Bell, who's Assistant Department Supervisor for the Denton County Clerk, and are pledges to be led by James Wells, our county auditor. And before we start to pray, I'd like to have just a moment of silence. We had an employee pass away yesterday evening by the name of Gary Reese, or external Lewis Phil. So let's have a moment of silence and we'll have our prayer. Please stand. Our Heavenly Father, we just appreciate you to bestow upon us your guidance on this body and all of our citizens as we do your work and as the county does your desire business Dear Lord, please bless those who are serving a Broad and here at home protecting our freedoms and fighting for our liberty Dear Lord, we ask you that you just bless us and keep us all safe. In your name be pray. Amen. I pledge allegiance to flag of the United States of America and to the Republic of the Wichest and one nation of the God's individual liberty and justice for all. On the protection of flag, I pledge allegiance to the one. Thank you, gentlemen. 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 available from the aid to the court. I would like to also remind everyone at this time to please turn off your cell phones and pages. In consideration of their time, I'd like to go to item 3A. 3A is presentation of a quarterly report by the Dimkani Alternative Dispute Resolutions program. We had a long report in our backup material. Good morning. Things seem to be going well. Well, we're every time I get up here and I was actually thinking about something new and wonderful to tell you but it's pretty much the same thing. Things are going well. We're doing we we, we, we have some months that we're finding are a little slower than others, but they seem to be the same months every year. So, but other than that, we're working to finish well over 200 a year. And I was, I was actually in the position of having a pile three weeks ago that was supposed to be a two-day trial that ended up being the better part of 10 days and we spent at least eight hours a day. Now remember in the middle of that trial thinking that this would have mediated all the time this court would have saved and times 200 I think we could save well you can do the math. Yeah, saves a lot of time, energy, trouble, heartache, a long list of things. Members, you had all kinds of information in your backup material. Do you have questions or do we have a motion for approval? Motion by Commissioner Mitchell. Secondly, by Commissioner Marchandt. Here are no questions. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, aye. Motion does carry thank you And let's see here one more thing I want to take up and that is under other departments 13 a 13 a is approval of a change order number eight of the DITM County Administrative Complex Phase 1, which is a deduction to the contract sum in the amount of $434,106. And we'll talk to Danny Burmley. Good morning, Danny. On a judge of commissioners. What this is for, this is for the alternate number two for the pond. What this includes, there's there's 100, let me get to it. 101, 493 that's going to that needs to stay in the project. This is for the excavation for the telecommunication line that goes across there so it'll go deeper so that whenever we do get ready to do the pond we won't have to move that line. Nuts 50 3948 the next item was some pond conduits and lights that were included in that amount, moving the bridges for 59, 222. And then the, putting the HVAC pipes lower in the ground light poles for the lights which is 35.93 which gives us a total of 101.493 on the front cover page where it shows that I think we had an amount of 15 million, 551, 641, that number is incorrect. The number should be for the contract sum is 15 million, 552, 135. Thank you. Other questions from the court? Danny, could you go over just a little bit while we're doing this? Explain. Just a little further. We've had to pull the pond out of this contract for some further investigations due to some state requirements for the pond based off the water. And what we're doing is when the project was bid, it was bid with the lines and the conduits being at a certain depth, but not by not removing and creating the pond, they're having to go quite a bit deeper. I think we need to state that the pond is going to happen. It's just not going to happen right now. Work. The architect is working on that part of it. It will happen, it's just not happening in the time frame that we need to put those lines in. Other questions or comments from members of court? Go ahead ahead. So, so the overall there's an overall change of $434,000 and $6 to the phase one contract. That is the deduction in the contract because we are not putting the pond in this phase, it will go to another phase. So will that 434 be added to the next phase in its contract? I mean that's how that money will be allocated for the pond. But in phase one we're still going with the undergrounds at the depth that that would support a pond. What are the state requirements in that pond that kind of put that in in jeopardy of being done in phase one? I'll let Halle in address that question. I'm Halle in Talley with HDR architecture with the architect on the project. Okay. There you go. That's better. Thank you. We went into the final review stages. The city of Denton said that we need to go review this with the state, TCEQ, and with the core of engineers. There are state and federal jurisdictions that need to be verified prior to the construction of the pond. So that's what we're having to go through now. And those are very, those are time-consuming to do that. So it's basically clearing the requirements for the state and federal jurisdictions that affect that drainage channel. The drainage channel is there on the site. Several years prior was actually an existing stream. It's been modified, but still on those historical maps it shows up as a stream. It's been modified but still on those historical maps it shows up as a stream. So we need to just go through that verification process. So that's what, I mean because it was an existing stream, that's what qualifies it for being reviewed by the state of Feds? At least from a review standpoint, and it could be a no impact, but that's nice. That needs to be, we have to go through that process. Thank you, sir. That could take months. And Holland, so just to declare for what we're doing today as far as the other site work for this phase, other phases, will accommodate the pond in future phases of the size and depth of what we've all been working on. That's correct. The depth that we're putting these site utilities in will accommodate the pond design that is that the commissioners have approved. Thank you, Leather. Any other questions? design that is that the commissioners have approved. Thank you. I do. Any other questions? Yeah. And the only thing that would change is if the state or the feds came back and said, you know, yeah, you're going to do this, but we want to increase the depth of this. I mean, could they possibly come by back with anything? It would go the other way. I mean, I think we want to we would be minimizing any drainage or any water that's actually in the pond. Does the city regard this as a retention pond? No. Yes. We have been going back and verifying that. That we're not in the category of a retention pond. I mean, actually, this is a, the fact that we're not retaining water is a very important point that needs to be clarified all through. Right. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? Very none. Do we have a motion for approval? Shall move. Second. Motion by commission. Marchant. Second. And by commissioner Ead's. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, sitting. Motion does carry unanimously. Thank you. Item two is the consent agenda. Members of the items on the consent agenda that you need to vote for consideration, or do we have a motion for approval? If we're approval. F. for approval. F. All right, anything else? Do we have a motion for approval of the remaining of the consent agenda? Motion by commissioners. Seconded by commissioner Mitchell. On favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed Opposed sitting. Motion to carry. The consent agenda today consists of two A, which is approval of the Watermaking Appointments. We have a new hire in the tax office. We have a promotion in jail health. A rehire in the county jail. A new hire in sheriff communications and two demean- uh, demotions in the Sheriff's Department. 2-B is approval of the Intra Departmental Transfers 2-C is approval of renewal of a contract for detention supplies, bid number 06081919 to Bob Barker Company, items 13, and 12, and Robinson textiles, items 2 and 8 and 10. 2D is approval specifications and 30 to advertise for medical laboratory services, jail, public health. This is RFP 05091976. 2D is approval of building use requests from Texas Storytelling Association to use the courthouse on the square courtroom and lawn on October 24, 2009 from 630 to 1030 pm for the purpose of scare on the square. Sounds like fun, didn't it? Let's take up to F. This is for recording purposes only. Our acceptance of the filing of an order by the Dicken County Judge under chapter 751, the mask gatherings of the Health and Safety Code. One, naming Jody Gonzalez as the county officer to hear applications for a permit for mask gatherings and allowing said delegate to revoke a permit and two, standing in the inspection fees as established by Dicken County Commissioners Court Order 090455. And your questions, Mr. Palman? Sorry about that. I'll be voting no. No, I just wanted to say for the record and I guess now that I don't believe it's good idea to have a member of the executive branch giving testimony before himself, before he makes a decision, pursuant to section 7510505, the FARM Marshall shall be there to give testimony and to give his report. So I guess he'll be giving the report to himself when he's making the decision and it just seems inherently inequitable. So. Currently in title two year opinion, Commissioner Coleman, have any other cond comments on this issue? This report recording purposes only. Boarding purposes only. Yes it is. And yeah we do need to vote on it. But the second part of that, oh my. Please. I'm okay with the fees that we decided upon. So should the motion be... Should be motioned. Before you walk out. There's a question as to whether or not we are voting on... Just the fees or it's posted as for recording purposes only. We actually took action on it last week. Please. This is a no action item. We don't need to vote on it. All right. We won't vote on it. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have the NTTA folks here? We don't okay We'll come back to three B and C. Let's go to item five A which is approval of the bill report payments from CSED Community Corrections T.IP, Shares Training, Shares Forfeiture, VIT, Interest, DA Check V, and DA Forfeiture funds are presented for recording purposes only. Good morning, James Wells. Good morning, Judge Commissioners. I ask for approval the bills as presented with the list of deletions and additions on separate page or seven deletions and additions on separate pays or seven deletions. We have various either processing areas or which one appropriate to pay. And there are five additions, some of four gas for various law enforcement departments, and some grant funds, court order type expenses that we just have been asked to expedite. That's all the corrections I have. Thank you. Do you have any questions from members of court? I'm going to have a approval. We have a motion by Commissioner Ead, seconded by Commissioner Coleman. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, seen in? Motion is carried. 6A is approval of the evaluation committees recommendation to rank HDR architecture and upgraded is the most qualified firm for architectural services for the law enforcement facilities project. We'll call them Beth Lenney. Morning. We're very excited this morning to bring this project to you. As you know, the AAA bond program included about 55 million in construction for the jail facilities. It includes an operations master plan, jail expansion, and then the third phase is the Sheriff's Operations Center in a crime lab. So this is a large project for the county. I'd like to thank the evaluation committee members who served on this committee, Hardy Burke, Assistant District Attorney Lee Hal, the Chief Deputy, Jeff Warrow, Captain, and Roy Davenport Assistant Chief. I'll serve on this committee and it is very time consuming those of you that have served on it before and they put a lot of effort into determining our ranking that is before you today. We have worked with HDR in the past. We are working with a whole new team on this one, or pretty much a whole new team. They have a whole justice division and that is who will be working with Jeff Bradley. Kurt Partay is here. He has worked on the other project as well. And John Holberg, who is Jeff and John are not here this morning, but that will be the team that will be working on on this project. So with that, we're just asking for approval of the ranking and then we'll move forward with negotiations and bring back a contract for the first phase. The questions the members of the court We have a motion for approval. Shall move. The motion of the commission march in. The general second, Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman. Chairwoman 7091985 and appointment of evaluation committee. First, I think we need to have a little discussion about RFQs in general and that is, well, certainly we can take this up in Commissioner's Court, whether or not this body wants to do an RFQ. Commissioner Coleman, you certainly have a right to ask for an RFQ, but I wish that you would do it through a commissioners court and let this body decide if they want to proceed. I said you certainly have a right to ask for it, but I wish you would come through commissioners courts so we can have a discussion about it. So let's have that discussion now. Right. Obviously commissioner Coleman is in favor of doing our Q. My initial I will tell you my initial reaction was like why but then I took a look at how long I'd been and I think you're right. I think it's time to do one. So other than I think we time to do one. So, other than... I think we need to do one. I think we need to do one. When I first moved here and saw from my previous county job, I noticed we had a county engineer who pretty much was charged with dealing with the RTC and a tripolitan planning organization. And it was interesting that we basically had employed a lobbyist to the text.n to the RTC and it really was one of those things when you came as an employee to the county you really didn't know what this person was doing and Since I've become a county commissioner, I've learned additional amounts of information about exactly what's done, but I also know that this contract is kind of a vestige that was left over from Jeff Mosley and has kind of been continued on through the years. And I really think, I'm not sure if we necessarily need this job or we need this position. It's over $360,000 a year. It's difficult to determine what kind of like, you know, a tax collection contract that we bid out, you'd be able to put an empirical number and say 99% of taxes were collected versus somebody else who did 94% of taxes. And it's difficult to put an empirical evaluation on what was going on. I've never seen this contract reviewed when I was with the DA's office. It seemed to me it was just automatically renewed. It was never I'm brought in on the county budget. It was always paid for out of the interest out of bond funds. I'm a big believer in open government. I think all these type contracts should be subject to review and we should give them oversight. I'll tell you I was a little I thought that as a County Commissioner entitled to bring up this stuff I don't have to ask permission to do it. I instructed Miss Fleming to look into it. She went ahead on her own and developed bid specs. I really assessed to review it and give some of my input on it. They generally weren't changed that much. I was surprised at 7 o'clock this morning when I got up to check out my email that a competing set of RFK's were submitted that looks like they may have been drafted by the current vendor. It looks basically like a resume from them. I don't believe it's a good idea to have detailed RFQs that are specifically done so that we have a lack of people making some medals. What I would like to do is appoint a committee that would would take to competing RFQs and develop a good criteria for us to submit this. It's going to be a difficult process, but I think it's something that is going to be better for the county. We may wind up having the current vendor. We may not. But I think of it this type of good for all of us. And if we spend that kind of money, particularly, when we're going to be in this kind of economic hardship, we also might need to evaluate whether we're going to forward this kind of luxury. I mean, we're fix the reason I had misfemming put it on the budget. The day that we were opening up with the budget is I thought it was appropriate when we're asking all of our department heads. And everybody to reduce their money that we look over this contract I'd like to see what other counties we're doing in regards to that See if Tarant County has a transportation consultant See if Dallas County has a transportation consultant See if Colin County has a transportation consultant for Ben That's another you know really air self-manly before Ben and Colin County has a transportation consultant. Fort Ben, that's another really air self-manly to Fort Ben and Colin County. And I'll tell you, I think I have a good working relationship with Ms. Proster. He's been very cordial and very knowledgeable. But I think this is a good time for us to review it. And particularly with this opening of the budget. And to see what's going on, I think a little sunshine never heard anything. Okay. Well, first of all, I think that while Mr. Polster and I shouldn't really say it's just him, it's ITS, the company has been a great job for Dintin County. I think that we would not be in as good as dead as we are today without ITS. I think there's a lot of oversight in that Mr. Poster meets on a regular basis with all individual members of the commission's court about county overall and things going on in their individual precinct specifically. You are correct in that this the funds paid ITS do not come out of the budget. We all received an email yesterday from our auditor concerning that funding. From my conversations with other counties, they just wish they were as progressive, advanced moving you forward with our projects as well as Dayton County was and I think we'd be remiss to disturb that. At the same time, I do not have a problem at all going forward with an RFQ. The RFQ that I presented, I believe, most more closely represents the not only the job that is being done and you're correct, the original contract was pretty vague. It was written many, many years ago and that did need to be refined. But the proposed RFQ, I believe, more closely reflects the job that is being done and the one that I would very much hope continues to be done. We've been pretty aggressive, but we've needed to be progressive and aggressive just because of growth in the county which is even though it's slowed down it's certainly continuing. So I think we'd be remiss if we did not continue the relationship with transportation consultant. Now one thing that I was particularly had an objection to in your proposed RFQ was the requirement that this person be an engineer. While there is engineering involved in road construction for sure, you hire that done. I have several engineers in my family so I can make their auditory remarks. I've said it to their face. They're great people. They're very bright and they're excellent at what they do but they're not the, I don't know what the right word to be, negotiators, the ones that put the things together that didn't navigate the the waters so to speak through text that through the federal government the relationship of Mr. Polster and with other transportation people too that are in that line of work that they have with textile, with the feds, with COG, with members of the RTC. That's very, very valuable and where it is allowed in county to go forward with a lot of projects in a more rapid manner and I don't think an engineer, just an engineer that you hire on the street, I don't care how many roads they built, I don't think they have the expertise to navigate those waters to use your term. So I would like to go forward with an RFQ, but I just wanted to make those things very clear. Other members of the court that would like to speak to the session. Let me just say, I think it's a good idea, budget time, as we all bring forth new ideas to have the RFQ. Yes, I think we all would have liked to have it earlier so you could go through it. But yes, it is a good idea to have this RFP. I just want to ask you on one item on the engineering, would you be willing to have an engineer in the firm? Because I don't think that we have to have our transportation consultant, page 420, in the firmware content. Yeah, a contract with the firm. I don't think we necessarily have to have an engineer that with the projects that we have, because what we're doing is having someone to go out and get these projects ready and work with the engineers to make sure that they are what then county needed. So, you know, that's one point that I think we could look at. Go ahead, you look at. I'm sorry. I think that'd be a healthy compromise. We're paying a lot of money for these services. And to me, having a PE here or something, at least on staff in the organization would provide some sort of objective criteria for us to judge people. We may not necessarily even want that engineer that's on staff to engineer our projects because it depends on other expertise on certain projects. You know, I may have a project that I know that engineer has that expertise that we can certainly have them bid on that project. So I think we need to take all that into consideration. Very good point. There's a litany of things. I just got it this morning and there I mean I'll be honest I really liked the good portions of it Judge because I think your RFQ tightened up a lot of the things that Beth and I didn't have on there. But there were certain things in there, and this is why I think it needs to be discussed by committee, but there was no provisions for a thorough fair plan. I personally think us having a thorough fair plan for the county is extremely important. That's listed as a deliverable in the old contract, and the repulsor and I've talked about it but we really haven't even worked on it since 2006. To me that's untenable the fact that a county is growing as fast as we have. We have had stuff submitted by the North Central Texas Council of Governments and I believe the person in charge of it just kind of dropped it and I know it has nothing to do with Mr. Polster because he's really there to help us and if somebody doesn't have that initiative it's not his fault that they didn't follow through. But I think it's something that I would like to follow through and it's something I would like as a deliverable in our contract. The fact that it has a provision that if you get this contract, you can't bid on any other contract. I think it's deliberately done to limit the amount of vendors. I would love it if we could get some big engineering firm like half an associate's or somebody that would be able to bring a huge amount of infrastructure and resources to bind for this kind of money. I think we need to be seeking a lot of vendors, not detailally, this RQ to make sure that only one person can bid. I think that's wrong. There's no requirement of detailed statement of activities. One of the things that I would like is that, and it was posted in the other RQ, that they're supposed to list what's been requested of them and when it's been delivered. For this kind of money, I'll think that's unreasonable. Other things. I'm saying good. Other things that I would like. And I just got it. I'll be honest with you. I woke up this morning. I got it. Had to run over to my office because my other printer was broken, printed it off. And these are just things I looked at in the first 30 minutes. But the other thing that concerns me is we have a non-engineer, bedding engineer bills. Okay? Say that again. A non-engineer, bedding engineering bills. Okay? Which I think is interesting and if the bills have to be submitted to that firm and then turn around and submitted to the auditor, I would like for there to be a provision in there that if the bills are submitted late to the auditor to be paid, then any penalties that are assessed or anything like that are interest be paid by the person who is supposed to submit them to the auditor. I think that's a good thing to encourage people to get work done. There's a whole bunch of things that I think that we can take from both RFQs and generate a good working document. And this is just the stuff I thought of in the first 30 minutes over at Cup of Coffee this morning. Commissioner, the contracts that go out with RFQs and Beth correct me if I'm wrong, these are draft contracts, those are things that are negotiated later. Is that correct? Yes, the basic format for an RFQ is definitely just qualification statements. We want to give them enough information for them to know what type of services we want. But then in the submitters we want them to tell us how they propose doing that. And then once you select your top firm, then you'll, you know, go ahead and negotiate a final contract. We do wanna give them the contract form so they'd know what type of contract is on, but it is definitely negotiable. It's not set in stone. But my point in asking the question is, I'm not disputing what you're saying, Commissioner Coleman, but those things can be specifically outlined in the contract. I think some of the stuff we need in the RFQs that they'd be prepared to deliver as a deliverable the thoroughfare plan. Okay. And in the RFQ, I think it's just unconscionable to say that if we get this contract they can't do any other county business. I mean, that's just, you know, inequitable, I think, because it limits a pretty finite amount of people. And to me, we want a large number of applicants that would serve us better. First of all, I don't want just an engineering firm. I don't think they're qualified to do the job that we are asking to do. There are other people besides ITS that do this type of work. And that's the type of company or who may or that I envision would do the best job for the county. I want a lot of competition when it comes to actually getting work out. So that's why it's stated the way it is. I agree, but I think we shouldn't, you know, we shouldn't spec out ITS, but we assume it shouldn't by specs eliminate teak-n-all-in-porkins or half-an-associates or, you know. Get on the contract if they think they can't do any of the work on the county. All those engineering firms by that. As I would want to do, I would like to eliminate them from this type of work so that they are free to bid on all the other work that goes on in the county. That's my point, Mary. I think that put in there deliberately to make sure we only have one or two bitters. And I don't think that's... I do that because that's the type of company that I want doing the job. Commissioner Eans? I think the fundamental question here is what type of consultant do we want to... what we want them to do. Do we want someone to do design and engineering or do we want to do? What we want them to do? Do we want someone to do design and engineering? Or do we want someone to do programming? Okay, and I think those are those two separate. They can be combined, but I think that our history and our current practice is that we really lean on our current vendor for programming to help get through the take start and the federal process and working with our TCE and our regional stakeholders and with all our firms. And so, I'm holding the firms accountable and working with our cities and obviously the courts. So, I mean, it's very heavily weighted on programming. That's our current model. And if you desire, some of this more driven as far as engineering, the engineering focus where it's being led by engineers and those engineers are also working on the same projects that they're managing. And I think there are some questions there that could be problematic if they're the ones handling the program and their firm is they're managing their hold in their own feet to the fire and the accountability process. I think we have to work through that because I think that could be, if you had one of those large firms and they're the transportation transportation consultant and they're also have projects involved, how do you, how, how, how we would resolve that, you know, so I mean, I think you want open government transparency and I, and I heard you say today and I believe that and I believe that for the rest of the court too. So I don't know how we would work through that if one of those other big farms or small farms was also working on other projects and maybe you have some thought about that. You've got through that. Excellent points. I just think that, you know, there's a reason big companies have in-house counsel to review and vet the bills that are submitted to them by their legal counsel. Same thing for engineering. I think it's a good idea to somebody, you know. And the problem is, is that the way we have it now is it's the, or it's real squishy as to what the criteria is going to be to hire somebody. Are we hiring a lobbyist? Is that the deal? If we are, let's just say we're hiring a text. lobbyist. What's going on there? Commissioner Cohen is outlining the RFQ. Commissioner Marching. I have no issue with going out for an RFQ on these services. I think it is incumbent upon us to define what those are by no means based on either one of these contracts to me, does it allude to this being lobbyist of anything it's a project manager or a consultant. Other thing is to address what you're speaking to as far as opening it up to any engineering firm who has the ability to bid on any engineering projects, to me immediately puts a red flag as it relates to even our conflict of interest statement that are in both proposed RFQs, which says a consultant firm affirms that it has no potential or actual conflicts of interest in providing services in County and its agreement agrees that it shall not enter into other contractual agreements that could reasonably create an appearance of impropriety nor potential or our actual conflicts of interest. And to me, an engineering firm that we are under contract for as a consultant that has the opportunity to bid on those projects that is currently managing to main poses of conflict of interest or possible and probable conflict of interest in my mind. I mean these are, like you said, you found within the first 30 minutes of reviewing the RFQ. This is a consulting contract, is that correct? Consulting contract that is out of a normal budgeting process because it is funded by specific funds. Is that correct? I'm not sure I understand your question. In other words, it's not part of our usual budgeting process. Is that correct? Well, I mean, I don't think any of us were in county government when this contract was initially done. I mean, James, were you here at that time when this contract was done? Can you provide some history? I was. Can you give us some background? My recollection of that contract is it was proposed by the county judge, so the totally a traffic transportation enhancement consulting contract was proposed by the county judge with the specific vendor in mind. It was the negotiations to decide on entering to the contract between the commissioner's court and the specific vendor and the decision was made by the court. Am I going wrong on that? We did issue an RFQ. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I haven't made that yet. Back in my old building. We only had one respondent at the time, but the commissionerers court did negotiate that contract directly and it was very important. I didn't know all of our Q. I'm sure. 1996. 1996 but didn't David Dean in those fellows have it before that? Are you talking about the original with ITS? That ITS got? That's I'm talking about ITS contract. Okay well no the original consulting contract. I'm talking? That's, I'm talking about ITS. OK, well no, the original consulting contract, I think the whole ride, I'm talking something different. And there is, we had a contract that predated the current vendor. I believe it was about 92. And again, I have all my records back at the old office. I don't know if I can find a me more. Anyway, again, my recollection is that it was put forth by the county judge at that time. Early 90s I think 92, totally new idea. The negotiations with one provider and the contract was given to this provider. And at that time since, and with the timing of it was mid-year and not been contemplated in any budget, and this was about the time that we got head on hand our first road bonds proceeds from our 91 road bond election the first one we had and it did have enough investment earnings to fund the contract and that's really the, that was the decision made then you could do it outside the budget not impact the budget in mid year and not, and that's really that, and I just continued on that has been the practice. I don't know that it's been and every year when the contract is renewed by the commissioner's court in my office comes back a week or two later with the identification of funding. It's always pointed out we've suggested again a road bond fund that has accumulated enough funds to pay this contract. It was suggested that it's outside of the budget, it's not required to be always a commissioner's court decision to ever include it in the budget. And it's always a chance, certainly with half percent interest rates, .05 interest rates, may will be a time we don't have money for this From road bonds again, and I just also point out that only Road bonds would be the funds that would be appropriate to fund this contract we did at the time of initial contract Verify through our bond attorneys that this sort of contract is closely enough tied to the original purpose of the bonds that we can spend the interest on that. Obviously, we have a building fund. We're not going to propose you the interest for that on this contract. Either you or Beth, remember why they went out for an RFQ to switch vendors? vendors. I think the general conclusions can be drawn that there was a satisfaction all at the end of the right time. Just a business decision of the court to do that. I actually did not remember without an RFQ. At a regional contract was it being internet? I was just trying to find out the history of it to provide information for the court. Judge Warren, did you consult with ITS when you developed your RFQ specs? Did I consult with... Talk to John about this when you were developing these? Or did you come up this all on your own? Because when I I talked to Beth about it she didn't have any of these ideas. No she didn't. I sent it to Beth. I sent it to Beth. I can't say that I don't ever communicate with John because I do. But you know, been here six years now and we have a track record of the things that he's been doing for the county. Question is, is that did you get the specs and the stuff from the person who'd be bidding on it? No, sir. No, sir. And what there's all on your own. I asked in a lesson, I asked questions. I did ask questions. I did ask questions. Period. I did ask questions, yes sir. Yes sir. May I? Yes sir. How did you come up with the RFQ? After it was requested that I look at it, I just took the ITS contract, took the task in there and basically inserted them in my basic RFQ form. So you used ITS for the contract that they're under to develop the RFQ. And as far as the contract signed, Kim worked on that in the same method, although then she began to tighten it up with some general contract language that would typically be in any of our contracts. And then Hugh gave us some input and I think we pointed out what those changes were in there he has and those were what ended up in there. And with the one that Mary sent me late last week, I did basically the same thing. I didn't do anything to the task. I looked at the basic RFQ format and rearranged it a little bit to fit our general practices on how we issue RFQs. to fit our general practices on how we issue RFQs. Okay, we have two RFQs here, and I would like for us to take some time to look at both of these RFQs. Instead of just saying we're going to do one of the other ones today. I for one would like to have had that RFQ when Beth you communicated with Beth about it and I've asked the staff several times and when we have something that affect the whole court that we all get a copy of it because we could have all had put in our two cents in this RFQ in the beginning if we had had it. Now here we are today with two RFQs that we just got that we have to look at and make a decision on one or the other. And I for one would like to sit on and us go through these RF cues. I see some good points in both of them and some bad points in both of them and decide which RF cue the court as a whole would like to do. But man, would you like to do that through the commissioners and a workshop or through a committee as a commissioner? I'd really like the commissioners to do this because we're the ones that are going to have to live with it. I agree with you, Commissioner Mitchell. I don't think it's a zero-sum game that you either pick one or the other. I think there are very good valid points in the one that was provided by Judge Horn. I think I like the way it was detailed, specific with the task. I was hoping we'd get something like that and I didn't get anything like that from Beth because we basically used the old form obviously somebody with a lot of expertise and knowledge into this contract helped Judge Horne put hers together. A lot of questions come here. Yeah and I mean it looks like a pretty good resume. Be have. Well let me finish. So I think there's a really a lot of good stuff in that one too and I think you know we take some points that you may have, that I may have, that Ron may have, that Judge Horn may have, and then we try and get the best contract we can and the best value can for the county. Let's do this, Commissioner. We have obviously a budget workshop's beginning. And we've got some schedule that we need or may not be meaning, but let's take a look at your calendars and let's schedule a workshop. Let's get her done. During an appeal, I don't know how many appeals we're going to have. I know we have a fee. For appeals, we usually block that a lot of time could we? I have appeals next Tuesday. There's probably eight or ten appeals maybe at this point. There are some people that have been out of vacation and they're contacting me today, but I don't think we'll need that Thursday meeting at all for budget workshop if you want to make it thin or we could build it into the same day as our budget workshop, whichever. I mean Thursday it 23rd? Yes. What time are the appeals scheduled for next Tuesday? Immediately following Commissioner's Court. We would kind of gauge the agenda after it's posted and then try to set up appointments for those individuals to be here. There are other things we can cover as well in the meantime. I don't know what the court was. I'd feel comfortable about attaching this workshop right after those fields on Tuesday, no matter how long it takes. Please, we get it done. Well, we can post it. And if we can work it in fine, if we can't, we'll repost it for as soon as possible. We're after it. I think we've got them both. We can go through the red line. Let's do that. OK, so 21st after the commission's court and after the budget workshop, depending on how long that goes, then we'll have a workshop on the RFQ. We're posted that way and hopefully we can get through all that. Beth? Yes, if I might. There are, as it was pointed out, good things in both of them that probably should be included in a final draft. If you don't mind, I'd like to suggest what some of those things are for you to consider and I'll do that in running. The other thing is is that we definitely have to have an evaluation committee. So when we post the workshop, is it going to be posted so that we can take action? Or will it kind of back? Let's do that. We would want to make sure it's posted with the evaluation committee as well. And I haven't recommended anyone, but commissioners court will need to make that decision. Certainly it's somebody from the office of the Civil Division, you. Myself in engineering and and what our policy says for engineering contracts is those three plus any departments that might be involved. This isn't a design contract so I'm not so sure that policy covers that exactly I think it's definitely you know Commissioner's Court consider who they want to serve on that committee and I've made a few suggestions earlier that possibly James Wells might want to serve on it there's a lot of funding issues is he bringing her out of of the I'm making no No Not to endorse it, but he's involved in this contract all the time so that might be a good resource as well So and I do believe Bennett how would be another good resource Thank you Okay, so it'll be posted after the budget workshop and it will be posted in such a way that we can take action if we want to. All right. Any other comments on this issue? All right. Yes sir. All right, there'll be no action on six feet at aim. Seven a is approval of budget amendment request 101-450 for computer supplies including the transfer of funds from district clerk records management and appropriated fund for district clerk records management funding the amount of $3,000. Hello. Okay. Motion by Commissioner Mitchell, seconded by Commissioner Eads. Hearing no questions, I'll be favorably say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed to the name. Motionless carries. 7B is approval of budget and may request 101460 to increase revenues and allocate expenditures from the sale of surplus property for road maintenance equipment for urban bridge precinct one in the amount of $11,000. I move for approval. Opposed to the commission or comments. Seconded by Commissioner Mitchell. Are the questions getting none on them favorably say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposition in motion this carries. 7C is approval of budget amendment request 101 470. Dean Cruz revenues and allocate expenditures from the sale surplus property for operating equipment for road bridge precinct one in the amount of $3,050. Okay. Motion by Commissioner Coleman, seconded by Commissioner Margent. for roadmage precinct one in the amount of $350. Motion by Commissioner Coleman, seconded by Commissioner Margin. Any questions? On favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed to abstaining? Motion does carry. 14A is approval of agreement between Dick and County Texas and North Texas State Fair Association incorporated to provide a water truck for the 81st annual North Texas State Fair in rodeo 2009 from August 19, 2009 through August 31st, 2009. Approval. Second. Motion by Commissioner Eid, seconded by Commissioner Coleman. On favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed to the name? Motion goes carry. 14b is approval of interlocal cooperation unit for property tax collection between Denton, County, Texas and Northwest Native Henning School District is recommended by the Denton, County, Texas, Assessor, Collector. Motion by Commissioner Mitchell. Seconded by Commissioner Coleman. Any new questions on favor, please say aye. Aye, opposed, sinne? Motion does carry. your comments. Any questions on favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed to say aye. Motion does carry. I don't know what happened to NTTA. Frank had to make a run this morning so he's here for me to ask. So we'll have to repost that. Absolutely. that? Well, Donna's budget presentation is posted for 130 in case any public wants to be here to hear that. I think we should wait for 130 to do that. It's actually 130. Didn't know what I said? I said 113. I'm sorry, 130. So let's recess and I'll contact the NTT and find out what happened. In regards to this presentation, State of the North Texas tollway authority, committee that I'm part of is asking for an opportunity to do an update, a presentation with NASCO. When would that be appropriate? Remember when we were talking about maybe going and joining what was it, Texas, Texas 21? X 21 that we talk about, maybe reviewing the current memberships that we have during the budget process. Are we still gonna do that? If we are gonna do that, would it be appropriate for them to come in during that time? And should I coordinate that with? I would assume the better. Pfft. I mean, I didn't want them to come in and I just thought it'd be appropriate time for them to come in. I think it is an appropriate time. Okay. We are recessed in until 130. First of all, on 3V, the presentation by North Texas Toa Authority, we somehow have that signals crossed and they've got it on the calendar for next week, so we'll be reposting that for next week. So now we will go to 3C, which is a presentation of Recommended Budget by the Budget Office that we'll call and down the street. Good afternoon, Judge and commissioners. This is a day that our office always looks forward to. Everybody's been putting in a lot of effort and time into presenting a budget today that we think is a sound financial document, as well as sufficient funds for our departments to continue to operate in our tech economic times. So with that, I've got a quick slideshow presentation. I say, quick, probably an hour, an hour and a half, depending on how many questions you guys have. So that's quick. I just wanted to give you a real quick overview of the initial budget request that we're received in our office. Of course, the court submitted MMO2. All of our department heads and elected officials asking them to hold the line. And that was all submitted. We received all the initial requests back from the departments. There's a detailed breakdown on page S20 of your packet. We won't go over that today unless you want to, but it basically gives some historical data for each department and grand total summaries for each one. Initial request this year, totaled $194.3 million, which was an increase of $12.7 million. Of course, after we picked ourselves up off the floor, we knew we had our work cut out for us. The tax rate that would be required to find what was initially requested would be 0.27984 cents. So that would be over a 4 cent tax rate increase. It would be 13.29% above the effective rate. There were 33 new positions requested this year by our various departments. We had two requests for the district clerk, one for facilities management. We had five positions, a requested for jail expansion. That would be to open 48 new beds. We had 11 in communications. Those positions were directly tied to the contracts that we're talking about entering into with all of the other entities. There were four positions requested in the Sheriff's Department, one for Constable Precinct 3, two for Constable Precinct 5, a request from Constable 6 to upgrade a part-time clerical position to full-time. District Clerk Records Management Department requested records management department requested one county clerk records management department requested one juvenile probation requested three and our public health department requested one there's a complete breakdown in your packet on page s59 and 60 so you can see what the cost of each one of those positions would have been and I'm sorry to interrupt you swirling the process, but the facilities management position was that the project management. That's the project management. That's the project management. That's the project management. That's the project management. That's the project management. That's the project management. That's the project management. That's the project management. That's the project management. That's the project management. expect us to have some conversation about that. All right, thank you. Next is just a quick breakdown. Capital expenses are always a large part of our budget. Capital equipment requests, again, are those items that are over $5,000 per unit cost. Those requests total $1.7 million this year. This next slide just pretty much gives you a recap of all of our funds in the county. It gives you some budget history as well as the recommended budget for each fund. You'll be able to see the variance and the percentage increase. So you'll see the budget that we're recommending today is $183.7 million or $183.8, which is only a budget increase and I say only of it's $2.1 million. And I'll get into some more specifics to explain that here in just a few minutes. That's a 1.17% increase in the budget. This is a record low for us as far as budget increase. On page S61 of your packet you'll see the same sort of report we just talked about that showed the initial request but this includes the recommended total spot apartment. Again it gives you historical data the current budget and status it gives you the adopted budget and the amended for each department. Again, I recommend a budget $183.8 million, which means we had to reduce department's request by over $10.5 million. Again, it's an increase of 2.1 million above our current budget. As far as tax levies and projected fund balances, there's a report on page S27 of your book that includes a breakdown by fund. This report shows the beginning and ending fund balances projected for each of our funds. It also shows you a quick recap or summary of what is non-tax revenue versus tax revenue. All the expenditures by fund are listed as well as the tax rate information. As you all know, our current tax rate is 0.2577 per $100 value. I've worked with the county auditor and we are estimating the effective tax rate this year to be slightly more than our current tax rate of 0.247. As you all know, the Pricil District has not provided the final figures to us so that we have an actual number to work with. We are working on historical data as well as the preliminary information we received from the appraisal district, but based on existing value of properties going down, the estimated effective rate looks like it will increase. And just to clarify, the effective rate is the rate that will generate the same tax revenue on existing property as in the prior year. So that's just valuing the properties that are on the roll for last year and this year. Truth and taxation is designed so that when the property values increase in the county, the effective rate decreases because the counties or entities are only allowed to bring in the same amount of revenue as they did prior. And in this case, this year, the reverse is happening. The values are going down. Truth and taxation is meant to still bring in the same amount of revenue to us. Therefore, our estimated effective rate will increase slightly this year. I did go back and research. And just to give you some history on this, this is the first time in 15 years that we've had that happen. We have had the benefit of the growth in Dintin County for years and the estimated effective rate has always been less than our tax rate. Unfortunately, that is not going to be the case this year. The proposed tax rate that we have included in this recommended budget, again it's preliminary based on preliminary information would be 0.2570. Again, that complies with the one cent increase that the court has discussed for the debt issue that we just went through this past May. The proposed rate would be 4.05% above the projected effective rate. And it still leaves us with a good ending fund balance of $36.2 million. This point, James Wells is going to start us off by talking about the revenue side of the budget. That's very important for us to know what we have to work with. And we've got some slides here to show you. And I'll run the slideshow as James explains all the information. And on page S2 of your budget and book, you do have a more detailed analysis. We'll probably just hit the high points here. Again, since we, the subchapter of the budget law that we, that didn't county operates under, does require county auditor provide estimates of funds available and funds, respectively, we're saved to the county budget officer. And that's what this report is about. And we'll cover both current year revenue results so far and expected results as for next year. And like any local government, it's picking any county government Texas we have about eight funding. Major funding sources, these haven't changed, they haven't been added to or taken away from in many years. Property taxes are number one largest source. At June and in the property taxes are going to be 60, 65 or higher percent of our budget total is our own. It is our only major revenue source that we have to control over as far as county does at the right for taxes within some constitutional limits. Good news on taxes. I mean, and revenue is far, budgets getting really hit hard this year. We have some, as Don, I'm sure will explain. There are some unavoidable major expense increases that are going to affect us too. But revenue user are getting us pretty hard. Taxes really are not one of those areas. As has been the case for countless years, even back to the years, the owner was talking about 15 years ago when property values were going down. Our collection rates are very strong. So, tribute to our tax assessor collector and also our contract program and our previous tax transfer collector. For him and our program collecting deletquent taxes, Our collection rates stay very strong. We collect almost our entire current year levy each year. We're average 99% and as much as our tax levy is, one or two percent is a lot of money now to leave on the table. Obviously, it's over each percent is $1.2 million nowadays. So to have a 99% collection rate of current taxes, certainly shows we're maximizing our available resources and our taxes are as fair as they can be because no one's having unnecessary burden for a lot of delinquent taxpayers. We do have some delinquents for various reasons. We have a lot and we continue to have a lot of tax that goes on the books. It really shows up as delinquent but it's really property that's being developed that loses its agricultural exemption and it's called rollback taxes. up that loses the agricultural exemption that's called rollback taxes. And our numbers are just about like our previous years. We've actually collected about half a million dollars in rollback taxes this year, which shows there's still development going on. The status economy is, there's still people out there doing things and developing new projects in our county. Not as I told you what we expect out of the tax, is we really don't think this year is really not the bad year for the tax base, tax base growth, the tax base growth is going to be less than last year. It will probably have about a million dollars less Money from new property added into the rows, but still strong we actually make a lot of the feeling that we may see that more next year That we see the fewer additions next year than we did this year, but Again, we'll see the values in late July we are We'll see the values in late July. We are budgeting about a million dollars less than you revenue, but still an increase about over three and a half million dollars from property that's added first time to our role this year. I think that's about 1.6 billion. I think. Well, it's been around 2 billion and you properly, each of the last four years, preliminary estimates were about 1.6, but still not as bad as we've had. In the handout on page S, C, you can see our historical, last five years levels of tax revenue, how they've increased the strength of our collection percentages and the various tax increases. We have been tax increases in the instances of tax rate staying basically the same over the last three or four years. Okay. And then, motorbikes registration fees, which take to our two types are a really large source of revenue for us. One of these is the optional $10 fee. We've the court has collected for many years, a $10 fee on each registration. It goes to road and rich fund. It is still, and it's a factor of population growth in the county. It continues to increase in spite of the economy. We have it been able to, and it's about 4.5, 4.8 million dollars increasing at the tier of about 200,000 a year, which is, you know, all of those very substantial given it's in $10 increments. That's a lot of additional business each year at the tax office. The other factor in these fees that is a ready split between General Fund and Bridge fund is the 5% commission, but county retains on collecting automobile sales tax. And this is one that's being hit very hard by the economy and the auto industry in specific. We think we're estimate we'll get about $3.8 million this year and this money is almost all collected right now. It comes in fairly early in the year from the Comptowals office, but we lowered that to $3 million exactly next year, the car sales. Every instance indication you see that statewide car sales are down about a third in the state from this time you know this year compared to last year this year sales is what we'll collect money on in fiscal 2010 so that's one of the major hits on the budget revenue side is we're lower than that but that's speaking about a million dollars less than that. First time ever that's going down I don't remember any instance that ever going down. Not that time only began when we started, right? There is a county history that predates either Ghana or me, but no one pays attention to it. It's such a different history there because thanks for so much smaller, but that would be one I would point out. You can see the growth in these revenues, these combined revenues on page S4 of your budget book and you can see that again this funding besides going down also a smaller percentage goes into rodent ridges here. This will eventually all transfer to the general fund by a very vague state law that required a tenure transition. So we're only putting 50% of this fee the total sales tax fee in the road and bridge fund next year. That would 50 goes in general fund. That will continue until none of this money, this particular money goes into road and bridge. The $10 or optional fee is not change. You get only can go in road and bridge. It's the far more stable fee. Okay, in regard to mental revenues, I need to ask a question and I meant to check on this and I haven't. There was a bill in the last session, the legislature to change the road and bridge fee, and I don't know if it passed. I haven't seen any indication that it passed. I had it was tracking that earlier, and I'd kind of lost track of it. It was, too, and then I forgot to go back and check on it. Didn't make it. Okay. Excellent. Yes, County King. Okay. Yes, it is currently the maximum it could be less with court chose to So we do assume that by 2016 that 100% of that money collected goes into the general fund and then you use the general fund to fund the Rogan bridge Yeah, yeah, that's Your your maybe I sense correct. I don't it's hard to count it but it's 2006 I was on the fifth year of this very strange tradition and this money, again, this is specifically the Commission on Auto Sales Tax, not the $10 fee. But that commission originally was in the general fund. It was changed by legislation many years ago, more than a decade ago. All of a sudden it was demanded it go in the road bridge fund. As a road bridge related revenue, it made sense. The decision to move it back was, my understanding was from counties that did not need it all for the road bridge. They felt like they were, for whatever reason, there were many counties that did not. Probably counties that had separate road bridge tax to the three-cent tax that we don't have. They had plenty of road and bridge funding. They did not, you know, they said they were being hamstrung by putting too much money in the road and bridge funds. So this was very strange. I mean, there's no net financial impact. It's money in one fund or the other. So we don't lose any money. It's just it's a little juggling game. It makes sure we get the right percentages in each year and the ten year transition I really don't understand. I never have understood that but that's what that's what we're we are abiding by that. But again it's not it has mainly there's no net financial effects. Money more money goes into the general fund from the commission. We have to put more taxes in the road in the road in Bridge Fund, but in the day it doesn't really. It doesn't change our total financial outlook as an entity at all. Any other questions while we're got a stop and spot? It's okay, nothing's a problem. But in the governmental revenues are our large source of revenue. These are the malgommation of things. Most intergovernmental revenues have a sum drawback to them. We get a lot of grant money. It's a grant to find things. There's always a rule of that. They don't add to our bottom line. They will fund things. We can't fund. But the only way to get grant money is to spend it and then be usually be reimbursed for it. At the end of the day we have more equipment or more services provided. We have financially where no better or worse off financially. In a governmental contract or another way we raise some money away from doing a road in a small town or a patrol service contract in the town or a special district to housing prisoners for other entities or paying prisoners. It would not be a revenue if we pay other entities for our prisoners. This is an area that's generally in some area of flux. Again, it's being hurt by the economy too. Our major source of funding is housing prisoners for the U.S. government in our jail. That is being downgraded simply because our own jail population is going up. It's always the concern. We always want to avoid building our budget on this kind of contract thing because it usually does go away, sometimes extremely quickly. We did actually go from this revenue from Prisoner Housing and C- sea sold from nearly 3 million in 2002 to zero in 2004. So we did a, with no-cut expenses, we had a $3 million flip in our budget. We had no control over any of you. We have to make it up in other ways. In 2004, it was back up to 2.1 million in 2007. And it certainly helped it. And it's in these countries have certainly helped us get our new jail open, get it staff in a really early fashion with at least the impact on the budget. It's probably a good governmental service to get these US Marshall prisoner towels. But revenue is going down. And we're again from a high of two point, recent high of two point one, me and I was seven where we're only going to be budgeting, basically put from the sheriff's office 450,000 in 2010, so we're back on the other side of this. Not particularly, I guess it's not directly related to our economy other than, in fact, maybe we have more people showing up there. Me and county residents are showing up in our jail. We don't have room for these prisoners. The Health Care Relief Fund is our mechanism for counting forward and budgeting for our proceeds from the state to back a law settlement, law suit settlement, where the trust fund for local governments and hospital districts was formed. I don't see how many years we've had this. It's about eight years. Again, this one is, you know, this is an invest, trust fund that they just, they, at the state, they disbursed the earnings. The earnings are going down, so we're, we haven't really lowered this much because while the, the mouth of the distributing is going down, Dr. Burton reminded me when we're doing revenue that we'll have a lot more expenses because we can count construction in our health department, but building a look to 88 will actually greatly, we'll report a considerably more expenses next year than our usual operating expenses. Fills we got these capital expenses. So that's one. We're going down to about 35,000 less than budgeted. This could easily be a hundred to hundred fifty thousand dollar cut. There not any increases we see are mixed beverage tax to budget a hundred thousand dollar. This is a portion of off-premise, not only mixed bear, we just call it bear-rich sales tax that's collected, other than it retail establishments. We're seeing that go up by $100,000 expected. June probation will be getting definitely more grant money from state through TJPC. That's about the only areas of intergovernmental that's going up in a meaningful way. Okay, anything else there we missed? Okay, and we'll point out that pending grant applications that have been submitted, not approved at this point. I believe we had one on the agenda today. Thank you, you may have one. Those are not included in the budget. I believe we had one on the agenda today. I think. You may want to know. Those are not included in the budget. When those are awarded, after the budget is adopted, we will just amend that into the budget. And that's allowable by state budgeting laws. And it's a little bit better for management to put in an estimated number at this time. Or a number we don't have. We try to avoid putting any budget Red Grant revenue that we don't have an absolute award on Into the budget and therefore having expenses budgeted with no revenue If we do receive some awards like we did on today's agenda We'll be putting forth that in our changes packet that we'll be seeing in a future budget workshop putting forth that in our changes packet that we'll be seeing in a future budget workshop. Since we already have the contracts, I know we can go ahead and get them incorporated into our budget. But unless we have that official notification, we will leave them out. Well, things of all, Fiscal Trusts, it really is our second largest social revenue in the county. Most things to remember about these, most of them are set by statute. They are, again, fees set directly for services. We provide a citizens. Always a good estimation of the demand for services in the counties where these fees are going up or not. They're really about flat. We were actually budgeting a small decrease from our 2009 budget. And actual revenue is not going down, which increases not as much. This year we had actually planned for it to be that we're still increasing. It's just going to be less 2010 budgeted numbers will be less than 2009. We are still seeing some, we're not seeing any real fallbacks in demand for sources and fees that pay for those. We're looking at them on page S5 and S6 on fees. There is some discussion on fees, on special use fees which we are as we did last year starting to looking at tapping trying to use these special use fees for records management, technology, security, law library, trying to maximize these as much as possible and taking as much of a load off the general fund as we can. We obviously can't do anything that's not allowed by statute on these special fees, but in this year in particular we've really taken a stronger look at what we can spend on the boat, can't spend legally on and trying to move some things. We've been successful in moving quite a few expenses out of the general fund and these special funds. And also, this is about a $15 million dollar fee projected for 2010. Also in the library, again, this is a special use fee on civil filings and district and county court. It is, could only be used to finance the law library. There's probably actually some areas of the law library cannot be used for even like construction such. What we see, this has a fee that it's a range of the fee is a range that can be up to $35 per civil filing week. We now have it set at $25 this year. This is a commission's court action. One of the things we have come up with, this is separate fund and accounting. Law Library fee has like two years of expenditures built up in reserves and consistently bringing in more money than they spend on their program. More money than they asked for in their budget. So we have as a gesture one of to give the citizen something back that paid his fee and to just be good stewards of this money to put the money to use rather than have it just to accumulate. We'll be asking the court to consider dropping this fee for some temporary basis down to $15 for case We'll leave the fund very well financed Then in the future if you know if it does draw the fund balance down to a level that It needs to be we need to change back can, the court could consider raising that back. Back up to $25 or so, it always could always go to $35 if the need be at some future time. So we, again we thought considered this, talked to the county clerk about it, it has the inquired of the bar association, what in the committee that has some oversight. We're waiting for approval but something we thought we would consider not because we cannot come up with any other uses for this money that would be legal. So rather than the idea was to again reconsider the citizens give them something back at least temporarily for those you know the people that are filing cases just put again find a way to put the money back to better use and what we're doing now. Now I've also ended up pointing out the child safety fee is another optional fee on car registrations there's again some discussion of it on page S5 and 6. Again, this is one we collect money and registrations, the bulk of which we actually, by statute, sent to the cities, the municipalities in the county, based on population. We did get to retain about $122,000 of a total $650,000 fee. Court fines would be the next area of revenue. In a nutshell, again this has come from all three levels of court. Let's go on with this one. It's a, we're budgeting about $.4 million dollars for next year. This would be for six JP courts, five county criminal courts that collect fines and five of our six district courts that collect that collect fines. So again, this is, the imposition of fines are certainly outside any of our control. They're up to the court, to the judge, based on the case load of these various courts. And then and actually most of the fines are set by the judge within scales. You can see that we've had some family dramatic increases in fines. Particularly in the county district court level since we've had the In-House Collection Program that was mandated for us by Senate Bill 1863. We started that program in April 2007. and total fines are not that great an increase the last five years, but in county district court, there's been your debt of $700,000 increase in fine collected in those two courts that actually offset some by a smaller increase in JP courts, but this has been a very successful program not only on revenue, but also on a bigger picture that the criminal justice is being fully carried out, that people that are found guilty and sentenced and have fines imposed on them, a far greater percentage are paying that fine and full and fulfilling their total sentence. Sorry. Then on the reverse side of that, you're saying that the implementation of a collection program in the JP courts is yielding less money collected than it has in the past. You know, we have a good question, and I probably make that real clear. Actually, I don't think... We did have a different collection program in the JP course that's with our contracted vendor, McCurry, the Selka Bragg, and Allen. No, we actually... They are bringing in additional revenue to the degree. Actually, what's been offset is more general decline in the number of cases and the number of collections in the individual JP courts outside of collections. Their collection numbers are as strong or stronger based on the fines imposed, but there's been a variety of reasons, most prominently a shortage, manpower shortage in DPS for several years. But they have not been really fully staffed, working our areas much. That's the best explanation I see. So actually the fine collection program in J.P. Court is working fine. I would certainly defer to the last one case they better. It's just a function, there's fewer cases being filed, I believe. But we see that we see an increase, it's not quite, you know, again, the increase in total fines from all courts, from 06 to the 2010 budget, is a little over 400, is right at $400,000, $500,000 or $400,000. So there's been a small decrease in JP courts at offset. Some of this near the $700,000 increase in the two higher level courts. So it is fortuitous in a way that we have got that collection program going. The saddest source revenue store we have is the interest on our investment income. This one is not much to report. We do have an active investment program of all of our funds that are not needed They cash flow We and I mean we have we invest both local you know local money tax tax money fees any kind of reserve funds we have Bond funds and when we just did our hundred and four million dollar I guess a hundred four Most recent bond sale that money was invested by the day we got it We just we don't have many venues right now to attract any kind of a return. We invest, as you know, by our adopted investment policy losing, we've been since rates starting going down about two years ago to what is now. And I think all the time low, annual, one year treasury bills are at about half of 1% 50 basis points, I guess. So this is hard, this is hitting our budget to the tune of about $2 million over the last half of 1% 50 basis points I guess. So this is hitting our budget to the tune of about $2 million over the last couple of years as far as budgeted, revenue and our budget funds a couple of years ago to what we're going to collect this year. Again, this is one of those, as with most of these revenue losses, we don't have a venue or a venue to replace those. Donna's mentioned the truth in taxation laws that don't allow an offset for loss revenue like this. So we're really budgeted right under a million dollars for 2010 for investment income. Our budget funds topped at three point.00, really right at $4 million and $7, that's really a $3 million loss. The flip side is the bright side of this that's far up in the tunnels when rates go back up, we're going to get revenue balance back up eventually because what we are and is directly tied to the federal reserve, they've got rates historically low right now, they do not show any. I can find no real expert that follows the federal reserve that says they're having any interest, they have any inclination to raise interest rates in the foreseeable future. But when they go back from a 1.5% of 1% up to about 4% in the next few years, we're going to see this corresponding increase. And I think it will be a real plus. It's going to be a real plus to the budget, because it won't happen. They're not going to say, in this time of year, they're going to raise rates 2 2% in the next year so we can budget accordingly. So we'll probably, you know, our budgets will probably lag the actual rate increases, but that will be a, you know, that we're becoming, it's just not this year. So this is one of the hardest hit areas. You know, it's not a big percentage of our budget. It's getting out only even in this best year, about 2% of our budgeted funds. But it, you know, so it's not that big except it is a $3 million dollar, while also over three years without anything to make it up. I'm sorry. Before you move on, could remind me where our oil and gas revenues are in this is in property taxes? Oil and gas is property taxes, yes. Is the reproduction? Could you see any flat line of that decrease in that or it's a decrease? Do you have any idea? Yeah, I'm giving it. It's property tax. This does for us point it out. We actually are seeing no preliminary numbers. The Petsnets have been extremely helpful and informative on preliminary numbers is sharing every other area on the tax roll. They have not given us a single number for oil and gas. I believe the... That's handled by a separate entity that actually puts a value on this. Right, right. And that's not known until the very end of the process. Actually, we saw, you know, or I guess, topped out really last, we saw a small decrease last year, you know, into the 10s of thousands of dollars in value. So not only that much, that much tax. But again, it's in a property of the, it is the reserves in the ground based on market price and also depletion. So my understanding of this area is that when a well becomes productive, of any kind of mineral, you said it's high, then based on market value to whatever is being extracted, you may get the highest valuation ever. Now, you know, obviously, oil, natural gas, which is a bulk of our minerals, is much lower. Her is not barrel, per million cubic feet or whatever. It's standard of value as much lower this year than last year, so that will affect us too. And this will affect our taxes, taxes rate in exactly the same way as a house that was valued at 150,000 being reduced to 135. It will be, the fact will be felt in the effective tax rate. That's where it will be felt it's not necessarily a, it doesn't just, unlike interesting income where it just takes money out of the Treasury, this one is more effective than that. That portion of our tax base will be lower valued so the people that only that property will pay their smaller proportional share overall taxes. We're about at the end. Miss Lines and Sraveneus are things that don't live fit in. They're Miss Lines. We have a small decrease. The largest of these are in-night foam fees at our jail, an act of juvenile detention, bail bond forfeitures and Corp. attorney refunds. I know y'all see all the money that goes out for Corp. attorney's every week. But we actually get a significant amount of money back. People placed on probation are almost always ordered as a term of probation, ordered to pay their attorney fees back. We actually have very, very few people that complete probation without paying that. Get a tape recorder. Buy this back all the time. Yeah, I'm really talking about half a million dollars in the two, really in district court, county courts. County courts will be because they have, county courts have a big, bigger case load, they actually have more convictions. We see a lot of them in both of those places and actually even juvenile court can get some money back from them. But so we don't point that out. As far as a non-expected revenue, and this is also this is also a function of our legal, you know, legal court system working well, probation department being very diligent about people seeing that probationers fulfill the terms of their probation or else they have motions to go and also this collections program in house collections program too. There's three or four different things working here, but we will easily top a half a million dollars in attorney refunds this year. Pay not from attorneys paid by defendants. So that is that some of the other areas the bail bond for fortress has been a just as a revenue source for about the eight or nine years. We were in the very first counties that really established program here. We've had millions of dollars of money and built my four-features. Go for the general statutory provisions that they enacted a couple of years ago. I'm making known that on Vell barn four-features. I'm ignorant on that. I just know we haven't had an attorney specifically for that about eight years ago. We're getting almost no money from that. It's going as high as 800,000 here. It's leveling off a little more. It's just a maternity process. They've collected an awful lot of, they've offered it an awful lot of bonds. And so they're fewer, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, million dollars even next year which is considerably lower in their best years but still a significant source. That's why goes in mislingaged revenues. Fund balance, I mean reserve funds, it is absolutely appropriate to use reserve funds for certain purposes and we do, we do budget some drawdown. We've done about the same budgeted draw down. Now that would be general fund there. You know, a two and a half million in the general fund. Now in full, well, we don't expect the general fund balance to go down at all. We don't expect to spend 100% of our budget. We hope as every year that revenues are conserved even we actually beat that. So we will, we will, we will budget a draw down there. We'll be expecting a slight increase. we actually meet that. So we deal with, we booked a budget or a dollar round, we're expecting a sliding increase. We are in the proposed budget as a transfer of general fund reserve funds to the capital replacement fund in the amount of two million dollars. This is about our third year for this project. What we're trying to do is use, since we have very comfortable reserve funds that many local governments and the state of California would be totally in VSF. We're going to put some of that to use in a prudent level. Again, it's about the third year to do at least $2 million. What we've been able to do is do some very big projects out of this capital replacement fund. Also build some money up in that one for even bigger projects and you'll notice we have not recommended the Courtney County tax notes sale this year. What we're trying to do is get a policy and practice in place we can or we can do some big projects out of current funds and stay out of the capital of that market for smaller amounts. We've got plenty of that issue in our plan without stuff come up in the middle of the year. But we did the Sheriff's CAD system this way. It's one year and a half years we would not have been able to do that out of current funds. We did the Cronos system, the timekeeping system out, almost half a million dollars. Again, many, many years that would have been a part of a tax note, plan, or a capital lease. And so we're really in a position to do a very sound financial practice, a plodge all on this, and avoid some debt, you know, and we don't pay any interest on this money, on these purchases. Basically putting together a fund. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you know, and the goal would be, again, where we're trying to avoid, absolutely, we're taking some money that's built up in our fund and our general funding particular, money for and excess of our, the minimum we need in our fund, per our fund balance policy, which of course has adopted. Money that we think, we're not putting our general fund in jeopardy in any way or our bond writing in jeopardy. And we're actually building up a fund to finance capital purchases. What would have been actually characterizes very large capital purchases a few years ago now are kind of meeting for us the half million dollars to a million dollar size purchases we are again specifically avoiding the issuing debt for these. I think it's a good sound financial practice. It's certainly more conservative and it avoids interest expense and it sends a great message to the bond-riders and capital markets. We don't go in there just for everything that we've got a plan. Basically it shows that we've got financial planning that when we go to the debt markets we're going for stuff that we've got a plan is basic shows we got financial planning that when we go to the debt markets We're going for stuff that we really need and has been planned for so That's worked real well and again why we've got evidence of of prices that we Even three or four years ago we would not have been made out of the regular out of the current budget We're able to do that. So in summary, I'll get in fund risk reserves current budget, we're able to do that. So in summary, I'll get in fund-miss reserves, checking in and fund balance for all funds, it's $36 million. A lot of money. This is a year. It's not an excessive amount of money, and this is a year for certain that points out the wisdom and the benefit to the county, having fund simmers are because we just talk about things the money that's going away this year. So, hey, and the general firm reserve will actually be at 20% of budgeted expenses, which is a well-in excess of our, it's an excess of our policy. It is not excessive at all though, especially in a year like this. Okay, and this phone and let's go to the summary right quick. So just to sign in, if some rise, if we need to, there is the summary here. We're looking at a total tax revenue of $3.8 million increased from new property of about $1.6 billion. Less than last year, still actually way more than what we were really expecting. We would be adding also nearly $5 million for debt service on our most recent bond sale. Totally planned, no surprise. Actually, well, and the only surprise surprises that's about a half million dollars less than we plan to know because we've got such good interest rates on that and it's easily easily a half million dollars less than we were planning on. Vigor registration is going to be a hit to revenue of about $800,000 directly linked to auto sales going down. Intergovernmental is also going to be decreased by about three-quarters of a million dollars directly tied to prisoner housing fees. All funds, fees are going budgeted about half a million dollars less just to some trending down but not inaccessible. And it's really not a decrease particularly just a smaller increase in what we expect. Small increase in fines, primary and district courts, interest income is already down in 2009 and go down another 1.2 million expected in the budget. Which is good news. This latest rab that has a small decrease. So, again, but even with all of this, I want to point out these negative, negative, negative on our revenues. The budget is put together. We haven't drastically drawn down fund balance. We haven't gone to anything. Approaching the dreaded term creative financing. I mean, there's not, there's good sound. We switched expensive. We tried to move expenses to where money was sitting. Kind of on the sideline. We tried to do very good sound financial planning and try to maximize, in this year, maximize every asset we have. There is nothing in this budget that puts us in any kind of financial real. I think it shows it plays on our strengths. And this is your business. There's some use of funds that we have because we are strong. But we hope this is the worst thing for home. I mean I think next year just to crystal ball a little bit you have to wonder how long Americans in Texans can stay out of new cars. You just you know I mean it's a tremendous decrease. I mean, time of third down with more people. I mean, it seems like that will rebound. It may not go up to this year or last year's numbers. I don't know that that. I don't mean by expecting that. Infrastrates, maybe by this year will be estimating maybe 2% return on investments. That's not very much, but that'll be a big increase over this year. That's investments. That's not very much but that'll be a big increase over this year. That's the two things. I don't think fees will go down. I don't think fines, not much. They're not much. They're the vehicle registration fees. There's never shown a sign of decreasing. So that's the crystal ball for any questions. On our increase in our bond rating, this last time we went out to the market, did I hear you say a dollar a month that you believe that saved us by having the increase in our bond rating? Well, I said half a million dollars on this first year debt service because you look back at our documents that were prepared by our Financial team as far as what to expect and the the performance they did on what to expect they were showing That we have about a five and a half million dollar increase on debt service because of this new fund and really it's we've show 4.9 million That's combination of our rating. In fact we got lots of competition. I believe 9 or 11 is. When we're you know again been told we may not get any bids we got 9 instead and you know in market timing market which is great you know it's not all of us. It's not all of it and county been strong. It's a big part of it. But timing was great on that. It kind of surprised me. It was a surprise, but it really does equate into half a million dollars. We did not have to do bond insurance. Bond insurance because of that's, you 100 million dollars that's 300 thousand more that we did not have to that's actually seen in the proceeds with God. Meeky to John Martin the South for Securities a couple days ago about those counties in Texas that have a AAA bond rating and for a long time we were the fifth in the state. There's now a sixth and that's Travis. But I think it's kind of interesting and shows how strong Nortexas is because the four are parent, Dallas, Colin, and Vinton. And then Harris County and now Travis. Kind of interesting. Thank you. Okay. James has also prepared a financial forecast. We're not going to go over that in detail today, but we'd like to reserve some time on the July 28th agenda. Do quickly review that. So in the meantime, on page S9, you're recommended binder. You'll find that detailed report if you want to look at that between now and then. We'll touch on the expenditure changes in the budget next. As you know, increased at service payments based on our most recent issue, the increase in that line on them is $5.2 million. As you know, health insurance continues to increase across the country. We're looking at increasing $500 per year per employee on the county funded portion, which equates to about three quarters of a million dollars to our budget. As you know, the retirement system had the same experience with interest loss, interest earning loss as well and we're looking at almost a half million dollar increase in our retirement rate for next year. Again, that's the county funded portion. We have included funds in the budget this year for jail expansion. This will open the final 48 beds that are available. This would include five new hires. Again, that's kind of a record low number of new hires requested to open that many beds in our hats off to the Sheriff's Department for finding ways to make this work with less employees. That impact is $324,000. Again, if we don't include these new hires and open those beds, we have a loss of revenue of $450,000. So it behooves us to go ahead and open those beds, get it up and running, and still we're still able to rent out space to about 20 inmates hopefully over this next budget process. Again, as James mentioned earlier, we'll be out of the jail business pretty soon, and we won't be counting on that revenue in the future until we have another jail expansion. And today on today's agenda, you just approved hiring an architect to start on our next phase. So, again, we're filling up our own jail with our own inmates and it's time to go ahead and expand for 48 more vids. 226,000 of those dollars are for the new hires, the remaining are for costs such as food, utilities and those sort of things that go along with that. Repairs and maintenance are up about $239,000. There are a couple of reasons for that. We have some full service contracts for AC maintenance work that have been requested by our Facilities Department. Contract labor, those types of positions can no longer do the technical end of that. They have to have license technicians, so they're asking for a contract. Also, we have some computer software maintenance that's increasing this year for the Odyssey program, as well as our time sheet, her credits. We have an impact of about $240,000 for that. Of course, during the legislative process, George Horn advised us and provided information about the need to develop a groundwater conservation district. This is the amount that we received early on which would be kind of a track counting district and would be one-third of the cost of that district for $167,000. Utility cost or increasing about $100,000. Primarily that's because we'll be opening the Loop 288 Center for about three months of next fiscal year. So you'll see an increase there. Ultimately you'll see some decreases when we close some are able to close some of our buildings. But this first year there won't be any buildings that will shut down so you will see an increase this year. Indigent care we've included a $100,000 increase as you'll recall last year we removed $100,000 from the Indigent Care Fund to provide a new program called Project Access with the Health Department. They're asking this year to replenish that back into the fund for emergency purposes. There's a small increase in the budget. There are absolutely no salary increases for employees. Unfortunately, I hate to say that, but in these tough economic times, this is just not possible to do in the budget that we're looking at. At the revenues we've been seeing there are some built-in increases that we're going to have due to employee turnover. Last year when we expanded the juvenile center in jail we deferred hiring on some of those positions a little bit you know for January or February dates. We also have some incentive pays that are new for employees as well as longevity pay. You know, in our hats go off to the county employees that work and, you know, a lot of entities around are not going to be able to give raises either But I hope everyone knows how valuable they are to us in this time and Again, we appreciate the work that they do Library funding we are recommending this year a slight decrease in funding a 44,400. And I'll go into a little bit more detail here in just a few minutes about that. Social service agency funding is being reduced at the cost of $84,000. Again, a citizen committee reviewed the funding methods and made recommendations. We did delete positions from the budget this year. Fortunately, they are vacant positions. A one is for justice of the Peace Precinct 5. As you know, back when we opened the Crossroads office, we were expecting the workload to increase probably more than it actually has. That position has never been filled thanks to the JP for being a student with the county taxpayer dollars. They have agreed to eliminate that position this year. Criminal DA has deleted an intern position to help with the budget crosses that we had. And so did Rodin Bridge Precinct 1 Commissioner Coleman deleted quality control inspector so the savings to the county was $114,000. We do have some decrease in our rental agreements. Basically we're not renting for the records management facility. They relocated temporarily last year while we were renovating the basement. So we have a little bit of savings there. We have less expenditures for telephone equipment. As you know, we had a major telephone replacement program last year. Just miscellaneous and transfers between funds or down. And my hat's off to the commissioners. Delanius and transfers between funds or down. And my hats off to the commissioners. Each one of you submitted a budget to us with less expenditures in your red and bridge budget. Commissioner Coleman and Eid's believe we're about a half million dollar reduction of peace. Commissioner March and Mitchell both reduced their budgets by $100,000 a piece. They have a very small budget compared. the commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners and commissioners one appreciate that and I know everyone else does too. Capital equipment is down to .4 million as we mentioned we have the CAD system last year in the budget as you know we just awarded a contract on that and that project is proceeding but we don't have near as many capital projects budgeted this year. So the total budget expenditure changes are $2.1 million. One other thing I wanna mention is we have transferred some positions as James mentioned earlier in order to defer some of the cost Thanks for some positions as James mentioned earlier. In order to defer some of the cost in the General Fund budget, we approached the County Clerk's office about utilizing some of her records management funds. There's a significant fund balance built up in that fund. To pay for some of the existing employees assigned to the County Clerk budget, she willingly agreed to transfer four and a half positions from that fund and that provided significant revenues or additional funds for general fund. Again, we appreciate her cooperation and understanding in this situation. She here, thank you Cindy for working with us. James and I met with her and she was more Cindy, for working with us. James and I met with her, and she was more than willing to work with us knowing what our situation was with this year. We also worked with Theresa Rogers in the records management department. We'll be transferring one position from the General Fund budget into the records management and preservation budget as well. There's a breakdown in your packet on page S63 if you want to see the specifics for those transfers. We also prepared a report for you and I won't go over it in detail today, but there's just a sample on the screen here for you. We attempted to break down each department in the county between personnel operating money and capital and give you a quick little snippet about why that budget either increased or decreased. And you'll see it could be salaries or benefits increased to such as health insurance. And it will show you whether we budgeted less in printed material and office supplies and those sort of things. So hopefully we spent quite a bit of time developing that. And I think it will be beneficial if you have a chance to look at that between now and our next meeting. Again, the breakdown is on page S28 through S49 of your packet. We always like to provide you with a breakdown of our county services. You'll see we have mandated, we break it into three categories. Mandated comprises about 63% of our budget, essential services are at 30% and non-mandated at 7. We do have a breakdown in your packet on page S50 through 57 that breaks that down by department. If you have any questions about that, be sure to just contact me. We do have contingency funds in the budget. Regular and appropriate contingency, we've included at the current level of just over $750,000. Those are for things that are unforeseen. Occasionally those things happen. This is knock on wood. In a fairly decent year that we have not had to dip into our contingency fund. And hopefully that will continue to be the case. We have built in an increase for incentive pay. As you know, we provide incentive pay to our employees twice a year. And so these are for those that may complete their courses and get paid that we really can't anticipate at this time. Vehicle repair contingencies included at $75,000. As you all know, we're self-insured as far as our insurance is concerned. So this is in case some of the smaller departments or even large departments need to repair or replace the vehicle. We have actually lowered the court ordered contingency that's in the budget to $330,000. That's typically carried at about a half a million dollar level, but we did include some increases in the individual court budgets this year specifically in the individual court budgets this year specifically in the district court level in their family law area. We have included some insurance contingency of $50,000. Hopefully we have sufficient funds budgeted but we did, we're helpful that the flooding of the Carroll building didn't cause our rates to increase. We don't think it well based on preliminary information, but this is kind of kind of insurance for our insurance. Last week settlement contingency, we always include a small amount there. Hopefully we will not have a need for that. If we built in a $400,000 increase for health insurance contingency, that's pretty common. built in a $400,000 increase for health insurance contingency. That's pretty common. We have $150,000 in the budget for facility contingency with the move to the Loop 288 Center and all that. We're just not exactly sure what maybe in stores. The health department included some funding for furniture and that sort of thing. It's just a kind of contingency just in case that project is more than we thought. Grant contingency, as we mentioned earlier most of the grants are not included in the budget because we have not received award notification but it's prudent for us to include our portion of that grant contingency in the budget. So we've included that as well as a $150,000 surplus just in case we lose a grant. Sometimes that's happened over the past couple years so hopefully that happens will be able to continue that program. We have built in $400,000 for potential increases in our utility and gasoline costs. We did remove some of the gasoline monies from budgets that we had increased last year based on the rate increase, but we felt like we needed to have some in reserve for the unknown. And personnel contingency is basically for smaller departments that don't have turnover that may not have a tuition built up and need to hire someone above budget. It's a small amount but we have about $3 million in our contingency fund. If you want to see a breakdown on what we have in the grant contingency on page S-58 of your packet, you'll see the breakdown for that $7,000-23,000 figure. Again, new positions that have been included, as we mentioned earlier, there were 33 new hars requested. We have included five for jail expansion and one position for constable six. They have a clerical position that's part time and we are recommending that it go full time. All of the other constables in the county have two full time administrative assistant positions and we're recommending that that department increase to be equal with the others. A lot of times you like to look at and we like to look at the 10-year history of what departments have had as far as employee staffing. You will be hearing a few appeals. Some will say we haven't had new hires on a long time. This report will provide you with that breakdown for 10 years by department. If you need to access that, it's on page S65. Our allowance summary, just in a nutshell, we have reduced some of the line items for car allowance, mainly in the reimbursable areas. You'll see that what was requested was $366,000. We're recommending $342,000. There are no increases built into the budget for fixed car allowance. And we've actually decreased the reimbursement rate to coincide with the RRS rate of $50,000 per mile. That detailed report is on page S71 of your packet and it's broken down by department. I showed you the slide earlier that showed requests for capital equipment at $1.7 million. You'll see that we're recommending a budget of $1.2 million in capital equipment at 1.7 million, you'll see that we're recommending a budget of 1.2 million in capital equipment this year. I'll go over quickly to vehicle assessment committee recommendations. There was approximately $12,000 in savings that they had recommended based on what was requested. They reviewed the condition, mileage and usage of each vehicle and transferred vehicles within the county as it was appropriate. There were 24 replacement vehicles requested, 22 recommended by the committee, and 21 replacement vehicles included in the recommended budget. The only vehicle that I did not include in the recommended budget was the record for the vehicle maintenance department. And the rationale behind that was that the committee, when they voted on that, it was a tie vote to include a record, a used record in fact at $35,000. To me, a tie vote was a no vote boat and so I felt like that should be eliminated. And based on the information I had received, it just didn't seem to be a prudent thing to include. There are no vehicles in the budget as far as new vehicles. There were two surplus vehicles requested and the committee actually recommended a basically newer surplus vehicles for the records management department. There were six vehicles requested for new employees and we did of course did not include any new employees that were tied to vehicles. The recommended budget, as I mentioned just a few minutes ago, includes $75,000 in vehicle repair contingency. There's a complete report on page S87 of your book. This next slide is just a quick recap, gives you some history on the replacement vehicles and how many have traditionally been replaced over time. You'll see the numbers down significantly from what we saw in 2008 and non for replacement vehicles. That is primarily because we just received notification that 11 of our vehicles will be replaced by the TCEQ grant. And so our hats off to the Sheriff's Office for submitting for that grant and receiving that grant so that provided some relief to our budget as well. Social Service Agency funding as I mentioned earlier, we have a Social Service Agency Committee that's appointed citizen committee. They reviewed all the requests that were submitted this year to that total of $730,000. The current funding level in the health care relief fund was about $540,000. The committee, as I mentioned earlier, made recommendations and reduced the funding to $45,000, which included elimination of funding for 10 agencies that were already on a reduction schedule. And then they reduced the remaining agencies by 7.41% uniformly. Again, the total reduction was almost, was about $84,000 and all of those agencies were notified by Dr. Burton of the committee's recommendation. H.S. 12, 112 of your packet includes a breakdown that shows all the historical data and each agency listed. This is a copy of that same thing right here for your review if you have any questions. As far as library funding, the library board again submitted their request, request total Request total $559,900, which included funding for 15 libraries. There was an additional $10,000 included in their request due to the addition of adding our goal as one of our libraries. Three libraries in the county are not requesting funding that includes Denton, Coppel, and Roe Nogue. that includes Denton, Coppel and Roanoke. They actually proposed reducing the per capita rate from 0.73 to per capita, 2.716159. In the recommended budget, we have included $505,500 for all 15 libraries that were requested. It does include the $10,000 in matching funds for the Argonne Library due to the addition of it. However, we've reduced the per capita rate to 63 cents per capita for an overall reduction of about 8% or $44,400. You know, we asked our county departments to cut back the sheer and felt like we had to do the same with social service agency and library funding. I have communicated this with the libraries. They're aware. I think there are some representatives here and I think they're understanding of this and I don't think we're going to see an appeal from them this year. There are several building projects that have been included. There were 39 requests for major projects that totaled about $556,000. And what we have included in the budget were 25 projects that totaled $281,962. Each of the projects are listed on page S120 through S123 of your packet. You'll see we reduced the request by $264,000. And we used the prioritization of all the projects that we received from the director of facilities management. We've talked about jail expansion. This is just a quick recap. You'll see that that affects the facility budget, as well as the county jail, that again opens 48 beds effective October the 1st. A lot of people that help put this budget process budget together, the budget office staff did an incredible job again. I appreciate all the work that each and every one of them put into this. It's the second year in a row. We've had building problems and we've had to relocate during the budget process. Boy, let's just hope that you had it. Yeah, we've been, this has been a great place and I like to take the opportunity. I personally thank Commissioner Eads and Commissioner Mitchell and Judge Horn for allowing us to use your office space. We've learned to be creative, we learn how to look a lot of stuff up on online, not as dependent on paper copy anymore. So that's probably been a good lesson learned for us. But my staff has done an incredible job picking up moving files, moving over here two years in a row. And we're able to present a budget that I think is a sound financial budget. I think departments will be able to operate with these budgets still. They're going to have to cut back, but I think it's doable. The county auditor again has put a lot of effort into this process with the revenue estimates and I always appreciate the work that he does. Director of purchasing, they work diligently throughout the year with the Vehicle Assessment Committee and pricing to help our departments in and deal with all the departments on a daily basis during the budget process and I appreciate the job that they do. Human resources deals with all the HR requests for new employees, they rank all the new hires they're received and any other year would handle reclassifications and all as well. Information Services, a cabinet is an invaluable asset to us during the budget process by reviewing all the computer requests. Makes recommendations of what needs to be replaced or what could be deferred in this in this case this year we asked him to take another hard look at printer request and those sort of things so that we could cut back in those areas and I appreciate all the work that he and his staff do in that area as well as helping us with our online budget application. All our committees, vehicle committee, social service committee, Alan Williams, the Sheriff's Department, as well as our department heads and elected officials. They've been very understanding through this process. I think based on what we've received so far, you'll see some appeals, but I think appeals are going to be down this year because I think departments understand that the state of the economy, the state of our situation and I think I think you'll see a surprisingly lower number. Just to and I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have, any information that you might need for a future meeting, if you'll just be sure and contact us, but we'll be happy to get that to you. Our next meeting is of course next Tuesday. It's been reserved for appeals. Based on the number of appeals we received so far, I don't see the need to meet on July the 23rd that Thursday. So y'all should be able to clear your calendars for that day. Just to give you a quick recap of what I expect you to see as far as appeals, what we received so far today includes an appeal from Constable Precinct III for a new employee. Constable Precinct IV, I believe it included printed material and they want the court to re-look at the sergeant status in that specific department. Health department will be appealing a new hire. District clerk is appealing to new hires as well as a district clerk records management fund. County clerk records management has requested that another new position be added back. Facilities maintenance will be appealing to the construction manager position that we are familiar with. J.P.2, I believe, has some minor requests for supply type items. We have some reallocations. We're departments want to just move money within their budget from one line to another. And then the reallocation of the Northwest ISD contract that we talked about earlier. And also for the Health Department, there will be some reallocations as well for the project access program. And I believe that Commissioner Coleman at some point will be presenting some requests for reorganization of road and bridge. We have regular budget workshops that will be held each Tuesday between now and August 11th immediately following Commissioner's Court. I know that I sent appointments, surveys clear on what dates are reserved for our budget meetings. We will have two public hearings on our proposed tax rate that will be held on August 25th. First hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. The second hearing is on September 1st at 7 p.m. in the evening. And then our public hearing on the proposed budget and adoption is scheduled for September 8th at 10 a.m. And with that, that kind of sums up the budget and a nutshell, but I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have or if you have questions after you've had time to review this in more detail, you just feel free to contact our office and we'll be fine. I don't have any questions right now, but Donna, you've done an incredible job again. And I know you thanked all these other people and there's the return that you forgot. One is yourself. You've done a great job leading the charge on this. And other is just all of our employees. I do hope everybody and I do believe they do recognize that it's just a tough year, and I'm afraid next year might even be tougher. One other time though. But I just, there's been, start this process, I just now want to thank all of these departments, and everybody for just really pitching in and helping because Donna could not have put together such a some financial, a visibly responsible budget proposal without everybody's participation, assistance, patience, and I just wanted to say thank you. And Commissioner Marchand has asked to spend. I echo those same comments and I appreciate I think that your fruits are in the amount of appeals and you only have nine appeals and all the departments and everything that's going on should, I mean that tells me that you have worked closely with them and communicated with them the importance of either the position that there are things that they're appealing and you put out other fires before they got to that point and I appreciate you very much in bringing this proposal to us. I have a couple of questions and I notice that through the Sheriff's Department, through the Constables, our law enforcement folks that some of the reduction that seemed to be consistent in every one of those are our gas, aene. Could you tell me and did you reduce an overall percentage across the board or are and what was the logic behind that? We just looked at it on a case by case basis looked at historical data looked at what the rate was last year compared to this year and just tried to apply that to the best of our ability. We didn't really have a percentage that we applied across the board. We looked at usage and then the fact that the rights gone down compared to last year. Again, we put some contingency funds because we don't want to short anybody and we want to have that available if needed. But we try to look at just their historical expenditures and expenses today. And in the requesting money outside of their budget amount, let's say in gasoline and let's say they've expended their budget within the first six months of the year. And they come to you to try to get contingency. Then you, as a policy of the budget office, you work with them and you go one, two, three, four. And that's a policy that the budget has. Is that correct? Lately, we actually work with all the departments when they start running low-low-end funds to try to locate the money within their own budget first. And most of the time, people are very willing to do that, and we get great cooperation. May I open a little bit of can of worms here? But is there ever a question asking if you're asking for contingency funds how much of that gasoline budget that you're using truly goes for the enforcement of the job that you're actually doing and the rest of the money for gasoline might be incidental to and from work to and from a secondary job and using the vehicle on the secondary job. It really concerns me that a law enforcement department would come before the Commission's Court and ask for contingency funds on gasoline that goes beyond the normal, what I would call the normal responsibilities of the job that they have into another realm to where the county's paying extra money out of contingency for gasoline that they should not expend it based upon their own policy. You follow what I'm saying? Yes, I know exactly what you're saying. Fortunately, we really haven't had that issue come up too much as far as running short. However, based on the situation we're facing, we will be asking those tough questions. And we will be asking for additional justification for any of those expenses. Gasoline is a tough line item to budget for because we don't exactly know what all those departmental policies are, how they use their vehicles, whether they're allowed to use them to travel to a part-time job. That's a tough one for us in the budget department. But we will certainly ask those. How can it be made simpler? Through policy, through the commissioners court? Probably. And Kim, I would ask you a question if I can... Okay, I understand this is something that we've addressed before and we have, and we always fall back or is relied upon an AG opinion that has to do with the use of those vehicles and who can give people the authority how to use those vehicles. Are we approaching any kind of difficulty with that opinion if we try to regulate the use of vehicles through gasoline allotments or through the budget process? Okay. Well, I mean, if you had a choice, if you had a choice as an elected official and you have a set gasoline budget that you would spend with these requirements or attachments to it, and one of those attachments doesn't use of a vehicle for a secondary job, doesn't qualify for that. I mean, are we usurping that A.G. opinion by doing that? And are we in peril of being called on the carpet for that? I just wanted to not wonder what the parameters are that we could in budget that we can work through. In prior instances of college students, every two to the right, they used to teach all of us through college, I don't know how much of that would actually come to my office. I think it would be more phenomenal about the college students of course from the other community, and they're just so beautiful. So, yeah, I know my kids don't want to get up here. But what will you do? That's an office by office decision based on that elected official. And sometimes it's in writing, sometimes it's not. Is it correct? I don't know if you can find any questions. Question came in. I guess my question is this. I'm looking for some guideline here and not getting into creative financing this. James so put it, but creative policy maybe. If we cannot tell an elected official, once the money has been budgeted or a vehicle has been budgeted, how that person can utilize that, can we use other budget items like gasoline or, you know, in other words, this is all the money you get for it, you choose to either use it in the way you do your business and doing your constitutional duty or do you want to use it somewhere else and that's all the money you get. I don't mind if you ask when we need one. The issue is probably more about how it's considered to be something far or I know it's a bit different. Okay. I don't know what the way to work is to work with people I have in the area that I think is in the teeth of the mouth. But I do know that it's in practice because's not really called to acquire the ton of requires to acquire the experience first and if you really want to have the confidence in yourself, then you can just bring the trust into your own research. So yeah, bring I would, I've done a little bit of research, for instance, and don't quote me on this because I don't know the exact particulars of it, but William some county, if a elected official chooses to allow a vehicle to be used for something other than their primary job, then the county itself charges 15 bucks an hour for the use of that vehicle, that the person using it has to reimburse the county if they choose to do that. And I mean, it's a policy that they've set up and assumed that they've vetted that. Okay. Members, what do you call, just a second, Commissioner, come in. I'd like to know your thoughts about asking, maybe it should be Amy or Kim either one, but checking with all of our hospitals office in the sheriff to see if they presently exist, wood and policy concerning this issue within their department. I would like to know that. I mean, I mean, I don't know if there isn't, but I'd like to know. I have some comments regarding this. Great. I get those AG opinions sent to my email and I can tell you there was recently one that I think unfortunately kind of confirmed the attorney general opinion that said basically you can't require people to reimburse and on an hourly basis. But I would suggest is I've always thought having people take Mark Carb Marked Car's home was a good idea if you live within the county just because it was good to have physical police presidents, presence in your neighborhood. I have a policeman who lives down the street. I love it. He's got his car parked out front. What I think is the problem is people perhaps with unmarked cars and if you do talk to deputies and various people they always say look you know I'm supposed to be using my private car and so instead I take my unmarked take home car or something else home or whatever. We really can't enforce policy but we can do a carrot and stick approach. What I would suggest is we have a tent as some sort of gentleman's agreement with the agency that we will give each officer a very small car allowance in exchange for them to putt using the county car for take home or for those ever purposes. If they agree they get it. If they don't, they don't. And that way we could have a finite budgeted amount. Our budgeting. So we wouldn't have a finite budgeted amount. Our budgeting. So we wouldn't have gas goes up and down. Oh, we get a whole amount. I say a very small amount like $25 a month or something. But they already have a county call. Well, that would be for them to not use their big complaint is that look, I have to go in off duty. So that's why I have my county car and that's why you know when I get called out at night I have to I don't want to use my own personal resources or anything So we would compensate them for the small chance that they would have to use their county car after hours to come and And pick up their personal car and that would make it a finite set amount of money as opposed to having Donna trying guess What gasoline is going to be now the the agency by, I'm just starting out there, but I'm just saying buy agency. They can say, yeah, we want to buy onto this. Okay, you buy onto it? Great. You adopt our policy. If you don't, you know, oh well. You know, you'll be on with Dona regarding the contingency. But I, what I do for your law enforcement is they want that person ready to go as soon as they're called from their home or where they are to whatever it is they're being called out for rather than driving their person to vehicle to the county picking up the county vehicle and then going. So I guess, you know, that would be a decision they have to make. I don't think the issue is, Ron is talking about it so much as him being called out at the outlet. I think the issue is them working a port time job and using the county call traffic control, county leaders. Well, let's put it this way. What if Logan Bridge, what if Andy and Hugh, and one of the people that's a heavy equipment driver is driving a dump truck and they got a job, a part-time job on the weekends of hauling dirt for a company and since they were able to take their dump truck home because of the proximity to wherever they live and part of the requirement of that secondary job is that they use their dump truck because their dump truck driver, I mean would we appreciate that? Would we allow that to happen? I think they're saying that police officers are doing your business and you see crime committed within your view you automatically become on duty as opposed to the actual public service. So you put in the telephone and other agencies within the jurisdiction? I'm not justifying. I'm just telling you agency within the jurisdiction. I'm not justifying. I'm just telling you that's the problem. Is it the point-time jobs that are a schedule? That they're taking the cause to do the point-time job? Yeah, it's not that them having a call that they're taking the aim and they're seeing a crime and action and they have to go take care of that. That's not that's not an unusual. The problem is is when they have the four-time jobs and they take the cause and work on these four-time jobs directing traffic and the Dink County course sitting there and they're getting paid from that four-time job and Dink County and using Dink County's gas cars, and uniforms. That's why you have the problem. And the public constantly calls you to say, why don't you fix that? And I say, I can't control that agency. Well, yes, you can. You're the commissioner. But I don't have any control over that agency, what they do. That's the problem for me. That's why I was thinking we could somehow try and encourage them by giving a small stipend to fall in line with the policy that we would be more favorably looked upon and maybe allow the budget department to more accurately fix our expenditures. I think those four-time jobs work those police cars. You're right. The law enforcement cars there for their business because that helps them. Basher, I can tell you, I think in the past month there was an attorney general opinion that came down. I mean, I may be incorrect, but that addressed that and basically said that the county could not seek the additional reimbursement for the car. Yeah. He's still on the line. I wouldn't think of any good car. Yeah. He's still one. I wouldn't. I can get an idea. Yeah. You want to ask a law enforcement agency is, share of the consuls if they, in that office, presently have a policy written policy. Yeah. I think, you know, with the understanding that some may respond to some may. Yeah. I don't know if there's written policy in any of the offices I'd just like the question asked. I had additional comments but whenever you're ready. Wait a minute. I guess James, he left. Okay, well then I'll ask him the question. Basically the question I wanted to ask him was, I know that we're gonna have the administrative buildings and you're planning them to be budgeted what in August of next year, roughly to come online. Okay, one of the things I know that Commissioner Eats and I had mentioned was when they go to those administrative buildings, we have our buildings on McKinney, that those people like the tax building and the other building are like probation and stuff, right? And I wanted to know how do we book if we can plan for those people to be moving in August? How do we start the sale of those buildings? Because that's one of the reasons I voted for the bond package was that if we go ahead and build these additional buildings, we need to sell the buildings we have. How is promotion going? Okay, so I I want to know how is that planned in our budget? And how would that be booked? Would it be booked as revenue? Do we take that money and pay down the bonds that we sell? How does that affect the budget? That's the first accounting question that's why I wanted to ask James about it. I can tell you a little bit about this. Okay. Certainly not an authority. But the first thing that has to be done obviously is to build the new building so it has some place to go. Oh, I know. Okay. Once that is done, if there's any outstanding vanded indebtedness on the old building, that has to be paid first. That much I know for sure. Beyond that, then those funds can be any remaining funds can be applied to what we're doing on loop 28 in the construction. I mean that would reduce our bond debt at all or anything. I'm sorry. That reduced our bond payment. I'm sorry they're going to. I think you could do that a couple of ways. There is debt to the. We're talking about you, James. Commission of common was asking a chain of events. How do we book? Once we have the administrative complex on Lit 28 and the old tax office and the old probation department there on McKinney Street, when those old buildings are sold, the first thing we do is if there's any outstanding body and indebtedness, there has to be paid first. And then any funds left over, he was acting, I believe, the mechanism by which those funds can be used and applied to the new property on 288. I was just wondering if we should account for all that revenue or any of that stuff in the upcoming budget. Or we can't or because I mean to me, I wondering if we should account for all that revenue or any of that stuff in the upcoming budget. Or we can't or because I mean to me I think if we, I know that you know you shouldn't predict you know stuff like you know whether in Texas or anything like that but we anticipate that building open in August right. So we might want to think about putting it in on the market for sale in July. I want to win it. This first phase, that's health department in child protective services. That's not probation? No, that's the building's over. That's the building's at flood all the time. That's the way it's down the road, quite late. Don't have any buildings that will be closing during this next budget process due to the move. But we can still start our plans to sell the McKinney building or the old tax building, right? Or we're not, we're going to still need that? In this next year, yes. And these two is for elections and probation. I thought we could still get rid of the old tax building. No, we better not. Or if we have another water flood, I don't know where elections are going to go. Well, right, I mean, it's pretty awful of election equipment right now. I'm just kind of the opinion, you know, like in my own house, old, you know. You buy something new, you know, you get a new toy in, a new toy goes out. Right. Otherwise, you wind up with the closet full of stuff and nowhere to keep it right ultimately commissioner that is the plan and that's how it was promoted in the bond list okay that's what we'll be doing but that is in phase two sir right I just want to make sure that we had thought about that in this current budget and then the other thing I wanted to ask was Gil the side seen in the paper that various counties around have instituted a hiring freeze for non-essential positions in counties. And I wanted to know, you know, an opinion is that legal because generally, you know, the discretion to hire and fire employees for elected officials pretty much comes within their discretion. I know some counties, am I incorrect in saying that Dallas County instituted a similar type deal very recently. If it came down to it, how would we implement that? Pardon me? Yeah, I just wanted to know if I mean, how would that work if we decided to implement any hiring process for? As you do during the budget process, you can do it, but you can't do it once the budget is adopted and that office that elected officials allocated so much funds. What seems like some of those other counties have done it non-during the budget process? Yes, you are correct, but I don't know that they've done it correctly. I just thought that might be something. I mean, I'm not sure how we want to think about that as a possible option or keep that, you know, depending on how the revenues roll in. So that's something I think we need to consider. The other thing is, and this is kind of on the other hand, I know, Ms. Stewart, that in the past, you had stated exactly, you know, for a 2% raise, how much of a tax increase we would have and you'd figured that out. Have you figured that out for this year or not? Farm employees? Yes. Like what percentage of a tax increase that would be? I want to know about whether we should we consider providing for the possibility of hiring freeze, but on the other hand, I'd like to know what the increase in the tax rate would equal a 2% raise from employees? Third of a penny. This one? This is 2% or half of the money. This is 2% of the money. 2% of the money. I thought she does the math in her head. It was too good at doing math. Yeah, I know. Yeah, about a third. Yeah. But, I think the President District, by long, is required to have the certified values to this by July 25th. And, actuality, I think they're going to have to us maybe 24 hours before that. So by next Tuesday, Donna still won't have the certified values, but she'll have it soon after that. That would probably be a better time to really put a pencil to it and maybe send them to the court members that email to give us an approximation. But the other thing gets me. I was just going to say a penny on the right would give us about $5 million. So if a 2% raise would probably cost a million and a half dollars Well less than a third 30 percent point three Rough estimate rough estimate. Okay. I just was Maybe read is funny. You know and maybe Yes I just was funny. Maybe we read as fun. You know, and maybe, yeah. And you may want to, first thing you may want to do is look at the minimums of the scale that we just set. I'm not promising anything. I just think, you know, during the budget process, we need to look at all options and I'm, Miss Gillis, I really would like an official opinion regarding the limitation of a higher infrage from you in your office And how we would propose implementing it in case we needed to do it in case of some revenue shortfall there in then proceeding are they upcoming here? If we wish I'm sorry I Would say for the upcoming year because I don't think we can do it now wrong because we didn't really but we didn't really plan for it in the budget process last year Right, I would like you know what I mean? Just to just to consider that commissioner calling the first thing I would like to do is the minimums of the scale and law enforcement first. I mean for the hiring freeze. I'll think about if we start making salary adjustments. Okay. I think we're going to. Right. No, I understand. I just look at that. Those are the first two things I'd like to look at. Okay. That's fine. I just wanted to, you know, I mean, I think we need to look at all possibilities. I think that's what we're here to explore. I'm not seeing or going. I'm not committing to a hiring freeze. I'm not committing. I mean, I've to miss about those values coming in on the 20th. I'm not committing to a pay raise but I think we did have additional information. If you know options open this time. Yes. And then it's so to kind of put that in them if that's going to be in the mix I guess we could ask Amy to tell us what's our average number of turnover. I think yeah to get that in advance. But in your basis, my foot is turn over annually. What that by department or just countywide or? I think ones that would be under the purview of the court versus the other like to the officials too. I think we could break out because we could control our departments versus other like to the officials. After during the budget we might be all in force to get across all departments including the elected officials. After hearing the budget, we might be all-in-forced to get across all departments, including the elected officials. Yeah, but I'm just saying in advance of the discussion, I guess we need to get that from HR or someone that how many, what's the turnover? We didn't know. She said she could have that next week. I don't know, it was probably down in a lot of the economy. I would guess. And remind me of what the judges said about, or what you said about the minimums that was recommended in Evergreen to bring those up. It seems like it was like a half a million, $600,000. Well, the combination of the both of them, the law enforcement and general employees would be about 1.3 million, something like that? I think what we talked about at that time was two different things. One was adjusting the non-law enforcement employees to minimum, and that was a small amount, like 100 and something, 1,200, 112, something like that. The other number was assuming we were going to adopt the steps which we did not adopt. So I don't think we have a good number right now for bringing the law enforcement employees to minimum. We'll have to look at it. Okay, are there any other questions or comments? All right, well, once again, Donna. I just asked Bob based on your question, Commissioner Marchett. Would you are you wanting a scenario that shows putting everybody at the new minimums of the ranges that were proposed by Evergreen? Would you like to see us? I just wanted to consider, I think we need to consider all options. I think you know, you don't know if we might have to implement a hiring freeze across the county. At some point in the future, but I think we need to be prepared as a you know pass-boys out That's always a good option Want to know what the legal implications are I know that other governmental entities specifically other counties in our area have instituted that Based on our private previous employment and you know my current profession it seemed like you have a little squirrely I want some official legal advice with the CO and everything. I agree with this look it into I mentioned it back in February I guess when we were talking about the budget goals and everything and that staff about it so I think it's good we we know all the options and that was the time to do it. I'm not saying we're going to do any of this. I just want to know about it. All right. Any other questions or comments? With that, we're a June. Have a great day. What's left of it?