Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, Denton County Commission's Court for Tuesday, May 12, 2009 is now in session. I want to tell you we're having a little trouble with our sound system this morning. Yeah, it is. That's what I'm telling you. The mic is on and this is as good as it's going to get. So whoever addresses the court and court members, please everybody speak up and we'll just have to do the best we can. These struggling with it, but for now this is as good as it gets. This morning our invocation of the given by Annem Bell, who's assistant department supervisor in the kind of clerk's office and our pledges will be led by any flips. Philips will you please stand. Thank you. Sorry, heads of me. Our Heavenly Father, please bestow your grace and wisdom upon us in this body as we do our service to you and the people of the United States, the state of Texas, and Denton County. Guide our leaders as we continue to face challenging times. Give us the strength to do what is right and the humility to remember that we are all public servants. We thank you for the blessings of freedom and democracy. Help us live our lives so that we may deserve it. In your name we pray. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the part of the United States of America and to the Republic, which is stands, formation, and honor. Individual, liberty, justice, and all. Honor of the Texas State. I pledge allegiance to the Texas. I would like to leave this to the Texas one state on your route. One in the visible. Thank you. 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 commission's court, we ask that you please complete a public comment form. We'd be glad to hear from you. Want to also remind everyone to please turn off your cell phones and pages. I have one public comment formed today and that's from our county clerk, Cynthia Mitchell. Good morning, Cynthia. Good morning. Thank you all for allowing me to be here. It's just a brief statement I was going to introduce today, our replacement for Erin who's leaving us Ashley Boynton will be joining the admin team I think after consent actually it'll be effective this Friday. Erin's last day is this Thursday so send a send any cards or emails wishing her well and her new endeavors up in Wisconsin. She certainly did and thank you and we're glad to hear you with us. We're very glad that Ashley's here. She's been with our department for a couple of years now in the criminal courts as the cashier and over in the bullpen. So she's quite knowledgeable about our office. She's got a great background in customer service and sales. And so she won't be afraid to raise her hand and go, hey, you guys didn't actually vote on that, right? We also need a lot of help. I appreciate help. And then of course, you've met Adam before. He is our, her direct supervisor and our assistant department supervisor of our admin department, which handles kind of all of our human resources and then our miscellaneous departments kind of like commissioners court, wall library, all of that and Adam came to us from Minnesota. We've got this thing kind of going on with the Norse, right? Yeah and where he was a license of attorney and so we're looking forward to Adam taking his bar next summer. So great. Thank you all. Thank you, Senator. Good. I have a letter that I'd like to read. It's a commendation letter. It says, do a constable read when your office carried out a read of execution for my client. Recently, we would like to express our appreciation for the professional manner that your office handled that matter. I've been an attorney for many years and had not realized a complication that could accompany such chowel. Your chief-tacket and others in your office displayed great skills as well as fairness and a sense of decorum. I do hope that your accomplishments will help read your county of such activities that were prevalent in this particular case. I did feel that these actions were a blight on your community. Didn't County should be pleased with the manner of the justice of the peace and the Constable's Office of Precinct III held their business. Thank you for all that you do. I wanted to give those to the justice of the peace and the Constable's Office for that rid of execution and remind us that we have a lot of those all over the county that could be dangerous and they're out doing their job and one of the businesses just wanted to thank you. That's great. I'm glad you brought that up. Okay. Let's go first to item 5B. 5B is approval of the sale and issuance for the 2009 series, Denton County permanent improvement bonds and tax notes. And we have with us this morning, John Martin and Bob Duranseville, and our first will call on James Wells. Thank you, Judge, commissioners. We have a courtroom beaver reminder, we scheduled a schedule to a sale of some of bonds for today We have with us and this we have bids in for we'll ask me asking the court to accept we have with us John Martin from Southwest Securities our financial advisor and Bob and Grant's field from Fulbright and Jaworski are Monday turnings. I think this most wisest thing we'd turn it over to John right now. Okay, thank you. Good morning, John. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Excuse my fancy, I broke my glasses on the way to court this morning. We'll work through it. We provided everyone a booklet as we always do, so these are always handy to look back and say, what happened and what did we do and what did we do that for? So it's nice to be able to have it as a reference book when you look back to and see how much was spent for the various projects, roads, buildings, and from what author of voter authorization it came from. This is always an easy reference. Really this is set up with some overview of some, an overview of the market as weight stands now, gives you an overview of the sale and gives you, so what happens now in terms of the impact on the taxpayer, which is what we're all really interested in more than anything else. If you'll turn to tab two, that gives you a general idea of where the bond market is going. This is the bond buyer's index and this is valued at closing of the market on Thursday of each week. You can see that the trend line has been pretty good. They're the end of April. We were, these were 20 year single a rated bonds on a national level that are indexed at 457, for example, that fourth week of April. And it kind of moved around there and you started out the year relatively at high numbers at five and a quarter. So it's moved back down and then kind of seemed to want to bump back up here in The first part of May, but it really firmed up for us fortunately We were so smart and the date that we picked and It all worked out behind all that that just gives you kind of an idea of trends of what's going on there is the standard and poor's report standard and poor's Affirmed your triple A rating, which is a big, big, big, big deal. It was a big deal to get there, but it's really a big deal to stay there. It's hard, hard, hard to do. So the comment that I got back from James Breeding and Paul Jason from Standard and Poor'ss after we after they've released the writing we've had a conference call with Mr. Wells to kind of go through some things. He just said no problem. So there weren't any real comments. So we always like no problem. That's a good thing. Moody's on the other hand can't quite get there and want to give us that triple A rating. They don't give it to really much of anybody. So we're at a double A1 there. Still trying to work through it. Moody's has taken an interesting approach and they did nationwide a blanket local government credit watch for negative, negative. So they put any all local governments nationwide on negative outlook. So regardless of where you were, who you were, they just don't, they say we need to watch out for all local governments. So they're obviously with that, they're gonna be real hesitant to do upgrades if that's where they believe things are going. So we're trying to work through that and we keep beating them over the head and one of these days. Behind tab three really shows you the benefit that what happened in the sale gives you an overview. Yesterday morning all of a sudden when Friday afternoon we were looking at four or five beds. We had had telephone conversations with people, had questions, wanted to make sure and confirm that we had their bid forms and their good faith checks, so on. And so we thought, you know, we might get three or four bids and they'll be just, you know, average sale. We got nine bids. And so the market was really firm debt for us. And what you see there in those bids, those first three between city group, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Kagan, you get out to the third and in some cases, the fourth decimal point before there's much of a difference. So don't you know that there might be a salesman out there and say, God, if I were to work for $25 less, we could have had this deal. So anyway, it's that close. Nine bids, awesome, awesome, awesome. And a lot of it is so much is, you know, y'all's credit rating and name out there in reputation and all those great things that you all have been doing. So our recommendation is gonna be to award the bonds to City Group. And by the way, we did not immediately give the verbal award to City Group because it was so close. We ran the numbers three different times in three different ways on these top three bids just to make sure because we really would have been embarrassed had been there and then Maryland's come back say hey we didn't we actually won this so we wanted to make certain and you can see that they embarrassed that would have been embarrassed. Behind that is shows you the interest rates that they all bid. And there are just lots and numbers on that page, which you can see how it's all worked through. They all, we all asked them all to bid us with a premium between $225,000 to $250,000. And the reason we asked them to do that was that was what we have budgeted for the cost of issuance. So the whole idea is that they'll pay through the premium, they'll pay that cost of issuance and all the vendors and so forth that it takes to do a bond issue and that way you all have more money for projects. So that's another 225 to 250,000 we'll have for our roads and buildings and so forth. So that worked out real well, did not have a problem with that type of bid. There's, again, behind all that, there's some other examples of market, of the overall overview of the deal. We expect to close this deal and have money in the bank to you on June the 10th. First interest payment January of next year, so we'll need to be talking about the tax levy and we will have to include the first payment for this in next year's budget when we set our INS tax rate. So we'll be working through that. The next page shows you the sources and uses where does the money come from, where is it going? Again, we issued $104,275,000 and they generated a premium to pay you and pay themselves commission of about 1.5 million dollars. And the crude interest is the interest paid from June 1st to June 10th. And then you see that we're going to deposit all that money, get 100% of the dollars into the project fund. So, and it breaks down those of the authorization categories. And I know that Mr. Jansfield appreciates seeing it that way, because so he can figure out how much is in each authorization. So 15 million out of the 04, 404 for roads and 08 roads, 41.8 in buildings are the bulk of it out of this last authorization of 47.5 million, basically. So again, the deposit of the debt service fund, that's at a crude interest, there's that cost of issuance which happens to match with their paying you up front in the premium and the under Irish discount is pretty hefty. But it is a competitive bid and they won it that way. They have provided us much lower rates than anybody else. And so, you know, it's kind of like paying points on your house. So we've got a much better deal. The next page shows you how the bonds were offered, the rates and yields and the debt service schedule. We'll start paying principal on this in 2011 and really start paying hefty principal in 2017. The reason we structured it that way was to make the most of the lower interest rate environment and to layer in is we have a lot of debt droping off after 16 and so we'll layer in and that's much more beneficial to our taxpayers. We're estimating the page behind that after we perform out what the remaining sales might be based upon the CIP that the court has approved if we continue on this pace and the CIP were not to change between now and 2014 you can see what impact it might have on our overall I and S rate. So right now our interest in sinking fund tax rate, which is the rate that's set aside to pay debt is about five and a half cents and it will be, we were projecting a few weeks ago, Mr. Wells, a full penny, I think, correct. And because lower rates, it's not going to be quite a full penny bump. Yeah, so it looks like it's about, maybe about 85.85. 85, 100ths of a penny, is that saying that right? So, you know, when you're dealing, it ain't much, but it's not as, it's even less than what we thought. So, that's all good. Based on our expectations for the tax roll, a little lot take, a lot take a cent, one cent to purposes debt. And we would kind of, pace, you know, had set ourselves up for that. So it's- Well, you're trying to prepare for worst cases in your area. Yep. So it's always, you know, come out better. Behind tab four is the actual offering document that the notice is sale, which is the bid specs. If you all the information, this is what the purchasers were really looking at to make a credit determination. Whether or not we're worthy of a bid or not. So obviously you were, you got nine bids. Congratulations, great job and great job by James, Donna, and staff people that really were so helpful in getting this. All the information to be able to get to the rate of 90's and to get out to the bitters and so forth and accurate information. So always helpful. Be happy to take any questions. Great news. Thank you. James, did you have something to add to that? I can't resist this. If you would please, under the next, the last page under tab three in your book is again the pricing and what our debt surface is going to be. If you'd also please refer to page 189 in your agenda book, the similar document prepared on April 16th in expectation of this sale. and the next one is the $1,000,000. $1,000,000. $1,000,000. $1,000,000. $1,000,000. $1,000,000. $1,000,000. $1,000,000. $1,000,000. $1,000,000. the accounting interest rates of 4.9639%. That's on your agenda book. You'll note we got 4.47447. If you'll look under, and what that means to the county, if you'll look under the fifth column right in the middle that says interest and go all the way down to the bottom. In our information on April 16th when this was approved we were expecting to pay a total of $91 million in interest over life of these bonds. You'll see in the actual bidding that we're going to be paying $82 million. I'm not a real good numbers person but I think that's about a $, backly. And the first year impact, instead of being 5.6 million, is 5.1. And I believe that's about $450,000 savings. On this, what we know is going to be a hard budget year, we've got a nice little bump here over what we were expecting. So I cannot let that pass without bringing that out. And just say thanks to our professional team behind me here. For that. You okay? Are you willing to go in the tank? You're here? This is Bob. I'm in the neighborhood right? Keep that. Your honor members of the court, the item I'm Bob Drancfield with Fulbright and Jaworski or Bond Council and the item that you have before you by adopting the order that you have It'll really encompass everything that mr. Martin has talked to you about it I'll take those rates that have been did it'll award the sale of bonds to the Particularly successful bidder and take care of all the mechanics and his john indicates we expect about a month I think June 10th is our target date for money in the bank. So I would concur. These are great rates. It looks to me like as I traveled around the state and see where we are in the marketplace today. You should be very well happy with this and pleased with the employee rating. That's another unique and great accomplishment. I'm certainly happy to answer any questions you all might have. Are there any questions from members of court? Thank you. You certainly picked the right day to do it. It looks like Well, that's that's great news and great news for the taxpayers of the county too We thank you very much We need a motion to yes award this bid Second we have a motion to approve by Commissioner Marchant seconded by Commissioner Eans are there further comments or questions Thank you for being here this morning too. Wow. I've hidden my fingers across all week at least. Okay, let's go back to item two which is the consent of the commission. week at least. Okay, let's go back to item two which is the consent agenda members are there any items on the consent agenda that you need to pull for discussion or do we have a motion for approval? Motion by Commissioner Ead seconded by Commissioner Mitchell all in favor. Please say aye I oppose a name by Commissioner Mitchell. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed say aye. Motion does carry. The consent agenda today consists of 2A, which is approval of the order making appointments. We have two new hires in the county jail. We have a demotion in communications, a promotion in the sheriff's department, and a promotion in the county clerk work and management. That would be Ashley. 2B is approval of the Intra Departmental Transfers, 2C is approval of payroll, 2D is approval of specifications and authority to advertise for polycarbonate plastic bird control spikes. This is bid number 04091970, and I'm gonna be very interested to know how well that works. 2E is approval of budget amendment request 101-040 for remote access charges for records management department in the amount of $300. 2E is approval of budget amendment request 101-040 for room, oops I said that I'm sorry. 2F is approval of Budget Amendment request 101-050 for computer supplies for sheriff's department in the amount of $2,500. 2G is approval of Budget Amendment request 101-060 for office machines for human resources in the amount of $1,750 to H's Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of the Office of Information System in the amount of $6,415 to J's approval of Budgetment Quest 101-090 for Computer Software for Countywide Technology in the amount of $22,000 to K's approval of of the appointment of John L. I'm not sure how to pronounce his last name. Georgia Dina. Ganon, thank you. To the Denton County Historical Commission and To M is appointment of Ronnie K to the Lewis Feltors number two board and committee as a representative of pricinct three that's supposed to buy kind of commissioner precinct three I Five days approval of the bill report payments from CSCD community corrections T.A.I.P Shares training shares for for sure via T interest D.A. Check B and D.A. Fourth chair funds are presented for training shares, forfeit sure, V.I.T. interest, D.A. check, V. and D.A. forfeiture funds are presented for recording purposes only. We'll go back to James Wells. No, they're really not. Judge and commissioners, I'd ask the court to prove the bill report is presented. Taking note of three dedetitions from the general fund had various processing problems and eight additions from the general fund that are primarily travel for the sheriff's office, travel expenses, that's basically all those are. One, a constable service fee and one phone bill. That's all the corrections I have. Thank you. Do we have any questions from members of court? We have a motion for approval by Commissioner Eans. Second. Seconded by Commissioner Mitchell. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, Sen. Eam? Motion does carry. 7a is approval. Budget amendment request 101-030 for computer software including the transfer of funds from capital replacement, unappropriated contingency for capital replacement in the amount of $1,796. Do we have a motion for approval or other questions? For the time. Thank you, Pardon. That is for the time. Keeping. Yeah, pay well. It's for the payroll, I believe. I'm just going to second it. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, any? Motion carries. Foreign favor. One opposed. Eight a is approval of changing slot 36 WC from a nutritionist to a nutritionist is recommended by the director of WIC Brand Jones. We have a motion by Commissioner Mitchell. seconded by Commissioner Marchand, other questions? Hearing none all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed to the name? Motion does carry. We're going to take 8B and C together because really they, they're not substantial changes basically. Amy, if you want to give a little explanation, so people know what we're doing. Certainly. I sent to the court and updated version. I added some clarification. And this will, these two policies, it's a sickly policy and the vacation policy. The changes in those policies will not affect the accrual rates or how people use vacation. There are simply administrative changes. There was some confusion earlier in the week when people looked at these drafts and it said that time would accrue on your anniversary date. Some people thought we meant annual anniversary date and we really meant monthly anniversary date and we hadn't clarified that. So I wanted to make sure that that was clear. Also the personal policy committee had recommended that. We clarified the vacation policy that time the accrual rate is dependent on continuous service to the county, not sporadic service to the county. So I've made those clarifications in the policy. The change in the accrual is that each month, instead of time accruing on the 15th of the month in the new system, it can accrue in real time on your anniversary date, monthly anniversary date. But are questions from members of court? I just got to comment while I certainly was not in favor of this vacation policy because of the L was the changes I don't have a problem with. Any other comments for questions? Very none. Let's see. We have a motion. No, we don't. Chair will move for approval of 8B and C. Seconded by Commissioner Marchen. I ask for more time if there's any further questions. Hearing none all in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed to name? Motion does carry unanimously. 8D is to approve the recommended recommended revisions to personnel policy 3.6 time sheets of electronic timekeeping. Thank you, Judge. These are changes to coincide with the implementation of the Cronos timekeeping system. I want to thank Cindy Brown for her help in drafting this policy and also the personnel policy committee for making some additional recommendations that sometimes Cindy and I get talking to each other and we know what we're talking about. But other people that don't deal with this kind of thing daily help us to see things that might not be cleared everybody else. So I want to thank both Cindy and the personal policy committee and I'm recommending approval today. We have questions from members of the court. I may have for approval. We have a motion by Commissioner Coleman. We'll take yours as the second commissioner needs. Hearing no questions, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, any? Motion does carry. 2e is approved to recommended revisions to personal policy 2.4. This is employee personal appearance. The employee personal appearance policy is really old policy at the county and it's very vague and very general and that's because we have so many diverse departments at the county. The additions to the policy today would clarify for employees that departments might have more specific standards depending on the workplace environment and that those standards are just as important as the general policy for the county. And so we're recommending approval today. Mr. Marchin. All right. I was an at this meeting when we discuss it. So I do have a question on the policy just for clarification. I understand the development of specific dress codes. Who is what body our person would be? Let's say that you have a specific dress code in the kind of clerk's office, just using an example. And they draw that up. Is there a body that would have to look at that and make sure that it's not violating first of all? I know that this is a non-specific policy pretty general, but would be violating any employee's rights. What is the, in other words, you can... I understand. I'll count the clerks. People have to wear sharp truce t-shirts to work. You know that kind of thing. A pantyhose. Yeah. t-shirts to work, you know that kind of thing. A panny hoe. Yeah, so what is, how do you vet that out and how do you make sure that it's not abusing the rights of the employees or whatever? That's a very good example. The county clerk is one of many elected officials at the county as well as some department heads that do have specific policies. We're aware of some of them. We're not aware of all of them. I believe I've seen the county clerk's policy unless it's changed. Some officials call us and ask us to look at it. Some of them might call legal and ask them to look at it. And certainly when we're asked and when we're aware we help with that. But as far as the county clerk or well another official who might not contact our office or legal we don't have any control over the policies in their office. If they seek our advice we're happy to give them advice but we can't. So you don't have control over it's that because you haven't been given control over it? Because they're an elected official and I don't think anybody really can give us authority to mandate policies and procedures in their office. Those are some of my same questions right now. Who's going to, who's going to police this? And I guess it gets back to everything else. Some employees are required to do this and some are not required. So how do we balance that and who determines what's appropriate a tire? I may have a different opinion from... And the dress codes do vary. What we look for is not to dictate what a standard should be for the county, but to encourage that the standards in the dress code are work related. We can't really dictate things that don't have a good business reason. I mean, employers shouldn't take things that don't have a good business reason. I mean employers shouldn't take things that don't have a good business reason. We have some basic store-dolph. Well, yes, basic, you know, and then the, excuse me, department head or elected official could build on that, but basic, you know, and I'm just saying this, it's black shoes, and I don't mean that you have to wear black shoes, but you know, basic of these shoes and nice shoes and a nice clean. So is there some basic that we can start with? I think the basic that we have is the policy that we're approving today, the 2.4 employee personnel. Here is policy. Amy, what I would like for you to do with the courts agreement, contact the elected officials and department heads and acknowledge in this communication that you are the elected official. We're not trying to tell you what to do. Okay? But I think it's important for those that do have a written policy or standard, whatever they want to call it, ask them to share it with you and for you to go over it with whomever in the legal division to make sure that we're not put in a bad position, we being the county. It's possible that somebody's done that and doesn't even realize it. So then it would still be up to that elected official, what they do or do not have for their standard for their particular office. But I do think it needs to be reviewed if they would be agreeable to do that. I'll be glad to do that. I can just send it to all elected officials and department heads. I mean, is that okay with court members? Yeah, that's okay. That's fine. I'll wait. Go ahead. Go ahead if you commission to comment. I'll tell you, Amy, first of all, I think you've done a great job on this because this is a very difficult fine line to walk. On one hand, you have the county departments that report to us and to answer your question, Commissioner Mitchell, I think what is good taste is basically decided by us as a body for our employees, which are the department heads. And frankly, I don't want to be the fashion police. That's why we employ our department heads to make those decisions for us. It's a very difficult line to walk because ultimately the elected officials are responsible to the voters and if they have employees who are addressing an appropriate, I think that's something that they'll have to answer to at the polls. Based on that, this is a very difficult policy to draft and I think Amy has done a very good job and Adam Roljob doing that, you know. Sometimes I've agreed with Amy sometimes I haven't, but I think she's done a very good job on this. It's a very difficult fine line to do. I think it basically as a body, we can all agree that we want them to dress appropriately in good taste, okay? But who defines what's appropriately? I think mine may be different from yours because you know I have certain things. I mean I would defer to your good taste. I think you should do that. I'm willing to say whatever you say is fine by me. I mean I do but you know I think women in the business should wear payouts, but not everybody agree with that. So. I would defer to your interest. It is a fine line. That's why I brought it up. But you know, yes, they are elected officials, but they're not totally out there. I mean, we still provide a budget and money in the budget for those employees. We still have an expectation of those employees and what they do. All I'm saying is what can we do nothing as far as a guideline of setting something up to where I just don't want a elected official to go out there and put a dress policy that violates someone's right as an employee and then the county is the ultimate person is liable in case they sue us for that. I have I guess two two comments in response to that. And one is that to get more specific in a county this diverse than to say that it need, that you need to be dressed cleanly and neatly and safely that I think it would be impossible because we have, you know, I mean, you know, we have truck drivers we had and we have people in uniform, out of uniform, attorneys in court. But the second comment, if I may, is that we could, if it, and this may be what you're looking for, we could put some language to encourage elected officials in department heads to consult with legal or HR and to make sure that they don't have anything in their policy that would violate some of these rights and then we could advise them and you know I don't know if that protects the county from an elected official doing something that that violates the rights or not, but John felt comment on that. That's kind of why I wanted to have the review. I'm not really telling him what to do, but really for the county's protection, we need to review it, take a look at it, and point out something that, you know, like you were talking about working with the chronos with Cindy. Sometimes the obvious escapes us, you know. Well, it might be that we go, we'll point something out and say, you're putting us in a bad position here, or everything may be just fine, but it does need to be reviewed. Andy? By reading the back of it looks like like we have a basic current policy. Everybody's needing clean. And then this policy allows for the departments to more specifically address it. So that's so I guess not knowing the history in those committee. It sounds like we're just any pre any new departmental dress coaches come before us, and this would just allow for it to be pretty routine. I mean, we just have to bless any new additional dress codes for any department. It's really for clarification for employees, because sometimes they see the county policy, and then the department has a more specific policy and they don't always understand whether that's allowed or whether one conflicts with the other or whether they have to follow both or that kind of thing. And so we thought we'd clarify for employees that yes, this is the county's policy, but lots of departments will have more specific things in their own department that pertain to their workplace and don't pertain to other county workplaces. That's horn said. So any new dress codes would come before the departmental and elected officials or just departments. Okay. Provide good leadership so that the elected officials would hopefully follow our example. We'll pray about that. Yeah. Okay. We need a motion and a second. I'll move for approval. Thank you. Motion by Commissioner Coleman Coleman seconded by Commissioner Marchant. Any no further comments all in favor please say aye aye opposed and in a motion carries foreign favor one opposed. Okay we're going to item 12 but first we need to go to 12c which is the public hearing providing an opportunity for the public to comment the joint application of 2009 Edward Burn the Jag grant. First, we need to go into our public hearing. Motion by Commissioner Mitchell. Seconded by Commissioner Coleman. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed to the name. Motion does carry. John, did you, you kind of looked at me like you might have something to say aye. Aye. Opposed to the name? Motion does carry. John, did you kind of look at me like you might have something to say in the subject? Go ahead. I didn't have everything to say, but I did note that we had the item posted for the public agreement. We had it after A and B. So I was thinking that there was anybody present that needed to make comments that it would be better for the court to hear them before deliberating on the matter. Thank you. Is anyone in attendance who would like to address commissioners court concerning the joint application for 2009 the Edward burn the Jag grant? Anyone in attendance who would like to address commissioners court on this issue? Any member of court that wish to make a comment on it? Hearing none, we have a motion to close our public hearing. Motion by Commissioner Marchant. Seconded by Commissioner Mitchell. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, say aye. Motion does carry. Now we will go to 12A, which is to approve the 2009 Edward Bern Memorial Justice Assistant Grant Application. This is 2009. Yes. I'm moving for approval. Now those numbers. We're just approving the grant application. The chair will move for approval. Second. Seconded by Commissioner Coleman. Other questions or comments Here none all in favor please say aye aye opposed Cineen Motion this carry 12b is to approve the 2009 burn grant at chag memoriam of Should be there not memoriam. How about memorandum? I've understanding for interlocal agreement between Denton County the city of Denton County. The city of Denton, the city of Louisville, the town of Flyerman, the city of the county, and the town of Little Elm. The motion by Commissioner Coleman, seconded by Commissioner Mitchell, other questions or comments? Any none? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, Senate. Motion does carry. I'm sorry, actually 8E and F. I need to go back to those please. Personal appearance. I'm sorry F and G. We'll go to 8F which is their proof, the recommended revisions to personal policy 3.7. This is holidays. Amy, you want to fill us in? Yes, Commissioner. I believe Donna Stewart sent the court a very thorough explanation of why this change was necessary. A couple of months ago we changed the holiday policy to pay out holidays to those employees in 24 hour facilities who have to work on a holiday. Instead of giving them the holiday time that they were given in the past, but because of changes in the economic climate, it's proven to be a budget issue to do that. And so we're recommending today to instead of paying employees that holiday time outright to accrue that time to a non-FLSA Comptime bank. And that way it won't count toward their FLSA maximum, but they will get that Comptime to be used in a later date when it's when they can. And that's in a nutshell what we're recommending today. But as you said, the email that does explain it real well. Members, do you have questions? Do we have a motion for approval? Motion by commission Marchant. Chair will second hearing no questions. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, say aye. Was that an aye? Commissioner E. Okay. Motion does carry unanimously. 8G. 8G is the word shop but and we'll come back to AG. Okay, now. 13A is approval of a legislative policy statement for the 81st legislative session relating to the sale of fireworks on a report of Texas Independence Day, specifically stating that County's opposition to a house bill, $5.99. Our fire marshal's on the contact of this on this, would you like to give a little backup? Jody? Orange judge and members, the situation here is that it's actually trying to create another 10 day firework season during Texas Independence Day. You know, being a native more Texan myself, I'd enjoy Texas Independence Day. I think that's a celebration time for Texans, but at the same time, I think this is putting an undue burden on county government, law enforcement, fire. That's a 10-day period that we're having to put more staff on overtime staff to deal with the people buying, selling the inspections of 50 to 60 fire work stands throughout our county. This does not prohibit cities, civic organizations, municipal governments, county governments from having a commercial firework show where it's a display in the U.S. to citizens to come out and watch a commercial display that's a professional show so that doesn't prohibit that. This only is trying to, my recommendation to the court is to, that we oppose this bill, increasing another 10 days for fireworks season in addition to the Fourth of July. New years, our New Year's Day, specifically because it's more or less a unfunded mandate that it cost overtime, comp time. It costs dollars out of the commissioners court pocket for fire protection to increase the level of protection that we have just for these 10 days. Thank you. Are there any questions or members of court or do we have a motion for approval? days. Thank you. Are there any questions from members of the Court? Do we have a motion for approval? Motion by Commissioner Marchant. Seconded by Commissioner Mitchell. Commissioner Coleman, did you wish to comment? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I was just more to say, I'm a, you know, personally a big fan of fireworks. I don't mind setting them off myself. I think it's a big fan. I'm there. It big fan it. I think it should do it safely, you know, and respectfully, you know, but I just don't see a problem with another fireworks season. I mean, you know, put me down, you know, I'm pro fireworks. So I don't know. I'm pro fireworks also. And I'm a big band of Texas, you know, in Texas Independence Avenue. I don't see it's a problem, but, you know, I mean, I think if you do it safely, you know, those people are out there selling stuff to generate sales tax. I think we need to be respectful regarding the use of fireworks but I mean you know I don't see a problem with another season but. Mr. Colin I certainly am a big advocate for fireworks myself and I think it's great fun but where I have a problem with this bill is the fact like Jody just outlined the additional workload on the farm Marshall's office inspections of what did you say six to your seventies. These stands across the county and overtime costs to the county. So that's where my objection comes in. And I think perhaps further explanation on or maybe a note to our legislators along with this resolution that we send to them specifically stating our objections. Certainly we want to be supportive of Texas Independence Day but our objection is because of the additional cost of the county to administer the whole thing. And certainly that's my sentiments to the commissioners that you know it's not it's not about the fireworks of the sale. It's specifically about the overtime. So, you know, if they want to add a fiscal note to support the counties to do this, they're not going to see that. I mean, the overtime wasn't even at the additional risk in the unincorporated areas that we're facing is the problem. We can always, I think, believe if we have our, generally, if we have our, we can have a ban. We have a ban. We have a drought threshold. We have to meet that threshold now. We have a motion and a second for approval of opposing this legislation. Is there further comment? You're none on favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, sitting. Motion carries four in favor, one opposed. 13B is approval of a grant proposal application for a courthouse and historical park museums. Denton County museums grant for City of Denton Hotel occupancy tax funds for calendar year 2010 for $136,500. I move for approval. Motion by Commissioner Ead, seconded by Commissioner Mitchell. Are there questions? I want to thank the City of Denton for these funds. Thank you. Very good partners with us. Good point. All in favor of the motion, please say aye. opposed in aim motion does carry 13c is approval of reappointment and bond for County Fire Marshal pursuant to the local government code chapter 352. Cheryl move for approval. Seconded by Commissioner March and the time to ask him about his policy about fireworks. He said is it time to ask them about the policy concerning about fireworks. He said it's the time to ask them about the policy concerning fireworks. It's the litmus test. I tried to put this on consent but it wouldn't. I did further comments. Hearing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Motion does carry. 14A Commissioner Eads has asked to pull that. It's got some other things he needs to do, so that'll be re-opposed. It's not going to take any action on 14A today. Under future meetings, we had had some discussion about the 29th, which is Friday, since we have the County Judges and Commissioners Association Conference. Having a meeting Friday the 29th and cancel Tuesday June 2nd. I received an email yesterday from Kim Gillis that there's a vast majority of the civil division is going to be at a training and it's really advantageous to didn't kind of have them all go at the same time because it's in Dallas so instead of paying hotel bills for for all those people they can all go at one time and get it done in Dallas. So just for clarification, we're going to hold commissioners court on Friday, the 29th of May and cancel June 2nd and want to limit the agenda on the 29th to order makers and paying bills since we're not going to have anybody from the legal division here. Did we can't have someone present if need be. If something pops up that we need to do, but we'll watch that. But if we possibly can, let's limit the agenda on the 29th to just order makers and paint them. That's in a second. That would be 9 a.m. start time. 9 a.m. start time, correct. OK. OK. Okay. Okay. I think the last thing that we have to go to is the workshop which is item 8G. This is a workshop to discuss classification compensation and benefits recommendations to take place after the conclusion of other items listed on the commission's court agenda. So that's now. I guess I understand our system is not working up there. So it was. I'll just stay here. But I did want to go through a very brief presentation this morning. I do not want to spend any more time than you want to on it. Yeah, I speak a little bit about it. Amy, we're having a real hard time hearing you and I know, I wonder if it would be better if you didn't come up here to the podium. Yeah. Give everybody a cup. We may have to repost this so that everybody can hear better. I mean, be glad for you to go through your PowerPoint, and we'll see how it goes, but we may need to come back to this so everybody can hear better. All right, we'll try it. I'll try to talk really well. Okay. Obviously, this is a follow- up to the presentation that the Evergreen Solutions Consultant Tata's burn did for Commissioner's Court last week. It is a brief presentation I thought that we would revisit our goals real quickly, look at the deliverables of the project and I'd like to talk about recommendations one through seven. I'm not planning to talk about recommendations eight through 18 today for a couple of reasons as Mr. Osborne pointed out last week we're already doing several of them they're already in place. Some of the others have a considerable budget impact to them and some of them it's just not the right time that they might be recommendations that we would bring forward in future budget years. As far as the goals, sorry about that, as far as the goals, these are the things that I reviewed my notes from when the consultants met with three of the commissioners and Judge Horn in separate meetings and talked about what was important to them, what were some of the concerns that they had with our current system. And I look back to see, and over and over again, commissioners said they wanted to see more flexibility. They felt like the, you felt like the step plan didn't give flexibility, which is a characteristic of any step plan, that year after year you were faced with a choice of either giving a 4% step or 2, 4% steps or sliding the scale 2%, or 1%, you were kind of locked in there and you weren't able to divide it up. And that was one of the things that you said you wanted to see in the recommendations. And the other thing was that you stressed several times that you were most interested in competing with the external market. You were more concerned, I think, with external equity than internal equity, although I don't think anybody wanted to throw the internal equity out the window. But there was a real emphasis on being able to compete with other cities and counties. This project, the Deliverables, are accurate,, and ranked job descriptions, which that is really important at this time especially, and I'll talk about that real briefly in a minute. Also an FLSA review of every job, and that's a great time to do that. In addition to that, strategic recommendations for classification, compensation, and benefits. An assessment of our current situation, I think you saw that in the final report. In addition to looking at all of our policies and procedures, the consultants had a lot of conversation with our employees and managers alike. They collected comprehensive market data, more comprehensive market data than we've ever had before. They collected employee input and manager input about what the department's needs are in the county. And so this was a really major project. The biggest one, my office has been involved in in the last 15 years. And I think it was a very thorough look at where we are. If there aren't any questions about any of that, I'll go to the first recommendation. The first recommendation is for a big change. It's for an open range for general employees. And one of the things that that gives us is the opportunity to compare apples to apples. Right now we have minimums and we have maximums. We don't really have mid points. And we mostly compare minimums. But I think I've made the core to wear over the years that our ranges have gotten kind of out of sync so that the minimums were below market and the maximums were a little bit above market. And we had 54% between the minimum and the maximum and what the consultant has done is designed a slightly smaller, not a lot smaller range adjusted to market and at the midpoint so that when we conduct a salary survey we can compare midpoint to midpoint which we haven't really been able to do before. Also there's an increase in flexibility. If one year the court saw that in the budget there wasn't money enough to give a 4% increase, but they wanted to give more than 2% increase. They wouldn't necessarily have to slide the scale. They could go ahead and give a 3.8 or a 3.2 or a 4.5 or whatever percentage the court felt was appropriate for the market and our budget. So there's a lot more opportunity there to balance that. And it also gives you the opportunity to do a little bit of both if it's a year when you need to adjust your ranges. You can adjust your ranges, say, 2% and give a 3% increase. Or you can adjust your ranges 1.5% and give a 3.2% increase. You have a lot more flexibility to do that with the budget. and give a 3% increase, or you could adjust your ranges 1.5% and give a 3.2% increase. You have a lot more flexibility to do that with an open range than you do with the step plan. And that's one of the reasons that most people use an open range with non-law enforcement employees and non-union employees. Amy, let me ask you a question there. And I understand that, and I understand the a question there. And I understand that. And I understand the reason behind it. And I understand what it does when we slide the scale 2% and then you hire somebody and they end up making the same amount as somebody who's been there a year and a quarter or something like that. But what concerns me is does that not create more inequities? I would create more inequities if everybody got a 3.2% increase or everybody got a 5.2% increase. I'm just saying from a hiring standpoint, you have a range for a particular job and this elected official thinks you have two people that are equally qualified, they may or may not start at the same salary depending on how the supervisor or the boss or whoever's in charge feels about it and that's where I'm concerned about inequities, especially over time. In the hiring range, the court, and I think what he alluded to was developing a hiring range, saying that, and we used to have this, you might remember, before we put in the step plan. We had a rule that said you could hire up to 15% above minimum, or yeah, it was 15% because that's why we developed the policy that we have in our step plan to go to 16%. So it's really not a lot different. You could put in if you wanted to salary guidelines that said if you exceeded the minimum by this much then you could hire at this percent above minimum. That's essentially what we do right now. We just take out the word steps and put in the word percentage. It's really the same thing. So that part really wouldn't be a problem. I'm with taking open range system and a step plan system and compare the two of what we're doing now, what we would do differently, you know, change with a hiring a brand new employee. With hiring a brand new employee, it would depend on the final policy that the court decided on. You could say, well, I think elected officials in Department Head should have discretion to hire between minimum and 15%. And that's up to the elected official. Or you could say, I want a more structured policy like we have right now. So it could be as different or as like what you have right now as you want it to be. That's really up to the core. And my person came in at the level, they were at this step and this grade. That's correct. Flexibility there. Is there any flexibility? Sure. If a person came in and they right now, if somebody comes in and they exceed the minimum requirement by say two years, then they could hire that person up to step two, either at minimum or at step two, which is 4% above minimum. You could have a guideline that said if they exceed it by two years, then they can hire up to 4% above minimum or 3% above minimum wherever you want to set that. I would, I mean my recommendation would be that that would be something that the personnel policy committee would discuss, bring a recommendation to the court, the court would consider and decide what they wanted. We did have open ranges before the step plan and we did have a hiring guideline. It wasn't as specific I don't think. Mr. Eads. There's a lot of clear. I was at different than what we have now because we have a bridge which was always a step. All of the current. We have a percentage policy. Yeah. Again, it doesn't have to be different. It could be different if the court wants it different, but what is different about the open range is the way that you can adjust not at hiring as much as when you give raises each year and you're trying to fit into the budget and you're trying to meet the market and you're balancing that. And what we have had in the past is either you have to give the 4% step, you can't get 5%. Well, you could get 5, but you'd have to adjust each step. That's more complicated. But you could, this way, you can slide the scale in between. It doesn't have to be a 2% or 4%. And also, by doing that and allowing people to move. Let's say you did want to slide the scale 2%. If you wanted to slide the scale 2% and give everybody a 3.5% increase, you wouldn't have everybody sitting at the same place when you hired in new. You'd have those people that were already there would be up a little bit. What's happened if, if, and he kind of went over this kind of quickly, but he started talking about quartiles and everybody glazes over when we start talking about statistics. But what he was talking about was that if you took our range and you divided it into four sections, 82% of our people salaries fall in the first two sections. Even though our average seniority is about 6.7 years, it seems like we should have a little more even distribution around the sixth year than we do. But because so many times in the past we just had to slide it. We've created a big compression problem and that's what you're hearing a lot about from employees a lot of times. I don't have so much problem with sliding the range. As far as the raises go, but where I have some concerns is the hiring port in the beginning. And the court can decide how structured they want that hiring to be. You can make it just as specific as you want it to be. I mean you mentioned something about giving the reviewer or the department had more flexibility in the raises. So are you saying that like individuals in a like position could have different raises like one could have a 3% and one could have a 1% raise because of the flexibility. If I said that I apologize what I meant was that it would give the court more discretion in granting the raises. I wasn't suggesting and the court could certainly do that. If that's the court's the court could certainly do that. If that's the court's pleasure, they could certainly say, here's your pot of money, and you can divide it up. However, you see fit or you could say we're going to do it according to performance or you could say these are going to be across the board raises. With an open range, any of those choices are available to the court. It's the court's discretion. I guess where I'm having trouble now is why should this not be applicable to law enforcement also? Okay, and their second recommendation, as you pointed out, was for law enforcement to be in a step plan. Law enforcement is a different environment. It's not a flexible environment. It's a paramilitary environment. And there's a lot of emphasis on what your rank is, and how long you've been here, and that kind of thing, even more so than in your general employee group. I would have to say that what he said about every other organization, I would say was 99% correct. I can think of one organization that recently took their law enforcement out of a step plan and I think it will be interesting to see how long they stay out of that step plan. We got in a step plan here because of law enforcement. They were very unhappy not having a step plan. If you remember, they really made a big fuss about having a step plan. They were filling the courtroom and that was their main emphasis. They were more concerned about being in a step plan than how big the steps were, how many steps or anything like that. They felt like they had to be in a step plan then how big the steps were how many steps or anything like that they felt like they had to be in a step plan and that's how we got where we are today. Did they want to rely on that based on a person's certification or training you know that would determine the step or? No, seniority only would determine the step. In a law enforcement environment they look at seniority as far determine the step. In a law enforcement environment, they look at seniority as far as what step they're unusually. I think it's really about the way they think and also about comparing to other law enforcement agencies. And again, you go back to, if you look at other law enforcement agencies, they don't have an open range. They don't have a minimum and a midpoint and a maximum. So it's hard to compare your scale to theirs. But if you look at their set plan and they like what Commissioner Eads was talking about, they like to be able to look at it and say, you know, next year I'm going to be here and in two years I'm going to be there and three years I'm going to be there that doesn't always have that and we've had to do some education on that in the county because we don't always have the money for that. But if we take law enforcement out of that step plan, I feel sure I'll be up here in a couple of years and we'll be putting them back in. I mean not if you got no my vote you won't be I think all employers should be treated the same and I say that again and you keep saying 99% of the other organizations for law enforcement is different I still haven't not seen a list of those organizations know what those I want to see it okay I don't want you to tell me I want to see it okay I don't want to you to tell me I want to see it and I want to have the numbers I want to have everything that they have and I want you to show it to me don't just I mean not that I don't believe you but I need to see it okay okay I think I see you want to see which agencies have a set plan for law enforcement and an open-air city because I don't think we don't we we have to follow everything that somebody else do. I mean I think we at Den County have to develop a plan that works for us and I think we need to stay with it just because somebody else is doing different and you know and sometimes we do you know and I'm not saying we don't always have to look at something else but we need to do what's best for them county, and not just what's best for law enforcement or regular administration. I think all employers should be treated the same. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just, we have the DA's office that's in a separate, that we do separate. And I think that's, we need to change that also, since we've looking at all this, I think all employees need to be treated the same. Go by the recommendations. What I'm seeing here is they're recommending actually when three different pay scales. For general employees, the law enforcement employees, and then the attorneys. I would say that's not correct, but I wanna qualify my answer. The attorneys would be in an open range system, just like everybody else. They just, some of the ranges wouldn't be as long as the general employees and I can explain why that is. So just really too. So when we consider increases in salaries in a budget year then we're actually taking a consideration to separate increases. One towards a law enforcement step plan and one towards an open range plan. Is that correct? That would be correct. So do we run into any of the problems with compression, and I understand the paramilitary, but do we run into any of that, will we still run into that within a law enforcement step plan if we if we running into across the board if the court slides the scaling does not give the employees that are there step then yes you will aggravate the the compression problem so they're just asking saying stay status quo with this. And their biggest argument is because it is what other people are, majority of other people are doing. And because the paramilitary type of protocol or whatever that they have, is that correct? Yes, and some of that goes to morale. It's not just that we want to look like everybody else. If we look like everybody else, honestly, that helps me because it helps me give you better data. But in law enforcement, the employees will tell you they want to be in a step plan. And it's not very often I feel comfortable seeing that up here saying I can speak for law enforcement, but I've never speak for law enforcement, but I've never heard a law enforcement employee say anything different. That goes all the way down. I mean, it goes across the board to sheriff to bailiffs to constables. I believe so. If anybody's here that's law enforcement wants to chime in, please do. I've never heard any of them tell me a little bit out out of Let's say tell you different things and they tell me Well, I think Yeah, Commissioner. Oh, I'm sorry Andy. Go ahead Commissioner needs you go first and yeah, none of this is working. So never go Commissioner Coleman I know it was a recommendation later on in their packet From last week was about pay for performance. But I think the easiest approach, I'm not saying it's the best, I'm not advocating for it either. I'm just saying if everyone wants easy expectations, easy know where they're going to be in five years, easiest administrative to administer, easiest to compare to other agencies, it's what we have now. Because you can almost guarantee if you're here, you show up, be an average employee, you could, and if you're sitting right next to a colleague who's exceeds you and works harder and might have been hired at the same time, you're both going to end up at the same pay in the future. And you can almost kind of guarantee that. I don't think that's a false statement. And I think a truly innovative thing would be some type of paper for performance that if someone's really working hard, really showing up, really being innovative, really doing things that they get ahead of the pack. You know, we talk about this compression problems. I think we need to reward the people who are excelling in the organization and promote them accordingly. But I don't, I haven't heard anything, like Commissioner Mitchell said, I haven't heard from law enforcement one way or the other about it. I haven't had that conversation with them yet. But I mean, I think that is the easiest. I don't know if we want to go with the easiest path, but that's the easiest thing to compute math to future budgeting, future pay raises. It's the easiest on all scenarios, but I think a lot of employees would probably like that. I mean, it's easy to predict, but I don't know if that's the way we should go. For them or anybody. I mean, I think true, the innovative way would be to do some type of pay for performance. That you have problems with that too, commission of eats, with people having their favorite employees, if they give money to any other ones, don't get that money. So you have a my rail problem. There are also. It definitely has, it definitely has its faults. I'm not sure if it's a problem here or also. It definitely has, it definitely has its faults. I'm not denying that. I mean it's. Okay, Commissioner Collin. Well, not to believe her the point, but I would tell you, I've had extensive experience and law enforcement being the attorney for the Sheriff's Department. And I have spoke to law enforcement regarding this, and they definitely like the step plan. They like the fact that there is a hierarchy, the fact that it's based on experience and years of service. I think it's a good way to define that type of compensation. They're always comparing themselves to other entities and you got to remember patrol officers are a fungible commodity. I mean, they're always looking at the bottom line. We could have our patrol officers go to Dallas, Carrollton, City of Denton. A lot of those entities compensate people a lot better than we do here in Denton County. I think it's a good idea to have a step planned for them. I will agree with Miss Phillips that it is problematic when we shift it rather than give step increases because then you wind up having instances and I think we've all been called recently by different constables and other entities where people have been hired in at higher or the same of people with quite a bit experience and that does cause a great deal of constination. And this is a very problematic situation. Commissioner Mitchell, I'm deeply empathetic to your comments about treating all employees the same. I don't think Andy or Ron were here, but I was an attorney with the county when y'all gave a raise to everybody but the attorneys. In the department heads. And you know, I can tell you that was not a... And elected officials. Yeah. I know. And my point to you is that I know that caused a lot of hard feelings at that point. So, you know, your comments are well taken. I just think that, you know, due to the militaristic or paramilitary organization of the Sheriff's Department of the Jail, that it's just a kind of a solution to a problematic problem. In commissionary eeds, I can tell you not any of the previous administrations, but we at the county at one point in the history tried to do a performance pay for performance And I had to I was on the receiving end of several lawsuits were defending the county for employees who are rated very high So that they could receive the additional compensation when in fact they were disciplined by their supervisors and It can be very problematic I think that's a good recommendation that we treat law enforcement different. I wish there was a better way. I just don't think we found it yet. And I, in the same hand, I agree with you, Commissioner Mitchell, that we really need to treat all the employees the same. And it's a difficult proposition for us to find a solution for. How do we improve on the step plan? What could we do to improve on the step plan for all employees? Well, plan that we're in now. How could we improve on that? Is there anything we can do to improve that? Other than raising the ranges, what we've done in the past, I don't know any way to improve on the step plan. The step plan, you know, it is what it is. It's like Commissioner Ead says. It's easier to administer. It has its good points. It fits the law enforcement culture, but if we keep everybody in a step plan, we are not going to have any better surveying than we have right now. We could keep doing what we're doing. I do have some concerns about how we would reclassify jobs going forward with new job descriptions that are linked to new ranges. But I felt like the court wanted to see some changes and that there were some problems with the step plan that you wanted ideas of how to correct and that's what I think he brought. I would add, I think you know that I look out for all employees and this is a, it is a real difficult thing to balance. But the law even treats law enforcement employees differently. We don't pay them the same today. They're all in the same system, but we don't pay them the same. We have them on an 86, 87 hour work week instead of, or work period over two weeks. So they don't get overtime instead of work more than an 86 hour week. Yeah, and they, you know, they can accrue their comp time up to 480 hours where another non-exempt employee will start getting paid after 240 hours. Law enforcement doesn't get compensated until after 480 hours and they're good reasons for those things. And but my point is that we don't pay in the same way if we have them in the same system or not. It doesn't make the right... It's the law. I don't know how we could ever have any kind of parity in equal. I don't know how we could ever do that. I think that what this has done has taken consideration those focus groups, those supervisors, those department heads, those elected officials and said what is it that you see could happen in the county that would improve your job here and improve pay, improve flexibility, all that. And these recommendations are made out of those recommendations of, I mean that's what we ask them to do. That's what we've asked them to do. And I think that each job that we have in classification is a unique animal and to put them into maybe three or two different groups of a step plan and open range is treating them even beyond equal. I mean, it is catering this wrong work, but it's addressing the uniqueness of the job and the uniqueness of what they do for the county. I agree with that. There's no much. As you will know, I know you do. Let's go on recommendation three. One more statement. Okay. As well as I didn't see anywhere here that the elected officials were addressed and their salary comparisons. And we didn't. Recommendations that had anything to do with that. And we didn't ask them to survey elected officials. And my office can do that for you. That's all published information. And we do that every year. That's not a problem. I put in that the same open range. Elected officials are never in a range. They do like, are they part of the executive band? They're part of the elected official group, which is just set by the executive band. They're they're paid. They're part of the elected official group, which is just set by the commissioners set by commissioners court. There's there's never a structure for elected officials. What is that? Is that across the board the way it is in different counties in the state of Texas? Yes. Yes. OK, let's go on to recommendation three. Okay, the third recommendation is to integrate the IT jobs back into the system. The market has certainly cooled. And you know, sometimes over time, IT jobs go up and down as new technology comes out. But we have unprecedented cooling right now, I think, in our economy. That's a new term, James. Yeah, unprecedented cooling. I think everybody knows what I'm talking about. We have a deep freeze. And a lot of people in this industry are actually, unfortunately, out of work. And I think that those people will have to go back to work before we see hot jobs again in that industry. So I'm not going to say that it won't ever be appropriate to take them back out and move them with the market. But right now, their market is a lot more like general employees and that recovery will be slow. And that's why he's recommending that this be brought back into the system. I think that's a good thing. $3 employees is saying. We never treat all employees the same. We have bilingual employees and we have different reasons for treating different employees a little differently. But the executive broad bands were designed, I'm sorry. I reserve my comments, but I just real quickly made a list of basically how under the fair labor standards law enforcement is treated differently. And there's considerable amount. I mean, you can force a law enforcement officer to take comp instead of vacation. That's illegal. So they can they can take comp instead of vacation. That's illegal. So they can they can have 160 hours of vacation. It could be December. They're going to lose it and you require them to take comp instead of vacation. That's a perfectly legal justification for they can be work and 86 hour work week for hours. One 81 through 86. They only receive straight time. Whereas all our other employees would receive overtime. We can require law enforcement employees to remain on campus during their breaks and lunch, whereas other employees were required to allow them to leave. And Miss Phillips also mentioned that I wanted to reiterate, for regular employees, they received cash, they're required by law to receive cash over time when they hit 240 hours. For law enforcement we can only be required to give them cash over time at 480 hours. I don't know if you all remember back to the days when we had so many law enforcement officers who were pushing up against those limits. All the more reason that let me be in charge of it, then I've changed them. I mean to me, I mean I'm deeply, deeply empathetic to your comments about treating all employees the same, but it's extremely problematic. I just wanted to, you know, those are things I think you all need to be aware of. Sorry, my computer's hibernating, so I'm going to go to my paper copy. See there? So much for technology. Executive broad bands, and I know when the consultant talked about this, he referred to it specifically as senior management. But in his final report, if you read it carefully and you look at how people are classified that really is specifically for department heads. That's really how that was designed specifically for department heads and it's been a while since we've hired a department head at the county but if you recall there aren't any minimums or maximums or anything like that right now it's just up to the court to identify an amount and typically what I do is try to do some kind of quick survey for you and get you a market point. In the past though you've hired some department heads that sometimes you hire department heads with a lot of experience and a lot of training for the job and sometimes you hire department heads that have less experience in training for the job but for other reasons, they're your best candidate and so it doesn't always make sense to hire those people and have all your department heads right at market because some of them have more and some have less that they bring to the job when they're hired. So what he's suggesting and what I keep saying he but really there's a whole team of consultants that worked on this and they're suggesting that it would be appropriate to have a broadband or two broadband and they've identified some groups of department heads, a group of department heads that comparing their job assessment tool and the market, balancing internal and external equity might fit into one broadband and another group of department has for the same reasons would fit into another broad band. And that would give you a maximum. It would also give you a structure if you wanted to, you could, you don't have to, but if you wanted to, you could hire, you could design kind of a hiring range there too, where you'd say, you know, we're not going to bring anybody in from outside at more than this amount. And that certainly is up to the court whether you want to do that or not. But that was his suggestion was that you have a minimum and a maximum to give you some parameters because right now you don't have anything. Okay. And after the department heads were hired they would progress just like other employees do. I don't agree with the broader range of so the attorneys even. The broader range for attorneys. This is you might commission this is broader than the ranges they have right now. It's not broader than the other employees. Is that help? Okay. Okay. And that's my wording and I might have misled by saying that, but the changes that from the system they have right now, he's recommending broader ranges. Similar to general employees. The reason that the attorney's ranges would be a little bit different than our other employees. They're one group and they behave kind of typically where our general employees were talking about, you know, all different kinds of employees. So since they were already broken out, he looked at them and how attorneys progressed through the range. And certainly, and John can correct me if I'm wrong, but certainly we usually hire misdemeanor attorneys and they promote up typically. And so they're not usually in those ranges as long as the people say the first assistant and moving up into management. Once attorneys and our organization get into a management, they're usually in those positions a long time. We don't have a lot of turnover in those positions. They're new elected official. Yeah. So he has designed ranges that fit that. It's kind of a custom solution for us because in that group, they have the same kind of progression. And so he has broader ranges at the top of the organization where people stay longer and a little bit narrower ranges where people promote up. That little bit narrower ranges where people promote up. That's the only difference from the general employees and they're all together in one system. Okay. Recommendation number six was to adopt the pay plan specific ranges and the steps for law enforcement. You know, we've talked about this this I think I've talked with each one of you about that we might not have the money to put people into the ranges as they were recommended and so the ranges might need some modification at the bottom end to include employees if we were to adopt these ranges and also we might not have the money this year to put law enforcement on the steps, but we could adopt a range, a modified range from what was recommended if we don't have the money and the steps could be put in later. You know, some people might say, why do anything at all if you can't do what you really want to do? And probably a lot of people would say that. But to me, it's very important because we just had these job descriptions looked at. They're brand new job descriptions. They're updated. They're current. They're in a new format and they're linked to the recommended ranges. And if we adopt just the job descriptions and the ranges that are in the job descriptions, don't match the ranges that we have. And we can't just make a match because it's not an even grade 14 is grade 1, grade 15 is grade 2. It's not done that way. There are less ranges now. It's been condensed into more manageable program. eligible program and also some people have been evaluated one where the other in there based on the JATs and the external market. So it's not a simple thing to just take the job descriptions and not the ranges and it would put me in a, I wouldn't even know what to do with three class requests next year. I really wouldn't even know what to do with three class requests next year. I really wouldn't. So to me, it's very important. I don't know if it's very important to everybody else, but it will be when they request three classes. So that's why I think he made his recommendations in two groups. One that had no budget impact and one that had a budget impact. Or actually I think the way he looked at it, it had a small budget impact and a larger one. But we would, if we are going to adopt the ranges and if we don't have money to make the adjustments that are recommended, then we would have to modify those ranges a little bit to include everybody. Recommendation seven is really the last recommendation that I wanted to talk about. And that is to adopt the classifications. And that's all part of the same thing. The essential component of the job descriptions is how they're classified, what range they fall into. And again, all of that reflects all of the work that they did both inside the county with our employees and managers and outside in their external survey and assessment. I feel like doing the recommendations one through seven if they were to be adopted would give us new updated job descriptions and I said earlier that that's very timely. And that's because the ADA was just amended as you're aware. And one of the very first best practices that I read was to make sure that your job descriptions are updated, current, accurate. And we just hired somebody to do that for us. It seems to me that it would be good sense to adopt those job descriptions as they've been done. Also, they looked at all of our FLSA ratings and I thought I'd be able to say, well, there are some changes there that are really important. I haven't found any changes, honestly. I think that they looked at these jobs and found the same thing that we did as far as which jobs are exempt and which jobs are non-exempt. But I think it's helpful that we have had somebody else look at them besides just my office. It's the first time ever that I can remember that anybody outside my office has looked at that to make sure that we're doing it correctly. And that's timely too because it was just a couple of years ago that that law was revised and some big changes were made. I already said we would have improved survey data if we could compare apples to apples and this funds allow whether that's this year or next year or a future year ranges could be revised to the recommended ranges and steps could be added. I have a question concerning the job descriptions. After these were updated, did we get back with the department heads elected officials to get they're okay with the revision. We don't have them yet. We don't work them yet. Okay. So is Evergreen rewriting them? Evergreen is rewriting them, yes. Yeah. We didn't even... Each one of the departments to make sure they're... We didn't even see what was submitted. It was all submitted electronically directly from the departments to Evergreen. And if you remember after an employee and I'm going to rehash this just a little bit because I know Commissioner Coleman was not here at the beginning of the project. And it was several months ago and we might not all remember exactly, but each employee was given the opportunity to fill out either individually or in a group their own job assessment tool, which we used to call JDQs or something, to fill out a job description questionnaire is really what it is. And after they completed it, then the supervisor was supposed to look at it and they were supposed to make comments. So they gave their input right up front as to whether that information was accurate. They also, the managers and supervisors also had the opportunity to let evergreen know, tell evergreen about any either classification or compensation issues that they had. So in effect that whole process was very similar to in addition to looking at all the job descriptions that were submitted, they considered all the things that are usually submitted to my office as either a request for reclassification or you know I have this compensation equity issue in my department. So that whole process was all done by Evergreen this year which I think is really good to have somebody from outside because a lot of the things that were submitted I'm sure were submitted to my office previously and either we addressed them, the way the department wanted them addressed and they probably didn't have that issue this year or we addressed it but not the way they would have liked to have seen it addressed or we didn't address it at all because we didn't think it needed to be. So I think it's great to every once in I'll have somebody outside the organization. Look at those same issues and see if they see it the same way we saw it. So they've all had a lot of input. Yes. Mr. Chairman, Markton? I'd like to ask you two things for you. What do you recommend us to do today, if anything? Second of all, operational recommendations which are 12 through 18. I believe has to do with the operation of your department as well as policy and new policy. I'm interested in knowing what you think of those recommendations. You don't have to specifically tell me that. And if you see that those need to be implemented and what your time frame on implementation is as it relates to policy, for instance, recommendation number 13 says didn't count you should adjust the proposed pay plans every two years According to overall market movement. Is that a policy issue that should be in a policy statement or should that be just Something you give us every two years Number 14 didn't county should conduct comprehensive classification compensation study in five to six years. Do we need a policy that specifically puts that there so that we, every five to six years, it's up in our face rather than just we need to do this kind of thing. I have a little list where I checked off and may noted to myself. I don't have that with me. But in the interest of time, if it's all right with you, I'd be happy to send the commissioners a list of those recommendations and let you know which ones we're already doing, which ones I think should be looked at if all this is put in place and which one should be policy and we do specifically, I believe we have Something in our rules about adjusting our ranges. I think it I think our current policy is every three years So that can be addressed at the policy committee, but I'd be happy to send you something like that We have to look, are you? Today we can't take action. This is a workshop. And so we're not here to take action. But I think that, personally, I think they did a very thorough job. I think that they did the best they could to limit their recommendations to things that they thought we would be able to afford. They could have recommended a lot more, they could have recommended a lot of things to address compression and probably adjusted the ranges more to more closely meet the market. I think that these are very conservative recommendations made with our budget in mind at the same time, our budget might not allow them. And so that's why I think that at least the seven recommendations should be implemented with the acknowledgement that we may need to revise the ranges and the steps may need to wait. That'd be up to the court to decide whether there was money for that at the budget process. 723,000 in cash. Yeah. No, I'm suggesting that because we might not have that, we might not be able to do that, that the ranges that I would recommend would have a little bit different minimums than what they've recommended so that everybody would be within minimum, with the idea that they could be adjusted when money allowed and steps could be put in when money allowed. Hey, have the other questions. Thank you. Commissioner Coleman. Have a question. James, I know we're talking about a lot of different ranges and they be able to set the salaries or have them be discretionary or you know adopted within ranges. How do we adopt a finite budget for the county when we basically say we don't know how much will be paying our new hires or employees for the year. Well, our practice right now, policy in practice, adopting a budget is a specific line up, not only a line up budget, but a budget where salaries are by a position. Each position, approved position in the budget has a salary set for it. It's not specifically tied or identified with an employee, but that's how our budget is done. That's not a required policy procedure or practice. Many counties do not do that. The actual requirement for the statutory requirement for county operating under subchapter C with a pointed budget officer in Chapter 1 11063 of the local government code says that the contents of the budget says that the budget also shall itemize the budget to allow its clearer comparison as practicable twin expenditures including the proposed budget and actual arrangement expenditures for the same or similar purposes that were made in the preceding year. Actually, what many counties do, probably the majority of counties do, is they budget salaries by department by lump sum and they ought to leave that up the discretion of the department head or elected official to set the salaries within that lump sum but within their department. We may have done that 25 years ago. We have been adopting a budget where salaries are by specific by position for. Hello. 20 years. That detail, you know, again, the amount of that detail I don't think is not required, but it's not in practice. Again, it's up to the commissioners court to decide how clear, you know, what itemization allows us to clear comparison is practical. If you've been adopting one on a budget, again, it's the reasonable actually with the project, which I think really means departments. Departmental budget is going to look the same. You're just not going to see that detail for every salary in there. It's done by many, all over the state. I assume what happened is that once this budget set, department heads and elected officials have a specific amount of time to actually turn in the salaries for their department. By the first paper, well, I assume that's how it's done. It is done across the state, though. It would, again, I don't know about, I think it might be a question if you go from a tremendous amount of detail back to a small amount of detail, I don't if that's usually that clear comparison that's required. I guess that's a, you know, question of legal judgment I guess, but that it is done. And it would require, it would require a lot of, deadline once budgets are set adopted by the commissioners court. The first week in September, every department that elected officials going to have to have a deadline to get those salaries, specific salaries back for their departments back to the HR department and the budget department and the treasurer. James, couldn't it set percentage be applied to all those salaries just and across the board? Like just like now when we slide 2%. Absolutely. Again, I think I read understood Commissioner Coleman's question to be where it's not a fine act, not a per position budget. We certainly, you can set per position budgets with steps, with percentages, with fixed dollar amount, I mean, you can do any of those things. That's actually more, again, more details than required. The overall spending, overall total obligation to county is what is absolutely required in the amount of additional detail. Again, it falls in with this very broad, to me, very broad statement that you itemize to allow as clear a comparison as practical, you know, whatever that means. But we can buy anything in there. We could stay with, we could go to lump sum, the bottom part mental salary budgeting, we could stay with step, do step plans now, we could do percentage raises, dollar amount raises, all of those would, are totally doable and totally, they're, you know, change, if we go from, all those are changes that we go from a step plan, all of those are widely used in Texas County so. Based on that we could also authorize bonuses if we included in the budget. I think we could, you know, I was scare off bonuses, lump sum payments for performance, all our longevity, which is really long, you're not for performance, I guess performance is staying on the payroll in a certain amount of time. As I understand it, payments that are part of the, even some payments considered bonuses are absolutely legal if they're part of the employment contract and employee understands going in, he or she may qualify for those and they're included in the budget. That's the two hurdles she have to have for those to my understanding. I was just trying to think out of the box plus I also had a concern about us. We've fixing a budget of X amount and we including ranges of pay that if everybody decided within the discretion to hire at the high range we might at some point exceed the amount we had budgeted. Well for new hires, and we do that already though we have a salary contingency. Again the question is what do you, even with any discretion how do you ensure you don't hire, go over budget with what's that word people leave? I can't say that. With attrition and new hires, and what we do for that now, we always, the budget office always includes a contingency item specifically for that. And what that does, again, for a pointed fish like myself or a department head or elected fish, that allows us, it doesn't tire hands. If we do have a chance to hire somebody with extreme amount of experience and qualifications that certainly merits higher sour than the person that we're placing that gives us that gives us some doesn't hire hands to allow us to do that. Because larger departments will always have a Tricia that they can do that with, but we don't always have that we have a We always have a facility for that already. That's a week. That's just process we've developed because we got a good budget office All right any other questions or comments? Thank you Amy that clarifies a lot of things for me. That's helpful. I would like to say we will if we're going to make some adoption of some of these things we will need to know pretty real quickly because it will require some programming changes in payroll budgeting, the Treasurer's Office and my office. That's what I was asking. What are you looking for from us? I know it's a workshop and it's not an action item. Are you looking for a direction and asking that we adopt the one through seven recommendations? I would like to get that to you in writing in the next day or two along with the answers to your other questions. Okay. All right. I'm struggling any with how we can that all of these recommendations without knowing the funding that we're going to have to implement them. There isn't any funding associated with them. Obviously we want to do the job descriptions and things like that. There wouldn't be any funding associated with these recommendations as long as we revise those ranges. Lower the minimums on the ranges so that the people in them, their salaries, would fit within the range. And if we held off on the steps until budget time or next year or when you feel like you have money for them. Make the decision after we get certified values and go through a budget process to know if we're going to be able to make any impact on the recommendation at all. Okay. One through seven is no budget impact. That's correct. Okay. All right seven is no budget impact. That's correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Thanks, Amy. But one through seven is philosophical. It's, yes. A commitment. I'm going to miss it. Philosophical direction that will ultimately be. Quite a wrong. Okay. I believe that concludes our business. We are adjourned. Have a great day. Thank you.