Mishra's Court for Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 is now in session. This morning, our invocation will be given by Colin McQuinn, who's with Silver Saddle for H Club. And our pledges will be read by, we'll be led by Roper Wilkinson. Isn't that a great name, Roper? Kind of like Colt McCoy, isn't it? They use with Silver Saddle for H Club. Will you please stand. May I please have your heads and prayer. Dear Lord, thank you for letting us all be here today. Thank you for giving us these elected officials to see over us to have decisions on how we, this county is ran. Please help them with wisdom and clear minds in your holy name. Amen. The pledge allegiance for theiance for Learning ISX. There you see it. In two republic for religion, sans, one nation, our God in visible, liberty and justice for all. I know the Tavis is life. I pledge to use and see Texas once say, our God, one in visible. I want to say I got one in the physical. Good job, kids. Thank you very, very much. Item one is for public input for items not listed on the agenda. If there's any member of the public that would like to address commissioners court, we ask that you please complete a public comment form, which are available from the aid to the court on the side table over here. We'd be glad to hear from you. I want to remind everyone to please turn off your cell phones and pagers. Item two is the consent agenda. Members, are there any items on the consent agenda that you need to pull for consideration? Or do we have a motion for approval? Propreval. The motion by Commissioner Ead, seconded by Commissioner Marchandt, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye opposed Cinean. Motion does carry. Consent agenda today consists of two A, which is approval of the ordermaking appointments. We have a promotion in the criminal district to turn these office, the demotion and juvenile detention, new hire in the county jail, promotion and juvenile detention, new hire in public health, a promotion in the County Jail, Promotion and Juvenile Detention, New Hire in Public Health, a promotion in the County Jail and a New Hire in the County Jail. To be is approval of the Intra Department of Transfers, to see is approval of payroll, to be is approval of Budget Amendment request 100270 for remote access charges for county-wide technology and the amount of $500. 3A is the presentation of the Texas Agor Life Annual Report and the presentation of a check for volunteer hours contributed to programming efforts and who's going to lead us off today. Eddie, good morning. Good morning. How are you, Judge? We're great. Especially after such a wonderful breakfast. Thank you very much. That was great. It was a great breakfast. It was a great, very appreciative to you. And good morning to the court also. We appreciate the opportunity to come before you this morning and give you our annual interpretation of programs that were conducted through Texas Agricultural Life Extension. First I want to do some special recognition if it's okay with the court. I'd like to recognize Mr. Hurley Miller. He's our district director, state district director for Texas AgriLife Extension for District 4 comprised of 22 counties. So we appreciate you. Thank you for being here this morning. And I also like to recognize our staff back in office this morning if that will be okay. Our support staff which is County appointed and we appreciate everything if they do and help us put together these programs and efforts that we put forth to the community. I'd like to recognize Donald Wolf, Eileen Johnson, Mary Campbell, and Pamela Hill. We appreciate their efforts and I know they're watching on the screen. So we're ... Good morning everybody. Yes. And I would like to draw your attention to the screens. That's courtesy of our Hotel Courts of Lajit, Janet Lamenac, and that's just some of the pictures that we have taken throughout the year at educational activities that were conducted for the citizens of Ditton County just for your viewing and just kind of get some hands on visual things rather than us reading our reports. So I think then we'll just leave that on as we go through as those kind of roll roll on. I also like to thank the court and announce that we're as of tomorrow, we will be fully staffed in first time in years. We have a new BLT which stands for Better Living for Texas Agent that is State of Pointing. That's a fully state funded position. Nicole Cody will be taking that position tomorrow morning effective so and then we will be fully staffed. That will be very productive in our office area. I think at this time we want to do, do we have some presentations for the 4-H? Jennifer McAllister, her 4-H we'd like to present you with some point status which came from rainy farms they were grown raised and grown here in Denton County so these are Denton County Point status. Very much. Thank you. Where I can see you. Here of the work right here. Okay. Tom Ruin, Mr. Rani does a great job, and that's just one of his agriculture commodities that are produced within the county and work towards the image that we have put forth as far as agriculture in the county is involved. Let's see, we would, I think we'll start off with doing intuations reports and with no further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Jennifer McAllister and she's going to give our 4H Youth Development annual report. Great. Thank you, Eddie. Good morning. What the four-hers just handed out to you all is our family handbook. We like to give that to you all every year. That's kind of our operating guidelines for 4-H. Everything you ever wanted to know about us, y'all can find in our very large family handbook. Also the 4-Hers, our council officers worked really hard and you will see a mug in front of y'all, those are hand-painted by our 4-Hers for y'all. And today we have representing 4-H, we have not only our county council, but I have three members from our Ditton County 4-H Horse Committee, who have come to be with us today from our leadership teams. Today, I'm so excited to stand in front of you all because I get to brag on my babies and I'm such a proud mama about my 4-H members and today I want to focus and talk with you all about the great things that they've been doing this year. Every August, we hold a planning meeting with our County Council officers and in 2009, this yielded a huge interest in community service projects. Each 4H officer selected a project that was near and dear to their heart, something that meant something to them and they took charge of promoting this to the entire county. We've continued this again in 2010 and on page 91 you can see a listing of the projects that we're working on. Many of those are carried over from previous years with kind of a description of what we do with each of those. Since they were so excited about their community service work, I found a grant sponsored by Youth Service Day and the State Farm Foundation for Service Learning called a semester of service, which focused on long-term, high-impact community service projects. And Ditten County was honored to be selected as one of 100 national grant recipients, and we received $600 to support our community service efforts here in Ditten County. And what we did with that is we created collection kits for each of our 11 4-H clubs. What we do is every month at our county council meeting, the clubs bring the items that they've collected for the month and turn them into the counting and then at the end of the year our county council officers distribute those to the appropriate entities. The collection kits that the clubs received were particularly for the pool tabs we collect for the Ronald McDonald's House and Fort Worth, the EO Play Pink Lids, which is a short term project in the fall and supports the Susan G. Coleman Foundation. We do coupons for Fort Hood and that is a program where anybody can clip coupons that are current and mail them to a specific director at Fort Hood and they give them to families to use on the on-base grocery stores. And so they have a high need, we tend to focus a lot on formula and diapers because they have a high need for those. But we support that and then also our collections for pennies for progress. That's our in-house support that we do for the Texas 4-H Center. These four items are the most portable, they're the smallest. We try to focus on things that are easy to grab and go. And so the collection kits are geared for them to collect those and bring them every month. Just a quick review of what we've been able to do in two years. A project we had last year was Birthday in a Bag, which is also a military program. We collected 23 birthday in a bag, they're a bag that contains everything you would need for a birthday party. They are also delivered to the 4-H military program so that the families of deployed soldiers can have a birthday party before that soldier leaves. And so we collected 23 bags. Two days we have mailed over 10,000 coupons to Fort Hood. Because of our efforts with community service and some news articles that were run, we were contacted by a local organization to help with Memorial Day and we put out hundreds of flags at the IOF cemetery on Memorial Day. We have collected over 110 pounds of pull tabs that we personally deliver to the Ronald House in Fort Worth every year. We have collected 200 plus yo-play pink lids. We have sewn over 300 stockings that we donate to a local church who delivers them to a boys ranch in West Texas. We assisted with Relay for Life. We sold luminaries, set out luminaries. 4-H hosted a booth passing out water. We sponsored the water to give to the walkers who were out there. And we also did an in-house challenge challenging every 4-H club to raise $100 to support the effort. We did a closet clean out swap which was an opportunity to support our recycle project where our 4-Hers could take clothes that they could no longer wear that were in good condition. We had a 4-Her who donated to their house. We opened up a large store. If you brought clothes, you got to leave with clothes. And anything that was left, we had about 60 pounds of clothing left that were donated to friends of the family to be utilized. One of our four-anchors sponsored a project supporting the National Special Olympics, where they were doing a call for scarves to be hit crocheted or knitted. And we had 12 scarves that were submitted and worn during their opening ceremony. The just this past October at our 4-H College we held an hour and a half long Great American bake sale which supports hungry children and we raised $200 in our hour and a half with our Great American bake sale and then for our Texas 4-H Center pennies for progress, we've raised $200. This year with that project, we're supporting the 4-H center needs a new pool. And so the pennies would collect this year, we'll be going to help them upgrade the pool out of the 4-H center. What's really exciting about this, not only is all the great things, these are all projects that the kids do. These aren't my projects or these are things that they've selected that's important to them that they see the need to keep going and I'm really excited about all the things they have accomplished but because we participated in the Youth Service Day grant in October I received an email from one of the directors that said Miley Cyrus is going to be in Dallas in October and do you have three youth and a chaperone who would like to attend. She has a new initiative for Get Your Good On which is a community service base. And so I was able to send our county council president first and second vice president and our PLA which is our parent leader association president to the Miley Cyrus concert. They got a private meet and greet before the concert started and they had front row tickets and so that was really exciting to be able to do something back for them. Not only that, the Dallas concert was selected for her new video, which is running in store in Walmart's nationwide. And our four-hers were allowed to fill out talent releases and can be seen in her new behind the scenes backstage, Miley Cyrus video. And so didn't county four-h's now nationwide. They wore the four-h shirts and there's a picture in the video of them with meeting Molly Cyrus and so I'm really excited that we were able to do that back for our foratures and so as you can see I'm really proud of our forages and all the things that they've accomplished do you all have any questions for me you've had a busy year we have and I'm so excited. I really, I can't excited enough. I'm so excited about I'm proud of these four acres because these are things that they want to do and I don't have to push them to do them. I was just looking on the County website at Jal's website for the Ag Extension Office. It would be a good idea I think to put some information there if any county employees or anybody, to put some information there if any county employees or anybody wants to go get information where they can send you these articles. Absolutely. Because we do have, yes, absolutely. We do have collections in our office. We pick not only that, I have mailboxes and people can drop stuff off of our office. Absolutely. We can do that. Thank you. You've had a great year. At this time, I will introduce. Maggie Jover who is one of our two FCS agents to tell about it her fantastic programs. Thank you very much. It's been a year since we've been here and it really is a pleasure to be back. And this time last year when I came we were in the midst of an economic dilemma. And it's nice to see that things were improving this year. And I think our financial education programs that we do through Extension Service certainly contribute to our citizens being able to manage their money better. We have done financial education programs throughout the county, especially with those limited resource sites like Salvation Army, Workforce Center, the Veterans Association, places that really need the help as well as other sites like Peter Beilt, county employees. And this year I asked those who participated in the programs, what are you going to do when you take this information home? And are you going to use the information that I asked on three months later did you do it? And so I got some interesting results that those who attended the programs and we had four or five hundred throughout county attend funding and management education programs. They averaged about $800 a piece, producing their debts or credit card debts. Some a lot more, some a lot less and I thought that was really good when you look at 500 people that's over about $200,000 savings and credit card usage this past year. Then I asked them also, are you saving more money? Because that's one thing that we have learned to this financial thing this past year. We need to save more money. And they said yes, they increased their savings with head start mothers and some of the low income families. About $50 a month, which is about $600 a year and really good. And with all those who attended these programs, about $150,000 a year and increased savings, which go into our economy. So that was really a blessing for me to see that our programs were actually working out there. Home foreclosures have seemed to be declining, which is great for Ditton County and home ownership is picking up again. And one of the things that we offer through our office is our homebar education program because many lenders ask first-time homebuyers to have a six to eight hour homebar education class and I'm one of two people in Denton County who is certified by HUD to teach this program and so we do this with the housing authority and we've had over 50 homebuyers from the housing authority be certified to get that $7,000 home ownership incentive, which is about $350,000 at their eligible for through home ownership incentives just from this one class allowance. So we feel like our financial and financial progress doing well in Ditton County and we intend to continue that. Another area I work with is with childcare providers and when you think about childcare providers, take care of thousands and didn't count children every year. And their salaries are less than $20,000 a year. They need additional help with their education. And so we offer their clock hour training free at charge, which saves them about $500 a year. And when you're in that limited resource bracket, $500 a year savings, plus they get the 20-hour clock hours to be able to keep their jobs has been really significant. We've had a wonderful time with Head Start Fathers with our Fathers reading every day and you've seen some of the slides that Janet did for us. And we're realizing that Fathers play a significant part in the educational of their children. And when Fathers read every day to their children, we see that educational, this glassy scar should be increased because of the father's participation. So that's been really great. Recently, the media said that Denton County is one of the hot spots for retirement. And we know that we have a lot of seniors in our county who age in place, they wanna age in their home. And one of the things we do through our programs is elder care trainings to help those family members who are taking care of their older family members, age in place successfully and be able to navigate the elder care area. If you've had an older person, your family who's tried to age at home and you're taking care of an older adult, it's very stressful. And sometimes we just don't know where to go for help and so our conferences along with our collaboration with the area agency on aging and the new agent disability resource center has really been a success in the area. Next year's fast approaching and so we intend to expand upon our financial management programs. One of the things that we're going to be doing this next year is a new thing called small steps for health and wealth and I hope that you'll be seeing that on and some emails from us here really soon because we're seeing that the same things that we do to stay healthier the same steps we should take to be wealthy and so we're going to introduce this to Dean County employees in January, Peter Beard and also head start parents and so you'll be seeing some of this. We got permission from Rutgers University to do this for the only counting ticks. It's doing small-stitth for health and well because of my association through professional associations. I contacted them and said, we want to do it in Denton. This is a neat program. It's all going to do that. As our population continues to age, we're seeing a lot of grandparents taking care of grandkids. So we're doing some things with area ages and age in the United Way this next year on grandparents raising grandkids. They have issues with guardianship, legalities. They can't even take their kids to school or the grandkids to school unless they have some legal issues to resolve. And much less the parenting issues, the nutrition and things like this. We're going to do some things with grand parenting issues. We have strengthened our ties with TW and UNT. And so next year, TW and Extension are going to do a camp Joshua to assist families who have special needs children, especially older, especially children who kind of fall through the cracks or who owe for school. But yet, they have the abilities of a smaller child and do some things with those parents, guardianship issues, legal issues, financial issues. And so it's been a great year, we expect another great year. I appreciate all that you do to support us and I appreciate our support staff that you provide for us. And in front of you, you have our newest little recipe booklet called Healthy Living. This is made by Extension Agents throughout the nation and has some healthy ideas as well as some traditional recipes. And I hope you enjoy this holiday season and find your favorite recipe and if you should define the recipe you want to try out be sure and give me a call I'll be glad to let you know how well it tastes so you have a good holiday season thank you so much for letting me here thank you very much it's my newest coworker Stephanie Beesasier, Stephanie, come on up. And we're really pleased to have Stephanie on staff this year. Morning, Stephanie. Morning. Good morning. I'm Stephanie Beasier and I am the new agent in town. And although I'm new to Extension, I'm not new to Denton County. I was raised here and educated here. Both of my degrees are from UNT. And I'm about to start my third and hopefully final degree as well in January. As you might or might not know, Texas Agriolike Extension has a very comprehensive onboarding new agent training program. So I have spent my first three months doing a lot of training and getting to know kind of what extension does and what all we offer. So I haven't had a lot of opportunity to get into a lot of programming, but I plan on doing that, of course, in the upcoming year. I have had the opportunity to serve on a couple of planning committees so far. And one was for the power of a healthy woman, which Texas AgriLife Extension did in conjunction with Texas Women's University. We held a symposium on September 19th. We had over 200 attendees and people came and it was focused towards women and they were taught issues on financial management, healthy eating, stress management, etc. And I'm going to continue on that planning committee and we're holding our next one September 25th. I'm also on a planning committee called the Families Issues Summit and that is a district-wide committee so it covers over 20 counties in Texas. In conjunction with Texas Scottish Right, we're presenting a conference on March 4th, 2010, and it will be entitled What Keeps you up at night, issues and solutions for today's families. So we will be basically going over issues that really keep everybody up at night. Is it caregiving issues, financial issues, stress issues, those kind of things? That will be on March 4th. I'm getting, I have been trained, and I'm getting plugged in with some of our programs that have been in place, but have kind of lapsed, had a lapse because this position has been empty for quite a time. One of the programs that I will be working with is the Better Living for Texans, which is our BLT program geared towards, it's a nutritional education program geared towards SNAP recipients or wavered audiences. Approximately 81,000 people in Ditton County qualify for this, this type of free nutritional education. And with the help of our newest extension assistant who starts tomorrow, like Mr. Vag's mentioned, Nicole Cody, she will be out in the community doing programs throughout the week. And the good thing is, the community that Ditton County benefits from her in the state pays for her so we're really excited about that. Another program is the Walk Across Texas program which is basically a physical fitness initiative to help combat our issue of obesity that we have. It's an eight-week walking. We get groups of eight people. And the goal is over an eight week period to walk 830 miles, which is the distance from long to U2L Paso, which is walking across Texas. And because this position has been empty, there hasn't been a lot of support for the community, but even with this position being vacant, over 29,000 miles were logged for adults in Ditten County and over 33,000 with the kids in our schools of Ditten County. So there's a need for it, they like doing it and we will continue working on that program. Also, the DoWellBewel, which is our five-week diabetes management program. That's geared towards education for people who have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The CDC in 2005 said in Denton County alone, over 24,000 people who were diagnosed with diabetes. So there is a need in this county for this type of education when we can provide education, we can reduce our health costs and reduce work days missed, and that kind of thing. So, continue to do that. And lastly, our Master Wellness Volunteer Program, which is kind of falls in line with our much beloved Master Gardener Program, where we go and we train people in our community. We give them 40 hours of training on nutritional and health and wellness issues, and then in return they give back 40 hours to the community in service. So if I were to train 10 people 40 hours, they can go back to the accounting and give 400 hours. So that's how important our volunteers are. They help us a lot. I'm excited to be here and look forward to working with you. And I just also want to say what a great crew of co-workers I have. So really the comfort to him. Thank you. And I would like to introduce Janet Laminak. She is our horticulture agent. Thanks. Morning, Janet. Thanks. Good morning. I'm going to do this. Go a little glimpse of my nephew there. Sorry. Just can't really like it? You like it? It's cute, huh? First of all, I'd like to acknowledge two groups of volunteers that are here with us today, Master Gardener, Master Naturalist. If you guys could just raise your hand up, I won't make you stand up. As you know, as Stephanie pointed out, the exponentially multiplication of outreach that they contribute to our community, and we often talk about the quantity of hours that they give to us and it's tremendous and we're going to point that out a little bit later. But I just want to talk about the quality and the creativity and the innovation that these groups have in the programs. And also point out that the master gardeners just finished 20 years. Didn't finish. We're going to keep going. Sorry. But they're just celebrating their 20th anniversary in the master natural finish. We're going to keep going. Sorry. But they're just celebrating their 20th anniversary in the Master Naturalist. We'll be celebrating their 10th anniversary this year. So they've been here a long time and we're really glad to have them. Okay, so first of all, I want to mention the Trails of Denton County and there's a screenshot that's coming through here of the Trails of Denton County. This is a new project created by Master Naturalist that is going to tie into Google Maps already they have mapped Lila which is Lake Louisville. Ray Roberts clear Creek and they're working in Flower Mound the city of Flower Mound they're going to map all of the trails within County and a lot of them are going to have interpretive information like what are the birds and things like that they were able to present this at the State Conference and Master Natural State Conference and other people got really excited. So I think there may be a trails of Texas coming. Maybe not all of Texas, but it's starting here. We were working with our own GIS department on this at all. I don't believe that we have. We should, huh? Yeah, I think you should. I think that would be a nice thing to link. Yeah, absolutely. I will because it's mostly been a volunteer driven project, but I will talk to them about that. But their goal is just to, so that when you pull up Google Maps, you can just access all these trails. So I'll let them know that and we'll get on that. The other program is Science with Attitude. We affectionately call SWOT. And this is our outreach program to teachers, third grade teachers. Right now we're focused in Ditton, IOC, we have a partnership with them. It's a master gardener, master naturalist, and 4-H project. We have a lot of schools that have outdoor learning centers or gardens, and they kind of go weedy eventually or something like that. When actually the third graders have a huge amount of tax and tax, you know, teaks and all that stuff. And a lot of it is based on plants and nature. So this program is to empower the teachers to utilize their outdoor learning center and tie it to the curriculum. We want it to be sustainable and we want it to be crucial to what they're doing in their schools. We trained 28 teachers this last year. And next year we're going to do it again and we're going to add level two which is going to Even give them more tools in their toolbox for this and we also hope to expand outside of ditt niesti And so that's that's one future plan that we have and another is As you know the display garden the master gardeners are busy planning that up and we're excited to see where that will go over there at the courthouse and we appreciate your support on that. And then our plants include just continuing doing what we're doing. The master naturalist are docent and guides all across the county. Master gardeners put on events, educational events everywhere. So that's what we're going to do. Any questions? Okay, thank you so much for your time and support and I'm return it back to Eddie. Thanks Janet. They tend to go a little fast and that's okay because we gave them three minutes so I don't think any of them stayed within their limits so I get an extra minute too.. Okay. Thank you. Agriculture in Litton County. You can't separate agriculture and environmental stewardship and conservation. This can't be done. They go hand in hand. So our programming areas are coincide with both those subject matters. We have 612,000, 416 acres in Denton County of which dry land is 560, we're about 567,000 acres. Of that dry land we have 346,000 acres. Approximately there's still an agriculture production. And we can't just pull that number out of the sky. We have to verify that through USDA, put your farms that are filed through USDA and also through the Dittin' Appraisal District for properties that are filed for agricultural tax, not exemptions evaluation is what that is, feels under. So we still have quite a large number of acres in Dittin County that Viren Ag production. And that tends to step by 61 percent of the dry land in Ditton County still is under Ag production of some way and means and some method. Of that 61 percent, 3 and 46 thousand acres, there's about 43 percent of that is now in Ag production under small, we call them small production units. 50 acres are less. So that tells us and that's growing. If you look the number of farms that growing, we're losing agricultural acres. Last year we lost about 87,000 acres from agriculture or two development through urbanization for whatever it means. But still our number of farms that are growing. So our number of acres is shrinking, number of farms are growing. So that tells us that our audience is going to be smaller acreages and it's an expanding audience. And that's okay. They moved it and they reside in Ditton County and look for these smaller acreages. There again 50 acres in last, build a house, dig a pool and buy a horse. That's okay too because we have 26,400 horses in Ditton County, the largest populated horse county in the state of Texas. Parker County kind of jumped up and said no we had more but we still argue with that with the... Let me know how that comes out. With the US statistical service I call them up and I said well you got your numbers and they said well do you have yours? I got mine verified, I got mine verified. Send me yours, and I'll send you mine. So we're still dicking with that. I still think that we have more horses in the state of Texas than in any other county. In Parker County, it's just kind of not really pushing it that hard, but I am. I didn't kind of want to be. That's right. That's But that's an audience that we need to target with these small landowners. They don't necessarily derive their income from that property, from that land, or from that ag production, but they have another job outside off the home side. But still they want, they, and that's okay. They want to, they have that environment that quality of life that that small acres provides and they still raise horse hay. They can't they? They can still raise horse hay. Yes can't think. You can't think. You can't think. It still raised horse hay. Yes, ma'am, they can. They can do quite a few things with that on 50 acres or less. And they still want to maintain that lifestyle. And so we designed programs to target that audience. So when they do have the proper environmental methods, conservation methods, and give them the opportunity to manage that land the best way that they can with the time that they have. And those programs are expanding. I mean, they fill out, we have to expand on that. And so that's what you have here in front of you. We have two program areas that we designate during the year an output and an outcome program. Outcome program is designated that's your main area that you're going to work with that you see that your county clientele needs the most of and so that's what you have there in front of you right now on how we address that issue and this is just an example of one of those programs that was conducted throughout the county. So agriculture is here still very viable. We still gonna fly that flag as far as being the number one horse county in the state. We still have other commodities that you see that are produced. Yes, we did the economy, did the herd agricultural as it did in all the other industries throughout the state and United States as far as that's concerned. Our horse number, not our numbers, our numbers were relatively somewhat, we did lose a few 900 in the hundreds, but our horse income did drop about 31 million. You know, that's just the sign of the economy. People, they're not going to spend the money on the high dollar horses as they would before when the money was, when the funds were more readily available. So every coach and the steer here, eggs, mayhard eggs, we still are still somewhat intact. They're in the process of moving to the Vernon area, so they'll be, it won't be long probably two or three more years and their complete operation will be moved off the out of the county borders. The health industry is growing. We did have a $6 million increase in the beef industry and $4 million increase in wheat. And that was mainly due to the acreages, but the wheat prices, as you know, were just fantastic last year. It's just unprecedented. Never, you never see them that way again. The corn, we had an increase in corn about 500 acres, which was a significant 2D biofuel industry, which was a demand for that. With some acres, you go out of grain so all of them into corn, they're again due to the demand from biofuel production. So with that, I will leave agricultural sector and answer any questions if I can. Any questions? Okay. We have not. Thank you. Okay. Then I'm going to move right into the check presentation and the recognition of the volunteers. We can't do it without this team effort. Texturized Agrilyph Extension. We have to have you. Of course, they have to have the agents. We have to have the volunteers. Real quickly, I'd like to recognize those volunteers for Texas Agricultural Life Extension. They'll just please stand on and recognize you. I sure appreciate your efforts. In, in, in commissioners, that's what this check represents is the, the hard hours, the long and hard hours that these volunteers put in on an annual basis is just unprecedented in this county. And the county has a great volunteer base. They love doing this and they do a great job. And so we calculate their hours every year on how many they put in and then put a dollar figure to it that it comes back from a volunteer association that calculates what their hourly rate would be if we would hire somebody to do their particular job. So this time I'll introduce Lee and Jürgen. She is the Vice President of the LAB Committee. It's a leadership advisory board which is overall the PAC committees and she's gonna present the judge with the check for I don't even have much of this. Over half a million five hundred. I almost took off in between the breakfast and now, if that had worked. I'm afraid Eddie would attract you down. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just like to say I'm sure there's some questions about how that balance has come up with. And in 2008, the check that was presented was for $448,000, $48,000, $359,000 and some change. And it was for 22,981 hours of volunteer service. At that point, each hour was rated at $19.51 an hour. I can tell you this is exciting for me as a volunteer because this is just a neat day. You come and you know we do all this stuff because we just love it. I got involved because I saw a tree that was interesting and now I'm hundreds of hours a year. All the different interesting things that this County offers. In 2009, the check total, which you received, $568,640.25, he equated to $28,081, out-balling to your hours. There was a rate increase to $20.25, so that was a little bit of the difference. But mainly there was 5100 additional hours that work given this year. And we love doing it. It's a bunch of present. And we thank you. Are there any questions on it? Thank you. That's fantastic. We appreciate your volunteers. Couldn't do it without you. Absolutely couldn't. That's true. That's very true. Thank you, Lee and thank all the volunteers personally. I'd like to thank them. I wanted to go ahead and close out if I can and say that again just re-interrate that we do appreciate the court support Texas Agricultural Optics Teaching and that's appreciate your support. Our staff I know myself and Ann as the rest of the speak for the rest of the staff feel like we serve the greatest county in the state of Texas I mean very diverse very challenging Always on the forefront of a lot of different things and it's new to your leadership that you give So we hope we can continue the relationship with the court and again Thank you for everything you do and feel free that will be always you know be there for you if you need something in your precincts Feel free to call us anytime Well, thank you very much for the report. We always look forward to this. I don't think there's a time all year that the courtroom looks more beautiful. We appreciate the points that are fantastic. I actually have mine from last year. You did too? OK. It doesn't look anywhere like that, but it's hanging on. We'll pull it that way. But we appreciate you're giving this report each year too. It adds to my bragging rights and I do want that report about horse country. I'm not kidding about that. Thank you all very much. We're going to take about a five minute break here and then we'll be back in session. We're going out of item five A, which is approval of the bill report. Payments from CSCV, Community Corrections, T.A.I.P. Shares, Trinitious, Porfature, VIT, Interest, and D.A. Check V. And D.A. Porfature funds are all presented for recording purposes only with Colin James Wells. Judge and Commissioner of Residone Court to approve the bills as presented. Taking note of one deletion from the general fund, per the department, and six additions that need to be expedited, actual large payments at the last two, large payments are actually refunds, refunds of unspanned funds from the adult probation department, not the not x expenditures of county funds in any way. That's all corrections I have. Thank you. Are there questions from members of the quarter? Do we have a motion for approval? Motion by Commissioner Mitchell, seconded by Commissioner Eans. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, aye. Nain. Motion does carry. 7A is approval of budget amendment of quest 100260 for computer software for county wide technology in the amount of $710. Motion by Commissioner Mitchell, seconded by Commissioner Ead's questions. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed to say aye. Motion carries 7b is approval. Budget amendment quest 100280 for salary assistance benefits for public health clinical in the amount of $77,690. We also have Bing's email the other day, there will be more discussion on this probably next week. We have a motion for approval by Commissioner Marchant. Seconded by Commissioner Coleman. Are there any questions? Hearing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, aye. Nane. Motion does carry. 8 a.m. is approved to exercise the option to exempt the self-funded portion of the Denton County Public Employees Benefits Cooperative Plan, EPO Medical Plan, PBO Medical Plan and the PBC, PPO Dental Plan from the HIPAA requirements of Title 2527. It is of the Public Health Service Act and we'll call on Amy. Thank you, Judge and Commissioners. This is something that we ask you to approve every year. These are HIPAA exemptions while our plan does actually comply with most of the requirements listed here. We file the option to exempt so that we're not required to do so by federal law. Thank you. We have a motion for approval by Commissioner March. Seconded by Commissioner Eads. Questions? As usual, I have a problem with number six. And so I'm going to be voting against these exemptions. Just for the record, we do. I believe number six to get to that page I'm sorry but I believe that's one that we do fully comply with commissioner we just I can hear you I'm sorry. Number six is a provision that we do fully comply with we just had the option not to, but the plan does comply with it. Just can't even comply with it, but we have the option. I don't like the option. County does comply. Okay, we're just not required to by federal law. Okay. It's your question. Any other questions or comments? We have a motion. Second on the floor. I'll in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed, and aye. Aye. Motion does scary. Four in favor. One opposed. 10 a is approval of the acceptance of Guy James Road prop wash addition to the county maintenance system. This says precinct one is actually a precinct four. I would move for acceptance of the God James row. The motion for approval by Commissioner Ead, seconded by Commissioner Mitchell, are the questions? On favor please say aye. Aye, post and aye. Motion carries. 10v is approval of the acceptance of the road in the Huntwick States subdivision into the county maintenance system. This is increasing for. I will move for approval. Motion by Commissioner Ead, seconded by Commissioner Marchand other questions. On favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion is carried. 13A is approval of contingency allowance authorization number nine, inclusive of change order number 37 and the amount of $6,575. Again, this says it was posted by facilities. This is actually our new employee, our construction manager. He come up and explained to us what's going on. I have one question. It says that we have to change from concrete to asphalt and I know you're an expert at this and that's why I want you to explain to me but my understanding concrete is more expensive than asphalt. So why are we paying money? Good morning Judge, good morning commissioners. That's a very good question. What happened was this work was already in progress. So the reinforcing for the concrete was already in when the inspector came out to review it and at that point they said that it needed to be asphalt so the reinforcement had to be taken up and then asphalt put down. Why are we paying for it? Well it wouldn't that be the contractors mistake? Well it was on the claim to call for concrete but the city in their review did not note that that should have been an asphalt so we proceeded with the concrete contractor did but he was asked to do basically so we did he put it I'm sorry it should he did it put a sub-base down or was it steel that they had to rip out it was the steel that they had to rip out so are you saying the city inspector missed it and then when he came back he said we needed to change it not necessarily the same group the The planning department over there reviews the plans and then the inspector is kind of enforced what they've reviewed and I guess it was always their policy that it should have been asphalt, but our architect was in under the impression that should have been concrete And put concrete on the plans, but it was never noted that it should have been asphalt till it was in the field. So this is a small portion of road where we had to cut across the road to bring some utilities so it's a small patch is what it is. Thank goodness. Patrick Kimberley. Yes. Thinking the future, you'll be able to catch these things from the architectural plans and perhaps prevent these kind of change orders. I mean, that's one of the reasons we kind of brought get under my skin because it seems like we failed the plan or we have people failing to look at the contractors or the architects that we are. And when they make mistakes, it doesn't seem like it's on their pocket. It's just us writing a point check to take care of all the mistakes they make. In place there was a miscommunication between the city and the architect at SoundSight. We're not an empty well of money. I mean that they can come bringing a bucket to. I mean I think in general you're absolutely right. In this case it was hard, as you know in this project we have about six months worth of delay at the beginning because of trying to deal with a lot of these issues. And there was a lot of decisions going back and forth and this one unfortunately wasn't caught. So. Great. Well, the bill still has to be paid. No, I understand what I'm doing. I know, but I do want to. I'm angry with you, Commissioner. I just want to be fully informed that, you know, I mean, what are our options? I mean, if we don't pay it or if we don't do it, the city would be red tagged. Probably. Yeah, eventually you would not get a CO until you had to take care of. So if we poured a concrete street there, they would fail to inspection, right? We would have concrete instead of asphalt, which generally is considered better. It's better. It's better. Yes, they want to access it with the easy access because the asphalt, I guess. Did the architect just means are they not familiar with the stuff going on at the city? No. I guess they, you know, they had it as concrete per the city's specifications was the way the note read. And now they're saying this. I guess it wasn't specifically verified that that had particular pattern. I'm not giving you a hard time. I mean, we hired you to watch over these guys and I'm just trying to figure it. Because you know, I mean, this is all started before he came. I know, I know, Judge. I'm just trying to. I just thought I should point that out. No, I know. No, believe me. I know. I mean, he's got a really hard job because he's been the the the the the the the the the the give some input on this. One thing to keep in mind when the plans are getting approved, the planning department approves them, but the side inspector still has final authority. Even if we have approved plans by the city, if that side inspector comes out and wants to change it, he has full authority to change it. And that's what happened at this point. And the side. Has nothing to do with somebody missing something or anything else. It's just a personal opinion of that side inspector. Who works for the city. That's the city. We asked maybe to talk to somebody over there, George Martin, somebody over at the city manager's office. It's all public funds. We asked know we asked them that maybe since we're also a government entity and we're paying public funds that perhaps it might be okay to have it be concrete which is generally considered better and we gone back to them about that. He's pulled steel haven't we? I already involved it just a clarification of Why the city has the authority to do what they're doing? I know I know has nothing to do and been it please I'm not trying to give you a hard time. I'm just you know Thank the same thing can happen on a county project So and it and it happens so It's it goes both ways. I understand. Sometimes I just think I know when the county gives grief to the city, the city gives us grief and return. Well, I would think, you know, I would think it's a tip for tat and eventually you got to cut your losses and figure out the best way to get a CO into that building. I agree. I just think, you know, the city, you know, I know Andy's fixing to do some bond projects within the city of Denton. I'm fixing to do some bond projects within the city of Denton to the tune of millions of dollars. I just think we would do so much better cooperating to work on these projects. I mean, that's going to be a public building within the city of Denny's gonna, you know, just not enhancements to our community. I just, I don't know, I'm frustrated. Mr. Coleman, just answer one of your questions. They are the, the architect did go back to the city and request that they keep it, but they said that they had to, they supported their inspector in that case and run it wanted to concrete. Is that a private road or is that become I mean it's not a private road yes. Not a private road. A hill is what several million dollars that we're fixing to give them. I know Andy's got projects going in the city of Denton. I understand your frustration. I'd really like to get along with him better. Believe it or not, things are improved. He's fine. He's fine. We have, did you wish to give us some information? Come on up. Fair enough, I heard if you'd introduce yourself, please. My name is Paul Williams on the real estate manager for the city of Dinn. I could probably speak a little bit to this. We've, I think this was a street patch where there was actually a cut across the street. And the whole street's asphalt. From a contractor standpoint, of course, you want to just mobilize a small concrete patch on a little on a street like this. The problem is you're going to have a differential settlement where this concrete strip will be put in and you'll end up putting in like a speed bump in the street over time. And so usually on a street cut you match whatever streets there. If it's asphalt you match asphalt if it's concrete you match concrete. So that's I think that's one of the influences on this particular application You're probably right Might just be asking for more trouble to To go to concrete. Okay, I'm terrible most of her approval by Commissioner Eans second We have a second by Commissioner March and only favor the motion whether reluctantly or not please vote aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye The City of Los Fel 3, Sanger Volunteer Department, volunteer fire department is recommended by the Director of Emergency Services. Chair, move for approval. Seconded by Commissioner Mitchell. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, Sainine? Motion carries. 14b is approval of the fire protection service agreements between Dyn and County Texas. And one, the City of Corinth, Lake City's area. City of Los Fel 2, the City of Los Felell and to the city of Losfell three is saying a volunteer fire department is recommended by the director emergency services motion by commissioner Mitchell seconded by commissioner marchand on favor please say aye aye post and a motion does carry 14 c is approval of the medical examiner district agreement between tarot parker denton and johnson counties for the 2010 fiscal years recommended by the Denton County Health Department. motion by commissioner Mitchell seconded by commissioner marching to other questions. Hearing none on favor please say aye aye. Aye. Oppositing motion does carry. 14 D is approval of the interlocal cooperation agreement from between Denton County Texas and the town of North Lake Texas for maintenance of fought road and Cleveland Gibbs Road located entirely within the town of North Lake Texas and Denton County Commissioner precinct for motion by Commissioner Eans, seconded by Commissioner Mitchell questions. Here none. Favorite please say aye. Aye. Posting a motion carries 14 E is approval of Tower of Lisa Green. The between city of Denton and Denton County is recommended by the Denton County Fire Marshal and director of emergency services. Jody Gonzalez. Opposed to approve. Motion by commission marchin. Seconded by commission call in questions. On favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed to the name. That was easy, Jody. Motion carries. Did you want to give us some information? Yes, I'd like that. Go ahead. Morning, Judge and commissioners. Quick, this is a, this is the tower that's located behind the emergency operation center facility. That tower was funded 100% by Homeland Security Grant funding. Therefore being that was funded in that direction, that the intent of that tower is to provide inter-opful communications throughout Denton County. What this lease does, it actually provides a public safety platform for the city of Denton to be able to expand their capabilities in the southern part of their city, as well as the unincorporated areas of the county, that tower has multiple radio systems on it now and is going to help expand the city of Den as well as provide inter-oracle communications between county, other municipal agencies that are on the Denton System, which include UNT and TWU and those universities are on the City of Denton system and also include the county system. There's going to be an expansion on our tower to use 700 and 900 megahertz frequencies specifically on our tower there at the 9060 T's, the Lane location, that will be a county infrastructure. So it's more of an interoperability project than anything. So this benefits the city of Dendin, Dendin County, not any other communities? Right now it does not. The city of Dendin has the capability to expand. They have more frequencies granted to them by the FCC than any other entity in the county. There's three radio systems in the county, sitting at Denton County in Seattle, Louisville. And again, it's a very complicated mesh network of radio systems, but the key is that the Denton has the greatest growing potential to add people to their system. And they've added, they're giving us some frequencies as well on their system to help us expand. So do you? This is the tower we already have. Yes, sir. One that's also connected to all the other towers across the county. Yes, sir. This tower is on the Microwave Network, which helps also with the City of Dentons Microwave and our Microwave, which brings all of those channels together so that at some point, if the county system goes down, the city of Denton is our primary backup for communications. So while the county uses these specific channels, if we lose our county infrastructure for radio communications, public safety radio communications, it automatically switches over to the city of Denton's frequency. So this tower at that point will expand their coverage area. I remember originally negotiating that a long time ago. OK. All right. That's it. Thank you. And we've already taken a vote on that. 14 F, we're going to pull and repost. We have some 14 F. So there'll be no action on 14 F today. We're going to take 14 GHI and J all in one vote. They're on different sections. This is approval of declaration that a necessity in public convenience exists for the acquisition of all necessary right away for the FM 544 expansion and improvement project. 14 G is Section 1, Parcel 3 from Tramble Probe Company, number 33. And this is all Commissioner Prissing 2, a funding fund from Denton County Commissioner Prissing 2, and assign anticipated litigation to the law firm of Wood Thackerly, Facker and Weatherly PC is outside Council and authorize the Denton County Judge to sign a contract of employment with the law firm of Woodpecker and Weatherly PC. This isn't Commissioner Prusing II. Now, 14 H is same subject, but it's on Section 1, Partial 4 from Triamo Crow Company, number 33. I is Section 1, Partial 5 from Savoy Reality Company Limited and Jay is Section 1, Partial 7 from however you pronounce that THIMP, HU, development limited. What funds are these coming from? What funds are these coming from? coming for. Right away contrast. We have uh... RIPO 4 funds for FM-2499. I can't set not the 20 of our nine, I'm 34. Don't know the dollar amount of these acquisitions. We have approximately 292 thousand dollars unencumbered of the original $1.25 million for that project. So as long as these and other things stay within that dollar amount, they'll come from that product, from the original FM544 money. Okay. Expansion money in triple four. Any other quick. Thank you. We have a motion for approval by Commissioner Marchant seconded by Commissioner Mitchell Just for clarification. This is on 14 GHINJ All in favor of the motion. Please say aye aye opposed any Posting as carry Item 15 is executive session 15 is under government code 551.072 Deer Euration regarding real property close meeting to deliberate the purchase exchange or value of a property where a deliberation in an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the position of the governmental body and negotiations with the third party regarding tracks of real property for right away easement located and then kind of commissioner pushing for and 15b is under Texas government code 551.0711 a this is consultation of attorney in a closed meeting when the governmental bodies 60 advice of attorney about contemplated litigation regarding the filing of a complaint under title seven the civil rights act of 1964 by Nadia Williams We'll wear in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas Sherman Division. Under case number of four, oh nine CV, this is zero zero five nine one style Nadia Williams-Bowware versus Denton County. At all and with that we are an executive session. I mean from executive session under 15A Commissioner Cullen. I would move that we authorize the county judge to execute the right-of-way easement. As presented by Hardy Burke. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Coleman, seconded by Commissioner Marchant. On favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Opposed to the name? Motion is carried under 15b. We have a new order here saying, and I will move for approval of hiring outside council Thomas P. Brandt of Fannie Harper. Mark. Excuse me. Martinson Brandt in Couching, PC, to represent Dint County case number 409 CV, 00591, styled Nadia Williams, Bowler versus Dint County at all. Best of motion. Best of motion. The second to motion. Seconded by Commissioner Marchandt. On favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye opposed, Cinean. Motion does carry. With that, we are adjourned. Everybody have a great day. Go rise. you you you you you you you