All right, thank you all very much for being here today. Welcome to our commissioners court. So, congratulations all here. As we begin today, is there someone here who would lead us in our invocation this morning? Ben Ishael, Jason, if you would please. Also, if you remember, our tax system collector, Tammy McRae, who's getting surgery this morning, if you would please. So I'll stay in together and then the play just, okay? Hey, and the father, we thank you for the time to come together today to do the business of Montgomery County. Lord, ask for your favor and your wisdom to be on our elected leaders this morning as they make the decisions that they feel are best for our community and our county. We remember our Texas or Tammy this morning, we asked that you watch over her and that you guide the doctors and those that are entrusted with her care that she may get a good result. And that they may be guided by you. Father, we, uh, country, we put all of our elected leaders across our country from our president down to our city councilman our commissioners and everybody. Lord we know that it is because of you that they are in place and we ask that you give them the wisdom and the courage to do what is best for our country and what is within your will. Father we thank you for continuing to bless us in our community and our county and we ask for your guidance and forgiveness and all that we do in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the Texas flag, our pledge allegiance to the Texas one state under God, one and indivisible. Thank you. And you may be seated. Let the record reflect that all are present today. We have a quorum. We have motion to approve the court agenda. Move. That motion is our second. All in favor? Uh-huh. Both. Motion carries. All right, at this time we give opportunity to our citizens to come to the podium here and to share with us the thoughts if they would like to on any item that is on either the open agenda or the consent agenda. All the way asked is that when you approach the bench or that when you approach the podium that you would tell a surname, what item you want to talk about and that limited to three minutes. I'm going to ask Commissioner Wheeler if he would keep the time for us. Is there anybody who would like to come and make a comment on any items that are on the agenda? Can I make a motion to do proclamations and resolutions before we do citizen comments? Is there anything in the state constitution or in Robert's rules that would prevent us from doing that? If we'll make a motion, will we have a second to that event? Ah second that. We need to get that. Okay. If you'll give us a few moments on Citizens' comments. Alright we can do that all in favor. Aye aye. Post. Post. that? We need to get that. Okay. If you'll give us a few moments on Citizens comments. All right. We can do that. All in favor? Uh-huh. Post? Motion carries. So, Proclamation's resolution is presentations. Let's go ahead and move on. I don't number eight and eight. I'm not making a motion. I'm saying come forward. So this is a considered discussed presentation from precinct 3 regarding the re-installation of the monument plaque at the Spring Creek Nature Center. Take any appropriate action. So the Spring Creek Nature Center was built when Commissioner Ed Chance was Commissioner Commissioner of Present W Warris Commissioner Chance. There he is right over here. Commissioner Chance led that up and had that facility built when he was in office in precinct 3. He was in office for 28 years. Did a great job from County. And it's customary anytime that in any municipality or county or whatever, when a particular elected official builds something for the community in their particular jurisdiction, you put up what's called a monument plaque. And the monument plaque just basically lists who was always involved in that project. You've seen them before when you see one, you'll recognize it. Unfortunately, some years ago, the previous commissioner, after a commissioner chance, decided to remove that monument plaque from the nature center, from Spring Creek Nature Center. Well luckily two of our awesome employees, Kirsten and Kerry, when I first met with them they were telling me that story. So then I got with our Building Maintenance Department, Mr. Rob Wright, who our Building Maintenance Department a phenomenal job if y'all are familiar with them And I was telling him the story and said hey, man I'd sure love to try to get another one of those plaques and he said you don't need not to do that my guys were smart enough a decade ago to Keep that plaque and not and not throw away as instructed so if you would please bring that up Rob. So that's the monument plaque that we will be putting back on the nature center where it should be. And Commissioner Chance, if you would mind coming coming up with, would I get a picture of you with it? What did they replace that with? They just had an empty spot hanging on that, you know, we need to make sure this never happens again. Here's another situation where we can't have this going on. You can't just be taking a plaque off a building Thank goodness robbing kept it. Yeah, I'm going to give it a go. Boy? Cool. What else? I dropped out of there. this never happens again? Put it on the agenda. I'll put it down there. All right. I'll put it down there. That's wrong. Been an easy one. All right. Now at this time we're going to go back to item number seven, where we give opportunity for our citizens to make comments on any particular item on the agenda that you would like to make comments on, either to open or consent. Again, we ask that you're you're limited to three minutes. State your name for the record and the particular item you want to talk about. Is there anyone who would like to come forward and speak? Yes, sir. You tried once. Thank you for being patient. Thank you, Judge. My name is Robert S. Griffin, and I'm a lawyer with Griffin Canon-Herbig, and I'm here today to discuss the item agenda where a new courthouse plan is being discussed in front of you all today. I'm fortunate enough to own a law firm located on the second floor of Woodforce. I'm one of three partners. We have six lawyers and about eight staff, and we've practiced in this county for the entirety of our existence'm the son of Mike Griffin, a retired prosecutor who's practiced up here for decades. And while I'm always impressed with the efficiency our judiciary is able to achieve, I believe a new courthouse center will be critically important to continuing to allow this county to grow efficiently. Unfortunately we are a county that is very attractive or fortunately and sometimes our citizens get in a little trouble. An easy to navigate efficient courthouse will not only save them on attorneys fees but it will keep the costs in the court low. I understand that this is challenging from an upfront expense standpoint, but long-term it will have additional benefits, including but not limited to, the availability of perhaps more land in downtown Conroad to develop and allow private entities to come in and pay taxes. It will also allow us to free up our historic courthouse, the WPA courthouse, and perhaps renovate it using some state funds. I and some other individuals, such as Mr. Poole, have long been interested in having a sort of cultural or community center located in Conroe. That could be a driving force for the introduction of additional arts, science, technology, and engineering. I'm fortunate enough to have clients all over the state who are in medical technology startups, such as Emergence Bend and San Antonio, in space that is flexible and easily attainable as challenging to find. Having a small launch pad somewhere like that or having a location to capture our cultural ideas could be fantastic. Furthermore, it could just be a wonderful venue center. So I know that that is a heavy expense to put in a courthouse. And I know no one in the government likes to spend money, and that's something I love about this county. However, I think the time is now. And when it comes to location, I've thought about it, and I'm a little self-interested because I've got a 10-year lease over at the Woodforce Building. But I've thought about it and let's be blunt, the Jail is already built. So it has to be close to the jail and it has to be easily accessible to the jail. So just as one of the local lawyers who represents a bunch of folks on the Courthouse Square, I'm very forward to the new Courthouse construction, even though I know it's a challenging expenditure. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Appreciate it so much. Thank you. Is there anyone else who could hold your applause till after the comments? Yes, ma'am. Good morning. My name is Darwin Darwin Fetch and I represent some of the people that lives in the area as a low-star parkway and low-star bend. What is the item on the agenda? It's on the agenda for stop signs. Okay. I'm pressing one. It's a. Any? Yeah. Is that on public hearing? There will be a time during public hearing for you to be public. This is just citizen comments, but there's actually a separate public hearing and we want to make sure that we memorialize your comments and that you have adequate time to address this issue. Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else? There being none, then let's move forward. We've already gone through our proclamations and resolutions, item A, A. I would like to make some changes on the consent agenda if I may. The first is L1 on page seven. This this is just to change the verbiage, and it should read the temporary space mentioned in bullet 2, should reference mutually agreed upon space behind the overflow dash old CPS courtroom. And so that basically has to do with the movement of these offices. And the second thing that I would like to do is I want to defer F2A on page 4 of 11. M2 on page 7. I would like to defer that as well. And then I would like to move 4C page 5 and 4D page 5 to the open agenda. Okay, whether anybody is moving to open, I'm sorry. 4C on page 5 and 4D on page 5. Great projects, by the way. I don't see them. I don't see a four D. Yes, I'm sorry. It's preaching for. Oh. C&D. The G4 scene. What else? the . . . . . . . four C and four D you know there's needs to be a simpler these they're just putting the item on the agenda I'm sorry yeah I'm gonna put that item on there because it is so confusing simplifies deal all right are there any other change you like to make to the consent Yeah, Judge, I want to move 9c3. Hold on. Okay. Page that out. 9c3 is on page 3 on my copy. So 9 is on the first page, followed down, ABC. then number three. What do you want to do? Move it to open along with nine F2. Commissioner, what page is that on? Nine C3? On my copy, it's on page three. Do we all have the same copy? We should. We got the same copy, but I don't know how big your page is out on your 9c123 that's considered a proven authorized transfer of adjustments That's 9c3 from the origin office. Okay, move that to the open 9f2 Now didn't we just move at 9f2 a I thought we just deferred A. It is. I and F to A is deferred. So, nine F to B would be in open. Now, I was going to discuss A, but that's okay. Okay. It's deferred. Would you- So, are you- I want to move it. I want to move it'm good with your deferral. Okay. We can defer it very good. To be clear, S to be is stolen the consent agenda. And if two A is deferred, I defer a. That's one we need to be talking about. That's one one that I deferred. I was asked to defer that. All right. All right. I've got any other changes? There being none. All in favor of approving the consent agenda with modifications? Move. To our second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Opp I pose motion carries. This is why I wanted to put a popcorn machine out of the lobby. I move on that. Let's put that on the agenda. All right. Let's go ahead and move forward to open on the motion on the ones that I brought up forc and 4d for us here and in my concern is these are great probably are you going to move on the consent agenda the way no no we put we move those to open okay but on everything the remaining on the consent agenda do you want to go ahead and move on the consent agenda and then go to open or do you are you? I did. And we just voted on the consent agenda. I was going to. We voted on the consent agenda and now I had two items that I had moved to open. Oh, yeah, yeah, that will leave that for the next item. All right, are we square, Amy? OK. The projects, these are great projects that Commissioner Gray is picking up. We've attempted previously, under previous disasters. And that's why for sure I fully support it. I'm going to ask that this being an emergency management related grants that you guys would just keep me, me, abreast of what's going on so that we can work with whoever we need to work with and our management to assist in the development of these technical grants. They're very technical. You already got Rebecca that's working on them and she needs help from our Office of Emergency Management. That's all that I asked on that but I would move to approve these. Absolutely, Judge. I'll keep you informed. I will keep Jason Mills out. They had an OEM informed and I found the OLO in here. Good to see you guys. I'll be working closely with them. We haven't made a motion yet but he's saying that. Do we have a motion? I'm sorry, that was my motion now. Okay, it was our second. Our second. Second. Any more discussion? working closely with them so. We haven't made a motion yet but he's saying that okay do we have a motion? I'm sorry that was my motion now. Okay it was our second. Our second. Second. Any more discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you Commissioner appreciate that so much. All right let's move forward. Jason? You had something over all right. No that was deferred. My up. C3. C3. Yeah 9c3. the the the the the the the the the the the the the So this will be the departmental carryover. That is correct. All the department that actually had a PO that they haven't quite spent money out of fiscal 24 just yet, the remaining PO balance when we do the income and security role, which is essentially moving things over out of 24 into 25. It's an accounting thing that we're doing, but within four when we do that what happens is that open PO balance that they have obligations from previous year gets carried over into fiscal 25 and what that item is doing is it's transferring the corresponding budget for the obligated POs into fiscal 25 so they can't pay the bills. It's strictly PO carryover. It's strictly PO carryover. It is budget PO carryover. It's strictly PO carryover. It's strictly PO carryover. It's strictly PO carryover. It's strictly PO carryover. It's strictly PO carryover. It's strictly PO carryover. It's strictly PO carryover. It's strictly PO carryover. It's strictly PO carryover. It's strictly PO carryover. It's strictly PO carryover. received an item or a service in 24. They received or planning on receiving that item in 25. And this is to move the money from their 24 budget to the 25 budget. One of the precincts get their carryover. We do the commissioners carryover after act first. The audits done and presented. I'm out for I email just pass call on that as well. So that we're scheduling the effort, the effort to go through commission school, the second court in March. When that's done, it's not just the PO but the commissioners get tired of categories so that's when we close the books we don't post anything back into fiscal 24 we have a clean set of numbers to look at and that's when we do the categories. However, you got APOs? Oh, I did. Months? Yes. I got POs too. True. So. That's in early July. March. code march we take the audit and then as soon as that's done the first code in April is we do the calculation and do a carryover for the commissioners. So one of the things that you guys are unhappy with that, one of the things that this particular budget item is specifically for General Fund and Special Revenue Fund departments except for commissioners. If you guys wanted to make an exception and give some information to a cash, I mean we could try to do the incumbent's carryover part sooner than the financial report and do the rest of the carryover amongst the books or clean. Is that some direction that you guys want us to give to the Board of Judges to see if they're willing to do that for a cash. We can do that. But right now that it has been kind of the process that we've had for the last couple of years. Yeah, so if there's any big peos out there that you have payments coming up, that's going to put a strain on fiscal 25 budget. And the money's tied in the fiscal 24, then yes, we can't make that exception. But we need document from guys to be able to do that and I don't just buy that too so. We thank commissioner. If the money was there for 24 you're just transformed. document from the guys to be able to do that. And I'll draw us by that too. So. What do you think, Commissioner? If the money was there for 24, you're just transferring it to 25 for the PL, right? That's right. You shouldn't put a strain on 25. Am I looking at that, Ralph? No. From an accounting standpoint, if the delivery on that PL, right, if the goods were delivered our services perform fiscal 25, then it becomes a 2025 activity and it affects 25-25 budget. So it might put a strain between the carry-overs so we're building roads I need my carry-over cash so I'll move okay we'll work with Amanda and get all the P.O. dollars at least get it over then. So what is the question here? Well, this particular item excludes commissioners. I think what commissioner Gray is asking is to include commissioners as part of the incumbent's carryover. And is that correct commissioner? Yep. We have to bring that back. Just around about way of saying it's all right. We'll work with budget and the next school will get the the incumbent's just dollars get over. What do that? But your emotion is to approve this agenda item right here, right? Yeah, I think we need to to free it up. I think we made the poke. I'll second that. Emotion. Yep. There are seconds. I did. Now the question I have in discussion here is how does this relate to the monies that we paid from the previous commissioner on the POs that were carried over that typically we would have put to the March deal. What happened there? So, commissioners are welcome to put it with the auditors as long as it goes through the auditor commissioners are if they have particular purchase orders that need to go before the annual financial report is done. I think we're cash works with those those commissioners in previous. Yeah, so. Okay, if it was a strain then then we work towards it. All right. All right. We have a motion. Do I have any POs left from 24? You have some some minor ones. Yes, all of the commissionersers did. Because it's the stuff that most of the time it's the stuff that you did the last two weeks of September that maybe the invoice didn't come in in time or whatever. Maybe you didn't get the product, whatever it might be. Or it could be a large construction project. We saw that, especially with the tool road. We saw a lot of that. I've had a bunch of old POs at my next year budget. We'll work on that with budget. Okay, you're going to care about that. We have a motion in a second. We're going to make this, you know, I mean, universal for everyone or just... I just want to process that we understand and that's transparent. And so we know when we're going to get the money so I can plan my business. I understand. We have a motion to second in more discussion. On favor, high, I posed motion carries. All right. Thank you very much. Let's move forward. Appreciate that. Let's move to the open agenda. County Judge considered to discuss updates regarding metropolitan planning organization and text. Jason Smith, if you would come, and sure there's what's going on there Morning judge and commissioners We the judge places on this morning just for me to be able to give you guys an update on What he and I have been working on down at H.J.C specifically with the metropolitan planning organization As you guys know the call for projects just wrapped up and they should be voted on this Friday in the TPC meeting. Montgomery County, as it sits right now, stands to be awarded roughly about $350 million in projects. From various precincts, Commissioner Wheeler has degraded ramps on there under major projects. Commissioner Riley has the Magnolia relief route on there, which is going to require some additional work on Commissioner Riley's project to get it funded properly, but we've got a plan to move ahead on that. The 99 in Burnham Woods is project was on there as well, as well as the carryover spend down projects that were coming through, which were the countywide ITS project to upgrade all the signals in the county. We've got a little tronchromoney to fiber connect the remaining traffic signals that do not have fiber on them. We've got some resurfacing projects in precinct too as well. So all in all together with everything that we've done over the past year Montgomery County stands to bring in a little over four hundred million dollars to invest in the infrastructure in each one of the preseance. We're also meeting tomorrow for Hens of List. Sir, was that a comprehensive list? So I've got the comprehensive list here. It's the nine unburied ramps are on there. They're slated for 2032 right now. However, these projects, those are just the years they're slated in for physical constraint. They can be accelerated if we're ready to move on the project depending on how much money that HGAC currently sits on. The other one was the Magnolia relief route under major projects, the Rayford and Burnham Woods project. Conroe has Porter Road. I'm I'm sorry, faster faster drive from Frazier to Porter. So that's a city of Conroe project. That was everything that we were awarded in the call and the carryover. It was the two projects for Commissioner Riley, the ITS project, which is countywide. How much money is in the ITS project? About $14.2 million. And that's going to get all the signals talking to one another, communicating, and whatever they're trying to do. Once we combine that with the broadband project to get the remaining 10 polls connected to the fiber, then yes, with this new equipment, traffic ops will essentially be able to control, re-time, work on lights remotely, they're no longer going to have to go out and actually plug into the light and work on it on site anymore. It'll actually have technology on it that does constant traffic monitoring, so one of the plans is to be able to offer the public a website similar to TransStar where they can see real live traffic data which will also communicate with things like Google Maps, Apple Maps, Ways, those things as well to help people plan their trips and know when there's traffic snarls or hang ups. So, let's see. Well, that's the second part of the problem. So there's. There is. So those projects, the ITS project has been approved. AFAs are currently being worked on for the resurfacing projects, as well as the ITS and the broadband projects. They have been approved, we just need to get the AFA in place with text out, which we're working on now. However, a lot of these projects require stip provisions, which is revisions to the state transportation improvement plan. HGAC is going to be submitting our stip provisions this month. However, federal highway administration, the regional offices have been told by, as well as federal transit. Any entity under the auspice of us d. O. T. has been told that any revisions to the state transportation improvement plan have to be sent to us d. O. T. headquarters to be vetted by the office of general counsel and they have not been able to provide any guidance as to how long it will take O. G. C. to provide any type of feedback on that. Okay, who's O. G Office of General Counsel for Texas or for USDOT. So Washington, DC. Oh. So that's even better. So Sean Duffie's office, which is the new Secretary of Transportation, has basically removed the authority of regional FHWA offices to offer approvals for STIP. So everything has to go to Rushing now and they're unable to give us a timeline on when Officer General Counsel will be able to provide the state's the ability to go through. That being said, without STIPP approval on our projects, they will remain on an indefinite hold until we get STIPP All those projects are just the lights every single one of them. So would a would a jumping on airplane going Washington be a benefit to us? Maybe. That's the quintessential question. So what we are doing right now is the judge and our office staff are working with some of our federal partners to try to figure out a pathway forward to be able to get these done. This is all getting caught up in President Trump's need to revisit some of the spending of the federal government. However, these projects are all tied to transportation mobility, roadway builds, things of that nature. There's no projects here that are not directly related to road and bridge. So I think our hope is that USDOT is going to move swiftly on these projects because there's just not a lot of the things he's looking for to be able to pull out of it. But we don't know the answer to that question yet until we're able to meet with one of the senators. Do you meet with one of the senators? So right now Senator Cruz, who is our US Senator, is the chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. So we are certainly hoping that Senator Cruz and his office are going to be able to work with Secretary Duffy and President Trump to try to figure out a solution to where you guys can get back to building the roads that Montgomery County needs to make sure that our infrastructure is the way that our citizens expect it to be. So we've already reached out to Senator Cruz office and we're already affording that appointment. Yes, sir. Judge Kio and us as his staff has already reached out to Senator Cruz's staff. And we have meeting set up to go over this issue and try to work with the senator and his staff to get this taken care of. Perfect. Thank you. Welcome, we're carrying Carrie Senator Cruz. Yeah. Anyway, this staff has been more than welcoming to work with us and understand the problem that we are. Specifically, the carryover's been down because we're on a timeline to spend that money. Or it can be recaptured by the state and distributed to other regions in the state who probably also can't spend the money at this point. So we'll need to work with TechStyte to make sure that they're not going to recapture our funds because we're being held up by delays from USDOT. So there are some TechStyte folks here. Jeffrey said he wouldn't do that. I'm looking at him. So we're going to reach out to the district engineer as well as the executive director of text.over the coming days to make sure that we're able to make sure that these monies aren't recaptured because we're not the reason for the holdup right now. Montgomery County is ready to proceed with with these projects as soon as we can. Jason, thank you very much. Appreciate all your hard work and the effort that you put in I.S. Jason, when we started going down to the HAC, there's so many acronyms, HAC, the TIPS, the TAC, the RPT, whatever. I said, I want you to master this stuff. And he has gone and he has mastered it. Has been able to do some very beneficial stuff for us including the traffic light apparatus that you're talking about. We were the first ones on that and Jason picked that up as he just studied the material and saw that we could apply these monies for it and sure enough we got it. 14 million for it. That's a great job. This is appreciated so much. Thank you. Thank you, Jason. All right, the Sheriff's Office. I move on A and B. They can come on up, but I move on A and B. I'll second. The motion is second. Walker, second. All. We're going to vote on it. All in favor. Hi. Post motion carries. Proceed. Good morning, Chief Judge. Good morning commissioners Jonathan Disman, Chief Deputy Sheriff's Office. I know Sheriff do little in round to spend all night assisting a partner agency with San Jacino County involved in Austrian vol shooting and the citizens of Houston. Also partner with chief no ideas there offering support. He'll be here shortly but certainly want to thank you all in advance for both votes. I want to make it a point to honor can I max. Max, his handler, Sergeant David Birch. I'm going to be joining us in just one second. He's a wonderful. I believe Max is a familiar face around the courthouse and here all throughout Monkermate County. Just a little backstory, so Max is four years old. He's a Dutch Shepherd. He's been in service here at Monkermate County for three years. He's been handled by a sergeant Berge who's been our canine supervisor in sergeant for the past nine years. And it's a little on the younger side for retirement, but through his hard work, he's received some medical issues that has led to a rather early retirement, but we're fortunate that he's in good enough health to live a good life with Sergeant Fortune's family for the next hopefully many years. And on a personal note, I couldn't think of a better day to do this than on Sergeant Fortune's birthday, at the same time. And nonetheless, we'd like to honor Canine Maxx for his service and wishing well in retirement and thank you all for your support You've been all right. You want to get a picture would love that. Yeah, I'm just come right up around here I think it's great. I think it's so good when the dog gets to go home with the hand Yeah, and live out his life. That's very good Can you pick him up put him in your arms, Farger? Thank you all. Congratulations. Thank you Judge, can I just give a quick personal story. I went out Saturday night with a bunch of different agencies from Montgomery County and the surrounding areas for the Loan Star throw down task force. I know you did that on Friday night. On Saturday night there was a vehicle that was being followed by some of our deputies. They stopped the car, one guy went east, one guy went west, and we put it up on the scene shortly thereafter, but a long story short it was because of the canine that was able to stop both the guys. An of the officers got a hold on one of them first, and unfortunately had a knee injury. Canine assisted, and then the other one went into some sort of construction tube, and the canine went in there after him and got him. So if you're not a believer in these canines, let me tell you what, that right there, because these guys were armed, they foundO in the car. And so it lets you know pretty quickly how important those canines are to our deputies and our officers. So nice job. I'm going to finish here and thank you for that. And I couldn't agree more. Our canines, our handlers, our heroes, they do some of the scariest police work imaginables. our hats off to them and all of our local partners that run canines as well. And then very quickly, again, thank you for voting on B as well. I want to quickly recognize Mr. Kevin Patel. Once we realize that canine max was going to be going into medical retirement, one thing that Sheriff Doe Little is committed to is stretching the dollar using taxpayer funds as responsible as possible. And that means cutting waste. That means partnering with philanthropy community leaders and community partners to help bridge some gaps and fill in some holes and Mr. Patel was kind enough to be the first one to step first one of many to step up and offer to donate Max's replacement. So with with the donation from Mr. Patel we are able to purchase a dog from Bonlit Kennel's of Indiana on the nation leaders in providing police canines so we I would like to thank thank Mr. Batel for that donation as well. Thank you. Thank you all. All right. Thank you. We appreciate that so much. It's moved to Port Syn Gilbert. Good morning. Good morning. Our first item is a change order for the Miracle City Day Center. This is $84,138 change orders for MuleWorks, some tile, HVAC, electrical, some site work, framing and door frames. A motion to approve. Second. All in favor? Aye. motion carries carries. I have them cute. And this is change order number three. This is our pay set of personal services agreement. We've been working with the elections department on trying to figure out a way to get their part time and minors paid and putting them through this pay setters program seemed to be the best option. However, the current contract we have with pay setters, they have a 37% markup to run all of our folks through their system. And for the elections department, that markup is now 47%. And this is to be funded I think a man to have a funding source for this. We are asking for an additional $100,000 to help fund this contract. I'm along with you know the fact that we have the bond election coming up as well so we know there will be some of these election workers working that. So we're asking for a hundred thousand to come from contingency which that balance right $336,000. Gilbert, can I ask, I'm trying to understand the markup from 37 to 47, markup of the... Right, so if somebody's making $10 an hour, really? They add 47%, and almost 50% more. Right, and there are some deductions that are taken out of that. There's some iOS and Social Security deductions that are taken out of that. And they're not counted in our info system. And it does affect our info license agreement. There's some licensing that has to happen with info. They use counts, employee counts. That eliminates that. But the minors is the biggest issue. They are accepting minors. There's a lot of high school students that work at elections. Susan Sierra can explain that process better than I as to why she needs this, but this seemed to be the bit. We started off with pace that are specifically for elections and some other departments use paysetters as well for temporary services. But this is the end result of our negotiation. Another issue that we're having is these are temporary workers which we are having to add to our payroll because they are employees. They cannot be treated as vendors. There's no other county in the state that treats them as vendors. So we have to hire them. Whenever we hire them as employees, that means that there's got to be a PCR. That means it hits budget. It hits HR. Every time there's an election, there are probably, I don't know, hundreds of PCRs. And then also it hits our IT. We've got to establish a spot for them to get W2's, for them to get paperwork, for them to fill out time sheets. Not only that, we also have all the reporting for that and we need licenses for our info or for our set. So every time we hire an employee, there's a substantial infrastructure cost which is what pay setters is now doing for us. So we're looking for every possible solution to minimize the cost of these ones, giving the constraints that we cannot treat them as vendors. We have to treat them as employees. What is the pay scale at 47 percent? What is that hourly wage or how do they get paid? So the individual gets $10 an hour. There's various rates. $12 an hour or whatever the rate is. And then pay setters adds the 47% on top of that through the processing of that payroll. That's the best deal that we can get. So what's 37% we knew, my understanding person negotiated the contract added minors under 18 that's what drove the price up. Right. I'd like to hear from Susie. What would happen if we didn't approve this? What are what are other options do we have? You know, we have to have an election. So that's correct. Well, the other option would be another service or add all of those workers as employees as Amy was describing. So we either have to put them as employees or we have to find someone to hire them and contract with them. So the cost we had a, I guess, a gigantic meeting with purchasing, with IIT, with risk management, with HR risk management with HR with elections with budget with the auditor To try to bring you this way than the other way. Yes The the issue is the license in the infrastructure with onboarding all of these people Just to share volume alone. We are going to need additional staff to just process all of the, it's also the fact that Susie can open on this, is the fact that there's some days where the work that is shows up for the election. We've never met the work before and they have to work. So they haven't filled out any paperwork, they haven't done, gone through the HR process, but we still have to pay them, right? If I'm doing my Matthew right, the 10% markup is $100,000. That means that would pay... I'm doing my math here, right? The 10% markup is $100,000. That means that we're paying pay-setters 47% which equates to $470,000. So we're paying them $470,000 over and above what we're paying these people to work collections, is that right? So your day, come and show me. I pulled it up. Susie, what is it? It's a G.S. over and above what we're paying these people to work elections, is that right? So, your day, come assure me, I pulled it up, Susie. What is it, the GL has been 302,000 for the November election? That's what we paid pay setters for the November election. That did not include all of these workers. Some of these workers did hit payroll. So that's what we're anticipating, that with the markup and with the bond election, the numbers are going to go up just a little bit. Well, yeah, I'm just using math. If it's 10% is $100,000, then the total of 47% total is $470,000. So we're paying them $470,000 as a staffing company, basically. That's over the above what we're paying, the actual workers, what you're saying. This 47% is the markup. That's the increased markup for elections from 37 to 47. So increase the markup of the pay by $470,000. At the time, Commissioner, when we passed the budget, we actually didn't even have pace that is a contract we didn't have even thirty seven percent budgeted i understand i'm just i'm trying to get my head around the fact that we're paying these people to run elections and we're paying pace that is four hundred seventy thousand dollars on top of that i think we're paying closer to probably overhead uh... just paying them and a minute administrative fee, close to $150,000 right now. That's what we paid here to date. Based on what we, because remember, we haven't, you're thinking just from 37 to 40, so we didn't even have the 37% budgeted before. Because we were using them as county employees until we found out IOS guidelines say, it shouldn't be doing this. So what we end up paying them pay setters? So we're anticipating, so I don't know how many, how many of those are going to be on this next election? 53. Same as a general election? No, the general election there were 113. The general election we spent 302,000 plus we had people on the county payroll. So I would have nice that didn't include early voting. What's the primary? I forget we've not only paid for the general election but we also paid for the primary. So the yearly cost would be what? Six hundred rent? The primary was in March. That's well budget. Is this a pre-visual? I would say 800,000. Commissioner. total is what we would end up paying pay setters. Is this something we could shop? I mean, is pay setters the only game or is there... Is there somebody else that we can try to leverage... Against pay setters that we can go and go and shake the best deal? We went out through the... It was a bid process that we went through to get pay setters initially. so we can always go back out, of course. Industry standard in that industry, from my understanding and talking to others, was the miners. They would not take miners. They had to do something at the corporate level to accept the miners. And I think that's what drove the 10% increase over the thirty-separers. Sir, who wouldn't take the miners? The 10th agencies. So we're paying them ten dollars an hour, right? These kids are various, ten dollars to... Right, ten to fourteen. I'm surprised you can get them to work with ten dollars. It's volunteer work basically. And when you employ depending on what election cycle it is, right over 100. And they're working 40 hour weeks. Oh no, no, these are when you say over 100 is that just for the miners or well i used to have a hundred and fifteen precinct hundred and thirteen right might be where overthinking this guy's i mean unless it but you just said a number that scared me what did you say eight hundred thousand that's what yeah that's what got caught my ten how can that be at ten dollars an hour and they're not working that much? I mean, so how many do you think that you had on the payroll, that county payroll? For that would be essentially early voting workers and that's probably 300 or so. I'm not talking. The 302,000 right was just day only workers, election day only workers was 300 in 2000. That's where I'm estimating 800,000 because we're gonna have voting day again. But this time we're also going to put early voting on there, plus we're gonna put the minors on there as well. It's just a projection. What's the way budget free election? I'm sorry. How much do we budget free election? Are they different? They're very yes. The primary. The zone side. The election. Turn out. And keep in mind also who we're contracting with right? If there's other as probably elections if we're running what running other entities, school districts, whatever list that cost. So he does have, Suzy does have some revenue sources because other entities that participate in our elections pay her to run those elections. So, some of that cost is for whatever elections are going on for school and other ones achieving it all. That's right. If I may, we're not going to have time to fix this before the May bond election. Okay? No. So, if I would suggest we approve it as it is and then immediately after the bond election, then let's look at this and re-evaluate it for the November election. Let's get some numbers and re-shop. There's a tendency when you use the same people all the time, they just kind of just keep on flowing and we don't bother to look at other opportunities even though they do a good job. This is perfect. So I would suggest that we do that. But for this, that we would approve it and move on with the agenda. Still, how much do the elections go to cost? The May election? Yeah, the May election. What's it going to cause? We've just finalized the list of participants in that affects the county's causes. I haven't done the estimate yet. That was just finalized. I was told that like the city election up in Willis and they have a low turnout and it's 20 30,000 to carry. Is that pretty close? Yeah depending on yes. There's a motion on the floor and the motion is zero seconds. I got any more discussion? Paul in favor? I. I. I. Post. Motion carries. Thank you and Gilbert right after this election. Right. You want to give right after it. Sure bring us the results. Yes sir. Yes sir. This is the vendor we have and so this was a solution that we came up with. For now. For this for yes sir. Okay. Proceed you got. All right. The next item. This is that we have a current lease and this is replacing that lease for IT. We can see that there's a one-time charge of $6250 and then monthly charges of $10,950 for storage and network services and then a monthly lease charge of $4800 a month. This is a 24-month lease. This is for Bobbys here. Bobbys, can you come up if he has any questions? Is there a bonka, right? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We're adding some additional office spaces all we're requesting. We're not requesting any funds to do. We're paying out of local funds. All right. I move. Chair, second. I'll second. Any discussion? All in favor? I'm posed. Motion carries. Thank you. I am C. Yes sir, this is an on-cult material assessing inspection contract with geoservices for commuter precinct 1. This is for traffic signal foundations and other things that you need to move. Any motion? Second. Motion, discussion. All in favor. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Gilbert, thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. County Attorney. Precinct 2. I move on A1. I have a motion on A1. Is there a second? I guess second. All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. All right. We're going to recess Montgomery County Commissioner the committee. I'm going to be a member of the committee. I'm going to be a member of the committee. I'm going to be a member of the committee. I'm going to be a member of the committee. I'm going to be a member of the committee. I'm going to be a member of the hearing, these are the proposed, Montgomery County guidelines procedure for tax abatement. They're required to be renewed or promulgated every two years, otherwise you cannot issue tax abatement. So there are very few revisions to the ones we've had from two years ago. In fact, I really just know substantive provisions. We kept the guidelines and the schedule the same. We made some minor textual corrections and clarifications on the guidelines. And so that's what's here before you know. Are there any minimum number of employees required for an abatement? Yeah. 10 is what we've done. and that's been the number for a number of years. Part of the reason we went down to 10 probably six years ago was the increase of technology and we're seeing a lot of companies that you know would make substantial investments but because of automation and other technology they they would have fewer employees. And as Commissioner Mayor, you say, well, we don't get self-tax anyway. That's usually more important for cities. We look at what value they're adding to the tax base. Okay. But it's 10 on all of the schedules and you're free to change that. That's what is your guidelines. Jim, I took both the previous one and the one that has been revised. I've gotten with Tammy McRae on it or tax assessor collector. She and his new house have got with BG on it. It's minimal changes end up at this point. I think the employees is the main thing for me. I think at one time during COVID, you remember there was several that were having a hard time retaining employees. There were in the way the the abatement agreement and this is not the abatement agreement, it's just policies guidelines and we tried in the abatement agreement to kind of address that by changing how you count employees or I think there were definitely a full time on-site employees until we made some changes in our agreements. That are not necessarily reflected in the policy. We'll do that on a case-by-case basis with the agreement. All right. Thank you, B.D. Appreciate that so much. Let's lose item 14 B precinct. Any comment? Oh yeah. Is anyone else that is here that we have make open comment on that particular item? Yes ma'am. If you come forward, states that thank you B.D. states your name for the record. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Good morning. My name is Deborah Golca. I'm speaking on 14 Bay, the kid of one. Consider and approve and always stop control at the intersection of Bowdark and Lowdon star bend. On behalf of the Red Man. We made this for clarification. We were still still making comments on 14A, which has to do with the procedures for tax abatement. But do you stare at there for it? Is there anyone else that would like to make comment on the tax abatement? There being none, then let's move to 14B. Is it item two or one that you're talking about? Number one. I'm sorry? Item one. Okay. Proceed. Okay. On behalf of the residents of the city of Montgomery and those that live in the villas in the oba. But I'd like to request a three way stop sign at the intersection of Lone Star Bend and and bow dark. Currently there's only one sign there. A three-way stop with controlled flow of traffic and speeding in this area. And with the accelerated growth of the community, this is proven for the safety of our neighbors and children. I did send a letter to Commissioner Prism Dwin,woon Precinct, to be in the city of Montgomery. And I have 14 signatures, 45 signatures from concerned citizens that would like to see a three-way stop at that intersection. We can ask. Yeah, please. Oh, yeah. We've done a traffic study, and we're looking at it really really hard and I feel confident that we're going to put that three-way stop there. Okay, that's three-way stop. Yes, ma'am. Okay, thank you for the opportunity. Appreciate it so much, Deborah. Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to make comments on precinct 1-1? Yes. Yes, ma'am. Yes, I'm up again. This is Darlyn Fetch and I represent the same area. And as we spoke at your meeting in Montgomery, there were two parts to this. And the other part is a stop sign at Lone Star Band, the other end of Lone Star Band, and Lone Star Parkway. The traffic there is backing up on Lone Star Band because all of the people from Rauvin area and the Lone Walden Road are cutting through instead of taking Rauvin 5. And there's times that the backup to turn on to Lone Star Bend is your 15-20 cars stacked up on Lone Star Bend trying to get onto Lone Star Parkway. And where they only once was the stop sign. And trying to see what's on coming when there's somebody in the turn lane on Lone Star Parkway is very hard to see what is going on. So if there was a stop, three-way stop sign there, it would improve traffic a lot. And even a white turn lane off a floan star bend on the Lone Star Parkway would help the back up because those people could turn a lot easier than the ones that are trying to turn left to get up to 105. And this really needs to be looked at because it at rush hour and it's gold time, it is a big backup. And you're welcome. There again, we're doing a traffic study there also and I think it's more appropriate to put in a light. I guess. I'm going to show you. You can't really stop.ore Parkaway, but two stop signs. You'd really have a traffic jam there is we're having all over this county, but yes, ma'am, we are. The problem with that is. I was thinking that we were thinking that at least to stop sign now, I understand eventually that we're going to expand Longstore Parkway to a four-way yeah, but that's Involves a whole lot of other which may be a long time. We just need something now Red light's gonna work best and it's all about the money. You know, it's it's um But that's something we're discussing and we're gonna get something taken care of there If you guys could get together together, sure. I don't talk about the settings right after. Thank you very much for your comments. All right. Let's move forward to appreciate one on the same item on the first one. Appreciate. Thank you. My name is Adam Minton. I actually live on the corner of Bow of bowdark bend and lo and star parkway. Been there ever since they cut that road through. Speeding and all sorts of other issues are concern. Alongs littering. I agree with her. There needs to be a stop light out at Lone Star Bend and Lone Star Parkway. Right. However, the three-way stop all that's going to do is impede myself from pulling out of my driveway. As it sits right now, people around that corner, they don't pay attention to that stop sign. So two more stop signs. That's not going to fix your problem. I think that studies every day. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's something we can discuss. But I propose putting one at Harbor Side Lane in the middle of Boat Arc to stop them from speeding. I've seen rollovers on that street already. It's not a matter of when or if it's when we'll have fatalities. We get obscene gestures, people pass. It's a 30-mile an hour. And then on the side street there, which is a city street, 25 miles per hour, people passing. I got actually videos on my security camera near near head on collisions. We pretty close times at the corner. There's gonna block us from getting out of our driveway. You guys to get together, sure. We just have to get where you talk. I mean because that's that is the city street. Yes sir. It goes out to the Lone-Store Parkway. Should have never been cut through to begin with. Well, all it is like she said, it's all Walden. Yeah, Walden, nice track. Well, it's a third. It's a cut through is what it is. It's a shortened and we all use it. They know. Oh, I know, but they don't pay attention to, yeah, I'm not sure how many times almost on any road we have in Montgomery County people don't pay attention residential street though a little different now. Yeah, Adam. you very much yes or appreciate your comments and what else you would care to comment on B1 they're being known precinct 1 B2 consider and pretty establishing and always stop control the intersection of snow like snow lane and long street anybody here to speak speak about that? All right. There being none of us reconvening court and take appropriate action. Do we have a motion to approve the new procedures for our tax evapment? The motions are a second. I'll second. The motion is second. All in favor? I posed? Motion carries. All right. And then do we have a motion to approve item B1? I make a motion to approve item B1 and B2. It's our second. Our second. We have a motion of the second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Together. Are we all in favor here? Aye. Opp I opposed motion carries. All right. Thank you very much. Precent to Commissioner Riley. Consider discuss and accept the P.G.O. land plan period in P.G.O. is Montgomery County new courthouse study. Commission June the 20 June of 2022. We've been working on this. We've been looking at this for a while and I wanted to make sure that we have this study out in front of the public so they can start looking at what we're. What we're gonna try to accomplish sometime in the future. So, judges, I've got some judges here that going to talk to us for just a few minutes. It will be a few minutes. Last time I sat there was an hour. We're going to go through this quick so we can see the drawings and see the plans we've got and we're ready when you are. OK, so we definitely don't want to waste any of your time and we've done a lot of work to streamline the presentation to only keep it to things that we think is very important. I know some of you know this information, but we also know that the public is listening and also interested. So we are starting. These are just a few pictures of the past court houses. Basically we're here because we don't want to hear us counting or Montgomery County. We talk about law enforcement prosecution. That cannot take place if there's no place to hold court, to get people to go to trial. Have please, that's the only way these cases come to a a conclusion is when they are forced to trial. When we have a trial, that means the courtroom is busy with trial. It means that the plea dockets, the things that go into getting rid of cases have to stop unless we can get another judge or an aj to be in another courtroom handling those-cases. Right now we're using my court for a lot of that because I have got a legislation that allows me to have my dockets online, which leaves the courtroom free for that, but we are running up against space limitations as you're aware. So overview, I know that you all are mostly aware of this big circle at the bottom of the main courthouse up above that is the county courts at RAHL, up above that is where the district attorney office and the felony courts are, to the left of that would be the tax office and right below that is the place where the LAG has court and where the jury's symbol remains. Situation present, no space for future courts. The original court house was built in 1936. The Wings were built in 1966. They create modern day safety concerns for court operations. A potential ADA nightmare. I have a presentation that I'm just going to give you some information on. We'll hand it to you on McClennon County and what they went through that the courthouse was lead on a lot of ADA violations and endless repairs including the elevator shaft that you guys just approved to the tune of a quarter million dollars a couple of weeks back. County Courts building and the all-work building were added through, do you want to pass it out? Thanks, there's a lot of each. and the county court's building and the all-work building were added through, do you want to pass it out? They still, yeah, a lot of each. The county courts building and the all-work building were originally designed as office space. They were connected then by crosswalks to the original courthouse. That created additional safety concerns and we have limited time to fix because we don't have room for future courts. The relevant history is that was the original courthouse here's the 1966 WING addition, much to the sugar and the Texas Historical Commission. In 1997 was the last time that any comprehensive plan was made to address courthouse space in Montgomery County. It was when the county courts building was purchased and that was the last time where there was specific space that was purchased, required or built specifically for the courts. Since then, the US population has gone with 24%, Texas 57%, Montgomery County almost 200%. That's half a million people. Since 1997, which the last time we had comprehensive planning, we have three new district courts, three family, AJ courtrooms, three new county courts at all. The ninth court of appeals has started having court in Montgomery County, they have space, and we gave up our jewelry assembly room in the Cre Recreate and it is now across the street from the main courthouse. To facilitate all this extra space we've created band aids. The all-wraith building was never intended to be a courthouse yet we have built out all our felony courts on the top floor. The bird's eye view is this is of the I'm going to be joining Peno coming in in the group, the third time you are in the group, the third time you are in the group, the third time you are in the group, the third time you are in the group, the third time you are in the group, the third time you are in the group, the third time you are in the group, the third time you are in the group, the third time you are in the process, then they have to be brought back across the courthouse square to the other court facility that they are going to. Third-by-view, for band-aids, we have continued extensive repairs to WW2 building, power issues, and if they're brucing with my ability to be able to handle emergency situations like the mental health market because I can access my computer and the files they're own, we have discussed safety issues in the executive session, we can do more so today if you'd like. We have more overflow, quote, and most recently in one of my most recent trials, we had a jury, we had to stop trial, generally at least three or four times because we couldn't have trial in my courtroom. There was an unexpected construction outside that was interrupting us being able to hear. There was no other courtroom. I had to reach out to my fellow judges. They would give me space maybe four days, maybe four half days. That means we had to uproot a journey, every verse, every written source, and from day to day I had to tell them we're gonna be here, go to the facility and go to that building. That would be like this morning if you had to stop every hour on the hour and go somewhere else and use Quilt and Square and start our over again. That's just not the way business should be here, they, definitely not court. We have an entire floor of unusable space in the courthouse that's crumbling and settling the OJR at the top of the courthouse. We've had to have a p-dirt asbestos remediation every time any changes are attempted to be made in the main courthouse. Inmate took home inmate with judges prosecutors and the public. We've had public attack inmates, which just causes the burls to have to jump in and risk injury to break up their fights. This is not an appropriate security situation for any courthouse. This is the burls attempting to bring inmates in through the back doors of the courthouse, which is how transport has to be done on a regular basis multiple times a day. The main thing which we're looking at cannot access that allulates to large, so that means it takes up to 15, maybe 17 dollars out of the courthouse into the back alley to protect that process. The last time we addressed, we can't evidence this issue, there's in 2022, and we created a county court at number six. I was the admin judge at that time with a county court and then we'll present to you about one of the first questions. I think it was Commissioner Ralker stated at the very beginning, where are we gonna put it? There's no room, we know up for this court. That conversation ended up after the creation of that necessary court and our CPS court was first to re-locate to a vacant area, which is a very smart area and probably not appropriate for CPS proceedings, but it's our real reluctance. This was a definite like a plot regarding the lack of availability and we made leadership with thank you, Commissioner Commissioner Riley because you always not only question your judges and care for about what you're approving but you will also walk across the street to the courthouse to look yourself at what's going on with ours appreciate that. So the verdict is in an attempt to save money by prior commission's courts. been's been undermined by the continued and unforeseeable exposure population growth in the Montgomery County acquisition of the Atrium Building in 97 was the last attempt to collect a full plan for future courts that was almost 25 years ago. The population is a half million people less than now. It is not a problem of remaking there's incumbent upon you to size. Continued pathways that will on now, there will be no appropriate footprint down to the corner in which a courthouse may be placed. There will be continued waste to maintain an integrated dysfunctional unsafe buildings that are not possible to properly secure, we will have a dysfunctional branch of governments. We will end up at Karrist County. People will be given PLBans because there will be no place to put them and there will be no courts to try them on. To continue to deploy tax money on temporary vendors that possibly might cause more tax pay lowers than properly addressing the problem now. Keith? Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Judge, for giving us a few minutes. And you can thank Judge Blair and Judge Bayes because I really condensed my slideshow down. I originally started with the top 10% of counties which would be 25 and looked at what always happened in those counties some of them have experienced Explosive growth like us and some of them have been large for a long time. I'm gonna focus on just a few today I know this is the question that's asked anytime something comes up and probably any type of county government What are they doing in this county that we look at and use as a comparison? So some of these are counties that you're going to recognize. I use common arbitrary numbers as growth since 2000s to make, so I'm comparing apples to apples on Montgomery County. If you'll see there 293 to 743,000. So we're at a plus 153,000. Keep in mind we have eight district courts, six county courts, about five and one probate courts, so 14. Fort Bend is the closest one to us geographically that we're looking at. There are two ahead of us on the population chart. They have the same number of courts as us, but they have, obviously, they have a historic courthouse in downtown that is, as you can see, beautiful. What they did originally was add onto the back of it. And then when that got to be not enough space, the border leased, the Travis building where their courts were until they had the Justice Center built, which I believe was a two phase, maybe even three phase project completed back in 2009 and 2011. Interestingly, and they have seen their growth as similar buyers a little bit more, but I also have statistics from Texas OCA on the number of cases that the District and County Courts law dispose of in a year and the last full calendar year they have is the September 22 through August 23 so that they have good data statewide. In that time period our district and county courts at law moved 31,800 roughly cases for Ben with the same number of courts moved roughly 24,000 so we are and I these numbers are important because that's how busy the courthouse That's how busy all the courts are And I'm gonna tell you and move on to the next county Deadly before you move to the county. Yes. What are y'all proposing? Well, how do y'all suggest we don't get there? That's Judge Bay. Right. Yeah. All I am is the geography there It got to to compile what's happened and all these and I will tell you this if you have any specific questions for me afterward I mean I've got a ton of info on what they've done in a lot of different counties not even some that aren't even in Texas have experienced similar growth um... didn't county 131 percent you see they just uh... just I think hit a million million. And I talked to a actually county court at law five judge there at a seminar I was at last Thursday. He's a criminal court, just like CCL five here. And when I mentioned to him, I started off to use them as a good example because you see they have another beautiful historic downtown court house and they did a a couple of things between one and two but two was built on the slide there that's their courts building. When I first started this I thought three was where they had their courts but three is basically this building that's their administrative courthouse. I mentioned it to that judge and he kind of laughed a little bit and said well Marquiel's building is good and he said, well, yeah, we have probate courts and other courts right now that are often a warehouse because when we built it, we didn't build it big enough. I don't think they were expecting to be in a million when they got there. The county's plan on building three indicated that the four floor of that may hold some of those courts that are right now elsewhere. I don't have solid source source for that other than their counties plan did indicate that the fourth floor of that administrative courthouse could potentially hold some courts as of now it doesn't have any district county court law probate courts. Those are in building two, which is the courts building that was built in 1998. Collin County, now I will say this, I think Collin, if y'all ever, what was your total disposition of cases? Oh, Denton County, 33,900. So 2,000 more than we were 31, eight, there were 33, 9, they have 20 judges. 20, when I say judges, I'm talking about elected judges. That's not counting AJs. That's not counting 40 child support or some of the counties have CPS court judges that are not elected judges. So that 20, you know, our 14 actually is 20 judicial officers that we have. These 20s are probably 20 and 28, 29, maybe even 30 if you count their.J.'s and other judges who are not elected. I'm talking about elected benches, 20 in Denton County. Now Colin County, they have 23. They move 39,000 and they've got 1.2 million population. Their courthouse, if there's one to look at for how to handle this stuff, I mean, their plan and I'm not talking about what their courthouse looks like. When I was finishing my research on them, I saw in their commissioners court materials their plan for 2026, 2028. I'll just cut through it. They have similar thing and their building one is used kind of as Mr. Greffin mentioned. It's leased out and used for a number of different things. It doesn't house any government function as far as I know. It's just a historical building. It's not a museum. I don't think it may have one or two small ones in it, but it's leased out for private events. building too was the report house from 1979 until it was sold to the city of McKinney To be used as their new city hall which never ended up happening But the building on the bottom right of the slide which is what they have now it is This is it from the side I went to it a few years ago not for this just because I was there and I wanted to take a picture of it. And I never saw the side view so I had no idea how deep it was. You know I didn't see there was a Sally Ford entrance there on the middle of this slide. And this is what I was talking about when I said that they're really thinking forward. If you'll see where that black truck is parked there, truck is parked there It's a parking lot. They have an aerial on that future plan of their expected buildout and they already have planned courthouse expansion right there That is in the work right now and then planned how many acres is that on? Okay, that's what I was going to tell you at the end as I have a Okay, that a spreadsheet sources and everything. I can get it for you. The reason, and here it is on paper, but I really need to get it to you because it has links that you can click. Okay. I do have that opened up. It is large. I can tell you that. to 300,000 square foot courthouse. Do you have any adeacres? That's alright. We can... Okay, I mean I... I would just curious. Okay. Right, so if anyone wants to look on the slide before that I did have the little QR. I think is what it is that you can click on to see their PGA else work up on that courthouse. And it has kind of the whole bill about expected or the expenses and all that. So this is where I would keep going and list off individual counties. One at a time and tell you everything happened there and other history all their poor houses and these two said I couldn't do that. But we're good with that. Okay. You know, this is really interesting to me. I was going to get to interesting. I know. It is interesting. We understand where you're at. We understand when we're trying to get to. Yeah. kind of curious to see if the Pekow drawings that we looked at for the last two or three years have changed So I don't know who's up next I'm No, no good Williamson County. Yes, sir. You take his much time. I appreciate it I and I understand I know what a right if I was to tell you everything that I know about some of these everybody in here with either fall asleep I'm gonna thank you. Thank you. You took time. You need I appreciate it I understand I'll pass a county there in the middle there the one that's closest to us in population and they built that courthouse in 1991. They have a lot more courts than we do. They have 28 that's twice as many elected district and CCL judges. And then the year that we processed 31,800, they processed 34,300. They're about 120,000, 130,000 population higher than us. I think but their growth rate is low. It was a 3% when I looked at it on a longer time frame and less than 1% in the last five years. This is Hidalgo County that's brand new, that's included because that one, they just got their occupancy certificate from the mayor of Edinburgh. I think they moved in January of 25. This is in Potter County, this in Emmerillo. And they have had very similar, the slide that I used to have with them shows a courthouse that is the same age as our 1933 courthouse. And then in 1980s building that they built. And then this one that they're just not doing, the population there is odd because Em Emeril has cut in half, half of it's in Potter County, half of it is in Randall County, Canyon is the county seat of that but so their population doesn't put them anywhere near the top 10% for their reason. And that's the one that's in Travis County that was built finished in 2022. You'll probably see this one if you've been to the beach in Galveston in the last decade that is the Galveston County Justice Center right on the side of I-45 when you entered the building or enter the island and I've got the court data on all these counties if any of your interest in it but I will. That is the side view or the the wide view of Bell County. They have a about a 300 some-d thousand population, but they have a higher case count for their population due to the location there by the Fort. They changed the name to Carvazos. Thank you for Carvazos. So they have a considerably higher case count for their population given that. that. So as I said, if any of you individually want to find out more about what they've done in other counties, they have a lot more data, they have a lot more sources, but that is all you're getting from me today. This last list are just the ones that have very recently either all-building or the Commission's Court have just approved Ector County of death as they just passed a resolution to build a new court house. Smith County they're brick and I mean they're building slabs right now or forms I guess. And there you go that that's kind of the counties right now that are either in the process of building or have already approved it and one of those I think is already finished. So now let Judge Bates come talk to you more about the plan here. About us. You got to hear about how we got here. You got to hear about how other counties are handling a similar situation and now we're back to looking at us. That's the county courthouse. I mean, you've heard about how it was 1936, think about this. That is three years before the World War II broke out in Europe. It is in a state of complete disarray. And you said just two weeks ago, Commissioner Gray, let's see if we can hear it on here. We cannot. You said our infrastructure, we are so far behind on our infrastructure. That building is probably the prima example of that. In 2019, you hired PGAL to do a survey of downtown facilities they did. There was the report card. They characterized the courthouse as being a fair condition, which I think is generous. But they said that the tax office is actually in poor condition. You've heard a lot of the courts. Let's take a minute for the tax office. That's a department that's in need too. The courthouse is the oldest building the county has, the tax office is the second oldest, and it is a department that needs to move. What we are proposing today involves a courthouse with a tax office in it. So why is it that the tax office needs to move? Basically it's the same reason as the courts. Tammy is completely out of space. Look at those pictures. She's storing things for the ceiling. The picture is the same. The picture is the same. The picture is the same. The picture is the same. The picture is the same. The picture is the same. The picture is the same. The picture is the same. The picture is the same. The picture is the same. the elevator won't move smoothly unless you pull the grate in towards you and you better pull it pretty far or you're going to lose a finger. It's not an ABA compliant, it's not great. Back about a month ago, the Houston Police evidence room had drug addicted rats. The rats were enjoying eating all of the evidence in several drug crimes. That's not a great thing to have. Now, the good news is, Taney doesn't have drug addicts rats. But she does have them. She's got a rat infestation in the tax office. You can see those two little critters that used to be alive, wrapped up in plastic, what he believed. That's just from December out of her office. But do you understand it's not just the tax office that's rat infested? Look, there's our courthouse. There's one of those dead critters sitting right there on the courthouse steps. Don't have accounting on the camera county. We can do better. We need a solution and we need it quickly. We're going to be at a million population in just seven years since the time to act is now. Here's what you're going to now. You're going to ask Commissioner Gray. The proposal or question, what is the cost? What's the taxpayer impact? And how are we going to deflate a taxpayer impact? What is the cost? In June of 2022, PGA was commissioned to do a new core cost study, which they did. They took extensive time and effort and labor to get all of the data and all of the information. It was finally completed with pricing in June of 2023. The pricing that they gave us is tax title and license pricing. It is out the dual pricing for the building to be moved and ready. So these are prices that you can channel, no surprises along the way. Not to mention, they gave this five land plans for you to choose from. Anyone of the five will accomplish the goals that they identified and you've got the cost for each. So what does the cost look like? They range between $131,085,000. We'll let the sticker shop wear off, shake it off. This is a big building. It's going to be expensive and it's also mission critical But one thing is the best bit is the one that comes in at a hundred and sixty million dollars So what do you get for a hundred and sixty million? Is that twenty two money or is it today money? It's twenty four money. Okay. Yeah, they escalated it to twenty four So we're just a couple months behind it being solid numbers for today. So one sixty what does it get you? Well, as I told you for future. This is a 20 year plan, which means you'll have to hear from this again for a good two decades. You get a single structure. It's 291,000 square feet versus the 161,000 square feet that we have right now, plus as I mean the Bayerists will tell you, having to guard four public entrances in the four court buildings we have now is terrible. One building, one public entrance, much more secure. We'll have 28 courtrooms. We're building 20 of them right now. Shell space for eight more in the future when we need them. And then there's a major cases courtroom for the larger cases that go on our bigger audience or have more parties. It also doubles as a jury assembly room. Now, on real point now, we're building 20 now because we have 20 judges with all the AJs right now. And I will tell you, we have 17 courtrooms. We are already three short of where we need to be. The tax office, as I mentioned, has come in with us. It's a 45,000 square foot space. This is a two-for-one advantage for you on the capital improvement front because Plumies authors moved to have a salary for it because of all the money and the license plates that go to the thousand square foot space. This is a two-foot one advantage for you on the capital improvement front because Plumy's office moves down to Sally Port because of all the money and license plates that go in and out of that office. We need a Sally Port because it's a preservation company to the to the courthouse. We can share the Sally Port and so that's what they manage to put in the two projects together. If we build outside of downtown, the building is designed to have a jail that could be added onto it, but if we build in downtown there is no room to build a jail. However, PGAL has drawn the downtown plans with an idea of having 6,000 square feet for basically a mini jail. And what that means is the prisoners can come over in the morning, spend the entire day in the mini jail and then go back in the evening. People get arrested at the courthouse during the day, they go down to the mini jails, they can be processed. The whole idea is it cuts back on transport dramatically, which will be a huge cost savings for our county, more on that in a minute. And then, who's coming with us? It's going to be the district clerk, the county clerk, the DA's office, the attorney attorney will have conference rooms there, it will be IT, the sheriff's bail institution, and the office of court administration, and that will point out, you had a consent agenda on the item earlier trying to look for space for the county clerk and for the district attorney because they need more space, pick anyone of these five PGA projects that will have all the space they need, not for right now, but for 20 years from now. You won't see another agenda item like the one that you dealt with today for a really, really, really long time. Now, what is the impact on the taxpayers? You have Mr. World by going to numbers at the end of January for the right bond. Moving off of these numbers, the bond that you picked is the $480 million dollar one, no tax increase. If you pick any one of the PGA plans, we move into bond scenario number two, which means it will cost a tax increase. A half a cent per $100 on a $100,000 home we're talking about our taxpayers having to pony up an extra five bucks a year. Let's fill in a cup of coffee. But like you, we're a good student taxpayers dollars, and we want to make sure that cup of coffee isn't even something that impacts their lives too much. So we've come up with a number of sources of revenue so that you can pay for a substantial part of this project with revenue, not taxes, where we start. We started the tax capital improvement project account. There's 5.6 million in it right now. Tammy is on board because we're moving her office into the courthouse to put money in up that money right up front. That's money you can put down this project two day. Cash money. Next we'll add to the court facility fund. That was a fund that was created in January of 2022. And it is a percentage of the filing fees that are paid with civil and family cases. That fund, as of September of last year, has $550,000 in it, but bear in mind, every time some refunds will answer, more many goes into those coffers. The $550, that's what we have right now to put down on the project. What about when the project is completed? We will be vacating all worth Annex, Q, and the tax office, we can sell them. Those are on the tax rolls of $24 million. They are class B buildings that would sell between $145 to $155 square foot. And that means that you would get a sales price of $28.8 million to $30.8 million, which is a huge chunk of paying down the principal on the data associated with the courthouse. All in one first swoop, some of that you can do immediately. Where else have we got? We will go back to the trial for the Quote Facility Fund. Remember, this fund is continually adding on. It averages about $16,000 a month, and annually about $200,000 a year, which means that that still a source of revenue to help us pay for the courthouse in our taxes. What else we got? They're executive suites. The idea is that that shell space, when we build out eight more courthons, when we need them, it sits empty. It's 35,000 square feet. It's a class A building that leases for $29 a square foot. So what could we do if it other than leave it empty? Well, what if the county decided to lease it to some executive suites company, let them handle the bill about, and then they can lease it to attorneys for emigrations, depositions, and conferences. The same things that attorneys are always asking us to use the courthouse for any answer. Or is that what we know? But imagine if in this case the answer was yes, that's $1 million of revenue a year for the county. What else? There's Colin County. It's popping up again. Advanced Center. Colin County renovated its historic courthouse as have many across the state of Texas and those who have only have lab reviews. Our courthouse turns 100 in just 11 years. We partner with the Texas Historical Commission for a complete renovation, tear off the wings, restore it to its art deco glory, and suddenly it can become pretty much anything you want. Car and county is a good model of what it can be. It became an events center. They lease it for weddings and receptions and conferences and conventions. And if they lease all the space out, it's $8,100 a week. Now, maybe we lose this out of 100% or 100% of the time. But if we do just 50%, that's an extra $200,000 for the county. And that's not even a good number. The good number is that every county that has done a historic renovation of their courthouse has experienced an economic boom. Warton County said that their property values around the courthouse went up 279%. 21 Hollywood movies have been filmed at Texas courthouses, and the Texas tourism industry is a 74 billion with a B dollar a year industry and guess what tourists like to come see. The estimate is that there's roughly 9,000 people a year to go to see these courthouses. I think he's as among them. But this is something that is a benefit to our economy. It's a benefit to the people in this community. And it honors our heritage and our history by fixing up that old courthouse. Well, what else can we do? This really speaks to the issue that you have next on the agenda Commissioner Gray because we too believe in government efficiency and we believe in spending money wisely and carefully and this is what the next two items deal with. The first is prisoner transport. As you heard, we do multiple trips every single day. Jail, the courthouse, courth, jail, jail, courthouse, courthouse, the jail. The sheriff's office has estimated that depending on the number of trips, that's 350,000 to 500,000 annually. We can reduce that to two trips, because we have a hooding facility. We'll come over in the morning, we'll go back in the evening that is a savings for the county, a very $2,840,000 and 1.2 million a year. That's money we're spending anyway. We're just asking you to spend it more reasonably. And so too, the repairers. You know how these buildings are. You all have been down this road once or twice before. We had the 2020 indoor flood and the annex building that destroyed four courtrooms. We had the 2022 HVAC going out in the main courthouse which caused you to get a show for 22,000 months or 11 months. The 2024 elevator project, $4 million. Let's spend the money better. It's money that is going to spend anyway. Let's spend that to pay down the debt on the new courthouse. And one that will bring us three important things. Health, safety and security. Come on. There we go. These are courthouse. It is infested with rats and black mold and ancestors. It is an electrical mess. I've clicked two-funk through. It's an electrical mess with all those wires hanging on the outside of the building on the portacles with the standing water. Where it could go wrong. And there's an electronic mess as you can see from the paddles and the carpet on the basement floor of the courthouse. The reviews on the bottom two pictures are out my office window and you can see the standing water's been there so long that on the left hand side, we've got nice and finished growing on the roof that supports those PVC pipes. The old coat has doesn't have hot water, it doesn't have a spring for system and the oven of a fire, and it can't have one because of the aspect of the black mold in the building. And then there's the jail. The upper two floors of the old courthouse is the old abandoned jail. It has literally tons of weight, a steel and concrete right over our heads, and look how that concrete is doing. You can see the rebar. It is crumbling dramatically and that is over the heads of the thousands of people who visit the courthouse every single year. Security is another issue that we need to discuss in executive session with a two-minute video that we would like to show you when we get in there. And so let me end what's the ask? Well, we want you to recognize we are out of space, we are out of time, we are out of options. We are coming to you with this proposal and it's already years too late to be doing it, but it's going to cost you even more if you wait. And that's not just about inflation and money, it's about the quality of life in the government county. Well, that sounds like an exaggeration. It sounds like hyperbole. It is neither. Here is the reality. We are in a situation where we are three courtroom short, right now. A report came out yesterday that we need two more criminal courts right now. But the reality is your judges are doing amazing things. You heard Keith talk about it. We clear 31,800 cases. There are only five counties of comparable size that is better and every one of them has between six and eighteen more judges than we have. They are averaging per judge, twelve hundred and nineteen hundred cases a year. We're averaging twenty-three hundred cases per year, but it's not a sustainable model. The case violence are going up, the news is becoming greater, and we can't ask you for a new court because there is no place to put one. And if you want to know where that road leads, look down south. Harris County needs 26 more judges. They can't get them and as a result, third judges are releasing people on lower bonds and PR bonds. And December, one such fellow got out committed to capital letters. Just last month, another such fellow got out and committed five felonies. This is not high-pain This is what's happening. This is the path that we're on. We need a solution. Just two weeks ago, Commissioner Riley, you remarked, and I couldn't agree with you more. We don't want to be compared to that. Harris County on anything. And we do want. But we need your help to be able to get us off the wrong path and back on the right path. We're asking to be the heroes who make McKenna County great again. We need a new courthouse gentleman and we are asking for your support on this project. Thank you. Thank you. That was a great presentation. I was in kidding at the beginning when I said I sat through almost an hour, this presentation was longer and more detailed. And I want to thank you to the, no, I'm seriously going to say thank you to the judges for putting this together. K-Shall forgot they have day jobs. So this was a lot of work on Y'all's work. I really appreciate it. Just look, look, it took two years to get a road bond to do that. So my question goes back to how do you suggest we approach this? I want to hear from you all what you're putting forth how we should do that, when you think we should do that. On the funding side of the evening? That's all that matters right now. Fair enough. Well, you could do a bond election if you were so inclined in November. We also would like to explore the possibility of using certificates of obligation to get something to happen more quickly. We are open, however, to any, we will have big sales, if that's what it takes. Commissioner, we are desperate and we are determined and we will walk this path with you to make it a power-to-bow funding mechanism to accomplish the goals. I know all those feelings very well, well. This is back you do. But we are here. We are a resource for you. And whatever discord decides is the best option for a funding move. We will just be thrilled that you have decided to fund it. This is Commissioner Reilly. Thank you. Why always item? Do you have anything to add? Well, I just wanted to bring this up. finally get it out to the public because we've been talking about this for a while and we've been looking at different designs. And I think the one that we're talking about with the tax office on the bottom floor and the holding sales, I mean, all that is exactly what we need to get away from. And share if I'm not trying to talk for you with the transport and prisoners and trying to unload in this back alley and locking streets. I mean, that's just a friggin nightmare So and I'm I'm proud of the presentations that y'all put together y'all not only said here's the building But here's some things that we can do to help you with that and help the offset some of these costs So, young went through a lot of effort and I do appreciate it. Hold on better or more presentations than what I saw the last time. So. and help offset some of these costs. Y'all went through a lot of effort and I do appreciate. Hold on better or more presentations than what I saw the last time. So you come up with some solutions, you come up with what we need to be looking at and I wanted to get this out so we could get it in front of the public and I wanna make a motion that we accept this presentation as at least a starting point of looking at what we need to do. We can always add to this or move it or change it whatever but we need to come up with something that we all agree that this is what we need to try to do. I'm not trying to say we're going to go sell CO's next week but we need to be looking at that. We need to be looking that way and I think this is what this design and this project is what we need from Montgomery County and I've been wanting to do something with that old courthouse for 35, 40 years. It's never I won't go over there. It's something needs to happen to that old courthouse. So I make a motion that we take this and accept this presentation and we can always change and add to it if we see fifth or however we want to proceed with this. So when you say the presentation, and we can always change and add to it if we see fit. How do we want to proceed with this? So when you say the presentation, are you talking about this one that they gave out last course? This one or the one that they just presented? That one they just presented right there. Okay. The documentation that you have, the documentation that you have, I think it's an advanced because there was a lot, so you would have a chance to look at it, but what she has prevented is the foundation of the document. Do these include the county clerk and district clerks in those spaces as well? They do. In fact, there's a 58 page document which we gave you two weeks ago that is the original before the for the pricing list done. And you you will see on pages I think it's like 19 through something like 42. There are spreadsheets. Color coded spreadsheets which describes the square footage requirements for each of those offices individually. So it's not just county card needs this much space. It's county card needs this much space for for an intake window It needs this much space for this number of employees on a 20 year projection. It needs so it's very detailed Analysis of what the square footage requirements are and it doesn't include all of those departments is the eighth floor still vacant And you know when you know when we set through the presentation before we'll be gal The eighth floor was completely vacant at that time for future growth. Yeah, still the way it is I'm rich, but we didn't have an age. Oh, I'm sorry. I know No, I think it's in the middle. This is the show space supposed to be in the middle like four, four, five, something like that Still like family Top of love there you go. You remember same. At the top of the. Remember better than a story building. Correct Paul? Yeah. I mean, depending on. Yeah, I watched. We went through two presentations on this. Those years ago. And then you have to have it for future growth for what you're talking about. But, sir. But commissioners' rallies isn't motion isn't about finalizing the plans about accepting this presentation. Yeah. And get the answer to the public's question. You want something to look at? You don't have to talk about it. I'll second accepting the presentation. Yeah. Discussion? All in favor. Couple things. Yes, sir. Personally, I love it. Glad. What did you've done is incredible. Thanks. I especially liked the parts about how we're going to fund this. Yes sir. You got to figure out how to do without a tax increase though. Number one, I can't support that. Number two, won't support a CO. Has been voted on by the people. If I'm back, number three, we have a bigger issue. What's that? Jail. Yes, sir. Staying not coming to us and telling us we need to replace our course. We can come up with three more courts right now. Just for conversation, because I'm not against this. Please understand. Okay. We have a priority issue with we have an inmates sleeping on the floor at the jail right now. So somehow in this configuration, because you've done fabulous work here, you're going to figure all that into it. And because that is a priority that today we've got to do something about. Okay, and let me just assure you, and the sheriff, who I know is seated behind me, we know the jail is in need of a match. That's really the best thing that could happen to it. And we know that. We as members of your electric system, as in Strike One and drop it some more with gasoline. Yes. As you said, then. I'm always looking for solutions. Commissioner, you know that. We know that we need a new jail. I am not suggesting that we do not, but we also need a new courthouse. And the reality is we must evose. Now, the only thing I'm prepared to present, of course, is the courthouse, that I agree with you that the jail is something that needs our attention and it is a solution that we may define and in the short term, not in the long term, I agree with you. I agree with you. There's more of the element to this whole deal as well. Let's have. How many of you here like waging in traffic raise your hand? We have a traffic problem. We have a $480 million bond. We already could reach the surface. That's kind of the same one thing, respectfully. This has been, and this is nothing new to Montgomery County, what you talk, either of those issues. But this is what has caused us to have court in four different buildings, with four different entrances and more exits than that, comparing it to other things that are needed. And this is not to say that we don't need a jail, it's not. But the part of the court house that she's in is 50 years older than the jail. I toured the jail as a Cub Scout before it opened. Right. I want to say I'm not opposed to this. I'm going to vote in favor of this. Okay. But these are other considerations along the way that you know we got to come out of the ether on this. We have got infrastructure issues that got road issues. Yes this is definitely part of that. And again I applaud your efforts. I especially like the way that you have structured some type of pay structure in this. That is awesome. Thank you. That's a great job, sir. Well, we stand with you, Commissioner. Oh, Commissioner, good job. Kiu, on the fact that this county has needs. Commissioner, you literally said that two weeks ago that we are so far become an infrastructure we are. We need vital mobility in this county because of all those people who are coming. We will need a new jail and we need a new courthouse and we simply have to find a way for the three to coexist in a funding vehicle. I want you to remember that all of the additional cars on the road that we have to account for as responsible government to make the quality of life better for these people, some of those folks go out drunk driving. Some of those folks go out and they have wrecks. Some of those folks break down on the side of the road and some of those are wrong for death when someone comes and hits them. All of those are scenarios that end up where. At the courthouse. house. That's why we have to walk this walk together and I am willing to go down this path with this court to make it all happen. Thank you. Yes sir. We have a motion. We have a second. Any more discussion? All in favor? I post motion carries. Thank you all very much. This awesome. Thank you. Appreciate it. It feels like Christmas. All right. Move it forward. Pre-shift. Four. All right. Well, I guess we'll jump into it. Almost need a mini recess, Judge. So I don't be one who's considered to discuss and take appropriate action regarding the creation of government efficiency task force. The task force shall be comprised of one rep from each member of commissioner's court. The government efficiency task force is charged with developing recommendations on improving service delivery and reducing cost associated with the Department supervised by commissioner's court. Which we can also discuss what is meant by department supervised by commissioners court. So, that being said, it's nice to see a huge conservative movement sweeping across this country, the state on the federal level and what's happening in the United States. So I'd like to move forward with getting a representative from each precinct and some department heads to work on cost savings, processes, procedures, transparency, all these things that we can improve and improve in Montgomery County. We can improve it. And our day lives, the state level, the federal level, at any level. And it seems you when you do in a job for a while to get complacent and to think everything's going smooth, which I would say be the first to say in Commendants County on how conservative, and how streamlined we are, but we need to start with your Which is Gilbert, and Compile Rest, and anything, any bids or contracts coming in that are above 5% from the year before, they need to be flagged and reviewed and put back out to bid or challenged with that service provider. For example, let me show you what we've done in precinct four. I've been an efficiency task force over that precinct for about two years now. And it's been a pretty good time, but just I'll share something with my peers, which I think I have already the striping cost got so inflated on a two-dollar stretcher road that we were getting Striped normally for around $8 to $11,000 jumped up into the neighborhood of $75,000 for two- stretcher road. So what we did, we turned them about our own striping rig and our own truck and the symbol of it. And we've since then striped nine miles a road. So we paid for the truck three times over, four times over, already. So if we start taking a look into those things, we start streamlining processes. I think we can eliminate a lot of costs. We talked about elections today. I started asking questions how much does the cost throw in a mail election? How much is a primary election? I didn't hear an answer. I don't know if you all heard an answer out there in the audience or up here, but I didn't. So it's nice to have a baseline to work off of to see what those inflation costs look like. I looked over at you, Rich, and asked, what are we looking at? What are we talking about here? I'm talking about a million dollars of inflation costs. So we need to start taking this, not saying we're not taking it serious, but we need to start drilling down on this and finding some of those savings and bringing them back to the court and applying it to law enforcement, to infrastructure and to roads. So again, the goal is to have representation from each precinct, limited number of department heads. I think after growth, my point of contact will be my chief of staff, Josh Pasquo. Please have your chief of staff skill with him if you want to participate. And the idea is that that task force would come back and report quarterly on what findings and what processes that we're looking at and what improvements we're making in county government, not government county government. So, I may comment? Absolutely, please. I think it's a great idea. We have in with support the idea of a government efficiency task force for sure. We've discussed this with my staff a number of times, especially in light of what's taking place in Washington. You know, as it is today though, we'd already be looking at 5 to 10% of a $440 million budget. So we're going to leave out 90, maybe 85%. And my suggestion in that whole deal is that if we're going to utilize this tax force, that we would move forward on doing all departments of the county, look at everyone including the elected officials for the preparation for the August budget, which would include all of our departments. And I would even make a motion that we approve that task force at the entire budget, including elected officials' budgets ahead of the next budget cycle, starting with the five of us appearing in the system of the Greatest and the Highest and the Highest, we would start with you first. Then you, then me, I'd be glad to go first. You can come look at my point. Let me start with you. I'm talking about I'm covering about and you're showing this task force and moving forward. I'm doing it If we're going to do that. I just says right now you're really covering I Don't understand what we're near cover at all. We're talking about comparison and I don't like comparison is out but I don't see how you compare Montgomery County to Washington DC. What's going up there? Listen, this is... comparison and I don't like comparison is all but I don't see how you compare Montgomery County to Washington DC what's going up there? This is nothing compared to that absolutely nothing. I don't know how we've got procedures in place with the partially department with a budget officer with the auditor with people all over this county, checking, double checking, what we're spending, how we're spending it, I don't know who's going to be Elon in this thing. And who's going to be the first, so who's going to be the first department that we go, that we go into and we try to figure out what they're not doing and we're going to figure out, I don't know nothing about purchasing. I don't know what he's doing right. I'm going to make a motion. We're in a lot of discussion here without a motion. I'm going to make a motion to approve the agenda item. Do we have a second? I've made the motion to do it on all options. I'm waiting for a second on that. If you want to make a motion in a second discussion, I said we do it in all departments. I even included in commission of raise to partner as well. You're certainly welcome to look into it, Judge. I wasn't suggesting that we looked into the elected officials. I don't want to go digging through precinct two and precinct one or how you all are spending your budget to do the roads, but we certainly can. I think we need to move. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. It's a motion because remember, with the way your proposing is anywhere from think about this. You got 60% of as elected officials of our budget. You got another 9% in debt service. You have an additional 30% that has to do. Let me just give you a few things. Our tours three and one rooms can't change that. Indigent defense can't change that outside entities and nonprofits, you could change that. It's only 0.28%. IT, we're going to change salary and benefits. See, that always what makes us all up and you're left with about 5% of that, which is not absolute. And for the record, I want to say, we have a balanced budget every year. We do it. We do a great job at it. We come up with it up here and we don't spend over what we budget. As a matter of fact, you're talking about carryover that we have. We always have a surplus giving us a triple a credit rating. My only thinking is, if we're going to get into this, let's really get into it. Rather than just dance around the fact that we're going to leave all of us out of it, but we're going to look at our department heads, which by the way, if you look at their stuff, most of them have got carrier. They would spend all the fact that we're going to leave all of us out of it, but we're going to look at our department heads, which by the way, if you look at their stuff, most of them have got carry over. They would spend all the money that we've given to them. Our job is to have them. We just said, there's a motion. If there's no shack at all. We just sit right here and listen to these judges tell us how they can change things. And it comes down to doing things different and involves the share of transportation. It involves the... they can change things and it comes down to doing things different and involves a share of transportation, it involves tax offers, it involves everybody. I'm just a man, I'm not a favor of a doge here in Montgomery County. Is that the same thing? Is that the same thing? Is that the same thing? Is that the same thing? Is that the same thing? Is that the same thing? Is that the same thing? Is that the just saying. I don't think it includes anybody. All I've got to say is I'm Elon Musk in Prese 1. So I kind of cut the butter in my department all the time. We tighten our belt. There are things we can improve. It's a great deal. I've talked about getting something to do the striping. Let me just remind you all of something. Two weeks ago we voted on a policy for outdoor elected officials. You guys do not want to look at cash, you don't want to look at capital. Even though by statute we're required to, you voted that down just to do an audit on assets. And yet you want to do this. So you're against making sure that the departments are running more efficiently across the county. Is that what I'm hearing? Of course not. That's what I feel like I'm hearing here. Hey, hey, hey, come here. Sure. You know that I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm sure there's this making complete. Now there's a motion for this or a second. Well, the motion, you made a motion on my agenda item judge, and that wasn't part of the agenda item for the elected officials. It was through the departments that we manage. So you brought up and you said in your own words, law enforcement. Law enforcement is almost none of the five you brought that up. You brought that in? I trust in my words yet. What I said was, finding more efficiencies and cost savings, which we could apply to law enforcement infrastructure and the things that we pay for out of the county coffers. Okay, just as an order of order. Just as for the order of the court. You brought it up, I made a motion. I modified what you were saying. Okay, so I made a motion. What I'm asking for is a second on that motion. If there's not one, then it will die for the life of a second. And we'll move on. And my motion is, is that when we move forward, we look at everything. Is there a second? My concern is that infl inflates it so much, Judge, that it turns into a witch hunt and that you can't get anything accomplished because we're worried about all these different directions. Why can't we systematically process through the departments like it's written here? Can we show you a suggestion? Like I'm going to say in a second. With the discussion is over. I'll call the question. Sure, a second. Can I make another motion for? For how I've got it? Yeah, but he never said that. It's going to die less than I can. Good. And then you can make another motion. Thank you. Okay. So, would you not have a second? The motion dies for a lack of second. Good. So I'll make a motion on I don't be one to proceed to doing an efficiency task force on the departments that we manage in Montgomery County. I'll second that. Thank you. On more discussion. Yeah I'd like to ask some discussion now that we've got motion in second. So how often would the task force be meeting? Well they would present a court quarterly. So I think they can merge that out between themselves, the task force, with input with us on how often, whatever's reasonable, weekly by weekly, spit bowling, how many departments are we talking about here? That were were that department that this task force would be looking into for processes, procedures, basically an internal audit is what I'm hearing. Not an elected officials department obviously, but so the department already do. Departments outside of elected officials, how many departments are we talking about? It's just an estimate, Commissioner, but I'll just say 28. Okay, so 28. So let's just do the quick math if we run through all of them in the course of a calendar year, it's about two per month. So they're probably going to need to meet at least twice a month. Is what you're saying? I didn't say that we would do them all at once and I think to, no, no, no, I'm saying if you just run through them. I don't know if they'll run through them. I would expect the group to bring the findings back to us and let us know. once and I think to you know that's what I'm saying if you just run through them. I don't know that they'll run through them. I would expect the group to bring the findings back to us and let us know what the best plan is. This is I'm trying to get a handle on it. I am pumped and my employees out of the office basically. Yeah. I'm looking at. Oh, we're going to need we will need to appoint. If we do this commission we will need to appoint a person from making our departments. I think I would. Yeah. Yeah. And put a show to it. I would propose. If we do this commission we will need to appoint it person from the department. I think I would. Yeah. Yeah. And put a chair to it. I would propose Jason Millseps to be the chair is done well with our ARPA money. He's established that he can do it. I've already appointed Josh as the chair for it though, Judge. Okay. I didn't know that. I apologize. Are we? We are not approved yet. We are your point people. Well, that's that's what I recommended when I brought the I don't forward. So let me let me just run through Let me just run through this quick scenario every year the engineer's office Maintenance maintenance I'm drawing a frigate blank. I T they all walk up here And Tell us what they need and it ends up being they need people You go to the engineers office right now and they're 90 to 120 days back behind on plates because they're stacked up this high They need people they don't need to be cutting anything. They need people. That's the honest God's truth. You go to the permit office They got to pile stuff that high too. What do they always say? I need people need people. That's the truth You go back there to robbing them and building maintenance They got more buildings and they know what to do with try to keep up with and people always want stuff done There's I don't have far behind they are but my real question is this I was keeping No, my real question is this, who is going to walk into the forensic center and know what we're trying to help her do Nobody nobody here in this room or anywhere in here knows what the forensic center is doing Nobody you can't do what you're trying to do what I see on the agenda We probably want't know about that one for a while, Commissioner. Say that again. We probably know about that one for a while. That's the most to me. Exactly. I'm talking about doing what you're talking about. You're talking about walking in there and seeing how she's operating. Do you know how to do that? No, not her, but I do know about procurement and about environmental. We've been working on a lot of these places, the streamline the processes. I'm just saying this is a bad idea to get for the employees of Montgomery County. How is it a bad idea to try to spin tax dollars more wisely and try to update. I really don't think that's where this is going to end up. And do you feel more efficient with processes and procedures? I brought to court after the 2023 budget. So what I thought would be improvements, I call the Muslims learn whatever, and after action review, simple things you do after meetings or I see a lot of engineers out here, projects, after meetings you do an after action review. I had a bunch of eyes just stare at me like I was an alien when I was sitting here discussing how we could make improvements. After the budget cycle. And then I sat through another budget cycle that made me want to vomit when I was up here. So that's how I feel about it. So with that being said- You were talking about in the middle of the budget process. Yeah, and I voted against it. Okay. I guess I saw this- I saw this agenda item as sort of an internal audit coming from the private sector. We did that every month. I mean, every single month we went back and we, it's like reviewing game film basically, right? You go back and say, okay, was there anywhere that we could have done a little bit better? Who's wheat? And there's wheat. The business that I was in. Okay. So for me, the way I took this agenda item in a way was you got this committee, probably chiefs of staff, let's call them from each area, that are doing nothing more than asking questions. Hey, how do you all do this? How do you do that? How do you do this? And they may come up with something, they may not. They may come back to us and say, you know what? Didn't find anything. But anything but they may come back and say hey talk to this particular department and this is a process they're doing that seems like maybe is repetitive or there's not an economy of scale here that we can come up with so for me having an internal audit where you just have people looking at things from a different angle I don't think it's a bad idea. What I don't want it to turn into, to your point, is a witch on it. That's exactly what it'll turn into. The, something else is that I don't think it is wise to have the, whoever chairs this physician represent one precinct. My part represents every vote in this county and all four precincts, and it needs to come out of the chief executive officer's office. Which would then not make it slanted one way or another because I have an interest in all of the people. You do, but the person you suggested also is a department head. So yeah, but that's under me. That's not a department that's under me, that's under elected official, and so that would not count. Well, that won't be looked at. Well, it won't be said. Well, no, it wouldn't, according to what he wants to do. I wanted to do it for across the board, but why did this, why did this, we already had a discussion, pardon me. Why does it need a head? I don't understand why the committee needs somebody to charge you the committee. Are we in charge of the committee? but why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it why is it to do their job. And it's their job is the same as us as commissioners to make sure everybody does their work. Anybody works for me. I hold them accountable. I've got supervisors. Every department head out there has got the same structure. And if there's an issue with that, that's something that we, you know, you bring them into your office in talk terms. talk to him so hey look, we need to try to improve this or do things. I don't have time to help run every other department. I'm like, Charlie, I don't know anything about what Gilbert does. I know a whole lot about what Robbie does, but Robbie is great at what he does. Everybody that's got, I just, and Commissioner, I hate to disagree with that, but I just think it's, I just think it's a waste of my time. Well, it was a little embarrassing when we had elections come up and we're talking about 47% and this increases, we had another item, the inflation increase was so big, we can't even get a cost on it on what we're paying out a pocket and then we're sitting here and no one wants to participate. Sure, go ahead. We'll take them. But to defense of that, we as a group decided, okay, this is an increase. It was brought to court like how it's supposed to operate. We all made a decision that hey, we need to look at that. It's too late to do it right now, but we will look at it and boom, we dozed that deal right here on the spot. And to that effect, any of us can bring anything to the court that we see a need to make changes on. We frequently do. So there's that element as well. So just to consider it, it's, yeah, well, this is the thing that's going on. I want to turn it to witch hunt for sure, but I don't know how you can avoid going to some department and asking point of questions without it being perceived as a witch hunt. I don't care how it's perceived. I'm here to see the best interest. Same here of the tax dollars and efficiencies and process of procedures that streamed one of these processes. I was in favor of this we talked about this a couple months ago when we did away with the department which was going to be special projects where I had suggested doing the same thing. Which it felt flat because apparently there was something in the past. Was there an administrator of the county? I guess before my time, our time and I have a vested interest as to my constituents to understand how some of this is operating and that it's as efficient as possible. I apologize if that's uncomfortable for some people, but sometimes it's uncomfortable getting better. I don't think anybody here who doesn't want to cut costs and make things more efficient to measure. But I think what we need to do is, let's take it as far as we can right now. If that's what we've already turned down to one, my motion died for a lack of a second. We have now a motion of which I have seconded. And if there's a more discussion, then we'll ask for the vote. All in favor of doing this, say aye. I'm not. I'm going to one point of discussion. And that's only the thing. That's what I'm concerned about the committee chair position. And so I'm going to vote no on this, but only because I want to bring it back with more clarity and more definition as to how this committee is set up and exactly what the structure is and what the mission is. I think personally I think this is a good idea. I just got through saying I think having an internal audit is not a bad thing. Okay so it it's like a roll call that? You just roll call it. You said you don't, you vote against it. Where are you, Commissioner Gray? You're voting favor ever correct? I'm still good because there's, we can't have a manual on a process that preserves you for everything that we do right here. So that's what we're asking these people to do is my robot to that that But one thing I think we should discuss before we move forward it says associated with the departments supervised by Commissioner's Court Which departments are supervised by Commissioner's Court and which ones are supervised by Commissioner it's been something I've been a little unclear. I've been on court. And we can do this supper, or we can discuss it now. I think it's a healthy discussion. You tell me about what we have a motion and a second on the table. I would suggest that what would you, this, if you're concerned about whether or not we have a chairman or not. Well, that's just a one point. Because I think we brought up another good point. but we're in the, we're in the department, but let me finish. I have a motion in a the second just as it is just what it says right now all in favor I all post folks may taste over the it's it is a three to two and we don't need to discuss it in go further on that. Let's just move forward. Thank you. Is anything else on the agenda today? We'll look here. We look at this session executive session. At this time, the court will recess for executive session pursuant to one or more of the following provisions of the Texas government code to which chapter 551 sub chapter D. Articles 551.071 551.074 551.076. All right, thank you all very much. Be patient. We'll be back in a little bit. Thank you all for being patient. We're recondained. There is no action to be taken from our executive session. And so with that, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. I'll move a motion to adjourn a second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Those motion carries. Thank you all very much. Have a great day.