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KERR COUNTY COMMISSIONERS COURT
Special Session
Monday, November 24, 2008
9:00 a.m.
Commissioners' Courtroom
Kerr County Courthouse
Kerrville, Texas
PRESENT: PAT TINLEY, Kerr County Judge
H.A."BUSTER" BALDWIN, Commissioner Pct. 1
WILLIAM "BILL" WILLIAMS, Commissioner Pct. 2
JONATHAN LETZ, Commissioner Pct. 3
BRUCE OEHLER, Commissioner Pct. 4

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I N D E X
November 24, 2008
--- Commissioners' Comments
1.1 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action to
acknowledge and thank Shaleah Hill, Kerr County
First Responder, for her actions on Nov.7, 2008
1.2 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action on
request from Texas Rainwater Catchment Association
to be added to the nonprofit list for use of Hill
Country Youth Exhibit Center
1.3 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action on
request from Aglow International to be added to
nonprofit list for use of Union Church Building
1.4 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action to
approve Bexar County agreement for CERT trailer
permanent loan
1.5 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action to
initiate investigation of alternative energy
sources for county facilities
1.7 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action to
accept conveyance to Kerr County from K Bar
Ranch Ltd., Inc.
1.8 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action to
reappoint Janet Moseley to Library Board for
a 1-year term
1.6 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action to
authorize the 216th District Attorney to contract
for appropriate staff to facilitate more expedient
case dispositions
1.9 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action to
formulate a plan to clean and repair Flat Rock
Dam and Ingram Dam
1.10 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action to
authorize request for funding from UGRA to
assist with the cleaning of Flat Rock Lake and
Ingram Lake beginning winter of 2009; authorize
Commissioner Oehler to inform UGRA of plan to
clean the lakes & request funding for same
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I N D E X (Continued)
November 24, 2008
1.11 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action
to approve a resolution concerning proposed
legislation concerning county subdivision and
land use regulations
1.12 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action on
implementation of the burn ban
1.13 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action to
approve contracts with Dietert Center, Families
& Literacy, Inc., and Kerr County Soil & Water
Conservation District; allow County Judge to sign
same
1.14 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action to
revisit sick leave portion of Personnel Policy
1.15 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action to
approve Library Agreement between City of
Kerrville and Kerr County
1.16 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action to
approve bond for Angel Garza, Constable, Pct. 3
1.17 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action to
schedule annual County Christmas Party
1.18 Consider/discuss, take appropriate action on
proposed site plan and related work for Hill
Country Youth Exhibit Center and surrounding
property
4.1 Pay Bills
4.2 Budget Amendments
4.3 Late Bills
4.4 Approve and Accept Monthly Reports
5.1 Reports from Commissioners/Liaison Committee
Assignments
--- Adjourned
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On Monday, November 24, 2008, at 9:00 a.m., a special
meeting of the Kerr County Commissioners Court was held in
the Commissioners' Courtroom, Kerr County Courthouse,
Kerrville, Texas, and the following proceedings were had in
open court:
P R O C E E D I N G S
JUDGE TINLEY: Let me call to order this regularly
scheduled meeting of the Kerr County Commissioners Court
which was posted and scheduled for this time and date,
Monday, November the 24th, at -- 2008, at 9 a.m. It is that
time now. Commissioner Letz?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Would everyone please stand and
join me in a moment of prayer, followed by the pledge.
(Prayer and pledge of allegiance.)
JUDGE TINLEY: At this time, if there's any member
of the public or the audience that wishes to be heard on any
matter that is not a listed agenda item, this is your
opportunity to come forward and tell us what's on your mind.
If you wish to be heard on an agenda item, we would ask that
you fill out a participation form. They can be found at the
back of the room. That's not absolutely essential; it does
help me in having a heads-up knowing that there's someone
that wishes to be heard on an agenda item. However, if we
get to an agenda item that you wish to be heard on and you
haven't filed a participation form, just get my attention in
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some fashion and I'll see that you have the opportunity to be
heard on that matter. But for right now, if there's any
member of the public that wishes to be heard on any matter
that is not a listed agenda item, come forward and tell us
what's on your mind. Seeing no one coming forward, we will
move on. Commissioner Letz, what do you have for us this
morning?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Only comment I have is to
remind everybody that Saturday is Christmas in Comfort, a
tradition after -- the Saturday after Thanksgiving. And
there's a parade and day long of activities, lots of things,
so it's a pretty fun event. For those that don't go, invite
everyone down to Comfort. That's it.
JUDGE TINLEY: Commissioner Oehler?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: I don't really have anything
at the moment, I don't believe.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay. Commissioner Baldwin?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yes, sir. In these days of
troubles and bad news that we see every day, we have some
good news. Not just good news, but fantastic news. Our good
friend Eric Maloney, which is the EMS Coordinator for the
City and training officer for the First Responder -- our
First Responder program, has -- wants to say a few words to
us. Eric?
MR. MALONEY: Judge, Commissioners, how are y'all
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JUDGE TINLEY: Good morning.
MR. MALONEY: It actually gives me great honor
today to speak, for the Court to recognize some outstanding
performance by one of our First Responders. Shaleah Hill
here has been a First Responder for 11 years for Kerr County.
Her response area is typically in Zone 4, which is the Ingram
area, and some -- and Zone 5. She has provided medical care
for numerous trauma and medical patients alike. On Thursday,
accident across from the Ingram fire station. Upon arrival,
she identified that the accident was caused by a person that
suffered a heart attack, and was not breathing and did not
have a pulse. She quickly applied her AED, the automated
external defibrillator, and heard the words, "Shock advised."
AED delivered the first shock, and the patient began to
breathe. About approximately two minutes later, Kerrville
Fire Medic 2 arrived on scene, and her AED advised to shock
again. After the next shock, the patient started to breathe
with a strong pulse. The patient was flown to San Antonio on
that Thursday, and two days later, on Saturday, he walked out
of the hospital. I have talked to the family. He is doing
well, and they feel very blessed by her quick response out
there. And there are a lot of occasions that we really don't
hear much of the outcome of the patients, much less that they
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survive, and this was one of the those great occasions. So,
without anything further, I want to say thanks to Shaleah
Hill and her quick response with her AED.
MS. HILL: Thank you.
(Applause.)
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Speech.
MS. HILL: Speech?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Speech.
MS. HILL: Speech. I wasn't the only one there.
There was other people there helping me, and it takes a great
team to do a heart attack. When a heart attack is called
out, and you're the -- and you're thinking -- you pray all
the way there's going to be -- gosh, sure hope somebody else
is there. I mean, because when you're there and you're by
yourself, there's just no way that you can do it alone. And
with one of the Ingram First Responders that helped, I was
very grateful that she was knowledgeable in helping, as well
as an RN nurse that was there helping me as well, and I
appreciate that. It' nice to have First Responders that know
what they're doing, and we'd like to have a few more.
JUDGE TINLEY: Thank you.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Thank you.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Shaleah, you actually saved
somebody's life. That's -- that is so fantastic.
MS. HILL: I mean, I had help.
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COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yeah, but still --
MS. HILL: Thank you.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Thank you very much.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Wonderful.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Thanks for coming.
JUDGE TINLEY: Going to be hard to top that. You
got anything else?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: No.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: That's it.
JUDGE TINLEY: Commissioner Williams?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: One is, apologies to
members of the Court if I missed them Saturday night at Judge
Ables' retirement dinner. I apologize for that, but I
particularly wanted to make note that Commissioner Baldwin --
that if he wasn't there, and I didn't see him, he missed an
absolutely wonderful opportunity, once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to be in a group of people where the ratio of
lawyers to regular people was I8-to-1.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Boy, and I'm sorry about
that. Sorry I wasn't there. (Laughter.)
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: It was a nice event for
Judge Ables, and he was very gracious in accepting all of the
kudos. Judge, were you there? I didn't see you.
JUDGE TINLEY: Mm-hmm.
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COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I missed you. Maybe it was
19-to-1.
JUDGE TINLEY: Yeah, could have been. Anything
else?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: No, sir.
JUDGE TINLEY: As Commissioner Williams said, it
was a nice event. That ballroom at the Y.O. was -- was
packed, and there were people from all over the area, and it
was a nice event. There were quite a few lawyers, though,
Buster, so you might have felt real uncomfortable there.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yeah, and it may have been
better that I wasn't there.
JUDGE TINLEY: Yeah, could have been. Could have
been. No, I did arrive late, because I stayed for the events
here at the courthouse and the courthouse lighting and all of
that that got kicked off, and all the announcements that were
made there. So, I was a little late in getting there, but I
had the opportunity to participate in both events. The --
the lighting of the courthouse last Saturday was really a
neat event. Each year it seems to get bigger and better.
The parade that precedes it, the number of people that turn
out, there were -- there were several deep on the streets
that were viewing the parade on both sides. The weather
wasn't the best. Even at one point, we got a real light mist
coming down, but that didn't seem to deter anybody, and it
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COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Did you lead the singing in
JUDGE TINLEY: No, I didn't. Judge Ables had made
before anybody realized that that was the date that we do the
courthouse lighting	that he	normally	-- he and Linda normally
lead the singing.	So, we -	- we got	some able substitutes,
and things went off as planned and went off well. But it was
a great event. It's an annual event downtown here, and I
think everybody had a pretty good time. Let's get on with
our agenda, if we might. We'll move to Item 2; to consider,
discuss, and take appropriate action on a request from the
Texas Rainwater Cachement Association to be added to the
nonprofit list for use of the Hill Country Youth Exhibit
Center. Commissioner John Kight.
MR. KIGHT: Thank you, Judge, Commissioners. My
name is John Kight, K-i-g-h-t. And, what we're here to ask
y'all is to allow us to use the facility, understanding we
need to pay for the setup and the chairs and tables and so
on, insurance, whatever. But we'd like to have our first
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annual rainwater harvesting conference here in Kerrville next
March, and that's why I'm before y'all, if you can waive the
rental part. The rest of it we know we have to do. And I
hope y'all understand -- I notice Jonathan, in his prayer,
asked for rain. We're in a serious condition, and this area
of the hill country won't support the density of growth
that's occurring with groundwater. It just -- it isn't
there. Rainwater, if you have a properly designed system,
you can sustain a drought of record with water left over.
I'm on a rainwater system; I don't have a well. Right now,
I've got 36,000 gallons of water sitting there, enough for
about two years just for house use. If you water the yard,
of course, you're going to use a lot more water, and I -- we
do water the yard. We got a lot of landscaping. But,
anyhow, we're -- we organized this last December. It's the
Texas chapter of the Texas Rainwater Harvesting Association.
And, again, we want to have our first annual conference here
in Kerrville next March, and that's why I'm before y'all, if
you can waive the rental part. I'm open to questions, if
y'all have them.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: You're basically asking us to
be included on our nonprofit list?
MR. KIGHT: Right.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Which I don't think is a full
waiving of rentals. It's a reduction -- it's whatever our
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standard reduction is.
MR. KIGHT: Yeah, we're a 5.01(c)(4). The reason
we went to 4 instead of 3 is, in a 3 you can't lobby. I
think we need to lobby. Which -- and that's the only
difference in the two. You know, 'cause in a 3, there's a
very fine line between lobbying and education, so it's better
to go to the 4 and full-blown lobby. And I've been before
T.C.E.Q. and the Legislature on this.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: And you have members in Kerr
County?
MR. KIGHT: Oh, yeah.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: The reason is, I believe our
rules require that if you're -- you have to be a Kerr County
resident to be active. So, I move approval.
MR. KIGHT: Yeah. In fact, our --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Second.
MR. KIGHT: -- Secretary/Treasurer is here in Kerr
County.
JUDGE TINLEY: Motion made and seconded for
approval of the agenda item. Question or discussion?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: John, how large is the
group?
MR. KIGHT: Right now, it's about 100. Now, we're
part of the national group, which is thousands. It covers
most all of the states. But we wanted to form one that's
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strictly Texas.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Sure.
MR. KIGHT: Because -- in fact, I'm working with
the national organization right now. They're writing up
design guidelines and installation standards. Well, some of
the things that the national group is doing, they don't
understand Texas is a little different than Minnesota or
California or somewhere else.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Just a little. Little bit
different.
MR. KIGHT: And even Texas, between east Texas, at
60 inches a year of rain, and El Paso at 8 inches of rain,
you know, you got to be flexible in what you're proposing.
So, anyhow, you know, we're working on that.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I'm just trying to visualize
all of our hotel rooms full. Some of them will be with
that --
MR. KIGHT: Oh, yeah.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: If all those people show up.
Sure will.
MR. KIGHT: Yeah.
JUDGE TINLEY: Further question or discussion on
the motion?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Just quick, are you going to
have exhibitors here?
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MR. KIGHT: Oh, yes. Yeah.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: 'Cause I just --
MR. KIGHT: In fact, let me just tell y'all, if
you're interested in looking -- do you want me to give --
this is the Rainwater Harvesting Association, our -- it's
www.texrca.org. In fact, I'll just leave it -- with you? Or
Jody. Y'all need to get online, and you'll see in there that
we've got the registration, and for the exhibitors, and then
also we're looking for sponsors to help on this thing. But,
yeah.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Okay.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Fantastic.
MR. KIGHT: And that's why this -- the place y'all
have out here is just perfect for something like that.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Maybe y'all can donate a
cachement system for that building.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: For the new building?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Any of them.
MR. KIGHT: I've been working with y'all's nature
center here, been up consulting with them, and they're
getting a rainwater system -- bigger one.
JUDGE TINLEY: Further question or discussion? All
in favor of the motion, signify by raising your right hand.
(The motion carried by unanimous vote.)
JUDGE TINLEY: All opposed, same sign.
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(No response.)
JUDGE TINLEY: The motion does carry. Thank you,
Commissioner.
MR. KIGHT: Thank you.
JUDGE TINLEY: Let's move to Item 3; consider,
discuss, take appropriate action on request from Glow
International to be added to the nonprofit list for use of
the Union Church building. Is Ms. Trowbridge here?
(No response.)
JUDGE TINLEY: Have we heard from Ms. Trowbridge?
MS. GRINSTEAD: I haven't heard from her this
morning. I talked to her last week; she said she'd be here.
JUDGE TINLEY: Did she indicate that she would be
here?
MS. GRINSTEAD: Yes. I need a copy of the
nonprofit proof.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay. Why don't we pass on that
item and we can come back to it later. We'll go to Item 4;
consider, discuss, take appropriate action to approve Bexar
County agreement for CERT trailer permanent loan.
Mr. Emerson?
MR. EMERSON: Thank you, Judge. I was asked to
present this on behalf of the Community Emergency Response
Team, which is the animal support part of a natural
emergency. It's been mandated by the state. It's my
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understanding that Bexar County has obtained an AACOG loan to
provide one CERT trailer for each county in their district.
Unfortunately, because the grant is through Bexar County, all
the trailers technically belong to Bexar County, but it will
be placed on a permanent loan agreement and stationed
actually in Kerr County. It's a small trailer; it's a
5-by-8, has a little bit of equipment in it, and to be honest
with you, I'm not sure what it's used for.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Nor am I.
MR. EMERSON: I feel sure that Rusty will be kind
enough to house it at his facility.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: He will or will not?
MR. EMERSON: The honorable Sheriff is seated right
there if you'd like to ask him.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I misunderstood.
MR. EMERSON: I said I feel sure he will.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You feel sure he will.
SHERIFF HIERHOLZER: We have one AACOG trailer --
to me that's what that is, just a real small 5-by-8 box
trailer that could be used during homeland security-type
issues. You know, we have this emergency communications
trailer out there now. We can lock that one up too, I guess.
JUDGE TINLEY: My understanding was that in
I
connection with the animal aspect of emergency preparedness
and things of that nature that -- that are involved in those
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issues, that that's in large measure what it's designed to
support. Also for training and things of that nature, I
believe.
MR. EMERSON: In theory, Judge, I think you're
correct. But, I mean, it's a small enough trailer. I'm not
real sure how it's actually going to be used.
JUDGE TINLEY: Well, this -- also, I'd like to take
this as an opportunity to recognize Christine McIntyre of
your office, who's probably one of the lead persons in this
state when it comes to emergency preparedness issues and
animals. She's -- she goes all the way back to Katrina and
prior to that in her work with animal rescue in those
disasters, and she has done a fabulous job, and she's been a
tremendous resource to the entire state in some of the works
that she's done and some of the documentation that she's
drafted. And I think the State's getting a real good free
ride out of all of her work. I think you understand that
from her work in your office, how competent she is. This, I
think, in large measure, involves her work with the animal
rescue in emergency situations, and I think she's also going
to use it for training other groups. She's been doing that
in a number of instances in the past, and I think is
scheduled to do a whole lot more, so this will give her some
more resources to do that.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I move approval of the
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agreement with Bexar County to house the CERT trailer.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Second.
JUDGE TINLEY: Motion made and seconded for
~ approval of the agenda item.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: That gives you authorization to
sign.
JUDGE TINLEY: Question or discussion on the
motion? All in favor of the motion, signify by raising your
right hand.
(The motion carried by unanimous vote.)
JUDGE TINLEY: All opposed, same sign.
(No response.)
JUDGE TINLEY: The motion does carry. Let's go to
Item 5; consider, discuss, and take appropriate action to
initiate investigation of alternative energy sources for
county facilities. Mr. Emerson?
MR. EMERSON: Let me tell you right off the bat,
this won't cost y'all any money, so relax.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: That's good.
MR. EMERSON: In the process of discussing the
electric use for the county, it came to our attention that
the courthouse last year used approximately $68,000 worth of
electricity. The jail and the Sheriff's Department used well
over $100,000 worth of electricity. Now, I know from various
articles that have been published and communicating with
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counties are exploring solar panels and wind -- wind
turbines. The city of Frisco has recently put in a system;
they're estimating it will reduce their electrical cost by
source companies, have them come out and look at the
facilities, have them make a presentation on whether they
think it's feasible or not and it can actually help us. But
I just need your authorization to pursue that.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Rex, are you talking about
solar and wind? I mean, inviting people from the wind --
MR. EMERSON: I'd like to talk to both. Now, I
MR. EMERSON: -- of the City's ordinances limiting
height. It is possible to do something like that out by the
Sheriff's Department, where it's open. The courthouse itself
would be strictly solar.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Rex, in looking at that, I
don't even know if we can do it here, but I don't -- I know,
like, in Houston, larger industries, they're free to kind of
negotiate rates with all kinds of different energy providers.
They don't have -- they don't have to use, like, whatever --
Houston Power and Light. They can use whoever they want. Do
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we have that flexibility here? Do we have to use KPUB, or
can we negotiate a rate with Houston Power and Light?
MR. EMERSON: I don't know.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Be interesting to find out,
'cause I know this Houston -- you know, when you sign up for
services, you get to pick off the menu who you get your power
from, and it's based on -- the rates vary. So, it'd be
interesting to look at. I know the co-ops have a little bit
of a different way that they can do things that they -- you
know, but I know that -- but, obviously, KPUB's a lot
different than a co-op.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I see where KPUB lowered --
they're lowering their winter rates, though, so hush.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: We want to get it lower. They
still may lower it anyway. Just something to think about.
You may find out if we have that flexibility here.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Would your investigation
include all county facilities, like the Hill Country Youth
Exhibit Center as well as the jail and the courthouse?
MR. EMERSON: We can certainly do that. I think
initially it was I was going to start at these two facilities
because they're the primary electrical users.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: The other thing you may look at
specifically because of the large amount of acreage we have
at the parks and at the Ag Barn -- or larger amounts, and
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Little League fields and -- what do you call it? -- Road and
Bridge, I believe you can -- if there's -- we generate power
there, KPUB has to take it back in through the system, so we
may get a credit against our whole power by having one
facility out at local remote location like that.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: That would be something
really to look at.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I have no idea what the payout
of those type of things are, but, you know --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You're right.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: My understanding, that's how
you're supposed to do it, but I know, again, co-ops are
different. Should we try that?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Plus get John J.B. Miller
here in the courtroom to tell us about how KPUB wanted a
million-dollar liability policy in their favor for him doing
the same thing at his home.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Right.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Well, if we need a court
order, I would move to authorize Rex Emerson to look into
these issues.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Second.
JUDGE TINLEY: Motion made and seconded as
indicated. Question or discussion on the motion? All in
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favor of the motion, signify by raising your right hand.
(The motion carried by unanimous vote.)
JUDGE TINLEY: All opposed, same sign.
(No response.)
MR. EMERSON: Thank you.
JUDGE TINLEY: Motion does carry. Let's move to
Item 7, if we might; consider, discuss, and take appropriate
action to accept conveyance to Kerr County from K Bar Ranch,
Limited, Inc., 2.12 acres located immediately adjacent to Big
Sky Ranch Subdivision in Precinct 4 on Lower Reservation
Road. Commissioner Oehler?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: I was notified by the
partnership that did this subdivision several years ago they
would like to convey this property that's actually -- there's
a -- where the fence is has been in the same place for many,
many years. It used to be Tatsch Road, now Lower
Reservation. A portion of that, they want to deed the 2.12
acres to Kerr County that is outside of their fence, which is
already in our right-of-way, and so they can quit paying
taxes on it. But that's the sole reason. It's land that's
non-usable. They're going to prepare the deeds from the --
actually, I think three different deeds that have to be
prepared, and submit them to us for conveyance. And so I
would offer a motion to accept the conveyance of the 2.12
acres from Big Sky Ranch Subdivision, Ltd., Precinct 4, into
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Kerr County.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Second.
JUDGE TINLEY: Motion made and seconded for
approval of the agenda item to accept the conveyance.
Question or discussion on the motion?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Bruce, are you saying that
these folks have been paying taxes on land that the County --
that the public owns?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: No.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Say it again.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: The landowners actually own
it, but it's inside of our right-of-way, what's fenced into
our right-of-way.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: We have an easement right now.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: We have the road easement,
and then that land is between our easement and their fence
line.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Very good.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: And so it's kind of cleaning
up a -- that's a really wide right-of-way. It's about --
with this, it makes it about 80 feet wide now instead of 50.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Just follows the road?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Just -- right, it's parallel
to the road, and it's already in the existing area. We don't
have to do anything except accept the deed.
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COMMISSIONER LETZ: Rex, do you have a standard
form deed to accomplish this?
MR. EMERSON: No, sir.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: We don't have to prepare it;
they're going to.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I know. I'm just saying we
have -- I mean, several times we've done these things in my
precinct, and there's several more that are getting ready
that we have to look at, and just to keep -- it might be
easier for Rex, rather than reviewing multiple deeds, if we
had a form that we prefer to provide the deed.
MR. EMERSON: There's a general warranty deed form,
okay, that's out there. But typically I don't prepare the
deeds; I'll allow the landowners to prepare the deeds. Or if
we have to do one, I'll go through a third party because of
the liability associated with real land transactions.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Okay.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Basically, the area that's
highlighted on this little plat I gave you is the roadway,
the first two lines -- first three lines, and between the
last line and the fence line is where the property is.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Okay. Is there a motion?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Is there a second?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Yeah, it's already done,
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except we haven't voted on it.
JUDGE TINLEY: Any further question or discussion
on the motion? All in favor of the motion, signify by
raising your right hand.
(The motion carried by unanimous vote.)
JUDGE TINLEY: All opposed, same sign.
(No response.)
JUDGE TINLEY: The motion does carry. Let's move
to Item 8, if we might, to consider, discuss, take
appropriate action to reappoint Janet Moseley to the Library
Board for a one-year term. Commissioner Oehler?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Well, evidently, I may have
messed this up. I thought that we would just do it for one
year. I've got some ideas about what we should do with that
Library Board now that we really don't have any interest in
it other than we give a set amount of money every year, based
on our agreement with the City. But according to Mike Hayes,
that -- per our agreement right now, it's a three-year term.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: So I think we should probably
pass this until the next agenda, put it on there to do that,
and then give us time to work out what we're going to do with
that Library Board.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: But I don't see the Library
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Board as being much of an issue any more. We don't have any
vested interest, really, negotiating anything with them.
But, anyway, I'd like to pass it till the next meeting and do
it properly.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay. Let's move to Item 6, a 9:30
timed item. It is close enough to that time at this point.
Consider, discuss, take appropriate action to authorize the
216th District Attorney to contract for appropriate staff to
facilitate more expedient case dispositions. Commissioner
Baldwin?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yes, sir. Thank you. You
remember a couple of months ago, we had a -- had a workshop
here at 7 a.m. in this room, and we had the two District
Judges; we had 216th D.A. and one candidate for 198th D.A. in
the room, as well as a lot of other folks. The District
Judges offered to help us financially to hire visiting judges
to go out to the jail and help facilitate those disposition
of some of those cases that are just sitting around out
there. And we kind of nodded our heads and had a nice visit
about it, and in my opinion, agreed with it and thanked them,
went on down our way and came back in here, and then in the
budget process, put some money in the budget for the District
Attorney to hire an assistant of some sort to go out and be
the prosecutor at the jail. So, that's basically what we're
doing, is giving him authority here to move forward to
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appropriate some staff to do -- to do -- to take care of
those issues. That's it.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: This is purely for 216th?
Or does 198th have a piece of this too?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: In my mind, it's for both.
I'm not real sure that 198th wants to participate. I mean, I
don't know. They keep talking about these other things that
they have not appeared in this room yet to -- to present to
us. So --
COMMISSIONER LETZ: What amount -- maybe I should
direct it to Mr. Curry. How much do you need out of the
amount that we budgeted for staff? I mean, what's the dollar
figure? Do you have a dollar figure?
MR. CURRY: I -- back just to that original deal, I
think we were talking maybe in terms of probably 30,000, is
what I kind of figured for a part-time lawyer that would
spend, I'd say, an average of a couple of days a week doing
that, and then hopefully be able to try some -- some of the
state jail felony type things that are hanging in there. And
then the rest of it -- I think it was 50, if I recall
correctly, was to be used for some of the peripheral matters.
And I'm not really sure what those would be, 'cause I'm
thinking about using a tape recorder instead of a court
reporter for many of these items, and so I'm not sure it
even -- we'd use it all.
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COMMISSIONER LETZ: So, at this point, until we
know what 198th is, 30,000?
'~ MR. CURRY: That's what I'm thinking.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Bruce, is it your intention
to hire somebody on a contract rate, as opposed to that
individual being named an employee of the county?
MR. CURRY: That was my intention. And I think --
I talked to the Auditor about that. If that's -- if that's
possible, yes, that would be my recommendation on it.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay.
MR. CURRY: And you'd asked the question about the
198th, and I consider it to be a jail docket, and so it would
cover both. The candidate that actually won the election,
Mr. Barton, and I spoke about this over a period of time, and
he -- if we did this, he said he would just as soon I
administer it, but it would be for every person brought into
jail, regardless of which court they're going to, yes.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Thank you.
MR. CURRY: That's the idea, at least.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Thank you. Appreciate
that.
JUDGE TINLEY: Mr. Curry, in the -- in the
disposition of cases, we're talking about a lot of trying to
facilitate pleas, and quick resolution of cases, I assume.
Is it the current policy of your office that plea offers made
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to a defendant, that the first offer's the best offer?
MR. CURRY: I don't know that in concrete. I think
as a practical matter, that's probably right, but --
JUDGE TINLEY: Well, I can see where there'd be
some extenuating circumstances; witnesses recant, things of
that nature. But absent those extenuating special
circumstances --
MR. CURRY: I think that would be a fair -- you
know, the evidence may change, something can happen, but I
think that's probably a fair assessment, yes.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Judge, I move that we
approve the agenda item.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Second.
JUDGE TINLEY: Motion made and seconded for
approval of the agenda item. Is that on the basis of the
30,000 that --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You can do that it way if
you want to. I mean, I don't --
JUDGE TINLEY: It's your motion, Commissioner.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I have no problem with
limiting it to 30,000 today, and 20,000 next week. That's
fine with me.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: But is that what you want?
JUDGE TINLEY: It's your motion, Commissioner.
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COMMISSIONER LETZ: It makes sense to me to put a
dollar amount so we know where it's coming from and coming
out of that line item.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Well, that's fine. It -- in
the final analysis, it makes absolutely zero difference.
But --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Let's do the 30, and if the
District Attorneys need more, we can come back with the other
20.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Super. So, we'll limit it
to 30,000.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Today.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay. We have a motion and a
second. Question or discussion on that motion? All in favor
of that motion, signify by raising your right hand.
(The motion carried by unanimous vote.)
JUDGE TINLEY: All opposed, same sign.
(No response.)
JUDGE TINLEY: The motion does carry. Thank you,
~ Mr. Curry.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Thank you, Bruce.
MR. CURRY: Thank you.
JUDGE TINLEY: Let's move to Item 9, if we might.
', Consider, discuss, and take appropriate action to formulate a
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COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Well, I just thought we ought
to get started on this, being as we didn't really allocate
any funds in this year's budget for those repairs to either
Flat Rock or Ingram, and we did not, to my knowledge,
appropriate any funds to do any major cleaning of either one
of those. So, it would be my suggestion that we -- that
during the course of from now until probably June or July,
when we go through our budget process, that either Bill and I
together, or independently on each project, meet with some
people that do these kinds of repairs that have been -- that
came out of the assessment done by Freese-Nichols to get some
estimated costs of doing this, so that we know what that
amount is, or somewhere in the realm of reality of what that
is before next budget year.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Freese-Nichols is doing a
little bit of -- Bruce and I have talked about this. We're
pretty much on the same page. Freese-Nichols is doing a
look-see right now at what the scope of work might flesh out
to be, and getting some contractors' names and so forth lined
up for us, people that do that kind of work so that it --
when we start these discussions, we'll have a leg up on
perhaps what kind of costs we're ultimately going to be
looking at to do the two dams. And it makes sense to do them
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both at the same time. There is economies of scale in doing
that. We don't want to have them ramp up to do one, then go
away and come back and have to ramp up and do the second one
at some later date, do the same work. So, while all these
things are in front of us, one of the engineers from
Freese-Nichols is supposed to get back to Bruce and me with
this discussion.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Is there -- under the cleaning
portion of the agenda item, is it a thought that we need to,
like, I mean, clean the dam or clean out the lake?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Clean out the lake.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: And --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Not the dams, just the lakes.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Is there a -- I guess while
Lake Ingram -- Ingram is drained, y'all can probably do some
calculations as to how much is there, and, I mean, we drain
it again in a couple years and get some of the silt out.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: That's part of what I think
the plan needs to include, is kind of somewhat of a
timetable. Of course, the timetable on that includes
funding.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Right.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: And I think Ingram, the
amount that it will cost to do a fairly major cleaning on it
is much less than what Flat Rock's going to be.
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COMMISSIONER LETZ: That's what I was going to say.
I think part of that includes Bill and I talking to some
contractors and getting some cost estimates to see what we're
looking at for next year's budget.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Flat Rock's going to be a
major piece, not only because of the size of it, but the
Court will remember that we went through this exercise once,
Bruce, before you came back on the Court, and in which we
talked about cleaning up Flat Rock Lake, and then
appropriated what's probably a modest sum of money by
comparison to what's going to be needed, 'cause Flat Rock --
knowing it needs to be dredged, as does Ingram behind the
dam, but there's other debris in this lake that contributes
to hazard -- often hazardous conditions. Hate to reference
it, but, you know, we have three lakes, and if we're ever
going to be talking about surface water as an alternative or
adjunct to groundwater in the eastern part of the county, and
if there's any hope of that in the future, the River
Authority would engage itself in a water treatment plant
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facility in the Center Point region, we've got to be thinking
about that dam and that dredging of that lake as well. Hate
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Well, I think, you know, part
of -- part of the process, I think that we're looking at
spending over half a million dollars to even make a dent in
Flat Rock.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I wouldn't be surprised.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Cleaning it, and removal of
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: And --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Could be higher than that.
I'm thinking that Ingram, probably in the neighborhood of
100,000, 150,000 will take care of it. But those kind of
funds I'll talk about in the next agenda item, because I know
-- I know that we don't have the money to do it with. And
there are some people that are under the impression that we
do, and I don't remember appropriating one cent for the
thing. Also, in the course of this year, we -- we kind of
have started in motion the same thing we did at Ingram, is to
go ahead and get that stuff cleaned away from the ball down
there so that we can drain Flat Rock next October, that being
part of the process. And the pumping and the diving part of
it is a very minimal charge -- cost to prepare to drain it.
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~ We can't just --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Right.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: -- go down there and do it.
You know, we found out we had all those problems at Ingram.
Now, I think we figured out how to solve it, and it worked
very well. And I think the total cost on the draining of
that thing, doing all the pumping and diving and everything,
was about $3,200. Two days on the pump, and 2,900 from
the -- Doug Hill and his part.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Would part of your review be to
figure out where this debris would go?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: I think that we've got a
pretty good alternative for that. We've got the pit over
there across the road at Wheatcraft could take a lot of it.
It would be -- which would be a close haul. I think we could
use some of it at Flat Rock up in our park area to fill up
some areas in there, make those more usable.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Get out of the floodplain.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: And we have still -- I think
it's 9 or 12 acres that's out of the floodplain on that piece
of property. If we could do some leveling in there and do
some preparation of that part, future, you know, building
projects on that property, it may turn into a really nice
place, I think.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: T.C.E.Q. has some pretty
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stringent regulations on what you do with that stuff and how
you do it. I recall in the last major flood that we had,
where the intake on U.G.R.A. Lake got all screwed up, they
ended up doing some dredging behind that dam after that, and
they had to put all that stuff on the ground in the proximity
of taking it out and let it dewater for a long period of
time. They needed to move it.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Yeah. It's -- and the thing
is, by draining -- by draining like we've done at Ingram,
that stuff would be watered -- of course, this is an
unusually dry year.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: It's dewatered faster than
I've ever seen it. It's amazing how quick they were able to
get in, and a couple owners that are doing some work. And,
you know, it doesn't have near as much siltation in it as
what I thought it would have after 11 years.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Probably more rock than
silt.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: There's not that much rock,
and there aren't many health hazards out there that I can
see, you know, health and safety issues. There aren't any
big stumps sticking up, you know, trees that have washed in
or -- you know, we don't have any cars in there this time.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Few refrigerators.
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COMMISSIONER OEHLER: We haven't seen a
refrigerator either, so that's pretty amazing. No canoes and
no docks or anything like that, that sometimes come down and
sink. But do a little work around the boat dock; Road and
Bridge can do that, just do a little cleaning, because some
of the bigger boats that come in there hit the bottom when
they start to back in the ramp, so we just need to take a
little -- probably take a half a day or no more than a day to
do what little needs to be done there. Anyway, meantime, I
III just wanted to kind of air this out a little bit and kind of
~, make everybody aware of what's -- what I think we ought to
do, and kind of get started on it ahead of time so we don't
scramble round at the eleventh hour to try to find out some
information that we could do during the year.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: So, we don't need any action,
really. This is more just a --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Kind of consensus of the
Court to see --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: We've already started the
process. We'll just finish it.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: So, when is it -- what's the
plan on doing all this work? I mean, when?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Next budget year.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Next -- I heard two years
somewhere.
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COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Well, there may be -- as far
as the cleaning part of it goes, it may be a five-year plan,
depending on funding.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: One part of the -- one part
that we talked about with the Freese-Nichols engineer was
that, first of all, we don't have anything in this current
budget, and the earliest that we could have any funds for the
repair of the dams was in the '9-'10 budget. And that being
the case, we could lower the level of the lake and do the dam
repairs, both of them, sometime after October, and get -- of
next year, in the '9-'10 budget year, and get that out of the
way before the spawning season begins for the fish. So,
that's part of what we'd already talked about.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Yeah. One of the things that
sounds like -- I don't know which one of y'all -- I think
Bill said about surface water. It may be a good idea for us
to go through Region J to add these in as strategies to -- as
a potential for surface water impoundment.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Mm-hmm.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Because that opens up a whole
lot of federal and state funding opportunities.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: That's a good idea,
Commissioner. When can I meet with you? (Laughter.)
COMMISSIONER LETZ: We're -- Region J has a meeting
in Bandera on the 11th of December.
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COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: 11th of December?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: You just had to bring it up.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Am I invited, sir?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Certainly.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: But you take out -- you know,
I believe the -- with cleaning the Flat Rock Lake out, you're
going to be able to impound --
I COMMISSIONER LETZ: A lot of water.
~ COMMISSIONER OEHLER: -- a tremendous amount of
water over what's being impounded now, with all the mud and
stuff that -- that's in there.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Sure. Same would apply to
the Center Point lake. I don't think that's ever been
cleaned out.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Probably not. Do you know
how to drain it?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: No, sir, I'm really not
sure. But I think a hose over the top might work.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: At this time, you can
probably put a 6-inch hose on it and probably drain it.
Anyway, that's all I really have on that. I just wanted --
more of an information thing than anything else.
JUDGE TINLEY: We've got a companion agenda item,
Item 10. If there's nothing further on 9, we'll move to 10.
Consider, discuss, take appropriate action to authorize a
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request for funding from U.G.R.A. to assist with the cleaning
of Flat Rock Lake and Ingram Lake beginning in winter of '09,
and authorize Commissioner Oehler to inform U.G.R.A. of the
plan to clean the lakes and request funding for the same.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Well, I think there's some
misinformation that's been floating around at U.G.R.A. that I
was made aware of the other day that we're -- it was said
that supposedly we had two and a half million dollars to do
this cleaning with, and that we didn't need any money. It
was brought up in one of the -- I think it was right after
one of the meetings, and might have been during the meeting.
So, I -- you know, we don't need that kind of stuff floating
around. And also, in my -- in my opinion, that, you know,
U.G.R.A. talks about doing a lot of clean river stuff and
clean this and clean that. This would sure enough give them
an opportunity to take some of their funds and help the
county do this project, and I think that we should formally
request some funds from them and see what they tell us.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I don't see any harm in
requesting, see where it takes us.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Give them an idea and make it
-- make it, you know, a process that can go on for several
years where we wouldn't expect all the funding at one time.
But maybe, you know, to allocate a certain amount each year
in their budget to where, you know, we can eventually be able
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to do some -- some real work on these lakes rather than just,
you know, kind of piecemeal them because we don't have the
availability, in my opinion, of funds that we can just
allocate in, say, a year's budget to do that.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: We could do probably something
-- you know, maybe 25,000 a year for a couple years.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Yeah, but we can't -- anyway,
I think we're facing some tight years ahead, and especially
next year could be a real tough year for any kind of
additional funding.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I'm wondering -- just
wondering aloud; Jonathan may know the answer. Is there any
state revolving water funds, T.W.D.B.?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I would -- I'm sure there are
state funds available for this. I don't know where they'd
be. I mean, I would think that this is something that the
state Corps of Engineers -- I don't know whether it's through
T.C.E.Q. or through who, but I would think this is certainly
not a unique problem to Kerr County, and local entities just
are not going to have the resources to do it. And,
certainly, it's a really -- it benefits the state as a whole
on water quality issues, so I would -- I have no idea where
those funds would be, but I would be very surprised if
there's not some avenue at the state and federal level.
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COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Can we amend your -- what
will be your motion, perhaps, to add other -- other agencies
in addition to U.G.R.A.? U.G.R.A. and other state agencies?
To --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: I think we'll have to ask the
County Attorney about that.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Can't do that?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: We can put that on the next
agenda to hit other sources of funding.
JUDGE TINLEY: What you're suggesting,
Commissioner, is that we are in the process of formulating a
plan that's going to include the cleanup of -- of those
lakes, and it's going to take considerable financial
resources, and we don't have those, and just asking
assistance from U.G.R.A. of whatever they might provide?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: That's right.
JUDGE TINLEY: To that end --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Well, I just think, you
know, it's another one of those things -- this is kind of an
early -- early in the year thing, perhaps, for next year, but
I believe it gives us some time to work on this funding level
so that when we do pull the plug next year on Flat Rock,
there may or may not be funds available to start the process.
JUDGE TINLEY: Mm-hmm.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I don't think this -- but the,
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you know, absence of an agenda item is certainly not going to
preclude anyone on the Court from making inquiries of other
agencies.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Of course not. Okay.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: But I thought it would be a
good idea, being as U.G.R.A. is here locally, to have some --
you know, I don't feel good about going over to ask .for money
unless the Court is going to go along with that.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I'm not bashful. I'll go
with you.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Okay, I'll be glad for you
to.
JUDGE TINLEY: You feel like it might be helpful to
have an actual formal action by the Court in order to
facilitate that? I think it would be appropriate.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: I do. I really do. I think
we should -- it would be appropriate to have a letter from
the Court requesting funding for this project.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I'll make a motion that we
authorize Commissioner Oehler and Commissioner Williams to
enter into a dialogue with U.G.R.A. about cleaning of the
lakes in Kerr County.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Second.
JUDGE TINLEY: And --
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Kerr County-owned lakes.
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JUDGE TINLEY: -- assistance for funding?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: And request assistance for
funding.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Second.
JUDGE TINLEY: We have a motion and a second as
indicated. Question or discussion on that motion? All in
favor of the motion, signify by raising your right hand.
(The motion carried by unanimous vote.)
JUDGE TINLEY: All opposed, same sign.
(No response.)
JUDGE TINLEY: The motion does carry. Let's return
to Item 3, if we might. Consider, discuss, take appropriate
action on request from Glow International to be added to the
nonprofit list for use of the Union Church building.
Ms. Trowbridge?
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Yes, I'm sorry I'm late. My
request is for the Aglow International organization, which
was here in Kerrville -- the last was 14 years ago, so it was
formed here in the 1970's, and lasted until the president
died of cancer; moved back to Boston about 1993-'94, so it's
been 14 years. Now there is a new generation, let's say, who
want to form Aglow International here, and we're in the
process of forming it, and we would like to request that we
could have the Union Church at a 50 percent discount, because
we are a nonprofit organization, and I have the paperwork
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here from San Antonio, Texas, signed by the officers.
JUDGE TINLEY: Have you -- have you obtained a
nonprofit status from the Secretary of State of the state of
Texas, or the I.R.S., or any of those governmental
organizations?
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Well, Aglow, for 42 years, has
been a nonprofit organization in America. Aglow
International. But -- but the Kerrville group here is just
forming, so it -- we don't have anything like that at this
time. We just would be under their umbrella from San
Antonio, central Texas.
JUDGE TINLEY: This would just be a chapter of the
Glow International?
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: What is Glow International?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Are you saying "Aglow"?
MS. TROWBRIDGE: A-g-1-o-w.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: The women's Christian
organization?
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Yes, sir. Yes.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Aglow. Aglow.
JUDGE TINLEY: A-g-1-o-w, okay. I know what that
is.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Women's Aglow.
MS. TROWBRIDGE: That's right.
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COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Been around forever.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. Aglow, okay, got
you.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I move approval.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Second.
JUDGE TINLEY: Motion made and seconded for
approval. Question or discussion?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Clarification. The -- the
approval is to be added to our standard reduction. Might not
be 50 percent, I'm not sure. Whatever reduction --
JUDGE TINLEY: Added to the nonprofit list.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Nonprofit list.
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Yes, please.
JUDGE TINLEY: Further question or discussion? All
in favor of the motion --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Let me ask a question.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Are you talking about having
a regular monthly meeting there, or are you talking about
going down there every day and praying for me, or what --
what exactly -- what are you -- what's the plan?
~ MS. TROWBRIDGE: The plan would be, like, the first
I
Saturday of each month -- and we might occasionally meet
somewhere at a restaurant, like Mamacita's. But, you know,
we would be there probably, out of each quarter, at least two
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months, you know.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I have no --
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Of each quarter.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I have no problem with that,
but, you know, we denied a guy that wanted to have his
regular church services there.
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Oh.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: We did, yes.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: And this is kind of -- I
mean, I see it as kind of a similar -- not against your
group --
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Oh, I know.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: -- or any kind of Christian
activity, but, you know, what's good for the goose is good
for the gander, kind of.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I think this is a -- I think of
this more as just a periodic meeting. Not --
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Right.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I mean, it's not --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Not a church service.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Not a church service, just a
meeting. I was thinking, you know, monthly or whatever
y'all --
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Right. We might just meet there
once every three months. But it would be, you know, probably
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four times a year, minimum.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Like a board meeting kind of
thing?
MS. TROWBRIDGE: No, we would have 50 to 100 people
come to the meeting.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: A meeting meeting? What is
a "meeting"?
MS. TROWBRIDGE: It consists of praise and worship
and having a speaker, usually from out of the city.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Like a church service.
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Somewhat, yes, except it's a guest
speaker coming in.
JUDGE TINLEY: "Periodic meeting" is the term that
came to my mind too.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Rex, does this violate any -- I
mean, is this a -- a meeting -- I mean, is it a -- what do
you think? Is this a meeting or is this a church service?
MR. EMERSON: I don't know if there's enough info
to determine that.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I mean, we've -- we've opted
', against allowing church services there.
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Right, I understand.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: We clearly established that
the building that you want to be in is the Union Church
building.
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MS. TROWBRIDGE: Yes.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: It is no longer a church --
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Well, that's true.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: -- as such. Public events
facility.
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Yes. Kerr County Prayer
Fellowship. Judge Danny Edwards' wife, Lana Edwards, and the
other women had -- had that for the last five years, and they
would use Union Church at a discount rate about twice a year,
once a year. So, you know, even something like that would be
fine.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I think it's fine as long as
it's -- for y'all to use it, but it's got to be clear that
this is not intended to be a location for church services.
MS. TROWBRIDGE: I understand.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I don't want it to evolve
into once a month and once a week.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: What about -- yeah, and I
agree with everything. What about this thing of blocking out
a particular day for a year when they're not going to be
there but two or three times a year, so that that day could
be used for something else? Can we say that when you get
ready to use it, to reserve -- reserve it at that time? Or
do we need to block it for a full year, every third Monday or
whatever it was?
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COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: First come, first served,
isn't it, Ms. Grinstead?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Just whatever our standard
policy is, what I would think.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I think I heard her say,
though, that she wants to block out the third Friday morning
at 9 o'clock. Just trying to make it clear up front so we
don't have a problem later on.
MS. TROWBRIDGE: We will meet, you know, the first
-- the first Saturday of each month, so we'll have stability
and people knowing when we're meeting, you know. This is
done across America and the other 173 nations we're in, so we
just meet once a month. But we could just stipulate that the
other times we would meet there, we'll pay full price, $100.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Other times what?
MS. TROWBRIDGE: The other times we might ask to
sign up to meet there because of a consensus of wanting to,
we would pay the full price. If it were --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I got a problem with that.
We're -- setting aside the rate, whether it's regular rate or
not-for-profit rate, we're getting into regular church
services there. We've already denied one group that.
MS. TROWBRIDGE: We met at Luby's Cafeteria last
month, and we're meeting at Mamacita's December the 6th.
Those restaurants, you know, say we can meet for free. We
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have 47 people signed up right now for the Mamacita's
meeting. We're signed up for next month for the Union
Church. And, so, I'm just saying from there, where do we go?
You know, once in a while? Or --
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I think what -- what I'm
hearing, I think, is that we don't want church services and
we don't want a regular place for you to hold your -- your
services. If you want to meet there occasionally, that's
fine, but it should not be your standard place to meet for
that kind of a service.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Right.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: It should be a limited number
of times, maybe twice a year or something like that.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Well, first the lady said
maybe three or four times a year. That's quarterly. Now
it's down to month and whatever, so --
JUDGE TINLEY: What I'm hearing is we do not want
to block out on a set schedule the first Saturday of each
month, for example, 'cause the next step is every Sunday, you
got somebody doing church service there. If you're holding
meetings, as opposed to worship services, and occasionally
you want to use that facility, you're a nonprofit, you
contact Ms. Grinstead, who handles the reservations. She
sees if it's available. If it's available, you can use it
for that purpose. If it's not, you find yourself another
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facility or you select another day. Isn't that kind of where
it's going?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: That's exactly it.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: That's correct, Judge.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Especially on Saturdays, we
have a lot of weddings and stuff going on there.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: We do.
JUDGE TINLEY: Well, if it's booked, it's booked.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Yeah, if it's booked --
JUDGE TINLEY: But we're not going to book it, you
know, a year or months out in advance.
MS. TROWBRIDGE: No.
JUDGE TINLEY: Y'all -- what I'm hearing from you
I is, there are a lot of other venues around the area that you
use, eating establishments, maybe other meeting facilities,
Dietert or whatever.
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Yes.
JUDGE TINLEY: But occasionally you may want to
hold a meeting -- not a worship service, but a meeting -- at
the Union Church, and you want to be recognized as nonprofit
status for that purpose.
MS. TROWBRIDGE: That is correct.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay. I think we got a motion,
don't we?
THE CLERK: A motion and a second.
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JUDGE TINLEY: Okay, and a second. Further
discussion on the motion? All in favor of the motion,
signify by raising your right hand.
(The motion carried by unanimous vote.)
JUDGE TINLEY: All opposed, same sign.
(No response.)
JUDGE TINLEY: Thank you, ma'am. We appreciate you
being here.
MS. TROWBRIDGE: Thank you.
JUDGE TINLEY: We will now move to Item 11, to
consider, discuss, take appropriate action to approve a
resolution concerning proposed legislation concerning county
subdivision and land use regulations. Commissioner Letz?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Yes. I -- there was in the
packet a kind of generic resolution, and then over the
weekend I customized it for Kerr County, changed it slightly,
but didn't change anything real significant. And this is
part of the -- similar to a resolution we did earlier, and
part of the Hill Country County Coalition and its efforts to
get some new legislation through. We met last --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Thursday.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: -- Thursday in Fredericksburg.
Commissioner Oehler was there. And we went over the actual
bills that have been drafted by the University of Texas law
school, some students there that are working on this project
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as a class. I've got copies of what we looked at for anyone
that wants to look at it, but they're being changed again,
and we should have a final version of those bills tomorrow, I
believe. So, they're -- that's what the students' goal was.
The three areas that are -- four areas, actually, that it's
kind of been narrowed down to, the first is a -- and it's
under the "Now, therefore, be it resolved," the 2, 3 and 4
items. First item is clarifying county authority to mandate
subdivision development in unincorporated areas. That is
essentially going into Chapter 232 and making a number of
changes. In my mind, they're not huge changes. Some people
may differ with that. As an example of one of the larger
ones would be, currently we have the ability to require
bonding for roads in a subdivision. This would expand that
to require bonding of water and wastewater systems, which we
currently don't have the authority, basically, to expand that
to infrastructure. It changes -- the last Legislature gave
us some authority related to fire suppression, Subchapter E,
and it quite enlarges the tank size. I think it was
2,500 gallons, 5,000 gallons. It raised those sizes a little
bit and lowered the limits a little bit of the number of
lots, make it a little bit more practical. Definitions were
added, or proposed to be added to 232, which get all counties
I
a little bit more on the same page. And I think it was
primarily Kerr County's definitions that we have in our rules
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were the ones that were adopted by the group.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Definitions of?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Plat, --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: This new stuff you're
talking about? Or just --
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Definition of just what a plat
is, what a revision of -- what replatting is, that whole
issue of going back --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: What a subdivision is.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: What a subdivision is.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: The age-old argument.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: And things of that nature.
That's -- I don't think that's a real controversial one.
We're still looking a little bit at that, but not a whole
lot. I don't think we've really changed there. The other
item is providing authority for hill country counties to
require setbacks between incompatible land uses. That is in
-- well, I mean, back up a minute. These follow -- the next
three are looking at creating a, under Chapter 231,
Subchapter M, which would cover the 15 hill country counties,
and it would be authority that only these 15 hill country
counties would have. Subchapter 232 -- or Chapter 231 is
currently called zoning, county zoning, which is an
unfortunate title, but it is a chapter in the statutes that
gives counties -- certain specific counties more authority.
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Hood County is one of the counties that is a
Chapter 231 county. A lot of the coastal counties have
additional authority because of wetlands and drainage and
water, flooding and all that stuff, but we're adding hill
country counties under there, and then they would get
additional authority on setbacks. Currently, we have
authority to do setbacks on the road frontage side, but not
on the other -- on the back, on the sides of the lot. This
would give us authority to have setbacks on all sides of a
lot, and that could be based on land use. So, what -- what
it does, it gives us a way to -- for example, a rock quarry,
we can say rock quarries need to have a setback of 50 feet.
And that's -- and the specifics are decided by each county.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Specifics are decided by
each county. The -- the incompatible land use issues, those
kind of things are decided by each county? I mean, like rock
quarries. What else?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: It's up to the counties. It's
the -- has to be reasonable under the statute. Like you say,
if you're in a residential lot, 5 foot. You know,
commercial, I think you have to bracket them. I don't think
you can single out a certain industry, per se. Maybe. you can
with rock quarries, but it's just a way for counties to have
a little bit more flexibility on setbacks. Like, if you have
a -- I think it's Commissioner Williams had some issues with
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a large rental storage unit going in right next to a
subdivision. We might say any kind of commercial development
getting at least a 25-foot setback. So you can -- right now
there's nothing; they can put it right on the lot line.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Or light industrial going
next to residential.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Or if someone wants a cell
tower, wind turbines. Say, if you have a cell tower, it's
got to be -- you know, you have to have a 25-foot setback.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: How about hog farms?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Agriculture is exempt.
(Laughter.) Or will be exempt. That is -- anyway, that is
the -- the setback issue. The next one is providing specific
authority for hill country counties to regulate population
density, as determined by minimum and average lot sizes
within a designated area. This is an attempt to give
counties authority to set lot sizes, average and minimum,
without only looking at water availability, as we currently
do. We currently have a -- well, we just don't have the
authority right now, other than water availability. Also
gives us more flexibility to do what we're currently doing in
Kerr County, which is possibly a little bit questionable on
allowing higher density in the ETJ. Other things, it allows
us to look at a little bit bigger picture, possibly. We're
looking at water availability county-wide, as opposed to
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looking at it in a specific -- or area-wide, as opposed to a
specific land --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: So it's possible that an
entire county could be a density issue?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Entire county, or it might be
doing like we're currently doing around the community of
Center Point and say we're going to allow a higher density
right in that area.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Based on public
infrastructure.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Yeah. Basically, health,
safety, and welfare.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You seem to think that that
is maybe illegal or something. I can't remember your comment
just a minute ago, that it's not the right way to go, but how
else would you do it? I like what we're doing.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I don't -- I don't -- I think
that there is a question, if you really look at the current
authority counties have, whether we have the authority to do
what we're doing.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Well, Columbus took a
I chance.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Yeah. And I think we've done
it. I think many of the other counties have done it.
It's -- we're trying to stay out of litigation, and this
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based on water availability, and that's a pretty strict
statute. Anyway, it gives a little bit of additional
authority to look at other items. And then --
to population density? Why don't we just determine -- why
don't we just talk about lot sizes?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: The -- this is one that we --
Thursday talking about this. The reason the term was used is
that the -- and also, the reason we got on the setbacks or
incompatible land use, the setbacks, when the law school
students and their professor were looking at how to do it,
how to get the -- what's been done previously, setbacks
were -- have been used around the state before. The term
actually for most other areas that have this ability on lot
sizes, it just says, "regulate population density." It just
leaves it as that counties have that, and that is deemed to
give us the authority for lot sizes. I think the group as a
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whole was uncomfortable with that; would rather have it more
focused, 'cause we're not trying to regulate population
density. We're trying to do lot sizes. That's why we said
population density through averaging minimum lot sizes.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: The reason I raise the
question is for the obvious reason. What happens in the case
of a proposed multi-family development of some sort, in an
area that needs public housing or needs low- to mod-income
housing?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I think that's a good -- I
think that's a good question. But also right now, under
water availability, we have -- you get into an issue. I
mean, what do you do now? I mean, it's kind of a --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I don't know; I asked you.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: And we're trying to really
resolve some of that to get some of the gray areas out of our
current, you know, state rules. But I think the -- the
reason that term was chosen is because that is what has been
used by other counties to get the authority for lot sizes,
minimum and average. They've used the term "population
density." And then the fourth one, and I'll read it, and --
is providing authority for hill country counties to assess
specific infrastructure fees to help counties fund the direct
infrastructure cost due to development. This is a -- prior
to Thursday, it was termed "impact fees," and was looked at
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as we're going to do a change to Chapter 395, give counties
authority under 395. There was a -- a lot of discussion on
go into impact fees, and do a much narrower view that will be
more specifically set out. When we get our new draft,
hopefully that will target it to if there's a -- I want to
say over a 125 percent increase of traffic due to a traffic
study on a road based on a new development going in, that's
the first trigger to set this off, and then the -- any
funding that would come from the -- a fee to the developer
would have to be used on that road within three years. The
money would be put in escrow, and if it wasn't used, it went
back to the developer. This is really to target -- the
purpose of this --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: They also have an option to
even going through this. If -- you know, say if the
developer wanted to build at the end of a 30-foot easement
that was a county road, and they're going to put in 500 homes
in there, and the County could work with them in a way to
help do some land acquisition, possibly, and improve that
infrastructure to where you would have, you know, proper
access to that sort of thing, and it would be paid for,
basically. In my mind, it was kind of a cost-share. It was
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somewhat county and somewhat developer would pay -- pay those
costs of upgrading that part of the infrastructure.
COMMISSIONER ZETZ: But that's -- you know, that's
a local option. It would either take a vote of Commissioners
Court or a vote of the public, and there would be pretty
lengthy requirements, at least two public meetings on the
proposed rules for the county. The counties can pick and
choose what they wanted. It would not be a grant
automatically to those 15 counties; they would have, then,
the ability to -- to go to each county for each county to,
you know, proceed with additional authority. I have met --
and I see we have two members of the Home Builders
Association. I've met with Heinz and Justin at some length
on these. We have -- and I've been kind of charged by the
group to meet with them, and also as a good representative
of, I think -- or a good conduit to the state organization,
to try to have rules that they support, or certainly don't
vehemently oppose, being the Home Builders Association, and
trying to figure out and get feedback, what they think works
and doesn't work.
I'll let them, of course, speak for themselves, but
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they don't have a whole lot of heartburn. They don't like
the impact fees, infrastructure fees, or whatever we want to
call it. They're not going to support that, I don't think,
but, you know, we've tried to really narrow it down a little
bit, and we probably will just have to agree to disagree on
that one item. I think that it's something that, in our
county, I really don't think it's that important of an issue.
I don't see that I would really support doing it in our
county, but there are counties that -- some of our counties
of the 15 counties do need it, I think. One that comes to
mind is that Commissioner Barton in Hays County, who was just
given or is currently being given a plat that's going to go
before their court for a subdivision with 7,000 homes, and
that's obviously going to have a pretty big impact on some
roads right around that subdivision, and he's looking at --
you know, he feels that they do need some help. And I think
if anyone knows Jeff Barton, he's a pretty conservative
commissioner, and so I think this is something that we don't
need particularly in Kerr County; I don't see me being a big
supporter of it, but I think it is important for some of the
counties further to the east, such as Hays and Comal,
possibly Kendall.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Are you saying the part
about -- when you have a development going in, and concrete
trucks and big trucks use a county road to get to that
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subdivision, that impact fee is to repair that -- the
existing county road that's being torn up?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: That, and also to handle the
increased traffic as a -- you know, if -- you know, if a road
was -- or say --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Just take Henderson Branch;
that's the only example I can come up with. They've got --
you know, most of that development's in Gillespie County, but
it all accesses out Henderson Branch Road.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Right.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: And that's not a huge thing,
because -- but that Henderson Branch Road is really narrow.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: And there was some damage
done to that during the development of that -- that property.
And I called and talked with the developer about it a little
bit to see if they might kind of pony up funds to help repair
that road they tore up, and, of course, I was met with "no."
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Well, see, I think they
should.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Well, and that's what this
'~ can do.
j COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yeah, I understand. And --
I~, you know, of course, that's been -- we've talked about that
I
for years and years and years, and I think there should be an
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impact fee for that. Not that you use it every time.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: No.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You know. I mean, other --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: It's a rare thing.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: It's kind of a rare issue.
I've got one in my precinct that they completely tore up a
really nice county road, and they should pay for it. Pretty
simple to me. So, I kind of disagree with you there. And if
-- and if these gentlemen in the back of the room don't --
you know, I will disagree with them as well, that if you tear
up -- if you tear up public roads, you need to pay for it.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Right.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Period.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: But, anyway, that's kind of the
purpose of the resolution. It is going around most of the
counties that are -- all 15 counties, I believe. I know that
Burnet County did not approve it, even though they're one of
the more strong ones that wanted some of these things. But
I
they, for whatever reason, chose not to. They wanted it, but
then they didn't want to support the resolution to do it,
though they also said they will support it at the
Legislature, which, you know --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Commissioner, would you
accept a modification on Number 3?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Sure.
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COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Make it read, "providing
specific authority for hill country counties to regulate
average lot sizes within a designated area by criteria other
than water availability."
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You don't like density, the
"D" word?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I don't like population
~ density.
JUDGE TINLEY: Well, does that exclude water
availability as a criteria?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Wasn't intended to, Judge.
So, if you can fix that, by criteria other than -- or in
addition to. In addition to.
JUDGE TINLEY: Uh-huh.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: By criteria in addition to
water availability.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Read it again?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Providing specific
authority for hill country counties to regulate -- take out
the wording, "population density as determined by, and/or,"
making it read, "to regulate average lot sizes within a
designated area by criteria in addition to water
availability."
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I have no problem. I think you
do need to say minimum and/or average.
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COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay, that's fine.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Because they're different.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. Okay.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: That's fine.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Leave "minimum and/or
average" in, fine. That's good.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I'll make a motion to approve
the resolution as amended.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Second.
JUDGE TINLEY: Motion made and seconded. Now,
question or discussion on the motion? I have some
participation forms. First, let me thank Commissioner Letz
for all of his hard work, and Commissioner Oehler for his
assistance on it. I know they've, over a number of months,
been putting in a lot of time on these issues that have been
developed. Mr. Roesch?
MR. ROESCH: Judge Tinley, if I may ask to let our
i
past president, Justin MacDonald, speak first.
JUDGE TINLEY: All right. Mr. MacDonald?
MR. MACDONALD: Thank you, Judge Tinley and
Commissioners. Appreciate the opportunity to talk to y'all
this morning. First, thank you, Commissioner Letz, for
sitting down and meeting with us and going over this item. I
am the past president of the Hill Country Home Builders
Association. I'm also a resident of Precinct 2, and a
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go, but we can see how those come out later. The main item
is the impact fee, infrastructure fee, whatever you want to
call it. We would urge you to remove that item from this
resolution. Commissioner Baldwin, in addressing your
concern, I don't really think that this, as proposed,
addresses construction damage to public roads. It's my
understanding that it -- it's meant to pay for upgrades due
to traffic increases over the long-term. That kind of
doesn't really work, because you're not only collecting --
you wouldn't be just collecting an impact fee on that, but at
that stage in the game, you would also be collecting
significantly increased property taxes on those properties.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: If that's the case, you're
right. You're absolutely right; I agree with you 100 percent
if that's correct, mm-hmm.
MR. MACDONALD: Okay. Because you'd be taking, you
know, generally ag-exempt, you know, valued land, and
adding -- you know, say it's 100 acres of ag-valued land, and
you add 10 homes on it, which are probably going to be
several hundred thousand dollars a piece, or maybe even a
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million or more. That alone increases the county tax base,
some ruts, and repaved a mile or more of the road over there.
But that's the main message, is that we would urge you, if
you feel the need to adopt this resolution, to strike Item 4
from that. Thank you.
JUDGE TINLEY: Thank you, sir. Mr. Roesch?
MR. ROESCH: Good morning, Judge Tinley and
ers. Thank you very much for allowing me to speak
Home Builders Association, the professional association of
currently around 350 companies that are involved directly or
indirectly in predominantly the residential construction
industry. I would just like to support what Justin MacDonald
already has said, and I certainly also, you know, take the
view that if somebody tears up public property, he needs to
pay for that. But as Justin also said, these fees, whatever
they are called, are not meant, I think, to address that
part, but to address the -- to upgrade or to create new
roads. And we feel that in conjunction with the Point 3 in
your resolution, that we would agree on somewhere -- you
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know, to define minimum average size lots. When a
subdivision is being put in, that that really limits the --
you know, the actual impact to a county infrastructure, and
therefore, we feel that the property taxes that would be
created or down -- down the road following an improvement
through subdividing would more than offset the increased wear
and tear on the infrastructure. So I, too, would urge you to
strike Item Number 4 of your resolution. Thank you very
much.
JUDGE TINLEY: Thank you, sir. Anyone else that
wishes to be heard with -- with regard to this particular
agenda item?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: The --
JUDGE TINLEY: Further question or discussion on
the motion?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Another -- just one other item.
The -- the -- I've met with Representative Hilderbran on
this. He's generally supportive. I'm not saying he's going
to be supportive of any specific item, but he is supportive
of the additional authority for hill country counties. I
believe Representative Aycock is, and Representative Rose
are, and Representative Miller. So, I believe all four of
our representatives of the hill country are supportive in
concept. Obviously, until the actual bill is written,
they're going to withhold their judgment. The bill should be
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available -- and I'll be glad to get a copy to -- both to the
Home Builders locally, Justin and Heinz, and everyone on the
Court, when I get the final version that's going to be
proposed. Once everyone receives that -- just a little bit
of information for those that don't know the process. It's
nice that the U.T. law students wrote the bill, but it will
then be rewritten by the Legislative Council, so it may come
out very different from them, and the verbiage, whether they
want "population density" or -- they will make that
determination probably, not us. But that's kind of the
process. And -- but I think there's pretty good support
amongst 15 counties and amongst the Legislature that this may
actually happen, but we'll see. And this will largely be
determined by things that happen in Austin that we have no
control over. The Speaker of the House --
JUDGE TINLEY: Have -- have those legislators that
you've mentioned committed to carrying the bill?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Two of them have, I guess,
offered to. But it is seen that they are not important --
that it would be better if some other person carried them,
possibly one of them being Representative Rose.
Representative Rose is a Democrat, and soon it's going to be
Republican-run; it's felt that he's probably not the best
choice.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Little early yet.
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COMMISSIONER LETZ: Yeah. Representative Miller, I
think, would be willing to, but as a freshman representative,
it is seen that that may not be a great option either. The
group as a whole would really like Harvey to carry the bill,
and Harvey's considering that. And --
JUDGE TINLEY: But he first wants to see the bill
itself.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: He wants to see the resolutions
from the counties, and he wants to see the bill. And -- but
he's very much aware of this, and I'm hoping to meet with him
in early December again.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Once again, the bill, in
its developmental stage, and ultimately its final stage that
-- for introduction, would -- would emphasize that these four
items are by local option, are local option.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Yes.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: And not a general option,
unless or until approved by Commissioners Court and/or a
public initiative, if required.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Correct.
JUDGE TINLEY: Further question or discussion? All
in favor of the motion, signify by raising your right hand.
(The motion carried by unanimous vote.)
JUDGE TINLEY: All opposed, same sign.
(No response.)
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JUDGE TINLEY: That motion does carry. Let's go
ahead and take about a 15-, 20-minute recess.
(Recess taken from 10:28 a.m. to 10:50 a.m.)
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay, let's come back to order, if
we might. We'll go to Item 12; consider, discuss, take
appropriate action on the implementation of the burn ban.
This is one of the those periodic things that we do.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Move approval.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Second.
JUDGE TINLEY: Motion made and seconded for
approval. Question or discussion on the motion? All in
favor of the motion, signify by raising your right hand.
(The motion carried by unanimous vote.)
JUDGE TINLEY: All opposed, same sign.
(No response.)
JUDGE TINLEY: That motion does carry. We'll move
to Item 13; consider, discuss, and take appropriate action to
approve the contracts with Dietert Center, Families and
Literacy, Inc., and Kerr County Soil and Water Conservation
District, and allow County Judge to sign same.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Move approval.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Second.
JUDGE TINLEY: Motion made and seconded for
approval. You've reviewed them, I assume, Mr. Emerson?
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Everything's okay?
MR. EMERSON: Well, I haven't reviewed them, but
it's my understanding they're the same forms we used last
year.
JUDGE TINLEY: They are to my knowledge, yes.
Further question or discussion? All in favor of the motion,
signify by raising your right hand.
(The motion carried by unanimous vote.)
JUDGE TINLEY: All opposed, same sign.
(No response.)
JUDGE TINLEY: We'll now go to Item 14; consider,
discuss, and take appropriate action to revisit the sick
leave portion of the Personnel Policy. Commissioner Baldwin?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Thank you, sir. When we
were meeting last week or two weeks ago about this issue,
Ms. Hyde made a couple of comments that just had some -- made
my antennas go up, and it had to do with the sick leave issue
and going from 12 days to 6 days, and short-term disability
programs and all of that, and it just brought about a bunch
of questions in my mind. And so what I did was I wrote down
some of the questions, and I think there's five of them here,
and sent them to her and asked her to respond to them, and
then, end of last week, went down and sat down with her and
went over them. And came to the conclusion -- both of us
came to the conclusion that it's difficult for her to answer
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these questions without us first making big decisions. And
it's difficult for us to make big decisions -- or me to make
big decisions without these questions being answered. So,
it's kind of -- and, you know, and I think there was a time
frame, in my mind. I want to rush through this thing; I want
to get this -- I want to get this policy book written and
approved and on the table, and done and out of the way
because of the evaluations we have coming up, which I think
is going to be one of the most important things we do next
year. But -- so I wrote the questions down. Ms. Hyde, if
you'd -- there you are. If you would come and respond to
them, and some of us have to be -- we're going to take a
Christmas vacation, so if you could kind of go through it
kind of fast, I'd appreciate it.
MS. HYDE: I think the first thing is that when we
started going over this, the sick policy was a large
discussion. What do we need to do going forward? How do we
do it? How do we manage it? We've got GASB liability that's
sitting out there. We have internal liability to the
employees. But we also had a lot of folks that felt that
employees took advantage of the situation with their sick
leave. So, the problem comes, do we change it or do we
manage it? Which is what you and I discussed.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yeah.
~~, MS. HYDE: The other part of it is, what's coming
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down the pike? FMLA right now is at 12 weeks. You also have
military FMLA that will take it up to 26 weeks, and guess
what? It's not a question of "if." It's when are they going
to charge back to the organizations to pay. Instead of it
being unpaid leave, it will now be paid leave. That is going
to add right into our sick policy. If we're going to have to
pay for sick leave for FMLA, whether it's military or
non-military, then that's another huge liability that we got
to look at.
So, we got a couple of quotes. They're very broad
quotes. Currently, if we do it with the 30 days, which is a
long time for a person to be out sick before they start
getting paid if they have nothing, you're talking about
probably $18,000 a year. However, comma, if you take that
down to seven days, you start paying on the seventh day,
which is like our worker's comp, and you're looking at four
grand a month. You take to it 15 days, you're looking at
three grand a month. So, you know, that -- like you said,
we've got to determine, what way are we kind of going to
head? Because we don't have any of this budgeted this year.
And this was all done based on what we could get or not get
during budget time. So, you asked what's the cost of
short-term disability? It depends. It's based on age and
wages, and what time frame are you looking at before it
starts to pay out?
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COMMISSIONER LETZ: Can we -- before we get to that
one, when I --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Before we get to the first
one?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Before we get to the first one.
I'm -- I think of sick days as, you know, I've got a bad
cold; I stay home that day. I'm hearing y'all thinking more
of sick days as short-term disability, as, you know, you're
out for a longer period of time. Are we talking about
those -- both of those or one of those?
MS. HYDE: Talking about both.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Okay.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: The layout for short-term
right now --
MS. HYDE: Sorry?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: The layout period before
short-term kicks in right now is what?
MS. HYDE: Right now it's 30 days.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: So, that takes that out of
the equation.
MS. HYDE: But the employee pays for that.
JUDGE TINLEY: When you're talking about existing
short-term liability, that's a supplemental policy that the
employee voluntarily elects to purchase.
MS. HYDE: That's right.
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JUDGE TINLEY: And the current program is, the
elimination period is 30 days.
MS. HYDE: Right.
JUDGE TINLEY: Before it begins payment.
MS. HYDE: Right. It has nothing to do with what
they've earned or accrued.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: And right now, if someone gets
sick, they're going to be out for a while, what's our -- what
do we currently do?
MS. HYDE: When you say "a while," the current
thing is, if they're going to be out on a third day, then we
ask for a doctor's excuse. If they're going to be out after
that third day, and it's going to be something -- for
example, they're going to have surgery, they're going to have
a baby, now we're into FMLA, so you go ahead and you give
them the FMLA. They're requesting it; you go over the rules
and regulations with them, they take it to their doctor.
Their doctor tells you this is how long they're going to be
out. It's all an estimate, up to 12 weeks.
JUDGE TINLEY: That's after they use the sick time?
MS. HYDE: Well, no. What we've done is, we allow
them to use paid -- in fact, we encourage them to use paid
time, because the law right now is unpaid leave. Doesn't
mean that we can't pay them, but the law states that it is
regulated unpaid leave.
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COMMISSIONER LETZ: So, if someone's going in for
surgery, they're not being paid during that period?
MS. HYDE: If they have sick time, yes, they are.
JUDGE TINLEY: That was my question, Jon. If they
have the sick time available in the bank for themselves --
MS. HYDE: Right.
JUDGE TINLEY: -- and they're going to be out, say,
five weeks --
MS. HYDE: They get paid.
JUDGE TINLEY: And if they've -- say they've got
', four weeks of sick time that they've accrued. They can use
that four weeks then?
MS. HYDE: Right.
JUDGE TINLEY: After that, they can use up to 12
I weeks?
MS. HYDE: They can use comp time, vacation time,
any sort of beneficial leave that they've accrued.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: And if they don't have any more
of that, then they go under FMLA, and they don't get paid?
MS. HYDE: FMLA starts day one, whether it's paid
or unpaid, in this county. By law, they say that you have to
allow them 12 weeks. It doesn't have to be paid leave. But
coming up probably the first of the year, the law is probably
going to change. In fact, it's in there right now; they want
it to be forced back upon us that we have to pay them.
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COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Big budget impact.
JUDGE TINLEY: Question. You say FMLA starts day
one. Does it start day one even if they have the sick time
accrued?
MS. HYDE: Absolutely. You don't give them sick
time plus an additional 12 weeks.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay. So, they run concurrently,
then. If they want to get paid, they use sick time, comp
time, vacation time, whatever they've accrued?
MS. HYDE: Right.
JUDGE TINLEY: If they don't want to get paid, why,
they can just take it on leave and not get paid, FMLA?
MS. HYDE: And I never have anyone ask for unpaid
time.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Now, if they -- if the law
changes, and you seem to think it will, wouldn't that mean
that we're going to have to use the paid, and they're not
going to use their time?
MS. HYDE: That's one of the questions.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: What about short-term and
long-term disability?
MS. HYDE: One of the things when we were doing
this, when we talked about what was FMLA going to do, is just
kind of a heads-up that it was coming down the pike. What
was FMLA going to do? What were we going to do? What
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direction do we want to go in? That's kind of why it's in
here like this, and there was a lot of discussion. Do we cap
it out at 240 hours? Do we not cap it out? Once they hit
the 240, do we allow them to use that so that when they
retire, we pay them a quarter on the dollar for their sick
time? You know, what are we going to do? What do we want to
look towards?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: What does the law -- if this
change comes down, that seems like a pretty big change.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Huge.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Why don't you just eliminate
sick days altogether?
MS. HYDE: Well, that would be my suggestion if
that's what the law changes to.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: May be coming to that.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Mm-hmm.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: And then everyone just gets --
then the federal government then mandates that everyone gets
12 weeks.
MS. HYDE: Or 26 if it's military.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Yeah. At that point, sick
leave becomes a nonissue.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Can you take FMLA for a day? I
mean, is there a process you have to go through?
MS. HYDE: No, you can take FMLA for a day. They
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call that intermittent FMLA. For example, one of the -- in
my opinion -- personal opinion, you can take FMLA for
migraines. So, you've got a year worth of 12 weeks that you
can sit there, and I can be out four hours. FMLA leave can
be broken down to hours. Single, individual hours.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: That would cause a
bookkeeping nightmare.
MS. HYDE: It's a bookkeeping nightmare, and it's
hard -- I mean, how do you say -- I mean, at least if you
have a different type of illness, you can have a doctor
telling you -- you know. But if you have a migraine, that's
kind of tough, because they're not going to go to the doctor
every time they have a migraine; they're going to take
Imitrex or something like that and rock and roll.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Is there some kind of
disability insurance or short-term/long-term that we can take
out to help offset some of this cost, possibly?
MS. HYDE: We can get some quotes.
JUDGE TINLEY: Excellent question, Commissioner.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Because, man, we're talking
about an unknown -- huge possibility of a huge liability.
JUDGE TINLEY: Something similar to comp.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Yeah.
JUDGE TINLEY: Except in a -- in a non-job-related
25 ~ incapacity.
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MS. HYDE: The problem right now is all the
insurance companies are waiting to see what -- and I'm sure
the price is going to go up, you know. But it might be that,
like other insurances, if you merge it, STD and LTD together,
you might get a little bit of a discount by doing that.
JUDGE TINLEY: Long-term disability, what is the
average coverage period?
MS. HYDE: What do you mean, average coverage
~ period?
JUDGE TINLEY: Well, six months? A year?
MS. HYDE: Six months.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay. Well, you're talking about
elimination -- the elimination period? Or are you talking
about the maximum --
MS. HYDE: What normally happens is -- that's why
we encouraged STD -- or STD/LTD during enrollment. If you
have STD/LTD, you hit your 30 days, then your STD kicks in.
And then your long-term disability kicks in week nine, and
it'll start retroing back, 'cause now it's become a long-term
disability instead of short-term.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Why would any -- if we're
required to give them 12 weeks, why would anyone go under
short-term? Why would anyone do that?
MS. HYDE: Well, because a lot of people -- we have
a lot of folks that have been out on FMLA during the last
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year and a half, and they're not staying out 12 weeks, unless
their doctor says they need to. Most of them are back within
four to six weeks, even with babies.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Okay.
MS. HYDE: And you asked how much money. Just from
the 12 to the 6, we figured it on 15 hours -- I mean, $15 an
hour. If you've got 12 days per month, that's 3,192 days --
excuse me, hours, versus 1,596. So it's 48,000 or 24,000. I
mean, it cuts it in half. That was Question 6.
JUDGE TINLEY: You're talking -- talking about the
sick leave component of it going from 6 to 12?
MS . HYDE : Mm-hmm.
JUDGE TINLEY: There's a $24,000 --
MS. HYDE: The suggestion --
JUDGE TINLEY: -- difference between the two?
MS. HYDE: Right. And the suggestion that we had
when we started talking about it was knock it down to 8
days -- or, excuse me, 10 working days, which is 40 hours,
times two, which is 80 hours. Right now we've got them at
96; they are at 8 a month. But, I mean, there's so many
unknowns out there sitting right now that it makes it real
difficult. That's why this is one of the review previews.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Sounds to me like we need to
knock it down to six to start with, and then, more than
likely, if the law changes, zero. Or maybe zero now.
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MS. HYDE: I would hate to do zero and then the
change in the --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Well, if you look at the
statistic that Ms. Hyde provided to us on the tail end of her
response to Commissioner Baldwin, it'll give you a little
sense of where we are. All-inclusive, Sheriff, jail, and all
the rest of employees together, we have, what, 23 percent of
our employees, almost a quarter of our employees who have a
week or less right now. A week or less.
MS. HYDE: What was amazing to me -- I mean, I
shouldn't say amazing. What was different was the difference
between here and the S.O.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Right.
MS. HYDE: Those numbers are huge. The change in
the numbers were huge, so it kind of skewed all the exclusive
numbers. But you can still see that -- that less than 2
weeks is -- has got the majority when you pull it all
together. The difference on the 5.0. and jail is, they're
161-plus. And I use that break-off 'cause I wasn't going to
get down any farther in the weeds, but I can tell you on the
5.0. and jail, most of those birds have got over 300, 400
hours sitting out there. We have a few on this side that are
like that. We have one that's at 1,300, 1,400 hours, and we
have several like that at the 5.0. that are high. So, I
mean, you know, the whole purpose, I think, that -- that
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people -- when you talk to employees, and the employees use
that for if they get hurt. Their -- their mind-set is not
for the -- as much the one-day, two-day. It's, "Oh my god,
what happens if I get hurt? I have to have surgery, and I'm
going to be out. I need my paycheck." And that's what they
hold it -- that's what they hold onto it for. They
understand that when they quit or retire, they won't get paid
for it, but they -- it's kind of like their insurance policy.
That is their LTD.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Some of them, you're
saying, have accumulated sick leave in excess of ten months?
MS. HYDE: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. That's
what was amazing to me.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Up to a year -- probably
close to a year, some of them.
MS . HYDE : Mm-hmm.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Huge liability.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Yeah, it is. It is a
contingent liability.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Got to figure out some way to
get rid of some of that. Especially --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: One way you --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Especially Rusty needs to
come up with a plan to get rid of some of that.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: One way to consider is to
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-- is to cap the earning, the amount that you can accrue.
Put a lid on it.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Or we could also -- I mean,
can't you -- can you put a cap on -- you use it or lose it?
MS. HYDE: Sure, you can put use it or lose it.
But I would say this, being the employee advocate. If you
have a benefit, and you're going to take the benefit away, my
suggestion would be that you replace the benefit with
something else. If you're going to take away their sick
time, then we need to pony up and do long-term and short-term
disability, in my opinion.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I don't view it -- I don't
see what we're talking about in terms of putting a cap on for
accrual as taking it away from the bulk of the employees. If
you put a cap on it, for example, at six months, all right,
then anybody who's already hit that -- hit the ceiling
automatically has six months going forward always, unless
they have a catastrophic illness and use it -- use it down.
So, you're not -- little bit of difference there.
MS. HYDE: What do you do with those that are
already at twice that amount? Three times that amount?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: You are under. Some of
those might be retro.
MS. HYDE: Does that mean they can no longer
accrue? See, these were all -- these are all great
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questions, 'cause this is what we all discussed. And
everybody was, like --
JUDGE TINLEY: One of the other issues that's
significant here is that we've got to have an overall cap of
what this is, because we've got to quantify it.
MS. HYDE: For GASB.
JUDGE TINLEY: Yeah. She's got some accounting
rules that she's got to comply with, and if you've got an
open-end liability, you can't quantify it. And she's got to
be able to quantify it in order to put us in good standing --
MS. HYDE: Right.
JUDGE TINLEY: -- with our financial statement.
And so we've got to do something. Now, --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Well, that's a nice --
JUDGE TINLEY: -- whether we do it now and come
back and revisit it later, or whether we do nothing now and
revisit it later, or -- you know, it's probably --
MS. HYDE: Would the Court like for me to get --
JUDGE TINLEY: When are we going to have a
probability of an answer on this FMLA --
MS. HYDE: I think if Congress can put it off --
JUDGE TINLEY: -- FMLA being paid or unpaid?
MS. HYDE: -- until the new president-elect goes
into effect, they will, but it's in there right now.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Well, it'll happen, then.
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Well, I brought this today just to kind of stir up some
thinking, and I'm assuming that that's -- that's enough. We
don't have to go through this whole exercise, but we can be
thinking about it. And I'm assuming that we will go into a
workshop session a little -- you know, in the next month or
so to nail these things down, so be thinking about it, 'cause
you got to make these decisions.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Are you talking about in
conjunction with finalizing the new employees' handbook?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yes.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Got to make these decisions,
and it's the tough decisions. I can make them today, but
they're not going to be palatable and people are not going to
like me, but I'm not hired to be liked. I'm hired to take
care of the people's business. But that -- I think that's
the route we need to go, is to just be thinking about these
issues. And we'll -- we'll put together a workshop -- a
larger workshop a little later on, I guess an overall -- an
overall policy handbook workshop. This would just be a part
-- just one small part of it, actually.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: You're going to need to do
that before the end of this year.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yes, sir, we do.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: We really do.
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COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: My understanding, we were
going to adopt the thing by January I.
JUDGE TINLEY: We can do that in lieu of your
Christmas party that you've talked about.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: No.
JUDGE TINLEY: You don't think so?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: No.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: We could do it in lieu of
Peter Lewis' show, though.
JUDGE TINLEY: I hadn't thought about that.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yeah. See, that's half a
day right there. So --
MS. HYDE: Is there anything y'all want me to get,
like quotes?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I'd like to -- I think you
probably have this, is a list of -- I don't want employee
names; doesn't make any difference to me, but the number of
hours that we have accumulated. I mean, I heard numbers
that, you know, 25 percent have less than a week, whatever it
was, and -- but if we could get -- I'd like to see the
numbers broken out in some kind of categories as to what that
liability is. Both --
MS. HYDE: We've got over 60,000 hours in sick.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Right. But, I mean, I need
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more -- how many employees are we affecting if we cap it at
six months?
MS. HYDE: Okay.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: How many employees are we
affecting if we cap it at three months? Nine months?
What's -- I mean -- because, I mean, we're not going to make
everyone happy with whatever we do. But I think, you know,
in my decision, I'd like to kind of do what's best for most
of the employees.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: You want a scary number?
60,000 hours times an average rate -- wage of 15 bucks. Just
for sake of suggestion, you're looking at better than
three-quarters of a million contingent liability.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: That's what I was referring
to.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: That may be off by a couple
hundred thousand. Well, that's close enough for figuring.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: What's there in the back of
our minds on this whole thing is -- is abuse, people abusing
the sick leave issue. Well, if I -- if I had a number of
employees -- and just as an example, Jody comes in and she
disappears for two days, and she comes back and says, "I was
sick yesterday," I'm going to believe her. You know, because
I trust people and I trust my employees. She was sick. Now,
if there -- if it looks like there is a -- a history of this
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thing going on, you know, every Monday morning, that we have
-- we're sick, sounds like a hangover to me. So I'm going to
-- you know, if I see a history there -- yeah, Jody.
(Laughter.) And if I see a history go down there, I'll kind
of start checking on it a little bit. And she was -- she was
saying after three days, we're requiring a doctor's note.
You know, can you get into your doctor's to get -- to get a
note in three days?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Take another three days to
get in to the doctor.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Or three months, sometimes.
So that's -- those things are -- those things are tough to
see. I mean, you can't get -- can't get in to a doctor in
three days to get a note, so, therefore, you're removed from
your employment, or dinged somehow. So, those are the kinds
of things we've got to -- I say if they -- if they don't show
up with a doctor's note after three days, they're removed
from their position, period. Need to get a different doctor
if you can't get in within three days. How tough is that?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Pretty tough.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Ms. Hyde, also, I think quotes
on short-term and long-term --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Disability.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: -- disability rates for the
County. And, as -- you know, I guess I'm thinking of
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changing our -- capping -- you know, capping the amount that
they can accrue and replacing it with long-term disability.
MS. HYDE: You want me to look at seven days?
Fifteen days?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Whatever you think is
appropriate.
JUDGE TINLEY: Short-term, and then six months and
beyond, up to, say, like, two years for LTD.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: 'Cause I think that -- I mean,
I don't -- I think most businesses -- most use it or lose it,
is my -- what I understand. That's pretty standard in the
business world in vacation and sick time.
MS. HYDE: Right.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: So, the fact that we're
accruing it as high as we are, I think, is a little bit
unreasonable to -- for the employees to think that we're
going to continue that, I mean, with no cap on it.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Well, this would be an
easy -- I think that's an easy decision to say lose it or use
it -- or use it or lose it. But what about those people that
have accrued all these years?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Well, you have to --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: What do you do?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I don't know what you do with
them, but I think first you -- kind of like the border. You
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know, stop the problem; then we'll figure out how to work on
the -- what we've accrued.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: That would give us a start.
You can always -- you can always red-circle these; they're in
a certain category, and -- and protect what they have, but
with the understanding they're not going to accrue more until
they use it down to the new limits. You can always do that,
can't you, Eva?
MS. HYDE: Right. Like I had talked to
Commissioner Baldwin, though, another thing that a lot of
entities do out there is, if they have the use it or lose it
policy, they typically will pay out something, because if an
employee has a choice to use it or lose it, they're going to
use it. But if you give them -- let's just -- for example,
we're going to let them have seven days. If they don't use
any of their seven days, you pay them for eight. And that's
an incentive for them not to use it, because now they get
paid for an additional day.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I'm going to play like I
didn't hear that one.
MS. PIEPER: I think on use it or lose it, we're
going to have employees out sick all the time. 'Cause I've
got employees right now that, they earn a day, they take a
day, and that puts a hardship on the rest of the staff.
I
', COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: If they abuse the sick
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leave, you need to fire their butts.
MS. PIEPER: I can't prove that they're --
JUDGE TINLEY: Bingo.
MS. PIEPER: -- abusing it. You now, they call me,
"I'm sick today."
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Doctor's -- doctor's note.
MS. PIEPER: Well, but they're not out for three
days yet.
JUDGE TINLEY: We can change the policy to provide
', at the discretion of the elected official or department head.
i
Any employee for any purpose can be required to provide --
you know, to justify their absence.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I just think we need to
toughen the thing up. I just -- it's the only --
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I agree with that.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: That is the only choice we
have, is to get really tough on this thing and tighten it up.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: When do you want to set the
~ workshop?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Confidential information,
Bill. I can't release that till tonight.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Or you have to kill me?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I'd have to kill you if you
knew as much as I did. What -- I don't know -- what month
are we in? This is November.
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COMMISSIONER LETZ: We're in, I guess, first two
weeks of December, in reality, to do the workshop.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Right.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: And we meet December the --
JUDGE TINLEY: 8th.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: 8th.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: -- 8th. How about that
afternoon?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: That works.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: How about Tuesday morning?
Is that --
COMMISSIONER LETZ: The 8th. I like the 8th.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: The 8th, in the afternoon.
After we get through here, we can just stick around. Okay.
Jody, does that make you happy?
MS. GRINSTEAD: Of course.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Okay.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I'm at airport.
JUDGE TINLEY: At what time? 3:00?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: 1:00.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Airport's at 1:00?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: That Airport Board can't
function without y'all?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: It can. It better.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: On that day, it probably can.
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COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: It better. Yeah, we can
miss it.
JUDGE TINLEY: What are we talking about, 1:30?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: 1:30.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Workshop, okay.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: And that's the overall book.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Primarily this.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: And then -- just a second,
Rex. And then the last meeting is the 22nd of -- 22nd?
THE CLERK: Yes.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: So maybe we'll be able -- be
ready to, at that point, adopt it on the 22nd.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Sounds like a plan.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yes?
JUDGE TINLEY: You got anything else you want to
'', run into this item, Commissioner?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I think Rex has something.
MR. EMERSON: Just a quick comment for the Judge.
If we're going to have a workshop that afternoon, we probably
II!, need to change our juvenile agenda.
', JUDGE TINLEY: Are you going to make that last
~~, longer than an hour and a half?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: No, this is not an agenda
item; we can't talk about this. (Laughter.)
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AUDIENCE: Oh.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Touche, counselor.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Ring one up for the boys up
front .
JUDGE TINLEY: Is it going to last longer than an
hour and a half?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Will it last longer than an
hour and a half? This could be days.
SHERIFF HIERHOLZER: Yeah.
MS. PIEPER: Yes.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I'm afraid so, Judge.
I'm -- we're going to limit -- limit it at two hours. And if
it runs over two hours, you lose it.
JUDGE TINLEY: Or you get to leave.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yeah, you have to leave.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Get to leave.
JUDGE TINLEY: So, we can set up our juvies at --
set up our juvies at 4:00.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: With a doctor's excuse why
you have to leave.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yes, that's right. Okay,
two hours.
MS. HYDE: Two hours?
JUDGE TINLEY: Set up the juvies at 4:00.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: That's why it's important
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that we be thinking about these things, be ready to make
decisions on it. Okay.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Ms. Hyde, I think whenever
you have information available on some of what we've talked
about, maybe share it with the Court in the form of a memo so
we can have something to think about before we go into that
workshop.
MS. HYDE: Okay.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Like on those disability,
short-term and long-term.
MS. HYDE: I'll shoot y'all e-mails as I get
information.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: What our liabilities are in
certain areas, and recommendations.
MS. HYDE: Recommendations? So I can get shot?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: From your point of view.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: That's all.
JUDGE TINLEY: That's all you got for us on that
one, Commissioner?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yes, sir.
JUDGE TINLEY: All right, sir. Let's go, then, to
Item 15; consider, discuss, take appropriate action to
approve library agreement between City of Kerrville and Kerr
County. Commissioner, do we need to pass that for now
because of the confusion over the terms of the --
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COMMISSIONER OEHLER: The memo that I got also
stated that there was some confusion over whether we needed
to adopt another agreement or not.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Sounds like it was already --
I don't know. It's in Mike Hayes' same letter -- same little
~~I memo that I got, wherever it is here.
II COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Where did this come from?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: From Mike Hayes over to the
City.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I think that our County
Attorney has a --
MR. EMERSON: It's my understanding that part of
the rationale for drafting a new agreement is because of the
significant change in responsibilities at the library. And
that doesn't necessarily mean, in reference to his memo, that
every agreement we have needs to change, but because of the
way the library was changed specifically, it was a good idea
to create a new agreement.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: We did a new one on the airport
with significant changes at the airport. I mean, I think
that makes sense. I mean, those that we significantly
change, we need to redo. Those that we're operating, like
fire, EMS, basically we didn't make a change on, we don't
change. I don't know what other agreements we have, other
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than --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Well, it just says here -- I
don't know if you got a copy of this.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I got it. He referred to all
the agreements. Well, I'm not sure what "all" means.
JUDGE TINLEY: There's going to be a change in
the -- you had mentioned something about a prior agenda item,
a one-year term versus a two- or three-year.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: I was just -- I was just
hoping to do it for a one-year term, thinking that maybe we
could opt out of that Library Board. Really, I'm not sure
what impact we're having on being a -- I'm on it as a voting
member now, which I can't see that there's any benefit to
that, and we have a couple of county appointees on that
board.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Should be sufficient.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Which, you know, if they want
to -- I just don't see any point in -- in doing any more.
The City is in control of the library 100 percent. Their
employees. They're allocated funds, except for basically
200,000, which we --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: They own it.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: They own it, so I really
don't know why we need representation on that.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I agree.
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COMMISSIONER OEHLER: I guess my point --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I don't disagree with you.
But going to Number 5, based on the level of our
contribution, this only memorializes '08-'09 for 400,000. It
ought to memorialize everything that takes us down to
200,000.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: That's right. That's what we
agreed to.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: This is one year.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Yeah, I agree, so we don't have
failing memories in the months to come.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Exactly, 'cause they will
have failing memories.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: That's right. I agree,
because it goes from 400 this year down to 300 next year and
200 the following year.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Right.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Am I correct on that?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: That's correct.
JUDGE TINLEY: Bottom line is, we don't want to
take action on this library agreement for the coming year
I now .
', COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Not yet.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay. We'll move to the next agenda
item; consider, discuss, take appropriate action to approve
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the bond for Angel Garza. We've -- we're going to have to
make some modifications to that, so we're going to pass that,
and we'll get something with real meat in it here. Consider,
discuss, take appropriate action to schedule the annual
Christmas party. County Christmas party, Item 17.
Commissioner Baldwin.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: That's me, isn't it?
JUDGE TINLEY: Yes, sir. Here comes the meat right
I here.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Here comes the meat
~ providers.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: And the bulls.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Well, I'm going to recommend
that we have the annual meeting at the Ag Barn. Is our last
day the 24th?
MS. UECKER: No.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: That's Christmas Eve.
MS. GRINSTEAD: We work Christmas Eve, 24th.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: 24th?
MS. HYDE: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: So, we'll hold the party on
the 24th at noon. Are we providing the meat?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: 23rd.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Try the 23rd.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: 23rd at noon. Are we
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providing the meat?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: We're taking donations for
that from all elected officials and department heads.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Is that how we're doing it?
I We're --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: That's the way we did it
before; seemed to work real well. Anybody else that wants to
kick in on the thing is more than welcome to do so.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Okay.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: And we're going to need
approximately $700 this year to do it.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Okay. Do we continue with
different departments bringing -- so we're providing
everything? Donation?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: It's going to be a very
simple menu. Two kinds -- maybe -- at least two kinds of
meat, and that'll be determined by how much money we get in.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: And a salad and some beans.
And then I think one of the departments gets a cake or two
from H.E.B. every year and they're going to contribute that
to the deal.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Okay, super.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Road and Bridge will do the
tea and...
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COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Now we know. That's it.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: What's our Christmas
holiday this year, 24, '5, and '6?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: No, '5 and '6.
MS. HYDE: '5 and '6.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: That's good like that. From
my perspective, on the 23rd, that's a regular all-day work
day for everybody, and I think our participation will be --
it was good last year.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I see where you're going
with that. Yeah, okay. Okay.
JUDGE TINLEY: As opposed to the 24th.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: As opposed to the 24th, when
everything might be different.
JUDGE TINLEY: Message received, Commissioner.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: That's fine.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Do it at the --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: At the Ag Barn.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: All right.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Ag Barn, 23rd, noon.
Everybody needs to donate money. Everybody needs to donate
money. What else do we need to talk about?
MS. HYDE: Who does the money go to?
25 I COMMISSIONER LETZ: Bruce.
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COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Me. Oh, Bruce? Jody.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Jody, and then I can take it
and purchase the food with it.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Okay. Judge, that's all.
JUDGE TINLEY: You got this thing under control.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I'm just trying to get it --
coordinate it. Bruce already had it, of course, but he needs
I to let us know.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Well, I figured -- well, I
was going to.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Okay.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: You already had it on the
agenda whenever I came in with it.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yeah, right. Sure.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: You were ahead of me.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yeah, sure. Yeah, I know.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: You were ahead of me.
JUDGE TINLEY: Everybody on the same page?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Requires zero action.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Except for the day of, and
all the cooking that goes with it.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Well, I mean, court orders.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Do you have a recommended
I donation?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Recommended? I think, total,
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about $700, if you want to divide that up.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Do you have a recommended,
I per --
JUDGE TINLEY: Individual.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: -- elected official and
department head?
	MS. HYDE: Fifty bucks.
	COMMISSIONER	OEHLER: Figure out how many of those
there	are, Judge. Are	you figuring that up?
	JUDGE TINLEY:	No, I'm not. I'm just trying to --
	COMMISSIONER	OEHLER: Somewhere between $25 and
$50.	If somebody wants	to give $75 or $100, depending on the
size o	f their offices,	that would be nice. In Rusty's case,
he can	probably fund th	ree-fourths of it.
	COMMISSIONER	WILLIAMS: Yeah, Rusty can do at least
two or	three -- two or	three increments.
	COMMISSIONER	OEHLER: At least.
	COMMISSIONER	WILLIAMS: $150 for the Sheriff.
	COMMISSIONER	BALDWIN: Out of his salary.
	COMMISSIONER	WILLIAMS: Sure. Road and Bridge can
I do three.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Yeah. I think, you know,
we'll get money gathered up pretty quick if we get $75 or
$100 out of everybody.
SHERIFF HIERHOLZER: Good luck.
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COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Evidently, then, Rusty's not
going to contribute.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Thank you for those good
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: We did serve the jail people
last year, though.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yeah, that's exactly right.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: We're going to do it again
this year.
JUDGE TINLEY: He's actually got two departments,
the Sheriff's Office and the jail.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: So that's 150 for him.
JUDGE TINLEY: At least. It's a larger department
on top of that.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Yeah. If you take a third --
it's a third of the county employees, and it ought to be a
third of the total dollars. That makes sense.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Makes sense to me.
SHERIFF HIERHOLZER: H.E.B. cake ain't going to go
very far, is it?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: And to remind the Sheriff,
when we had our convention in here a couple years ago,
after -- that you did the catfish, we loaded all that extra
up and took it to the jail and fed the jail people.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: That's right.
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MS. HYDE: We forgot the J.D.O. -- we need to
remember the J.D.O.'s this year.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I think we did that.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: We did.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: At the catfish thing.
MS. HYDE: We did them some?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Yes, we did. Somebody did.
I packed it up; somebody took it over there.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I did.
JUDGE TINLEY: The Sheriff, to this point in this
entire meeting, has been noticeably silent.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Don't stir him up, Judge.
JUDGE TINLEY: I guess the question is, do we want
to give him an opportunity to stick his feet in his mouth?
Do you have anything you wanted to say about this, Sheriff?
Okay.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: It's amazing. Whenever the
word "money" comes in reverse fashion, he gets real quiet.
SHERIFF HIERHOLZER: You got it.
JUDGE TINLEY: Let's go to Item 18, an 11:30 timed
item, and we are on the money. Consider, discuss, take
appropriate action on proposed site plan and related work for
Hill Country Youth Exhibit Center and surrounding properties.
I Mr. Lewis.
MR. LEWIS: Your Honor, Commissioners, it's good to
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be here today. I've got something I'd like to give you, and
again, I've got some exhibits to put up on a board, and I'll
put them over here by Jody. Jody's got one of these.
There's enough of that for y'all.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Uh-oh, I hope there's no
increase in price on this.
MR. LEWIS: No, I printed those in-house, so
they're -- it's almost like they cost you nothing.
JUDGE TINLEY: Wow.
(Low-voice discussion off the record.)
MR. LEWIS: With your indulgence, at our last
presentation, we presented the site plan, and you sent me
away with a couple requests or directives, and those were to
revisit the site plan with respect to the exhibit hall and
the ability to expand that in the future, as well as to come
back with some budget numbers. And I'm here today to do
that, and so the first thing I want to do is go through it.
You have your packet -- packets there in front of you that
has all these elements in it. If you can -- you can turn
to -- I'm sorry, I can't tell you what page it is right now,
but there is a copy of that site plan in there somewhere
around the middle of the book.
JUDGE TINLEY: Talking about the exhibit hall?
MR. LEWIS: Beg pardon?
JUDGE TINLEY: Are you going to the exhibit hall
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first?
MR. LEWIS: Well, I think we'll just go to the site
plan. Then we'll go right -- and I'll take that down and go
to the exhibit hall.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: What page?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: 12.
MR. LEWIS: Just so that you know, we still -- the
site is generally laid out as it was at our last meeting, and
when we get to the budgeting, we'll talk about some phasing
on this. But you can see on the site plan that we have
allowed -- there's a dashed line that shows how that exhibit
hall can expand, and we have deliberately done no other
construction behind the exhibit hall except paving, which is
fairly easy to modify. Now, the pertinent elements of the
site plan were realigning the site entry along Highway 27,
opening up Riverside Drive to the parks, and so that that
becomes -- the parks become an integral part of this overall
campus plan, and connecting this to River Star park to the
north. That would also allow it to function as -- as an
integral part of the exhibit center. I'm going to take this
down, and we'll go to the exhibit hall.
JUDGE TINLEY: Next page.
MR. LEWIS: The program requirements for the
exhibit hall originally looked at something in the
neighborhood of a 30,000 square foot building as we put all
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those program requirements together, and those being
significantly -- significantly a large exhibit hall that
could be divided into multiple spaces, meeting rooms,
catering kitchen, and all of the support facilities that go
along with those, as well as office space for county offices
and the potential for leasing to compatible other offices
which are now on the second floor. The entrance is -- the
main entrance faces Highway 27. It's on the diagonal; it
faces the entrance -- the site entrance on Spur 100. We've
that that also breaks out in that concourse area, and exits
directly to parking off to the left-hand north side.
All of the common elements that support this --
restrooms, concessions, catering -- will share space with the
indoor arena. And so -- and then there is a -- there is a
connection both up at the vestibule on the top side of the
floor plan, as well as down between the catering and the
women's restroom. And the spaces down below, that green room
is a prep room that can be used for staging events, whether
that is -- you know, whether that is for some kind of a
performance that's going on in there or anything, anybody
that is using that hall that might need a place to stage as
they enter and exit. And then storage. And then on the
Riverside side of the expo hall, we indicate storage and a
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stage area, which at some time in the future, when you find
that you're at capacity on this expo hall, the walls can be
easily removed. There's nothing other than a little bit of
electricity and ceiling in there, and the building can then
be expanded towards the river, you know, on whatever order of
magnitude that you see fit. And the other pertinent piece --
and I have some handouts here. And if you have any questions
about this, please, you know, we -- let me go ahead. We'll
look at the image of it, 'cause Jonathan was interested in
how many trees I had shown. Everybody can see that you've
got --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: That's the cover here?
MR. LEWIS: Yes, sir. You've got a black and white
version of that, but you can see, if you start to the left of
the drawing and work back towards the center, we've got the
existing indoor arena and then the show barn. Those are
large engineered metal buildings, and then the exhibit hall
on this end. We are showing a covered concourse across the
front of that that's on the outside of the building, so that
you could walk -- you'd be able to walk either inside the
building or outside the building from one end to the other of
the series of buildings. Sir?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I don't see it. In my mind,
I've always thought that that covered -- outside the front
door, I always thought that you would be able to drive under
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MR. LEWIS: That's possible. That's not what we're
showing, but we could have a covered canopy that could come
out over the walk here.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Rainy weather.
MR. LEWIS: We could do that -- certainly do that.
But you see we've got covered here, and my -- our thought was
that would all be out of a galvanized steel, much like the
outdoor pavilion at River Star. Low maintenance -- zero
maintenance for a lifetime. And then we're showing some
green roofs, so that it relates to the green standing-seam
metal roofs; relates to what's going on also at River Star,
so this whole campus begins to look like one planned event.
And then the -- the major entry and the area that is -- that
encompasses the second story office has some glass -- large
glass curtain wall on the front that brings light in and
makes that concourse area a pretty open and inviting space.
Makes it a functional space, not just a place to -- it's much
more than just a corridor. It's a place that events can
overflow into, or could be an event unto itself. And then --
and we are showing trees, because that's what we do.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Lots of trees.
MR. LEWIS: That's what we do as architects. Or --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: You like trees.
MR. LEWIS: We like trees, and we think that we'd
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like to see a few more on here. When you look back at the
site plan, there are -- certainly, we're keeping all that
buffer that's along Riverside Drive. When we do the -- our
thought about all the paved areas as well, there would not be
curbs in those, and any -- any areas that are indicated that
might look like they'd have a landscape area, those would be
at grade. We know that many events that come here like the
-- when the circus or the fair comes, and they have to set up
all their equipment, they just need a large expansion of
paving, so we're not going to put curbs in here, but we will
have where we do have sidewalks that connect the buildings
together, or connect the highway to the buildings. Those
would be curbed just for -- curbed for safety. Showing a
median coming in and some monumental signs. We see -- and
right above the E in exhibit, you see a sign at the entrance,
and we envision that as a monument sign. That could have an
electronic sign on it that would be able to allow you to
announce events and change those announcements easily and
frequently as --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Message board.
MR. LEWIS: Message board, yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: That's provided we stay out
of the city limits of Kerrville.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Yeah.
MR. LEWIS: Well, you are in the ETJ, and you're
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subject to their sign ordinance. But there's also
flexibility in that. So, I'm going to hand you the budget
here.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Uh-oh, here comes the bad
news.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You probably explained this
and I missed it. Talk to me about those cute little lines.
MR. LEWIS: Standing-seam metal roof as a bird
~' would see it looking down on it.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Okay. So -- so, on that
second floor, you have all these offices and --
MR. LEWIS: We have restrooms -- men's and women's
restrooms, two exits, an elevator, and office suite, so you
can configure it in any number of ways, depending on the
demand for those spaces.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: And that's the only thing
that's on the second floor?
MR. LEWIS: Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Which is a lot, don't get me
~, wrong.
MR. LEWIS: Yes, sir, it's almost 5,000 -- 4,400
square feet there, and the total for that building is 35,000
square feet.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: The major portion of that
building is -- is metal building?
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MR. LEWIS: Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: And the front portion where
the offices are is --
MR. LEWIS: It would all be steel frame, but one
would be a -- we would envision that the big part might be a
pre-engineered -- what we call a pre-engineered metal
building like the indoor arena, and the addition would be
conventional steel frame that would be tied together. And
we've done that on a number of projects in the past. It's an
effective way to get the economies that large open spaces get
out of these engineered buildings, and then get some
flexibility in the supporting spaces.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: You talked about a
concourse, Peter, that runs the length of the three basic
facilities. I see it on the outside. Was there also one on
the inside?
MR. LEWIS: Yes, you're able to walk from -- from
the indoor arena all the way to the end of this exhibit hall
inside or outside and be -- be covered and conditioned, in
one case, or just covered and protected on the outside.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Thank you.
MR. LEWIS: If you will look at the handout I've
given you -- if you have other questions, please don't let me
preempt you, but I know you're interested, everyone, in
cutting to the chase. And I'll --
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COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I've got a question about
this.
MR. LEWIS: I'll give you -- let me walk you
briefly through it.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Okay.
MR. LEWIS: The budget that we put together is in
three phases. If you'll look at the very last page of your
book, there is a phasing plan that shows five phases, and the
fourth and fifth phase are the amphitheater that's looking
down on the river side of Riverside Drive and the vehicle
bridge that would connect the east park. And we did not put
a price to those. We visited with Commissioner Letz last
week, and felt that we could defer any consideration of
those, and wanted to focus on the buildings at hand and the
site development that go with those. To put these numbers
together, we engaged the services of J.M. Lowe, general
contractors, because nobody trusts architects' numbers, and
we worked with them.
Obviously, these are budget numbers. They are
based -- and I'll explain the detail here. They are based on
a certain level of detail that doesn't benefit from completed
sets of construction drawings. We don't -- you know, we
haven't gone that far yet, so we've attempted to be
conservative and consider all of the things that each of
these phases would require and put a number to them, and
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as architect and engineering fees and contractors' overhead
and profit. So, the Phase 1, if you'll -- I'll just go
through it. It's repair the roof and the skylights --
replace the skylights. Repair the roof would be to go in and
those. We propose to put new 6-inch full-faced insulation on
the underside of the existing insulation. We'd use piano
wire. I'll go -- I'll talk about the detail, but use piano
the birds that are living in there now to get good perches,
so this would be a way to insulate that and sort of minimize
the amount of wildlife you have up in the structure. Upgrade
the restrooms, enhance the ventilation.
We need new electrical service in that, so we would
also include replacing the light fixtures there with similar
lighting, energy-efficient lighting. Renovate the pens.
Again, we don't have a good scope on that, so there's a
budget number in there for that, though. New fire protection
to the building, and fire protection within the building.
III The -- the Building Code stipulates that assembly
occupancies, which this is, when they reach a certain
occupant capacity, needs to be sprinklers, and this building
meets that requirement. It meets that threshold, so we've
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got a budget number for that. We also propose to replace all
the building trim. Not the siding, and not the roof panels;
we're just going to replace the -- repair the fasteners, but
we felt replacing the trim, the gutters and downspouts that
have been boogered up and that may be failing in some places.
And then you see, replace all existing lighting, including
the nominal overhead and profit and AE fees that -- the
pittance in the budget number we have for that is.
(Laughter.) $885,600. Again, these are in 2008 dollars, and
we'll talk at the end of this maybe what that might mean in
2009 or 2010.
Phase 2 would be -- and so that is just the indoor
That doesn't have much to do
immediately. And we felt that that was one of the easily
achievable things, and because that building's so well used
year-round for various things, at least it would be a
worthwhile endeavor. Phase 2 would be to renovate and repair
site paving, provide new site paving, and then build a new
45,000 square foot show barn, which means that the existing
exhibit hall and the area that has the hog pens would be
demolished. The paving in front on the highway side of -- of
the event center is in pretty good condition. We thought
that we could just retop that, do some patching and retopping
and restripe it. New paving would be on -- principally on
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including the area in between -- in between -- or the area in
between the arena and the future exhibit hall. And then new
sprinkler. Again, we have an assembly occupancy that
requires sprinklers, and the -- the number -- budget number
for that is $3,891,840, in round numbers.
And then Phase 3 would be the exhibit center
events building and site and paving. That would be attendant
to that, which would include the realignment of the site
entries, or the main -- certainly the Spur 100 entry during
Phase 2; may involve the realignment of the east-most entry
off of Highway 27. This -- this would be a point in time
when the Extension Office would be removed, and following the
construction of space where the -- the Extension Office could
continue to function, which is programmed for this second
story area of the exhibit building. Walks and paving and
building to go with that, and then all these indoor elements.
We would have an elevator, as I said, stairs, double exits
from the second floor, all the interior finishes, mechanical,
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electrical, plumbing, to support all this, sprinklering.
We've thrown in something for acoustic and sound treatment in
the exhibit hall so that it could be used for a variety of
functions and perform in that way. Catering kitchen, as
', discussed, operable partitions, folding walls to divide these
spaces, and the miscellaneous earth work and site work that
goes with that, and the budget number for that is $5,948,812.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Does Phase 3 envision not
just taking down the existing Extension Office, or moving it
to another location --
MR. LEWIS: That is up to --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: -- over to River Star or
someplace else on campus, or what?
MR. LEWIS: I think it is a movable building, and
it's an asset, and so it could -- I don't have a clear
direction on that, but it could find a place on this site or
could find a place on River Star on the far end of the site.
That would be up to Commissioners, how you might direct that
to be. But I think it has -- it will continue to have a
useful life in another location.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: The phasing --
MR. LEWIS: Commissioner Baldwin, you had a
question when I started?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: The phasing just -- that's what
made sense to you? That's something that you and I met last
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week and said that's something that, really, the Court needed
to look at as to what makes sense, and just one, two, three.
It can go in reverse order or any way we want. Really, it's
just kind of --
MR. LEWIS: We packaged them how we thought they
might be. Again, as I said, these are in 2008 dollars.
Historically in the industry, we see, over a 20- or 30-year
time period, about 5 percent per annum inflation in the
construction market, and, you know, sometimes we see great
spikes, and other times we may be in a period of very low
inflation in the construction industry for the next year or
two. But -- so if you were to project into 2009 or '10 or
'll what these dollars might mean, a 5 percent index would be
a reasonable number to use as a modifier -- or multiplier.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: In Phase 1, renovate pens.
What does that mean?
MR. LEWIS: Well, they just -- it would be to -- to
go in and assess the pens that you have there, and if they
need -- if they need repairs, scraping, sanding, repainting,
and make them like new. The thought is that at the end of
the day, when all this is done, you have a like-new facility,
and so the things that you have that have a useful life, you
know, but may be in some distress would be repaired as
needed. So, it's a plug -- we put a plug number in there.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Phase 2 -- I'm willing to
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bet that Letz talked about this when you were talking about
site paving and re-topping and stripe existing paving and new
paving and all that. Could the county Road and Bridge
Department do that?
MR. LEWIS: Yes, sir. We did talk about that, and
we talked about it being a chip seal. And this is not
7 inches of reinforced concrete paving; this is something
that --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: That's a good thing.
MR. LEWIS: -- that we think is -- you know, the
things that we budgeted for are things that we think are
reasonable and have a history -- that the County has a
history of using. And so, yes, I think --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: So, the --
MR. LEWIS: -- it's a good thing.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: The 3 million could be --
could be reduced by whatever.
MR. LEWIS: We did it as an at-market, so, yes, it
could.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Okay.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Back to Phase 1, you talk
about the renovation of the pens. That is the pens that
are -- that are part of the arena now? Not the pens that are
behind the exhibit hall?
MR. LEWIS: That is correct, yes.
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COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: New fire protection
underground, what is that? And is that a requirement or
what? Tell me about that.
MR. LEWIS: That is bringing fire -- water service
to the building.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Okay.
MR. LEWIS: Yes, sir, so that would be a
requirement. That would be a part of the protection, the
sprinklering of the buildings.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: So, is that a different
size --
MR. LEWIS: Yes.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN
inch or something?
-- line? Two and a half
MR. LEWIS: That would be something larger than
that, probably.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I think a 12-inch.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You're kidding.
MR. LEWIS: I don't know what it would be, but it
would be larger than 2 and a half.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: A lot of water.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: At least six.
MR. LEWIS: If you've got several hundred thousand
-- you know, a couple hundred thousand feet of space, by the
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time all this is done, or 150,000 square feet of space, --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Wow.
MR. LEWIS: -- that if -- if you need it protected
all at one time, this is for the fire department and for the
sprinkler system, so -- independent of domestic water.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: The current city rules, which
are based on some national guidelines, you need to be able to
pump 15 -- 1,500 gallons a minute?
JUDGE TINLEY: A minute.
~I COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You're talking about --
you're talking about a truck being able to -- fire truck?
', MR. LEWIS: Yes, sir. You have a fire department
connection, yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: And also sprinklers.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yeah, okay.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: So, it all happens --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Different ball game,
1,500 gallons per minute, yeah.
MR. LEWIS: One of the questions that came up in
our meeting with Commissioner Letz last week was, if -- if
the fire sprinkler system could also be used to -- double
duty, to replace the system that you use to wet down the area
inside the indoor arena, and the answer is no.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Answer is no.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I tried.
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COMMISSIONER OEHLER: You can't use that unless
it's --
JUDGE TINLEY: Fire only.
MR. LEWIS: Fire only.
I
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Have to replace all the
I' sprinkler nozzles or something every time it comes on?
MR. LEWIS: On those systems, you got pretty --
COMMISSIONER LETZ: As soon as the water starts
~ flowing, the fire trucks start rolling.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Oh.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: You didn't understand that.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Nice try.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: We can put a separate nozzle
next to the one that --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: So, if we add up the 885 and
the 3.8, and add that to the 5.9, we got --
MR. LEWIS: 10 million, 586 --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Say again?
MR. LEWIS: 10,586,252.
JUDGE TINLEY: 10,6.
MR. LEWIS: 10,6.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Means we got to raise a lot
of money from somewhere.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: I think we can do it.
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COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Well, shoot, Obama can do it
overnight.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Maybe you need to call him.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Well, this is one of those
things that we could submit as a plan in the making and see
where it goes.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: I think we -- you know, from
what -- the way things are today, I think the best thing to
do is to pursue grants. I don't believe we're going to pass
a bond issue to do this, and I wouldn't be for that anyway.
But --
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: And we started talking about
bonds -- grants and --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Yeah, grants is the way I
think we need to go. And I think it's possible it just -- it
will take time. I think we need to figure out which one of
these is the project that needs to be done first, so we can
raise the money to do that one and then move on with the
others as well.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I think a lot of them can
be dual-tracked, Commissioner. There are pots of money out
there that might be available for the agriculture components.
There are pots of money that we may want to tap for the
public events facility.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: I'd say if we're going to run
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two of them in tandem, it would be Phase 2 and 3. I think
the renovation can be the very last thing, because that is
one that -- it's not optimum, but it functions, and continues
to function, and I think it can -- it can continue for a
little while longer. I do believe that the show barn part of
it is maybe not the most critical, but it's getting pretty
critical, and I would like to see that probably proceed, that
or the exhibit hall.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Yeah. The -- we talked a fair
amount last week about it, which goes first. The -- you
know, the -- probably the most critical, in my mind, is show
barn, something that's needed out there. The benefit to
doing the exhibit hall first is that while that's being
constructed, the old exhibit hall can continue to function,
so you don't have downtime of a facility out there, and then
you -- immediately after the stock show period, you tear it
down and rebuild the show barn. That can be done in a year.
The exhibit hall is going to take more than a year.
MR. LEWIS: Show barn's probably a 10-month deal.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Yeah, but with scheduling and
timing, and -- but if you build the exhibit hall first, then
you have the ability to, you know, not really ever have to
shut the facility down, whereas if you tear down -- do the
reverse, you have to limit use.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Well, we can start putting
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some of our agriculture services in that thing to offset some
of our cost of operation with income.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: That would be a plus.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Would be a good thing to do.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I think that Commissioner
Oehler and I talked a little bit about it, but, you know, the
~~ phasing may be largely dictated by the funding. I mean, if
somebody wants to give us an exhibit hall, I don't think
we're going to turn it down just because we want to build a
show barn first. I think you kind of -- or vice-versa. If
somebody wants to give us a new show barn, I think that
becomes number one. We need to be flexible. But this gives
us, I think, what we needed and asked for, is something that
we can now go forward with and say, "Here is a plan. Here
are some estimated costs." And now we can go to local
foundations and other sources.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Wherever.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: And Department of Agriculture
is a source, and Homeland Security is a possibility of
looking at that for evacuation-type center, things of that
nature.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: This is great, Peter. I
like what you've done.
MR. LEWIS: Thank you.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: And this is necessary for
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COMMISSIONER OEHLER: This is looking 50 years into
the future. What's been there for 50 years is --
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Let's see if we can cut
that time -- oh, take us 50 years out?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Yeah, take us 50 years into
the future.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Absolutely.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: And I believe the spaces are
right, you know, for what our needs are, and that we have the
ability to expand on this plan if need be in the future, and
it's expandable. And if we can pull it off and we can get
the funding, I tell you what, it'll be a big asset to Kerr
County.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: No question about it.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Hear, hear.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I think -- and I see a couple
of representatives from the Stock Show Association here in
the audience, and I think that the -- this is the first step.
Next step will be to look for funding. And once the design
part comes along, which I know is their, probably, biggest
concern, I think certainly they'll be included at that point.
I think the square footage side of it is -- is adequate, from
all prior discussions I've certainly had with that
association. But the -- you know, I think when we get into
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the design phase of it -- hopefully we'll get to that
phase -- at that point, we'll bring in the users of those
facilities. Certainly, Stock Show will be included on that
part, and I think when we get to that point, the
Convention/Visitors Bureau will be included for the exhibit
hall part. So --
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: It's something that will
really, really be used, and the demand for it is already
existing, and it'll go up if we have a nice facility.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: A major Kerr County asset.
~ Major.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: And I think that there will
be a lot of people that recognize that with a plan like this,
it's a nice plan, but it's not an extravagant plan. We're
not talking about marble and granite, just talking about
basic spaces, nice and finished, but nothing extravagant.
JUDGE TINLEY: Peter, we thank you.
MR. LEWIS: I thank you. I want to say I
appreciate the opportunity to assist in this planning effort.
I appreciate how engaged you were in the process in our
workshop, and then these open events, as well as Commissioner
Letz' and Commissioner Oehler's involvement, you know,
whether it was on-site or at my office. And -- and I'm not
'i going away, so I'll be around to answer questions and
I
~, continue to have dialogue as you move forward with it.
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COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: You have extra copies of
this so we can get them if we need them?
MR. LEWIS: Yeah, and I can get you copies. I can
send electronic copies to Jody, however you want to do that.
I've been -- and also had a request from the newspaper to
send them an electronic copy of the site plan. If that's --
if you're in agreement, I'll do that as well, so you get the
word out.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Thank you very much.
JUDGE TINLEY: Absolutely.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: And I believe it's styled kind
of to wrap up your duties, that we'll accept the -- we'll
accept -- what did we hire you to do? (Laughter.) I move we
accept the final site plan for Hill Country Youth Exhibit
Center as presented.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Second.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Site plan? It's entitled
Master Plan.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Master Plan. Master site plan.
Master plan, that's fine.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Second.
JUDGE TINLEY: I have a motion and second as
indicated. Question or discussion on that motion? All in
favor of the motion, signify by raising your right hand.
(The motion carried by unanimous vote.)
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JUDGE TINLEY: All opposed, same sign.
(No response.)
JUDGE TINLEY: The motion carried. Thank you, sir.
~, MR. LEWIS: Excellent. Thank you.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Thank you, Peter.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Thank you.
JUDGE TINLEY: Why don't we go ahead and move
forward now, and I don't know of anything we have as far as
an executive session item. Any member of the Court have
anything? Okay. Why don't we move to Section 4 of the
agenda, payment of the bills.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Move we pay the bills.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Second.
JUDGE TINLEY: Motion made and seconded to pay the
bills. Question or discussion? All of these first items
that are here under Nondepartmental, Ms. Hargis, are those
accruals going into this budget year for insurance
requirements, or do they relate to this budget year?
MS. HARGIS: It's this budget year.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay. Any other questions or
comments? All in favor of the motion, signify by raising
', your right hand.
(The motion carried by unanimous vote.)
JUDGE TINLEY: All opposed, same sign.
(No response.)
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JUDGE TINLEY: The motion does carry. Do we .have
any budget amendments?
MS. HARGIS: No, sir.
JUDGE TINLEY: Any late bills?
MS. HARGIS: No, sir.
JUDGE TINLEY: I've been presented with monthly
reports from Environmental Health; District Clerk; Justice of
the Peace, Precinct l; Justice of the Peace, Precinct 4;
Constable, Precinct 3; and Road and Bridge. Do I hear a
motion that these reports be approved as presented?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: So moved.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Second.
JUDGE TINLEY: Motion made and seconded for
approval of the indicated reports as presented. Question or
discussion on the motion? All in favor of the motion,
signify by raising your right hand.
(The motion carried by unanimous vote.)
JUDGE TINLEY: All opposed, same sign.
(No response.)
JUDGE TINLEY: That motion does carry. Reports
from Commissioners in connection with their liaison or
committee assignments. Commissioner Letz?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Commissioner Baldwin and I are
really trying to meet with the City Councilmen assigned to
meet with us on ETJ issues, and the first date that we could
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get where they could meet with us is December 10th, I
believe. So, we're on schedule to meet with them in
mid-December.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay. Anything else?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: We've been trying for about a
little over a month.
JUDGE TINLEY: Anything else?
COMMISSIONER LETZ: No.
JUDGE TINLEY: Commissioner Oehler?
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: One thing, I guess. We did
have a -- have a little problem with a cat killing a bat, and
we have confirmed rabies in the bat. And it happens to be in
one of these cat colonies that has been established, and so I
think there's some action being taken on that issue.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Golly.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: And it's unfortunate, but
those things happen. Doesn't matter. When we have this kind
of problem, we have to deal with it, and Janie is doing that.
JUDGE TINLEY: The good news is, most of -- or part
of the process is to vaccinate the cats in these colonies.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: That's true. It just depends
on how long it may be since that was -- since that was done.
Anyway, that's -- that's probably the biggest news, I guess,
I have on one of mine. Of course, Environmental Health is
still cruising along. They have some issues they're trying
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to resolve with things that have been discovered in areas of
concern. And, anyway, that's about all.
JUDGE TINLEY: Okay. Commissioner Baldwin?
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: No, sir. Thank you.
JUDGE TINLEY: Commissioner Williams?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Airport Board is alive and
well. Judge Tinley swore them in the other day, and I think
we've got a good group of guys working for that airport. One
thing that Court probably ought to really take a look at in
that connection is that the -- the construction project
that's going on out there has been billed as a taxiway
relocation, but the reality of it is, it's a stormwater
takeoff project more than taxiway relocation. It's massive.
And this is Phase 1 of two phases, and so if you're out there
sometime, take a look at it. A lot of heavy work going on in
there. Huge box culverts going in right through the heart of
this particular phase, which will take care of the flooding
problems that have been at Mooney for all these years, take
'! that water down to Silver Creek, I believe it is, and then
Phase 2 takes care of the rest of the problem east of -- of
this particular phase of the project. If you're out there,
take a look at it.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Where's the funding coming
from to pay for that?
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: 90 percent TexDOT,
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10 percent City/County. That's about $5 million this year,
and we put up our piece, City's put up its piece, TexDOT
Aviation the rest.
JUDGE TINLEY: Actually, I think the master's
~ provided out of E.I.C.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Somebody asked me; I just
wanted to know.
COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: We have to deal with the
next phase, though, which is an even bigger phase than that
one.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Right.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: I wasn't really aware of it
till last Airport Board meeting. Never really was presented
that way, that one of the problems they've had is that all
these years, we keep on fixing the main runway, having
problems with it. Whenever we get a wet period, all that
water gets under the runway and causes the base to fail,
'cause you can't -- it gets trapped like a bowl.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: Saturated.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Saturated. It's a big bowl
~I down there, and this is getting all that water out from under
those runways. So, it's a -- and it's -- I think it's a
board member -- King was one that really brought this up and
said, "Hey, we need to quick look can at what the project is,
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quit calling it a taxiway relocation." Which it does that,
but the dollars are -- probably 80 percent of the dollars are
~ drainage.
!, COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Right.
i
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li JUDGE TINLEY: Anything else, Commissioner?
~ COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: No, sir.
JUDGE TINLEY: Any reports from elected officials
or department heads? I know the Sheriff's not here; that's
!, good news.
COMMISSIONER OEHLER: We were talking about getting
money from him; he took off.
JUDGE TINLEY: Yeah, okay. Is that it? We're
adjourned.
(Commissioners Court adjourned at 12:08 p.m.)
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STATE OF TEXAS ~
COUNTY OF KERR ~
The above and foregoing is a true and complete
transcription of my stenotype notes taken in my capacity as
County Clerk of the Commissioners Court of Kerr County,
Texas, at the time and place heretofore set forth.
DATED at Kerrville, Texas, this 2nd day of December,
I 2008.
JANNETT PIEPER, Kerr County Clerk
Kathy B nik, Deputy County Clerk
Certified Shorthand Reporter
11-24-08
ORDER NO. 31101
TEXAS RAINWATF,R CATCHMENT ASSOCIATION USE OF HILL COUNTRY
YOUTH EXHIBIT CENTER
Came to be heard this the 24th day of November, 2008, with a motion made by
Commissioner Letz, seconded by Commissioner Williams, the Court unanimously
approved by a vote of 4-0-0 to:
Approve adding the Texas Rainwater Catchment Association to the non-profit list for use
of the Hill Country Youth Exhibit Center.
ORDER NO. 31102
BEXAR COUNTY AGREEMENT FOR CERT TRAILER PERMANENT LOAN
Came to be heard this the 24th day of November, 2008, with a motion made by
Commissioner Letz, seconded by Commissioner Oehler, the Court unanimously
approved by a vote of 4-0-0 to:
Approve the Bexar County Agreement for CERT trailer permanent loan, and authorize
County Judge to sign same.
ORDER NO. 31103
INVESTIGATION OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES FOR COUNTY
FACILITIES
Came to be heard this the 24th day of November, 2008, with a motion made by
Commissioner Baldwin, seconded by Commissioner Letz, the Court ~lnanimously
approved by a vote of 4-0-0 to:
Authorize Rex Emerson to look into alternative energy sources for county facilities.
ORDER NO. 31104
CONVEYANCE FROM K BAR RANCH LTD. INC. TO KERR COUNTY
Came to be heard this the 24th day of November, 2008, with a motion made by
Commissioner Oehler, seconded by Commissioner Letz, the Court unanimously
approved by a vote of 4-0-0 to:
Accept the conveyance of 2.12 acres from the Big Sky Ranch Subdivision Ltd., located in
Precinct 4, to Kerr County.
ORDER NO. 31105
216TH DISTRICT ATTORNEY TO CONTRACT FOR APPROPRIATE STAFF FOR
DISPOSITION OF CASES
Came to be heard this the 24th day of November, 2008, with a motion made by
Commissioner Baldwin, seconded by Commissioner Williams, the Court unanimously
approved by a vote of 4-0-0 to:
Authorize the 216r~ District Attorney to contract for appropriate staff to facilitate more
expedient case dispositions, limiting it to $30,000 and if the District Attorneys require
additional funds, they will need to come back to the Court.
ORDER NO. 31106
REQUEST FOR FUNDING FROM UGRA TO ASSIST WITH CLEANING OF FLAT
ROCK AND INGRAM LAKES
Came to be heard this the 24th day of November, 2008, with a motion made by
Commissioner Letz, seconded by Commissioner Oehler, the Court unanimously
approved by a vote of 4-0-0 to:
Authorize Commissioner Oehler and Commissioner Williams to enter into dialogue with
UGRA regarding the cleaning of Flat Rock Lake and Ingram Lake, and request assistance
for funding.
ORDER NO. 31107
AGLOW INTERNATIONAL USE OF UNION CHURCH BUILDING
Came to be heard this the 24th day of November, 2008, with a motion made by
Commissioner Letz, seconded by Commissioner Baldwin, the Court unanimously
approved by a vote of 4-0-0 to:
Add Aglow International to the non-profit list for the use of the Union Church Building.
ORDER NO. 31108
RESOLUTION CONCERNING PROPOSED LEGISLATION ON COUNTY
SUBDIVISION AND LAND USE REGULATIONS
Came to be heard this the 24th day of November, 2008, with a motion made by
Commissioner Letz, seconded by Commissioner Williams, the Court unanimously
approved by a vote of 4-0-0 to:
Approve Resolution as amended, with the modification to Number 3 to take out the
wording "population density as determined by, and/or" and making it read "to regulate
average lot sizes within a designated area by criteria in addition to water availability",
and leaving "minimum and/or average" in.
ORDER NO. 31109
BURN BAN
Came to be heard this the 24th day of November, 2008, with a motion made by
Commissioner Letz, seconded by Commissioner Oehler, the Court unanimously
approved by a vote of 4-0-0 to:
Approve implementation of Burn Ban.
OKDER NO. 3 1110
CONTRACTS WIT~I KERR COUN"I~Y EN1~1"1~1}~;S
Came to be heard this the 24th day of November, 2008, with a motion made by
Commissioner Williams, seconded by Commissioner Letz, the Court unanimously
approved by a vote of 4-0-0 to:
Approve Contracts with Dietert Center, Families & Literacy, Inc., and Kerr County Soil
& Water Conservation District, and authorize County Judge to sign same.
ORDER NO. 31111
PROPOSED SITE PLAN FOR HILL COUNTRY YOUTH EXHIBIT CI~,NTI~R
Came to be heard this the 24th day of November, 2008, with a motion made by
Commissioner Letz, seconded by Commissioner Oehler, the Court unanimously
approved by a vote of 4-0-0 to:
Accept final master site plan for the Hill Country Youth Exhibit Center as presented
ORDER NO. 31112
CLAIMS AND ACCOUNTS
Came to be heard this the 24th day of November, 2008, came to be considered by the
Court various Commissioners Precincts, which said Claims and Accounts are:
Accounts Expense
10-General	$	228,139.94
12-Election Services	$	808.50
14-Fire Protection	$	15,000.00
15-Road & Bridge	$	42,936.26
16-Capital Projects	$	145,317.83
18-County Law Library	$	2,141.91
21-Title IV-E	$	46.19
31-Parks	$	16.97
76-Juv Detention Facility	$	4,375.62
83-216`" District Attorney	$	2,219.81
86-216`" CSCD	$	2,376.17
87-Community Service	$	96.29
TOTAL $ 465,978.14
Upon motion made by Commissioner Williams, seconded by Commissioner Baldwin, the
Court unanimously approved by vote of 4-0-0 to pay the claims and accounts.
ORDER NO. 31113
MONTHLY REPORTS
Came to be heard this the 24th day of November, 2008, with a motion made by
Commissioner Baldwin, seconded by Commissioner Letz, the Court unanimously
approved by a vote of 4-0-0 to:
Approve the Monthly Reports from:
Environmental Health
District Clerk
JP #1
JP #4
Constable #3
Road & Bridge