or comments. Any none? On favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, Cine? Aye. Motion carries, four in favor, one opposed. Thank you, Michael. Item 13A is approval of appointment of Mr. Daniel H. Duarte. It's the building of property committee. Chair, I move for approval. Seconded by Commissioner Mitchell. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Oppositing. Motion carries. 13B is approval of the reappointment of Mr. Jody Gonzalez to the environmental advisory board. Motion by Commissioner Mitchell. Seconded by Commissioner Marchin. On favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed say aye. Motion to carry 13c is approval of the reappointment of Mr. Roberts Bob, a sworn back to the Building and Property Committee. Chair, I move for approval. Seconded by Commissioner Marchin. On favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed to the Senate. Motion to carry. 14A is approval of the interlocal cooperation agreement for a special assessment collection for the city of Roneauk. Brayowick, a PID, as recommended by the Debt and Kind of Texas Hester Collector. Chair, I move for approval. Seconded by Commissioner Marchand. On favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed, sen. Motion does carry. 14b is approval of the Texas Online 2.0 customer agreement. Between the State of Texas acting by and through the State Texas Department of Information Resources in Texas and I see you, S-A-L-L-C, and Denton County for E-Filing Services. the LLC and Denton County for E-Filing Services. For approval. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Coleman, seconded by Commissioner Marchant. Are there questions? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed to name? Motion is carried. 14C is approved of the agreement for architectural services between Denton County and CHA, providing architectural services for the planning to design the Denton County Juvenile Probation and Detention Facilities Project. It's recommended by the Denton County Director of Purchasing Death Fleming and the Denton County Construction Manager, Michael Tugielo, with funding for this project to come from 6176339020, juvenile multipurpose building in the amount of $1,120,161 and $489,838 from 9.617659020, which is Missilini's building projects and $292,946 from 9.617639020 law enforcement jail Building projects and $292,946 from line item 61, 76, 319, 020, law enforcement jail expansion, we'll call them Beth Lemming. Good morning, judging commissioners. As you know, we posted this out on a couple of weeks ago and we pulled it. I did not do a very good job of explaining where the funds were coming from. This project was originally established as two separate construction projects with the design services being split. During the negotiation phase, it was determined that it was in the county's best interest to go ahead and start designing these simultaneously and to also once we get ready to go out to bid, to bid them at the same time. If you will look on page 414, I have a memo that or an email that explains the process and all the funding is on page 415. We did decide to go ahead and proceed instead of splitting this back out once we discovered the funding issue and CHA, David Isbel, I'm sorry, Brad Isbell is here and he has a memo on page 416 explaining the benefits to the county. So what we've asked to do is to borrow some funds for some other line items so we can go ahead and start the design process. Once those projects are designed and ready to go to bed, the funding will be available to go out for construction bids. There is no impact on the other accounts. We do not expect this project to go over the funding that is established for it overall. We're just recording some of it quicker than we normally would. So, Brad is, Isabelle is here. If you do have questions because there are some great benefits in doing this questions from maybe the commissionings Ode to amount again The amount of the contract is one million nine hundred and two thousand nine hundred and forty five dollars Approval second. Thank you. We have a motion by commissioner Coleman seconded by commissioner Marchen I don't need any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? All in favor of the motion. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, Cine? Motion is carried. Thank you. 14D is approval of the near local corporation agreement development agreement between Dink County, Texas and Town of Trophy Club, Texas and City of Rona, Texas, Northwest Independence School District. For road and utility improvements and construction of Bobcat Boulevard in the amount of $230,000. Wait a minute, was funding to come from... I know your agency. I want a road project. I know you're so anxious. You need to read all this into the record. The funding to come from Commissioner Prucyne for a AAA US Highway 377 Northwest Parkway Funds, Auditor, Lion Adam 6173679060. Okay, go. I move for approval. Motion by Commissioner E. Second, I bet Commissioner Coleman. I mean, that's a very fine. All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Oppositing. Yay, huh? Okay. Aye. Okay. 14E is approval of the contract for engineering services between Tignal, Perkins, and corporate, and Dint, and County, Texas for the Wynnwood Haven Street Reconstruction Project, in the amount of $59,800. $800. The funding to come from Road and Bridge, Engineering Professional Service Funds, Auditor and Line Item 2053018550. Motion by Commissioner Marchant, Seconded by Commissioner Ead's, questions or comments? All in favor, please say aye. I, at Poe Cine, motion is carried. A, in. 14F is discussion in any appropriate action related to the dent kind of abatement policy. Oh, she's handing out papers. Okay. Thank you ma'am. Right wrong. No light goes. Good morning, Judge and commissioners court. Let me tell you that we are getting close to the time when we have to pass our abatement policy. The law requires that we've done every two years, and it's actually not due until first week of January. But I wanted to bring it forward so we could have a little bit of discussion in case we needed to make any changes. What I handed out was a copy of our policy, which is online. Everyone can see that, but it wasn't attached today. And then also just a copy of one area of law that I think is important for us to talk about today because it's the one area that has caused a little bit of concern in the last couple of years and one of our one of y. The law states that we cannot enter into any kind of a tax abatement agreement. And last, it specifically fits within our terms and policies, which makes sense. And we have policies that state dollar limits and what we will give in terms of percentages. And by and large, that's exactly what we do. And every blue moon, we have the situation where perhaps if we had the ability, we would want to make an exception for a particular entity and provide something different than what this policy provides. I know you're looking at it on page two, but the way we have it now, it's less than 10,000. We don't give an abatement at all if it's 10,000 to 199 million. And million to 19,000. Excuse me. Yeah. 19, nine. We give 25%, 20 to 29 million. We give 30 and 30 million to 39, nine, we give 25%, 20 to 29, 9 million, we give 30, and 30 million to 39, 9, 35%. If it's over that, which we haven't had, then we have some other percentages. Yes, ma'am. Those dollar amounts does not have to, I mean, percentage does not have to be given. We could give less. Absolutely. And the way this is worded, thank you for pointing that out. It is not to exceed. Not to exceed 25%, 30%, 35%. In particular, I thought I might, Commissioner Marchin, if you wanted to tell about your situation, this prompted a dialogue between Commissioner Marchin and I, which is why we wanted to have a dialogue here today. What would we do if there was a situation that we needed to do something different than this? And one of the suggestions was that perhaps we would want to put a provision in here allowing for an exception, but requiring something extraordinary like a vote of four out of the five commissioners or something like that in order to do it. Do you want to tell about that example? Yes, I, Kim ran this abatement policy because I believe there was a directive from the commissioners court for initially for me to work with her on trying to put the policy that we adopted back in 2007. And that's why she came back to me. There was a situation that I was approached by the governor's office to try to help bring a company into Carrollton Ditton County that was going to bring out of the state of California over 100 jobs that could be documented immediately that would come into the county and we were competing at that time with the Holland County for that location and the city actually the city of Carrollton initially approached me about it and asked about the abatement we immediately say to the municipality, go to our website, pull up our abatement policy, or any businesses that are interested in any kind of economic development incentives within the county, go to our website, look at our policy if we can help you through that policy, please contact us again. But they did, they came back said, well, what we're looking for, the governor's office was looking for an interest and a commitment from all governmental entities within the location or the municipality were this company wanted to come in because the company had filed for a grant from the governor's office to get X amount of dollars to help them move into the state of Texas. Under the policy that you see in front of you, there was nothing that Denton County could commit to other than me bringing a resolution forward to the Commissioner's Court to basically say, you know, we're for this and but we can't do anything about it, but we're for this. We'd like for you to come. And so I went back and forth with Governor's Office with the City of Carrollton trying to figure out with Kim and basically what it came down to that we believed that unless there were changes made to the policy itself, there was no way that we could make an exception. Now let me tell you what the exception they wanted to make. It was on a personal property tax. They wanted us to abate the personal property, the tax that we would apply to desk to inventory that they might have. Although they're inventory, this was a company that was a subcontractor of Sally May. And they were doing government mortgage work and they had expanded the government expanded their contract so they could expand and so they were coming into the area and so but there was nothing within the con within our policy and can be very strongly that we could not do something without changing our policy and I was not real excited about coming to the commissioners' court to change policy in our abatement policy to try to abate this situation. And so, when she asked me, if there's anything within the policy that we may need to review, I suggested that we look at if we can't do those kind of exceptions other than if the policy allows us to do it, maybe putting within the policy some language that if we did make exceptions to our abatement policy that they'd be made by a vote of three quarters or a super majority of the commission's court. I don't have a dog in this hunt other than what I've expressed to you if the court thinks that that is appropriate so that situations like I just described you, we may be able to within our policy do something other than that, for instance, it would have been far below. They had $5 million worth of personal property. That's what they had. It did not meet any criteria. It was personal property. It was not avalorum taxes that we would be evading. It would be personal property tax. And so my suggestion was what kind of language could we put within the policy that we could at some time make an exception to that policy without having to change the policy itself? Personal property isn't at the loan tax. I'm sorry. Yeah. Good. Thank you. I'm sorry. Yeah. Good. Thank you. Just for clarification. But it would be in favor of other. I understand. And that's the trouble at any time you set policy. The first thing that happens is something comes up and need an exception to the rule. I would be in favor of a modification, slight modification to our policy that requires the super majority of the court. would be in favor of a modification, slight modification or a policy that requires a super majority of the court. I have a question. I would be in favor of that too. Now, Kim, let me ask you a question. Is this a policy applied to everything or is it only limited to chapters 311 and 312? Does it apply to 380 agreements as well? We don't do 3. Thank you. Just tell me my mic. Sorry. At the very beginning, when I got here, I should say in 2007, they were doing 3801 agreements based off of 380 agreements with the city. And in the course of developing this policy in January of 2008 that runs through January 7th of 2010 in that very introductory paragraph, this county made a decision and it says didn't county will not utilize chapter 381 of the Texas local government code to administer community and economic development program to provide grants as a form of economic development. Basically, the decision was made by the court that we just weren't going to do 380 wins. Otherwise, I think the policy would need to, or should be brought in F. I guess my question is, if we do this exception, then we could then do those if we get a super majority of the court. You talking about 380 ones, rebates? I don't want to do rebate under any circumstances because it hurts the county twice. I do. I have to put some exception. I agree. That's my point, you're. I would want more than 100 jobs. And I would want more than, I mean, the salary would have to be $80,000, $90,000 for me to want to make an exception. I mean, I want to make it worthwhile. Well, you'll have the opportunity to do that, Commissioner, because of taking the supermajority of the court to pass any kind of arrangement. Perhaps we can put in a phrase in there, some clarification that this supermajority vote of the court would apply to any 380 agreement that is presented to the court, but the court does not will not enter into 3801 agreements, the rebate agreements. Also could they use that exception policy to get us to waive the $1,000 fee that they ask that we commit them to? We probably should have that clarified too. And we need to clarify. So I'm just not interested in the five million. Listen to me, you know, I have to be honest, I'm not interested in the development. So that I'm clear what I'm getting here is some general language to allow for an exception with the supermajority, but this provision needs to have language that does not allow, that makes it clear that 3.81 agreements will still not be entertained by the court. And this provision should also make it clear that there is not a waiver of the, that there's not the question of the waiver of $1,000 is not one to come before the court on a supermajority issue. Is, am I understanding what the court's telling the direction of giving it? That's what I would like. Okay. I'm not interested in $5 million of maintenance. It's less than $10 maintenance. Maybe less than eight millions. I'm not interested. I'll be willing to look at it. I don't know if I've been before. Yeah, I want me to. I just don't. I think this allows us some flexibility. Yeah. But still maintain. The whole issue came up. I mean that. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it got pretty simple when I said no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no and the governor, plus their, their, their age and they were trying to find a way that they could help this company move. Anyway, our policy did not allow us to help. I understand, Commissioner. I think that's, you know, that's a, that's a good, very good point. My only interest is, is I'm not a big fan of those. I always look, I always think there's 380 agreements, but that's from the city. Well, it's under chapter 381 for us, but those agreements are pretty labor intensive. And I would hate for us to have to wave the fee after we put a lot of work into it. And then no pass it. So I want to at least have to pay the fee. I think are we clear on yes and let me ask you this based on some of the conversations and one phone call that I had. Do you want some language in there that would sort of state on on rare occasion when a county representative feels there is a substantial public interest I mean do you want some other defining language or just limiting language I guess I should ask or just you know should we have to make a finding public interest or something is that what you're asking? Well I don't know that we that may not be the best way to say it. I would have if you if you put certain language in there what would how would we establish that? How would you get there? Then I'm gonna go with kind of what we had discussed Originally, if I'm wrong that members are we all on board for a Supermajority to change any permission, but the 380 or the application fee 81, but all clear Craft that and bring it back in a couple weeks, actually the fifth, which will put it in time for our adoption to keep our policies running. I think that's fine. Any other additions or comments? Okay. I don't know about the super majority. I want to thank on it for making it a commitment today. Okay. Thank today. Okay. Very good. Yeah. If you have a least to think about it. The other option being just the regular route that we do versus four. Okay. That's only, I mean. All of this is just fine at comfort level with everybody on it. And so whatever that. But one of the lectures at the TDCAA meetings, you know, it's county policy and county policies, whatever the commissioners say it is at that point. Okay, so let me know action on 14 F. Lastly, we have executive session item 15, which is consultation of the attorney pending litigation pursuant to section 551.071.1A. The government code, McClendon versus the interstate hotels, incorporate it out all in the 350 second district court. County, this is case number 352-237758-09. With that, we are an executive session. We're just reconvened from executive session under item 15A, there will be no action. I believe with that we've concluded our business for today. I want to wish everybody a very, very Merry Christmas. Please be safe out there. Enjoy your families. Remember the reason for the season. Merry Christmas, everyone. We're adjourned.