1 1 2 3 KERR COUNTY COMMISSIONERS' COURT 4 Special Session 5 Monday, March 1, 2021 6 9:00 a.m. 7 Commissioners' Courtroom 8 Kerr County Courthouse 9 Kerrville, Texas 78028 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 PRESENT: ROB KELLY, Kerr County Judge HARLEY BELEW, Commissioner Precinct 1 24 TOM MOSER, Commissioner Precinct 2 JONATHAN LETZ, Commissioner Precinct 3 25 DON HARRIS, Commissioner Precinct 4 2 1 I-N-D-E-X 2 NO. PAGE 3 *** Visitor's Input. 5 4 *** Commissioners' Comments. 7 5 1.2 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 12 action regarding the update, facility use 6 and other matters related to the severe winter weather disaster. 7 1.13 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 74 8 action for the court to grant a 15-foot wide utility easement for the Kerrville 9 Public Utility Board across county-owned property on Spur 100 to serve the Kerrville 10 Independent School District property located on Spur 100, and authorize the 11 County Judge to sign same. 12 1.14 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 75 action regarding Texans for Responsible 13 Aggregate Mining (TRAM) and Resolution regarding same. 14 1.15 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 101 15 action for the Commissioners' Court approval regarding three Kerr County agreements for 16 storage of Kerr County owned materials and/or equipment. The locations are at 17 150 Ace Reid Road North, Precinct 1, 240 Southway Drive South, Precinct 1, and 516 18 Kelly Creek Road South, Precinct 4. 19 1.1 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 102 action to review pay policy for employees 20 that are required to work on administrative paid days. 21 1.3 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 110 22 action regarding the Local State of Disaster due to Severe Winter Weather that was signed 23 by Judge Kelly on February 22, 2021 and extended until terminated by order of the 24 Kerr County Commissioners Court on February 23, 2021. 25 3 1 I-N-D-E-X 2 NO. PAGE 3 1.4 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 111 action regarding availability and 4 administering COVID-19 vaccine, and discussion of county health unit. 5 1.5 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 116 6 action regarding Kerr County Veteran Services Office services. 7 1.6 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 126 8 action for the Court to approve the contract between Computer Information 9 Concepts, Inc. and Kerr County, and authorize the County Judge to sign. 10 1.7 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 127 11 action to approve amendment with Tyler Technologies for Tyler Jury Manager, and 12 have County Judge sign the same. 13 1.8 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 129 action and to accept annual report on 14 County Clerk's investments as it regards to the Registry Accounts of the County 15 Court to comply with the Texas Estates Code 1355.052. 16 1.9 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 130 17 action to renew ACA Reporting and Tracking Service (ARTS) Program Agreement between 18 Texas Association of Counties and Kerr County, and have County Judge sign the same. 19 1.10 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 131 20 action to accept annual Racial Profiling Reports from Constable Precinct 1. 21 1.11 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 131 22 action to accept the Kerr County Sheriff Racial Profiling (Tier 2) State of Texas 23 Mandatory Form. 24 1.12 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 132 action to accept annual Racial Profiling 25 Report from 216th District Attorney. 4 1 I-N-D-E-X 2 NO. PAGE 3 1.14 Consider, discuss and take appropriate 132 action regarding Texans for Responsible 4 Aggregate Mining (TRAM) and Resolution regarding same. 5 2.1 Pay Bills. 134 6 2.2 Budget Amendments. 135 7 2.4 Auditor Reports. 136 8 2.6 Court Orders. 136 9 3.1 Status reports from Department Heads. 137 10 3.2 Status reports from Elected Officials. 142 11 *** Adjournment. 144 12 *** Reporter's Certificate. 145 13 * * * * * * 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 5 1 JUDGE KELLY: (Gavel bang.) Good morning. 2 It's March the first, 2021 and Commissioners' Court is 3 in special session this morning. Since this is a 4 special meeting, we don't need the prayer and the 5 pledge. We do always have the public input. Is there 6 anyone that would like to address the Court about a 7 matter not on the the agenda? Mr. Fleming, do you want 8 to address the Court? 9 MR. FLEMING: Yes. 10 JUDGE KELLY: Give us your name. 11 MR. FLEMING: I'm sorry. W. L. Fleming, 12 here representing the American Legion, here in town. 13 And like I say, that's a private club, and we -- and we 14 got shut down again Friday. And to -- we didn't get a 15 citation, it was like a warning and it said -- there was 16 only three words. It said people and manner, and I 17 couldn't read the third word, and so I was trying to --I 18 came here to -- in an effort to try to get a better 19 reading on what the laws are, what we're trying to 20 adhere to in the bars. 21 Like I say, the American Legion's a private 22 club. We very rarely have 25, 30 people there, and it's 23 the same 25 or 30. It not a -- you know, a rotation. 24 So I was just trying to get a better reading on that. 25 And I believe -- oh, he was going to give me his card to 6 1 where he could -- 2 JUDGE KELLY: Dub Thomas, our Emergency 3 Management Coordinator? 4 MR. FLEMING: Yes. 5 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Yes. 6 MR. FLEMING: And you had said that if we 7 were below 50 percent, we could open up? 8 JUDGE KELLY: This is input. I hate to be 9 technical with you Mr. Fleming, we cannot respond to 10 anything that you say. We are here to listen to what 11 you have to say. 12 MR. FLEMING: Okay. Sorry. 13 JUDGE KELLY: When we do have our comments, 14 I will clarify what your interest is, what you're 15 talking about and I'll be happy to do it. But at this 16 point I cannot respond to your input. 17 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Plus it's not on the 18 agenda. 19 JUDGE KELLY: It's not on the agenda. 20 That's right. 21 COMMISSIONER BELEW: We can say there's lots 22 of information on our County website. All the 23 information you need. 24 MRS. STEBBINS: The agency website as well 25 can give you some information for bars. 7 1 MR. FLEMING: Okay. Thank you. Thank you 2 for your time. 3 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Thank you. 4 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Thank you. 5 JUDGE KELLY: So this will be the 6 opportunity for Commissioner comments. We're ready to 7 start on the agenda. 8 COMMISSIONER MOSER: I say where are we 9 going to start with comments. 1, 2, 3 or -- 10 JUDGE KELLY: Two. 11 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Two. Okay. Precinct 12 2, like everybody else had really difficult time during 13 the during the freeze and Center Point had a particular 14 hard time. I think probably other areas, did, too. 15 Because they have water distributed by Aqua Texas, and 16 some other entities, Winfield and others. And when they 17 lose power and only on for an hour at a time, and I know 18 everybody's trying to do everything they can, but all I 19 would say is in the future, see if there's anything on 20 the water utilities that you know, is part of the grid, 21 and part of the substation and all, if that can be 22 considered. I think would help a lot. 23 The other thing is gotta lot of illegal 24 aliens coming in, and I think they're going to affect 25 Precinct 2 and a lot of other parts of Kerr County, and 8 1 I just want to say watch out. That's it. 2 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. Three. 3 COMMISSIONER LETZ: Don't have much. 4 Precinct 3 was like the rest of the county. Not near as 5 much as Precinct 4, but we were impacted by the storm. 6 And the other comment is, I think the Court 7 knows I will be leaving about 9:45 today. 8 COMMISSIONER MOSER: That's for a short term 9 you'll be leaving. 10 COMMISSIONER LETZ: For a short term. I'll 11 be back; not today. 12 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I think everything I 13 have will be covered shortly on Precinct 4. 14 JUDGE KELLY: Precinct 1. 15 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Well I'm concerned 16 about these bar closings on the weekend. There seem to 17 be some wires crossed. I started getting calls Friday 18 night, and text messages and e-mails all weekend long. 19 As somebody sweeps through from the TABC finish your 20 beer and get out. And this happened in Ingram, it 21 happened in Kerrville, and it happened all around the 22 County. 23 And I went back through and talked to our 24 public relation officer, and said is there something 25 happening I don't know about. Nope. Asked our Kerr 9 1 County Emergency Management Director. No. We only have 2 about 8 people in the hospital here locally that have 3 the virus. And that's what this is based on. This is 4 basically somebody come through from the Texas Alcohol 5 Beverage Commission, witnesses saying that they told 6 them to get out. And so they're closing down these 7 business. 8 And my concern is that this has always -- 9 has never made any sense. It's always been 10 discriminatory. This is another example of it. The 11 Governor's unconstitutional executive order. And I'm no 12 legal scholar but I can recognize when somebody's being 13 discriminated against. That doesn't take much of a 14 brain for that, kids can see it. So they run these 15 customers out of these places based on the idea that we 16 are overloaded at our local hospital I was told 17 originally. Now they say it's expanded to our district. 18 And that's discriminatory also because what 19 we have going on here is not the same as what's going on 20 in this entire medical district, or whatever, zoning, 21 they have regions. 22 So if you have -- if you get 50 percent of 23 your revenue from alcohol sales, everything's fine and 24 hunky dory in your place. If you get 51 percent of your 25 revenue from alcohol sales, you gotta close down when 10 1 there's too many people in the hospital. That don't 2 make a lick of sense. 3 And so that's what's been going on. They 4 ran people out of bars this weekend. It's coming home 5 to -- and apparently, they are misinformed about how the 6 formula works. It's a little too complicated. And it 7 all goes back to the Governor's executive order. So 8 there's not something magical that happens. I mean a 9 beer or a cocktail is not the kryptonite for your mask. 10 If you got your mask in that bar oughta be the same as 11 when got it on at the HEB store. 12 This is discriminatory against the mom and 13 pop operation, and it's time that we visit this topic in 14 Kerr County, for us, and forget about what the rest of 15 the State wants to do. Our legislature needs to take 16 this up. It needs executive orders need to have a limit 17 on them. Just like the Judge. The Judge can issue an 18 emergency order, but it has to be confirmed by the 19 entire Court within seven days. That's a good system. 20 We don't have that in the State of Texas. And you need 21 to call your representative and State Senator and say we 22 need to stop this. We need to have a limit on it, so 23 that the legislature has to approve it. 24 Right now this is shut down businesses, and 25 wrongly so, based on a false pretext. These businesses 11 1 are still shutting sown, they don't know what to do. 2 You got people out here enforcing the law that don't 3 know what the law is. It's too complicated. It's a 4 mathematical equation that apparently they can't figure 5 up at TABC. 6 And now you got people standing around here 7 wondering whether they can be open today, or tonight, or 8 whenever bars open. I don't go to bars. But bars are 9 an important part, and I think more good ideas have come 10 out of bars than congress ever, so -- 11 (Laughter.) 12 COMMISSIONER BELEW: -- put that on the 13 record. And I'm angry about it and I've not stopped my 14 pursuit of getting this resolved. This is a bunch of 15 nonsense. 16 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I agree. You need to 17 look at that hard. Talk to the Sheriff, and Chief 18 Deputy. 19 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Talk to the Governor. 20 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Did you even know they 21 were coming? 22 MR. FLEMING: No, Sir. 23 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. That's a comment. 24 Let's try to keep us going this morning. We're going to 25 take 1.1 and pass it temporarily. And of course it's an 12 1 issue for us to deal with today, but it's not the number 2 one thing we have to deal with. 3 Let's move on to item 1.2, which is 4 consider, discuss and take appropriate action regarding 5 the update, facility use and other matters related to 6 the severe winter weather disaster. 7 And I have Dub Thomas to do that. But I've 8 asked -- we have Bob Loth here from Fredericksburg, 9 Central Texas Electric Co-op. We've still got over 12 10 hundred meters that are not hooked up in west Kerr 11 County, and I believe that number is something like 12 that, isn't it -- 13 MR. LOTH: Not anymore. 14 JUDGE KELLY: Not anymore? 15 MR. LOTH: No, Sir. 16 JUDGE KELLY: We're here to hear your status 17 report. 18 MR. LOTH: well, it's a really good one, in 19 my opinion. Yesterday was a red letter day as far as I 20 was concerned. We are down to, I believe it's on the 21 map, 131 meters in Kerr County that are still out. 22 We're about 1250 total, but only a 131 of those are in 23 Kerr County. We were able yesterday to -- and you'll 24 have a map to look at later. There are basically three 25 areas, small areas, that are still out of power in Kerr 13 1 County. We were able to do a lot of good yesterday down 2 Highway 41. The damage wasn't nearly as bad the further 3 south you got, so we were able to get that three phase 4 lit up, or made hot as the guys call it. 5 There was a lot of stuff that we'd rode out 6 and found there were little or no problems. Took care 7 of those quickly. And I'm proud to stand here today and 8 tell y'all that we're down to 130 here. We're fighting 9 a little bit of weather. I would anticipate in the next 10 day or two that we should have our total number three, 11 four hundred, maybe less than that hopefully. I don't 12 know if I set the goal -- I've done so many television 13 and radio interviews in the last week since I met with 14 y'all, and I set a goal for the weekend to be less than 15 a thousand by this morning. And we almost got there. 16 COMMISSIONER MOSER: You mentioned 130, and 17 what are the units that you are talking about. 18 MR. LOTH: 131 meters. 19 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Oh, meters. And so a 20 thousand is people, is that what that is? 21 MR. LOTH: No. A thousand is total system 22 wide. Kerr County is 131. 23 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Gotcha. Thank you. 24 MR. LOTH: It's Gillespie and Kerr. There's 25 about 1100 in Gillespie County, they're still off. And 14 1 in effect what we've done -- and there are a small 2 number south of I-10, but we in effect have closed our 3 gap from 16 North out of Fredericksburg to Interstate 4 10. And I can tell you, the Harper area, if you look at 5 that map again, there's a couple areas that are -- just 6 in northern -- or southern Gillespie County, I guess, 7 south of Harper, we're getting there. It looks a lot 8 look south of I-10 and north of Harper, we're also 9 getting in pretty good shape. So we're getting this 10 thing narrowed. 11 We still have all the crews working so we're 12 putting more people in these areas. They were the worst 13 hit areas. We got some bulldozer work to do some in 14 some places. And you know, we're going to fight this 15 thing until the end again. But coming over here, Kerr 16 County is in good shape. We're almost done. That's -- 17 I mean that's really the essence of the report. 18 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Somebody last week here 19 asked the question, said that they'd lived on the Gulf 20 Coast and whenever there were hurricanes they bring in 21 thousands of crews from all over the nation, and he 22 asked why we didn't -- why that didn't happen in this 23 area. What was the answer to that? 24 MR. LOTH: There's a lot -- there's several 25 reasons. The main reason is that this isn't a 15 1 hurricane. 2 COMMISSIONER MOSER: No. But it's a 3 disaster. 4 MR. LOTH: It's a different -- it's a 5 different storm. A hurricane wipes out homes. 6 Basically you don't -- you're not rebuilding single 7 phase taps to homes; you're rebuilding main 8 infrastructure. You're not rebuilding all those nooks 9 and crannies that you would be doing in an instance like 10 this. 11 Trees -- I mean the downed pole power lines. 12 The problem that we have is different is that in a 13 hurricane it's all gone. Here, we're having to pull 14 stubs out of the ground, get them off, get the old wire 15 off, transfer it onto the new pole. It's not the same 16 as going and building a brand new line. It takes 17 longer, there's more work. 18 The coast, you can get up in a bucket and 19 you can see 8, ten miles. In the Hill Country there's a 20 lot of places you can't see from one span to the next. 21 Now, another piece of this is if you have 22 nothing and you're just simply rebuilding, we're going 23 in there, and you get too many people in there and 24 you're making stuff hot, you've gotta do a good job 25 maintaining and protecting those people. One of the 16 1 easiest things to happen that can happen in one of these 2 situations is you -- and you can get somebody burnt or 3 killed, and that's last thing we want to have happen. 4 There is a method to doing this. We're 5 going out from substations and rebuilding -- and 6 rebuilding and turning on. You can't go to the end of 7 the line and pull everything up and turn it on and it's 8 going to get there, because it's gotta get all the way 9 to the end. 10 One other comment that I'll make -- 11 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Wait, let me ask you 12 before you change subject. So question is more crews. 13 Who it have helped you? 14 MR. LOTH: No. 15 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So if you had more 16 crews it wouldn't help? 17 MR. LOTH: No, it wouldn't have made us go 18 any faster. 19 COMMISSIONER LETZ: They brought in a lot of 20 crews. 21 JUDGE KELLY: 25. 22 COMMISSIONER LETZ: 25. 23 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Yeah. But the point 24 the guy made last week you bring in -- I thought you 25 were crew short last week. You said you had 25 crews. 17 1 MR. LOTH: We had 25 -- well let's see, I 2 was here on, I believe it was a Tuesday. And actually 3 we're up to -- and it depends on how you count crews. 4 When we started, we estimated that we would 5 start with 25 -- basically 25 crews. We would 6 reevaluate Tuesday or Wednesday. We reevaluated on 7 Tuesday. I think we probably put on another 7 or 8 8 construction crews. Those are crews that entail two 9 buckets and a pressure digger truck. 10 KPUB probably has a whole lot of trucks 11 driving around or bucket trucks -- or not bucket trucks; 12 digger trucks, that they have the auger sits out over 13 the top of the thing and drill -- that don't work -- 14 that don't work most places we go. You've gotta have 15 that big pressure digger. Okay. It slows things down 16 having that extra truck and working through weather. 17 And again -- 18 COMMISSIONER BELEW: On the coast they're 19 digging in sand. 20 MR. LOTH: Yeah. 21 COMMISSIONER BELEW: It's easy. It's flat, 22 it's sand. 23 MR. LOTH: It's different, it's not the 24 same. It -- and I've got nothing but glowing comments 25 from the contractors that we brought in. I think 18 1 KPUB -- anybody who's in this business understands going 2 to rebuild versus building new. There's only so many 3 you can handle. 4 And you have to be strategic in where you 5 place and were you move those crews. And I think that 6 we've executed as good as we could have. I can't tell 7 you how proud I am. And the patience has gotten better. 8 Most of the people that were still out Wednesday or 9 Thursday were understanding because they had the damage. 10 A lot of people that were unhappy that 11 couldn't see tree limbs and things laying in their yard 12 and simply didn't understand that you've got to build 13 this in an orderly fashion because otherwise you're not 14 getting anything accomplished. 15 But what I would like to say, and you know 16 I'm not throwing any -- this is a what if factor. Three 17 years ago we held a meeting -- LCRA held a meeting at 18 Mountain Home Subdivision to start talking about a new 19 Mountain Home substation. If that substation had been 20 built, I don't think anybody would have been without 21 power past Wednesday. Because we had to come -- 22 COMMISSIONER BELEW: The substation is for 23 the CREZ lines, right? 24 MR. LOTH: No. It's for our customers. 25 It's for our members. Right now the people at the end 19 1 of the midway tap and down 41, most of them are -- a lot 2 of it's served out of the Harper Sub. Some of it's 3 served out of the Ingram Sub. That would have made a 4 difference. Because that substation, we go to start at 5 a substation and you work out. If that substation had 6 been in that area, and it was a lot of people from Hunt 7 that were fighting it, and still are. We're -- we're 8 going to get that built, but you know looking back it's 9 one of those things that would have made a difference. 10 One other thing that I would like to do say 11 because our tree trimming process was brought up, I 12 believe also Tuesday, we've been spending a million and 13 a half to two million dollars a year doing right-of-way 14 clearing. And that hasn't -- I mean we've been doing 15 that for ten years. 16 We're -- our right of -- some of those 17 contractors -- and I wish I could bring all the people 18 associated with this in here. Some of these contractors 19 come in here and say Bob, your right of ways are cleaner 20 than many of the coops that we go to work at. 21 This was a -- this was a weather event. And 22 it needed to be done in an orderly fashion, and in a 23 safe fashion, and that's what we've done. And the map 24 kind of tells you where we're at today. I don't 25 remember the number last week. Don, you might remember. 20 1 We were probably at 12 hundred, 13 hundred, 14 hundred. 2 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: It was about 14. And 3 you know, it's still a hard sell for people who've been 4 without for two and a half weeks when they see 5 hurricanes wipe stuff out, and bam. My parents went 6 without for ten days and that was one of the worst, I 7 think, in the Houston area 1 time. And it's a hard sell 8 you know. People look at their place, you know. 9 I heard somebody say yesterday, man I've 10 lived here 27 years and they've only come clean up the 11 right-of-way once in that time. Posts -- your poles 12 have been suspect they say. How often do you do 13 inspections on those and what have you. That's the 14 criticism I'm getting from the people out there with 15 them on their land. And you know, the -- this -- the 16 slow dance is hard to sell. I mean -- 17 MR. LOTH: I agree with you. And I think 18 another thing that -- and the public doesn't want to 19 hear it because they've been out of power, you're 20 absolutely right. The power went out the night the ice 21 hit. We had 8 more days of freezing -- freezing snow, 22 we had all kinds of events for 8 days. The rebuild -- 23 the rebuild didn't actually start until last Sunday. 24 Okay. So you almost have to take a week off of where 25 that was. And I know that's a difficult sell also. But 21 1 we were unable to get crews from many places because 2 they weren't releasing crews because they had problems 3 of their own. And to bring somebody from Florida is a 4 two day drive to get here. I mean, you can't airlift 5 that equipment in here. 6 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Did you replace with 7 heavier duty, or you put the same thing back in, or -- 8 MR. LOTH: Well, yes and no. Yes and no is 9 my best answer. We rehung the wire that could be used. 10 The wire that was older in a lot of places we replaced. 11 We will continue and to look at that. We've got -- we 12 have projects. We've got a ten-year work plan where 13 we've got projects identified and they're prioritized. 14 And you know because of where we are and what we found, 15 we're going to reprioritize some of that. 16 So again, there's only so much you can do in 17 a year. We probably spend ten million dollars a year on 18 what I call infrastructure upgrades, doing things like 19 you're talking about. Converting single phase to three 20 phase, upgrading wearing areas. I mean those are things 21 that are ongoing. 22 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Is there a website, 23 chart or anything so that people can see what you're 24 doing? 25 MR. LOTH: No, we don't -- because -- 22 1 COMMISSIONER BELEW: It's a Co-op, right? 2 MR. LOTH: If I put a schedule out there, 3 something can change in a month, and things get 4 shuffled. And then all I do is create a public stir. 5 And you know, I'm halfway kidding when I say this, we 6 have a lot of electricity experts that live on our 7 system that I didn't know about. I mean there -- this 8 is much more complicated, much more dangerous than what 9 many many of our members really understand. 10 I'm not a huff and fluff guy. I'm a 11 straight -- you're going to get the truth and nothing 12 but the truth, and it is what it is. That's what I am. 13 That's what I'm notorious for. 14 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Is this -- 15 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Well, with our county 16 Road & Bridge they'll tell you what roads they intend to 17 repave in the next year, which areas they're in, which 18 precinct. That's all pending weather and conditions and 19 availability of materials, whatever. And it's not a bad 20 idea. People at least know that this progress is 21 coming. 22 MR. LOTH: I can take it back and ask them 23 how -- my operation's people and planning people. I'm 24 not opposed to looking at anything. We're going to sit 25 down, and we have learned a lot from this. A lot of the 23 1 communication area. I mean I -- we had talked, I don't 2 know, two months ago because -- I mean you can get on 3 that ap, and you can look and can we -- you know, some 4 guy called me and says well you should be able to e-mail 5 these people in these different areas. Well, I can send 6 out a mass e-mail just like I do on the Facebook or 7 anywhere else. But to get those messages to the right 8 places is a lot more difficult. 9 I think we're going to be able to get there. 10 And like I said it's something that we talked about. 11 It's something that we need to talk to our software 12 provider about. But there's going to be a lot of 13 background work to get that system in shape and good 14 enough to rely on. And you pile on top of that you have 15 a thousand new people, got people moving in and out. 16 That's -- that's -- it's going to be a tall task, but 17 it's something that we want to explore and see we're 18 going to get better. I'm not going to apologize for the 19 job that we did. We are looking for ways to improve 20 every day. 21 COMMISSIONER MOSER: How does -- 22 MR. LOTH: This storm did not cause that to 23 happen. We're doing that daily. 24 COMMISSIONER MOSER: How does Kerr County 25 compare in people without services, today, to other 24 1 places in the state? How does Kerr County compare to 2 others? 3 MR. LOTH: Well, there's 131 out. I don't 4 know what's all over the State. I'm focused on my area. 5 COMMISSIONER MOSER: You don't have any 6 information from other counties? 7 MR. LOTH: I've got 11 hundred out in 8 Gillespie County. 9 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So Gillespie is a lot 10 worse than Kerr County? 11 MR. LOTH: Absolutely. And the damage was 12 much more severe there. 13 COMMISSIONER MOSER: How about other coops 14 other than CTEC, okay? 15 MR. LOTH: Well, I can tell you, I got a 16 crew yesterday from Sonora that came from Southwest 17 Texas Electric Co-op, and they just finished their 18 putting things back together. I can go east, I want to 19 say it was Friday that Blue Bonnet Electric Co-op, 80 20 something thousand meters, said that they were able to 21 release crews if we needed help. 22 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So they're back -- 23 MR. LOTH: They just got there's back on, 24 but they didn't have the ice event that we had. The ice 25 event that we had was much worse than anywhere in the 25 1 state. Anywhere. 2 COMMISSIONER MOSER: With this -- this area 3 was worse than any place in the state? 4 COMMISSIONER LETZ: Yes. 5 MR. LOTH: Yes, Sir. It wasn't close. I 6 mean we were talking, I think the last time I was in 7 here about one inch of ice down in some areas, 8 especially Harper South, there is a place that's about 8 9 miles out of Fredericksburg out toward Mason, going 10 toward Mason, and was in County Commissioners' Court 11 with them last week and one of the County Commissioners 12 are said he had two inches, two-inch ice. 13 COMMISSIONER MOSER: I think it's an 14 important thing for people to know that this was -- had 15 a worse ice event, this area, probably than any other 16 place in the state. That's a fact. 17 MR. LOTH: I'm not sure that this isn't the 18 worst ice event that any place in this state has ever 19 seen. I'm not sure that it's not worse than anywhere in 20 the state ever. 21 COMMISSIONER MOSER: That's a very important 22 thing to know. 23 COMMISSIONER BELEW: I talked to somebody in 24 Tarrant County last night that didn't get any ice, just 25 snow. 26 1 COMMISSIONER LETZ: That is a big point, 2 that's why I bring it up, because you know unfortunately 3 for CTEC they were the heart of the worst spot, you 4 know. And -- 5 MR. LOTH: And again, it wasn't -- we've all 6 lived here for many many years. This wasn't a normal 7 ice event where it comes and two days later it's 50 or 8 60 degrees. It was here for 8 days sitting on those 9 lines. 10 COMMISSIONER BELEW: And you're paying the 11 wrong preacher. 12 COMMISSIONER LETZ: I want to go back to two 13 comments. One thing Mr. Belew had and one Mr. Loth had. 14 One, I think Commissioner Belew made the comment 15 something about will this ever happen again based on the 16 upgrades, things like that. You know, the odds are an 17 event like this will never happen again, and I think 18 that, you know, it is not reasonable to ask -- I'm not 19 going to ask businesses in general to do like what the 20 EPA does, keep on changing it more and more strict 21 standards on electrical or on automobiles or anything. 22 You go for what is a bad situation, you plan for that. 23 But you cannot plan for a catastrophe. You just can't 24 do it economically. 25 The other thing is that for the last -- last 27 1 ten years or so, the Hill Country has been fighting 2 power lines. And something Mr. Loth just said, the 3 Mountain Home substation would have solved a lot of 4 this. So people have to understand that, you know, if 5 they want the services, which we all want, I mean I 6 don't want it in my backyard. I'd probably fight it if 7 it was going across my ranch, but at the same time it 8 has to go somewhere. 9 And by the community as -- the big Hill 10 Country fighting these things, it has an impact. And 11 it's something that people need to understand that, you 12 know, yes, we don't want it, but yes, we do want it. 13 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Let me -- something 14 Commissioner Letz said and I believe you said last week, 15 there's this area is the power lines are designed for 16 zero inches of ice, or a quarter inch, what -- 17 MR. LOTH: Mr. Wittler was the one who made 18 the comment. He's on the engineer side. We build for 19 quarter inch of ice. 20 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. You do? 21 MR. LOTH: We do, KPUB does. Utilities in 22 general in this area. 23 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. Back to 24 Commissioner Letz. You do what's reasonable -- I mean 25 you don't do one chance out of a million, okay. You do 28 1 something less than that probability. So this is 2 designed -- these systems are designed for quarter inch 3 ice, and we had in excess of an inch of ice on lines? 4 MR. LOTH: That's a fair statement. 5 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Just being a structural 6 engineer, it won't take it, it's going to fail. So 7 therefore you design for one inch of ice. The answer's 8 no, because it may not ever happen again, and you play 9 the odds, or else people would be complaining about 10 their utility bills. You know, why did you design for 11 an inch of ice and you raise my utility bill by 40 12 percent. 13 MR. LOTH: And to do that, and in a lot of 14 these places are big ranches, especially down here and 15 south. And you're building -- you may build -- I mean I 16 can tell you -- I don't know if I told y'all this story 17 or not last week. I had my line crews from Mason to 18 Llano, I told y'all we didn't have any problem up there. 19 They were in my area. They were actually north of 20 Harper last week. They built 47 poles of single phase 21 in two days. You know how many meters we turned on? 22 COMMISSIONER MOSER: A bunch? 23 MR. LOTH: Six. Six meters, 47 poles. 24 That's like 8 miles. 25 COMMISSIONER BELEW: That's how many poles 29 1 it took to get to those six meters? 2 MR. LOTH: That's correct. 3 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: But I'll tell you 4 those people's livelihoods are at stake. They're 5 ranchers -- 6 MR. LOTH: They're just as important as 7 anybody else, absolutely. 8 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: You know, I don't know 9 if you know, but average cow needs about ten gallons of 10 water a day. More if she's lactating. Sheep and goats 11 a gallon, two gallons a day. Whitetail deer, a gallon, 12 gallon and a half. And we're hauling that to em now. 13 People's livelihoods. 14 I mean, if they have access to generators, 15 they're spending a hundred dollars a week in fuel. And 16 so I'm not ready to just say doggone we were unlucky. 17 You don't answer to Commissioners' Court. We have no 18 oversight to you. Who do you answer to? 19 MR. LOTH: I answer to my members and 20 through my Board of Directors. 21 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Okay. What about -- 22 MR. LOTH: Rex Brand is one of those 131 23 that are off, and he's -- 24 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I know, and I've 25 talked to him. 30 1 MR. LOTH: -- three years off of my Board. 2 And I mean Mark Reeve, I believe my current Board Member 3 from Kerr County, I don't think had power up until about 4 two or three days ago. But he was able to -- I mean he 5 texted me right away and he said Bob, I'm good. Don't 6 worry about me. I don't think he had power until two 7 days. I still have two employees without power. 8 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So don't you answer to 9 PUC? 10 MR. LOTH: Yeah. It's the way that we 11 build. It's the way we have to do this. I have two -- 12 I believe it's two employees, and I still have one 13 Director without power. 14 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Well, our front line 15 players, the Mountain Home Fire Department and Divide, 16 have been on. Most of their's, they don't have it at 17 their house, or they may have it now. 18 MR. LOTH: My understanding is -- I wasn't 19 there. My understanding yesterday when a lot of these 20 crews left to go back, they went by the Mountain Home 21 Fire Department to a bunch of screaming happy people. 22 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Sure. Your linemen 23 have been fantastic, and the ones you brought in, Bob. 24 But who's going to -- who's going to critique this, the 25 public utility board look into it, because this has 31 1 taken too long. 2 And again, I just can't buy two and a half 3 weeks when others are devastated along the coast, and 4 then this takes -- is drug out. They just think it's 5 money. Trying to -- you made a statement once in, I 6 believe, on a conference call with Chip Roy and Kyle 7 Biedermann and others, and other County officials that 8 you were going to do it efficiently. To me, that means 9 dollars. Could we have spent more dollars and got it 10 done quicker? 11 MR. LOTH: You know, not -- not -- no. I 12 don't believe so. That's -- that's a question for my 13 operations people, okay. I'm in charge of spending the 14 money, but I -- I don't think I've told them no yet. If 15 I have, I don't know what it would be. I saw my 16 operations manager turn -- there was a crew that walked 17 into our office, I don't know, last Friday or Thursday, 18 from San Angelo and they were looking for work. They 19 wanted to come help. My Operations Manager, I watched 20 him tell him we are full up right now. We've got all we 21 can say grace over, maybe when this is over with, 22 because we're going to have to be back out at all these 23 properties again -- not all of them, but the ones where 24 the damage was because there's broken poles that are 25 laying in the people's pastures we're going to have to 32 1 go and do cleanup on, and that will take place later. 2 But one thing I'm going to go back and say, 3 Commissioner Harris, is we couldn't start rebuilding 4 until Sunday. The ice had not melted. Okay. There's a 5 difference between when it went off and when we could 6 start re -- effectively start rebuilding it. And so -- 7 I hear -- I hear that. I had -- I had somebody on the 8 15th day e-mail me and said they've been out of power 9 for almost three weeks. 10 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: It seems like it. 11 MR. LOTH: Well, I -- I don't disagree. 12 Trust me. I'm living it, too. We're in good shape. 13 Yesterday was a big day. 14 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Yeah. 15 MR. LOTH: We're getting to -- we're getting 16 to the end of this. 17 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Now we can find all 18 the broken pipes and busted pumps and everything else. 19 So, you know, that -- the cattle -- well, watering your 20 livestock and -- and wildlife and it's going to continue 21 a little bit longer. 22 MR. LOTH: And it's -- and it's show season. 23 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Yeah. Yeah. 24 JUDGE KELLY: Mr. Loth? 25 MR. LOTH: Yes, sir. 33 1 JUDGE KELLY: The question that I've been 2 asked probably the most is why didn't we have a convoy 3 of crews coming up here to help us? And with the 4 expect -- 5 MR. LOTH: A what? 6 JUDGE KELLY: Convoys of crews. 7 MR. LOTH: Coming where? 8 JUDGE KELLY: Here. Just like -- remember 9 when we had Hurricane Harvey and we had all that news 10 coverage and we saw these convoys of trucks and crews 11 headed to the coast? People asked me, why didn't that 12 happen here? This is such a historic event, which it 13 is, historic ice storm. The worst ice storm I've seen 14 in my lifetime and I'm an old guy. Okay. 15 So -- and we -- we're approved for public 16 assistance as I understand it. Right, Dub? 17 MR. THOMAS: We're emergency protective 18 measures. Yes, sir. 19 JUDGE KELLY: So we've got funds available. 20 And I -- I understand where Commissioner Harris is 21 coming from. Money should have been no object here. So 22 when you say that these additional crews would not have 23 helped the situation, can you explain that so that the 24 public understands more? 25 MR. LOTH: I've only got so many people to 34 1 send those people to places where they've never been. 2 And a lot of places you drive 10 or 15 miles on the 3 interstate, you drive 20 miles on a state highway or a 4 county highway, and then you drive five miles on a 5 county highway, and then you go through four locked 6 gates. They don't know -- they don't know where they're 7 going unless someone is taking them. 8 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: And I know a lot in 9 Llano is -- 10 MR. LOTH: There is only -- so much that can 11 be done. There's only so many people that you can use 12 and get anything done. Otherwise -- and it doesn't -- 13 I'd -- I'd agree with you on the money thing. We 14 haven't not done anything to save any money. That's 15 just not -- that's not accurate. 16 JUDGE KELLY: Well, and the people need to 17 hear that. That's why I'm asking you. I'm not here to 18 throw rocks at you. 19 MR. LOTH: I -- I know. 20 JUDGE KELLY: 131 connections, is that all 21 we're down right now? Hats off to you. That's good 22 news. That's great news. I still -- my heart goes out 23 to the 131 but -- but it is what it is. 24 MR. LOTH: Well, it -- hopefully they're all 25 going to be back on today. I -- I can't stand here and 35 1 promise that because I don't know where each one of 2 those smaller areas is at. But I -- it wouldn't 3 surprise me, but it should be today or tomorrow at 4 worse. And that seems to be helping people knowing, now 5 again, like I mentioned, we can get more focused on 6 giving good -- better time lines than we could a week 7 ago. We're able to do that now. 8 I just -- I got here this -- I mean, I went 9 to work this morning, made sure there wasn't anything 10 falling down and got on the road to get over here. So I 11 don't know what the status of those -- there's three, 12 you know, bigger pieces and they're not that big, that 13 are in there. They've been driven out. They know where 14 the problems are at. The contract crews that were 15 working on that other stuff the other day are now going 16 to -- we're going to put more people on those. 17 Another thing that I think that we did 18 right, and you talk about bringing the -- we have done 19 this with my people and with three contractors, three 20 contract companies, because those people are used to 21 working with each other. If I'd have brought 50 22 different companies in here other than that and had 23 those people working together, chances go up somebody 24 gets hurt. Somebody gets severely hurt. 25 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Well, I wanted to ask 36 1 you about that. You have staging and communicating. 2 Those things have to be done. If you send somebody out 3 and say you're going to take seven miles of road or 4 whatever and look for this many, how do you do all that? 5 You gotta get these guys set up in the first place, as 6 you said drive them to the location, have basically a 7 pilot car that takes them there. 8 MR. LOTH: Right. 9 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Okay. So you have to 10 have some staging before you even get there. You've got 11 to meet them someplace. You've got to stay in 12 communication with them. Were you able to stay in 13 communication with all of them when they -- 14 MR. LOTH: Yeah. What we did -- what we did 15 immediately -- and that's a great question. I mean, it 16 -- we have been using iPads in our truck. Thankfully we 17 put numbers on those poles about three or four years 18 ago. They're all numbered. So documenting or getting a 19 good idea of what's at pole number whatever, is -- you 20 know, this number pole is down and we can look on a map 21 and see that. 22 All of our contract crews, all of my crews 23 have got iPads in the truck. Not each individual, but 24 there's an iPad per truck so that we can monitor where 25 the crews are at to more efficiently move them. They 37 1 finish a job, we can find where the next closest place 2 is to go rather than sending them all the way across the 3 county. 4 Our -- our management system has been 5 incredible. It hasn't been in place more than three or 6 four years. In the old days, you take a phone call and 7 you write it on a piece of paper and you don't know 8 where anybody is out in the field. It was a lot more 9 dangerous when you start turning things on. 10 This was a weather -- it was a severe 11 weather event and the co-op has not shorted in any 12 fashion. We are here to serve our members. That -- 13 we're not an investor on utilities. Directors don't get 14 bonuses if we meet financial things. We're not here 15 to -- we're here to make enough money to keep our 16 bankers happy. We've got a hundred million -- over a -- 17 well, we probably have a hundred and twenty or thirty 18 million dollars worth of debt now. So you've got to 19 show that you can be financially feasible. You know, I 20 can touch on that remark also. 21 JUDGE KELLY: No, no. I -- I'd rather you 22 didn't on that because -- 23 MR. LOTH: Okay. 24 JUDGE KELLY: -- we're not really here to 25 talk about the finances. What we're here -- this is 38 1 your opportunity on YouTube to explain to the public why 2 it's taken two and a half weeks for them to get their 3 power back on. 4 MR. LOTH: I'm going to address the two and 5 a half weeks again. I think it's taken us a little more 6 than a week so far. Since we were able to 7 start putting -- 8 JUDGE KELLY: That's fair. That's fair. 9 That one week -- 10 MR. LOTH: Well, that first week that ice 11 was still on those lines. It was too dangerous. 12 JUDGE KELLY: I accept that. Okay. But 13 this is your opportunity. But they asked us questions. 14 We don't know the answers. You're the guy with the 15 answers. And we appreciate you coming over here. Thank 16 you. 17 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Without a doubt. 18 JUDGE KELLY: And -- and -- but this is -- 19 this is your chance to explain to the people out there 20 that have been going through these hardships because 21 they're fussing at us. Trust me. You know they're 22 fussing at us. 23 MR. LOTH: They're fussing at both of us. 24 JUDGE KELLY: That's right. But you're the 25 guys with the answers. And so this is your opportunity 39 1 on YouTube to explain to them, why it took as long as it 2 did and -- and the object that I have to deal with the 3 most is people saying where were all the trucks, the 4 crews coming in to help us? Why didn't the Governor 5 send them? Well, my understanding is we didn't ask for 6 it. You didn't ask for the crews. 7 COMMISSIONER LETZ: He did. He got 25. 8 JUDGE KELLY: I'm -- any more than that? 9 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Why not 75? 10 JUDGE KELLY: Why didn't he ask for more 11 than that? 12 COMMISSIONER BELEW: He's just talking about 13 the visual. The optical. 14 MR. LOTH: Okay. To -- to back up. The 15 event happened on Thursday night. The ice was on the 16 lines. It made it impossible to go and start -- it made 17 it impossible. 18 JUDGE KELLY: And -- and that went on for a 19 week. I gotcha. 20 MR. LOTH: So the rebuild actually started 21 on Sunday. I -- you know, and I had four crews that we 22 already had here that we were able to get out on 23 Saturday and get just a little bit of stuff done. It -- 24 it -- but I don't count it because it was so minor. 25 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. 40 1 MR. LOTH: Okay. We called in the number of 2 crews that we felt confident that we could handle, that 3 we could put -- get iPads up for. And that was not a 4 real -- I probably shouldn't have even said that because 5 that was not a big deal. And we reevaluated -- we 6 reassessed on Tuesday and we added some more to get us 7 to where we -- we believed that we were in the best 8 position to do things efficiently and correctly and as 9 safely as we could. 10 COMMISSIONER MOSER: How many outside -- 11 how many crews do you have normally and how many outside 12 crews came in? 13 MR. LOTH: Well, that's a hard -- 14 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Wait. No. How many do 15 you have normally? 16 MR. LOTH: I probably have got 30 to 35 17 outside line construction crews, which are typically 18 three, four trucks and five, six men. 19 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Wait. Wait a minute. 20 No, I'm just talking about -- CTEC has got X number of 21 crews. 22 MR. LOTH: Well -- 23 COMMISSIONER MOSER: What -- what is -- let 24 me ask my question. What is X and how many more did you 25 bring in? 41 1 MR. LOTH: I have line crews that are five 2 to six people. I have -- I have service crews that are 3 two people. I probably have eight or ten service crews. 4 I have engineering personnel and -- 5 COMMISSIONER MOSER: No, but -- but -- 6 MR. LOTH: I mean those -- well, those 7 crews -- when you ask those -- some of those crews are 8 only two people. 9 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. So how many -- 10 how many outside crews did you -- did you increase it by 11 threefold, fourfold, or 20 percent? 12 MR. LOTH: No, I increased it by probably 13 almost half or a third. 14 COMMISSIONER MOSER: 50 percent more. Okay. 15 COMMISSIONER LETZ: I think that -- you 16 know, I understand that the public is upset that they 17 didn't have power. I didn't have power for -- I think 18 it was three days, not that big a deal. But people 19 compare it to a hurricane and Harvey. No reconstruction 20 started in Rockport for a week. So I think that you 21 gotta give them the week. In Rockport it took more than 22 ten days to get their power up. So, you know, I think 23 that, you know, I'm not saying that you've done a 24 fantastic job. I think you've done a very good job from 25 what I can tell. I think you brought crews in. It's a 42 1 lot different when Harvey -- yeah, they brought in crews 2 from all over the state. Well, it wiped out 30 or 40 3 entire counties. This wiped out a quarter of one -- or 4 in Kerr County basically a quarter of it or a half it. 5 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: It's still hard to 6 argue when you drive through town at night in the middle 7 of the night and there's no linemen trucks at all these 8 hotels and stuff in Kerrville. That -- that was a hard 9 sell. I -- I had one guy send me videos of it. I mean 10 pictures from hotel after hotel he drove to, vacant. 11 COMMISSIONER LETZ: Well, anyway -- 12 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: And that -- that's -- 13 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Well, that's -- 14 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Well, I talked to 15 one -- one guy who worked until 11 o'clock at night, 16 back out there at 5:00 in the morning. That's how much 17 sleep he got. You don't pay for a hotel room with that, 18 you sleep in your truck. 19 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: But we weren't getting 20 it. You know, the visual was terrible. And -- 21 COMMISSIONER BELEW: But that doesn't 22 matter. All this form over substance. Our country is 23 in bad shape because everybody wants to see a picture of 24 something. We need to actually get something done and 25 it doesn't matter what it looks like. 43 1 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: That's right. And 2 power -- 3 COMMISSIONER BELEW: If I got service crews 4 in front of the hotel, that tells me they're not out 5 there in the field. 6 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Perception is reality. 7 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Not to me. 8 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: The linemen, hats off 9 to them and relay that to them from us. 10 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Right. 11 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: But, you know, the 12 optics are not -- 13 MR. LOTH: They're not the only ones that 14 deserve praise, but thank you. 15 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Well, they're the 16 front line guys that -- and we appreciate them. But you 17 know, but two and a half weeks is just tough, Bob. 18 MR. LOTH: Okay. I -- I'm not at two and a 19 half weeks, but I'm not going to argue with you. 20 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Well -- 21 JUDGE KELLY: And I agree with how you're 22 assessing it. I got it. I understand. 23 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. 24 JUDGE KELLY: But that was the explanation 25 that I -- we needed from you because we can't get those 44 1 answers to the people out there because we don't know 2 the answers. 3 MR. LOTH: Yeah. 4 JUDGE KELLY: But the good news is, 5 regardless of who spilled the milk, it doesn't matter, 6 we're cleaning it up. We're 131 away from being back 7 where we need to be in Kerr County. 8 MR. LOTH: Yes, sir. 9 JUDGE KELLY: And thank you. 10 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: You got about nine 11 percent of them in the last couple days -- 12 JUDGE KELLY: Thank you. 13 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: -- I would say. 14 MR. LOTH: And a lot of that was because of 15 the -- how far south and they were -- they were at the 16 end of that substation. If there had been a substation 17 there and they'd have been closer to it, it would have 18 happened a lot quicker. 19 JUDGE KELLY: We understand. 20 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: We're trying to. 21 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. I know these are 22 difficult conversations but thank you for coming over. 23 MR. LOTH: Okay. Well, I -- I'd invite 24 you -- we're going to -- we will have our district 25 meetings and we'll have a whole lot better update and -- 45 1 and be able to go back and give a better timeline of the 2 events and -- and what we did and why we did it. I'll 3 have more people -- 4 JUDGE KELLY: You know, I think I would like 5 to go to that and learn. 6 MR. LOTH: It's in June. The first of June. 7 JUDGE KELLY: Because I need to learn it. 8 MR. LOTH: I don't have the date off the top 9 of my head when we're going to be in Kerr County. 10 JUDGE KELLY: Just let us know and -- and 11 that's -- we would certainly like to come and be 12 supportive of you. 13 COMMISSIONER MOSER: I -- I want to make one 14 other comment. I think what the Judge has said and what 15 you said is extremely important. What are lessons 16 learned and how do we improve. It's not to go to the 17 extreme, but what did we learn and how would we be 18 better next time. If there is a next time. Key point. 19 MR. LOTH: All right. Anybody else? 20 JUDGE KELLY: And being able to keep lines 21 of communication like this open are vital. And again, I 22 thank you -- 23 MR. LOTH: Yes, sir. 24 JUDGE KELLY: -- for being forthright with 25 us. 46 1 MR. LOTH: Okay. Thank you. I'm going to 2 get back to work. 3 COMMISSIONER BELEW: This was Dub's time, 4 wasn't it? 5 JUDGE KELLY: Yes, it was. 6 MR. THOMAS: Are we done? Thank you. 7 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Do you want him, or 8 you want Brian? Brian's here to kind of give an update 9 as well from Mountain Home, what they've been through 10 and -- 11 MR. THOMAS: I'll let Brian go first. 12 CHIEF ALEXANDER: I'm glad I don't got that 13 guy's job. 14 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Tell us who you are, 15 Brian. 16 JUDGE KELLY: Name. 17 CHIEF ALEXANDER: Oh, sorry. Brian 18 Alexander. Mountain Home Fire Chief. Sorry. Saturday 19 and Sunday, those guys did quite a bit. Quite a bit put 20 up. So I was one of those guys that went out to the 21 linemen. Because if you see those linemen, they're 22 dragging. So I was one of them that praised them so. 23 Anyways, I do want to bring up a topic that 24 a lot of people have complained about, is the Code Red. 25 We had a meeting with the Sheriff Wednesday. We came up 47 1 with a Code Red, and a lot of people had an issue of why 2 were we behind. It wasn't a behind deal. The idea 3 behind it was, was hoping that if a neighbor did have a 4 cell phone working or a land line that that neighbor 5 could go and tell the other neighbors what's going on 6 about where to go for food and water. So to let people 7 in the public know it wasn't a late, it was just another 8 plan to come up with another idea so. 9 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: We need everything 10 working together. I mean, communication was lacking in 11 so many different ways. Some might get some Internet on 12 their phone or something and -- but, you know, a lot of 13 people got nothing. And information was critical. 14 CHIEF ALEXANDER: Yeah. So like I said, it 15 wasn't an after the fact, it was just something that we 16 came up and talked about and trying to get the word out, 17 so -- 18 JUDGE KELLY: What we're focused on today is 19 really the status report. Where are we? 20 CHIEF ALEXANDER: Okay. 21 JUDGE KELLY: We're going to have a 22 committee, we're going to -- we're going to go back and 23 completely dissect this thing and go back and lessons 24 learned and the whole -- we're going to do all of that. 25 And we're going to improve these things, whether it's to 48 1 do the Code Red differently or not. So just kind of -- 2 how are the people doing out in your part of the world? 3 CHIEF ALEXANDER: So right now the biggest 4 problem that we're having is water. Okay. Pumps are 5 blown. Water lines are broke. So to kind of give y'all 6 more of a realistic idea, out of 14 guys that I've had 7 nonstop, we have over 800 hours. So my guys are 8 exhausted. 9 So we now have 18,000 gallon tanker out in 10 front of the station. We are in the process of working 11 on a pump site to make it work so if people need water 12 for their livestock, toilets, whatever you want to call 13 it -- not drinking -- they can go by there at their own 14 free time. 15 The problem that I have is all of us have to 16 go back to work. We're doing this all for free. So 17 what we're going to end up doing from now on is manning 18 the station after four o'clock. The showers will be 19 available after four o'clock until dark. Those people 20 that are doing the showers are volunteer too. So they 21 have their own lives, too. So I came up with a plan 22 that we're going to have everything pretty much open at 23 the station after four o'clock. So from four until dark 24 or later if it needs to be. 25 If we have to shuttle water for livestock, 49 1 we will do it then. I would prefer that if anybody 2 needs a large amount of water that we try to do it on 3 the weekend. That's what we did all day Saturday and 4 all day Friday until people get their pumps up. 5 Hopefully with having electricity up, now people can 6 call us and let us know what they need more. 7 So we still have a little bit of food left 8 over. Food has kind of calmed down because everybody's 9 coming to town now. But drinking water, we're still 10 giving several cases of drinking water out. So that's 11 pretty much about where we're at right now. 12 So like I said, we -- I gotta narrow it down 13 now to more specific times. I know that may hurt some 14 but they need to understand that we have jobs, we have 15 our own lives. We have -- I have guys that need to go 16 back to their ranches, fix their stuff now, too. So 17 we're going to narrow down to those times and so 18 hopefully that's going to work out for people so. 19 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Brian, it -- I cannot 20 say enough how appreciative I am of y'all, Divide, 21 Ingram to some extent. I mean, they didn't have as 22 tough as your community out there, but hats off to you 23 guys. 24 CHIEF ALEXANDER: Appreciate it. 25 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Each and every one of 50 1 you. I'm going to plant a seed right now. In fact, I 2 spoke with one other Commissioner and that was 3 Commissioner Letz and he agreed, when budgets come 4 around I'm looking at a big increase for y'all. 5 CHIEF ALEXANDER: Appreciate it. Got 6 anything else for me? 7 JUDGE KELLY: Just a thank you. A big thank 8 you. 9 CHIEF ALEXANDER: Thank you. 10 JUDGE KELLY: I did the 800 hours, 14 11 volunteers, that's averaging 57.14 hours per person 12 through this crisis. 13 CHIEF ALEXANDER: And I haven't -- 14 JUDGE KELLY: Hats off. 15 CHIEF ALEXANDER: -- even figured up mine. 16 And mine are quite a bit more than a lot of my guys, but 17 after I did the 800 last night I was like I'm tired and 18 I'm going to bed. 19 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Yeah. Brian, thank 20 you. 21 CHIEF ALEXANDER: All right. 22 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: We're going to talk, 23 and I talked with the Judge a little bit earlier, and 24 see if we can get you some help with the watering, okay? 25 CHIEF ALEXANDER: Okay. Yeah. 51 1 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: So we'll be talking 2 later. 3 CHIEF ALEXANDER: Well, hopefully with the 4 electricity up and our communication will help. So that 5 would be better. Because people can call and say this 6 is what I need. 7 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Exactly. Exactly. 8 And even though the -- everybody's getting their power 9 back, now they've got to fix everything that's broken 10 so. 11 CHIEF ALEXANDER: Uh-huh. A lot. 12 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Yeah. Okay. Thanks, 13 Brian. 14 CHIEF ALEXANDER: Thank you. 15 JUDGE KELLY: Thank you, Brian. 16 Dub? Hold on. Jeremy Walther. I'm trying 17 to -- I'm trying to get the people that have taken time 18 out to come down here and talk to us. 19 MR. WALTHER: Thank you, Judge. Jeremy 20 Walther, 332 Clay Street, owner of Pint & Plow Brewing 21 Company. Also a vendor and organizer and supporter of 22 the Kerrville Farmers Market. So I just wanted to 23 provide just a very quick information on folks out in 24 the county, producers, farmers and ranchers, and what's 25 happening to the Kerrville Farmers Market. There are 52 1 still some of our vendors that are without power. 2 Hat & Heart Farm in Gillespie County is one of them. 3 They planted, you know, 30,000 onions, garlic. They 4 have baby chickens. And so they're scrambling to kind 5 of keep their business going. And so Kerrville Farmers 6 Market is reopening this Friday. We'll be reopening. 7 That will be the first time that we're open to the 8 public as a public event. 9 One of the things that the Farmers Market 10 did to continue to support our local producers, ranchers 11 and farmers when the pandemic hit was to continue the 12 connection between producers and consumers by sending 13 the market to an online format and that really 14 benefitted those vendors and allowed them to continue to 15 produce and continue to get their products in front of 16 people. 17 And so now, as the pandemic appears to be 18 loosening up, we have the ability to reopen to the 19 public. So Fridays, every Friday through March, from 20 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. at the A.C. Schreiner Mansion on Water 21 Street, and then April to October we'll continue to go 22 every Friday from 4:00 to 7:00. And so for those out in 23 the public who are looking to support their farmers and 24 their ranchers in a meaningful way doing the best they 25 can, go to the Farmers Market, buy their goods and 53 1 continue to support those vendors. Thank you for the 2 time. Thank you. 3 JUDGE KELLY: Give us those dates again for 4 the public. 5 MR. WALTHER: Yes, sir. So it will be 6 beginning this Friday and every Friday in March, it'll 7 be between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. And this is at the A.C. 8 Schreiner Mansion on Water Street, the City of Kerrville 9 Library Complex. 10 And then April through October is every 11 Friday, 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. We get a little bit more 12 daylight as summer comes on and so we stretch the market 13 to take advantage of that from 4:00 to 7:00. So from 14 March to October, from now on, every Friday beginning at 15 four o'clock for Farmer's Market. 16 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Hey, Jeremy, you live 17 in Center Point. So what was your experience during all 18 this storm to look at the other end of the County? 19 MR. WALTHER: Yes, sir. We were fortunate 20 enough to only experience rolling blackouts in Center 21 Point. 22 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. 23 MR. WALTHER: We are on a private well and 24 my wife and I did some, you know, some creative 25 scrambling to keep that well going. So we never lost 54 1 water. We had some neighbors that weren't as fortunate 2 that did lose water. And, you know, some pretty 3 extraordinary efforts by some of the neighbors that did 4 have water and one of those neighbors was Mosty Brothers 5 Nursery, right there on Mosty Lane and China Street. 6 Brian spent about 40 hours of labor in the 7 lead up to the storm to maintain his irrigation for his 8 wholesale nursery and was able to keep his well going. 9 And so, when we saw a lot of our neighbors losing water, 10 he reached out and said look, anyone who wants to from 11 the community, come to the nursery because I got water. 12 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Good deal. 13 MR. WALTHER: Bring the biggest container 14 that you have and fill it up. And we'll do that as long 15 as we need to. 16 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Neighbors helping 17 neighbors. 18 MR. WALTHER: Neighbors helping neighbors. 19 And, you know, we experienced it at the brewery as well 20 and the Sheriff's office was a part of that. And, you 21 know, the City departments were as well. And so it's -- 22 it's still so many people that are struggling but still, 23 even more people I believe that really want to help 24 those people that are struggling and the answer -- the 25 question right now that no one can answer is what's the 55 1 best way to -- to help. 2 And so, I -- I'm a big believer in one of 3 the things that we can do is keep -- keep doing what 4 we're doing. And keep doing what all the things that 5 have made us a community, including supporting our 6 local, you know, farmers and ranchers. And the Farmers 7 Market is a beautiful -- is a beautiful way to do that. 8 And so I'm proud to be a part of it and I'm proud of the 9 community for supporting it. 10 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Thanks, Jeremy. 11 MR. WALTHER: I appreciate that. 12 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. I want to finish this 13 topic. It's been a long morning but it's been 14 important. And so, Dub, if you would, kind of give us 15 the short version of your report. Because I know you've 16 got, what, five pages of information to share? 17 MR. THOMAS: Good morning, Judge. Good 18 morning, Commissioners. But yeah, I'll try -- I'll 19 just -- I'll slow it down a little bit and cut it back 20 and give you the Reader's Digest version. 21 So in response to the effects of the winter 22 storm and the potential for further impacts, the Kerr 23 County, Kerrville -- City of Kerrville EOC was open on 24 February 13th. And that -- its priorities are in any 25 EOC is life safety, incident stabilization, to protect 56 1 property and then recovery. So we opened up the 2 shelters. We had Salvation Army, Calvary Temple, First 3 United Methodist Church, Ingram High School, Ingram 4 Elementary, the VA Hospital -- and that was basically 5 our medical. If you had oxygen needs we sent people to 6 the VA. We had two in backup. We had BT Wilson and 7 also the Hill Country Youth Event Center. But the Event 8 Center was shutdown for a while, we couldn't even use it 9 as a backup because the septic system or the -- had 10 frozen up. So near the end of all this it unfroze and 11 we used it again as a backup. 12 So staffing and supplying the shelters with 13 cots, blankets, and food, and workers was definitely a 14 challenge. Our two agencies, the Salvation Army and Red 15 Cross, of course, they had difficulty. Their volunteers 16 couldn't get out. Salvation Army froze up. They didn't 17 have electricity so they couldn't feed either. 18 Fortunately, Del Way at Calvary Temple 19 Church was able to feed their folks for awhile. And 20 Kerrville First United Methodist Church, David Payne and 21 his staff fed -- they're sheltering and I believe the 22 rest of the shelters as well. 23 They also -- First United Methodist Church 24 also provided some transportation for some -- several 25 long-term care patients that we had to evacuate. The 57 1 transportation annex we were going to try and use, which 2 uses the Kerrville Independent School District busses, 3 aren't really set up for moving folks who aren't 4 ambulatory and those types of things. So First United 5 Methodist Church has busses that have lift gates on them 6 and we used those. And David Payne, the Pastor, drove 7 it himself with a police escort from what I understand. 8 And as far as running the shelters, 9 Kerrville Fire Department has taken shelter management, 10 shelter fundamentals, and they were able to provide 11 shelter managers for most of those shelters. 12 The EOC was closed on February 20th. 13 Weather cleared up, streets were improving and people 14 were able to start coming back in town and buy whatever 15 they needed. We had six generators that were made 16 available from the First United Methodist Church 17 Disaster Operations Group. We farmed those out as best 18 we could. I think Divide Fire Department got one. 19 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I took one to Divide. 20 MR. THOMAS: Don took one to Divide. I 21 think Divide School still has one. I talked to -- 22 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I think so. 23 MR. THOMAS: -- yesterday. And then we -- 24 we farmed them out wherever we could. Special Needs 25 Pediatric Facility, I got a call from Junction Emergency 58 1 Management Coordinator that we have a pediatric special 2 needs facility on I-10 and 479, and they had several 3 children there that are on ventilators and they were 4 about to run out of gas for their generator. I got 5 ahold of Brian and he volunteered to take some gas out 6 there even though they were running pretty short on gas 7 themselves. 8 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: And by the way, a lot 9 of people have reached out to me, what can we do. One 10 man called me when he's at Costco, he said, can I load 11 up on water and take some to Mountain Home Fire 12 Department? I said, you know what, send them some money 13 for fuel. And they will still take that. That's what 14 was running low. We got water. Bottled water and 15 MRE's. But they needed money. And still do, for 16 anybody listening. 17 MRS. STEBBINS: And you can donate it at 18 their website or send a check in to their address, which 19 is posted on their website. 20 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: That's right. 21 MR. THOMAS: Brian will be leaving here in 22 just a minute and you can catch him as he walks out the 23 door and he'll take a check. 24 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Well, I gave him one 25 myself. 59 1 MR. THOMAS: Also, I had to place a STAR 2 request at the beginning of this event for 20 pallets of 3 water. Still have not received that yet. I placed -- I 4 placed another order for 10 pallets of water and eight 5 pallets of cleanup kits for the American Red Cross. We 6 received four of those, cleanup kits and four pallets of 7 water were delivered on Saturday, February the 27th. 8 Last Monday we got a pushpack from the State 9 of Texas. They sent out pushpack to all 254 counties. 10 It was 38 pallets of MRE's and about 15 pallets of 11 water. And we have since farmed those out to the 12 volunteer fire departments to use them as pods. They 13 know where that food and water needs to go and it was 14 easier for people to come to those departments that live 15 out in the remote edges of the county. It's easier for 16 them to come in to the volunteer fire department to get 17 it. 18 So I did contact, you know, trying to help 19 Brian out with the water issues for West Kerr County, I 20 contacted Texas Animal Health Commission and they 21 directed me to Texas AgriLife to try to get some 22 livestock watering crews. But in my conversation with 23 Brian, that was going to be just as -- just as difficult 24 as if they were doing it on their own because, like he 25 said, they're going to have to send a fireman with them 60 1 because these folks aren't going to know where to go. 2 So we did wind up getting them an 18,000 3 gallon frac truck that was delivered this past Saturday 4 and we're trying to get a pump for that today so that 5 folks can access that water. 6 I'm also looking at getting some more 7 generators. Maybe we can get some for some of the 8 larger ranches around there that are out in the remote 9 edges and folks can go to their neighbors and get water 10 if they need. I was on the phone just prior to this 11 meeting and the State Operations Center called me and 12 asked me if I still needed those five generators and I 13 said yeah, I'll take -- I'll still take them. Gas, 14 diesel or propane is all right. 15 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: We can always send 16 them back. 17 MR. THOMAS: Yeah. Yeah. 18 MR. THOMAS: Yeah. I can always send them 19 back. The Texas Baptist men delivered a shower truck to 20 Mountain Home Volunteer Fire Department over the 21 weekend. Showers were also available at the Kroc 22 Center. If you can't make it to the Volunteer Fire 23 Department, the Kroc Center will let folks come in there 24 and take a shower. 25 The Code Red issue that we sent for -- for 61 1 the sheltering, that -- that is an issue. Code Red 2 didn't fail but the delivery system did. Phone lines 3 down, cell towers not working, so that's something that 4 we're going to have to figure out. There's always -- 5 any -- the biggest thing anytime you have a disaster, 6 there's always one common problem, that's 7 communications. Never fails. That's always the biggest 8 problem. 9 As far as recovery goes, I've been in 10 contact with the utilities, Aqua Texas and Southwest. I 11 was getting up -- status updates from them daily and 12 they are -- all their systems are back up and working 13 and all of the boil notices are off. They're gone. 14 MRE's and water is still available for the 15 VFD's. I've still got some at the Youth Event Center 16 and I've still got those 20 pallets of water coming. 17 I'm not going to turn them away if they show up. But as 18 of yesterday, we had 11 full pallets and one partial 19 pallet of MRE's and another 48 cases to the pallet, 12 20 meals per case. And there's nine pallets of water. 21 COMMISSIONER MOSER: And that's at the Youth 22 Center? 23 MR. THOMAS: That's at the Youth Event 24 Center. Yes, sir. So the volunteer fire departments 25 will let me know when they're going to go pick some up 62 1 and I call Jake and make sure that we've got the 2 forklift available and somebody there to load it up for 3 them. Or we'll take it to them. We've done that as 4 well. 5 The big thing that I want to talk about is 6 individual assistance. On February the 12th, Governor 7 Abbott issued a disaster declaration for the entire 8 State of Texas ahead of the weather event. He requested 9 both public assistance and individual assistance. And 10 FEMA approved, initially approved, 77 counties for both 11 public and individual assistance. But Kerr County was 12 only approved for public assistance at that time along 13 with a couple hundred other counties. Let's see. 14 We had already been included for the 15 disaster declaration for public assistance. We've been 16 given a tool for everybody to use to report their 17 individual home damages or businesses, trying to get us 18 the individual to -- individual assistance. So the 19 website for individual assistance is 20 https:/arcg.is/uOrOb. We've had that on the County 21 website and put it on the Facebook page. We've been -- 22 published it in several places. 23 So that information is going to be extremely 24 important for Kerr County residents to get individual 25 assistance from FEMA. I can go on the web of EOC and I 63 1 can watch it real time as people are turning in their 2 surveys. 3 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Hey, Dub, I didn't see 4 that on the website. Is that -- where is it? Is it 5 buried under -- in the website somewhere? 6 MR. THOMAS: No. It's under weather -- it's 7 on the -- if you go where it talks about the special 8 conditions, the updates, it's back in there. It's about 9 the third icon down, it says weather survey. 10 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. 11 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: It ought to be a part 12 of y'all's press release as well. 13 MR. THOMAS: I think we did do a -- it was 14 on the press release. 15 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: And it ought to be on 16 the Facebook page, the County Facebook page. 17 MR. THOMAS: Just this past week, for those 18 who do not have Internet or cannot access the Internet, 19 there's a toll free number that's been set up for that 20 and that is 844-844-3089. So Kerr County was included 21 in the original declaration with the rest of the State 22 for public and individual assistance. 23 And I know the -- what's kind of sticking in 24 everybody's craw is that Kerr County has not been 25 approved for individual assistance. So there's a 64 1 recovery call every day at one o'clock and one of the 2 County Judges, I believe it was from Mills County, asked 3 the FEMA representative, what information do they use to 4 base those original 77 counties in individual 5 assistance? And his answer was they use the best guess. 6 Based on what they -- where they believe that the most 7 severe damage was going to be. 8 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I think -- no telling 9 how many people thought the County dropped the ball on 10 that deal and sort of like -- sort of like the Hub's for 11 the vaccine. 12 MR. THOMAS: Right. 13 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Completely out of our 14 hands. 15 MR. THOMAS: Yeah. It's all FEMA driven. 16 So they guessed where they believed the greatest storm 17 impact would be. Governor Abbott then requested an 18 additional 31 counties be included in the individual 19 assistance. Kerr County was not one of those, but all 20 31 of those were approved for individual assistance by 21 FEMA. 22 COMMISSIONER MOSER: What does that -- what 23 does that mean, Dub, to the public, not having 24 individual assistance? 25 MR. THOMAS: That means you're stuck with 65 1 your insurance paying it or you're paying out of pocket 2 if you don't have insurance for your repairs. 3 COMMISSIONER MOSER: And so the bottom line 4 again, repeat that, on why Kerr County was not granted 5 individual assistance? 6 MR. THOMAS: Because FEMA used their best 7 guess. 8 COMMISSIONER MOSER: FEMA at the federal 9 level? 10 MR. THOMAS: Federal Emergency Management 11 Agency. 12 COMMISSIONER MOSER: At -- in Washington, 13 D.C.? 14 MR. THOMAS: Correct. 15 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So they didn't get 16 information from somebody. 17 MR. THOMAS: The Region 6 office is in 18 Denton if you're interested. FEMA Region 6. 19 Last week Governor Abbott requested an 20 additional 54 counties be approved for individual 21 assistance and that included Kerr County. Only 18 of 22 those counties were approved and Kerr County was not 23 approved at that time. So the best thing that we can do 24 at this time is everybody still needs to continue to 25 complete those individual surveys. I don't care what -- 66 1 how much damage you had. If it's on your side of the 2 water meter, report that damage. 3 And just kind of to give a little bit more 4 information, a review by TDEM of those 31 counties that 5 were approved in the previous approval, there was a 6 common denominator among those counties. They found 7 that the approved counties had five or more homes with 8 either major damaged or destroyed damage rating to be 9 either uninsured or underinsured. 10 So this information -- all that information 11 comes from the individual assistance survey. If you go 12 in there, you have to put in what your insurance is, 13 what your deductible is and some other information. 14 So no one at FEMA confirmed that that was a 15 criteria but that was just an assumption by TDEM. So as 16 of yesterday evening, Sunday, February 28th when I went 17 and looked at the survey, we had 231 total surveys 18 turned in. This morning it was 238. We had zero people 19 claiming destroyed. Major damage was 69, minor is 55, 20 affected 19, and minimal was 88. 21 I can go back in and I can look at some of 22 that. There's a portal where I could look at the data 23 on whose claimed what, but as far as underinsured and 24 uninsured, I just haven't had a chance to get in there 25 and take a look at that. I got the links for that over 67 1 the weekend. 2 JUDGE KELLY: Let me -- let me just ask a 3 question. 4 MR. THOMAS: Yes, sir. 5 JUDGE KELLY: I think it's important that 6 the public understand that these determinations for 7 individual assistance from FEMA determinations, those 8 are federal government determinations, right? 9 MR. THOMAS: Yes, sir. 10 JUDGE KELLY: And the stuff that is TDEM, 11 that's state? 12 MR. THOMAS: That's correct. 13 JUDGE KELLY: And the Governor's Order is 14 state? 15 MR. THOMAS: Correct. 16 JUDGE KELLY: And there's not anything that 17 we can do at the county level other than ask. And we 18 beat the door down, right? 19 MR. THOMAS: Yes, sir. 20 JUDGE KELLY: And when we look at these 21 damage surveys that you're talking about here, where 22 people going online and report their damage, what's 23 being reported right now doesn't look too severe if 24 you're sitting in Washington or Austin, does it? 25 MR. THOMAS: No, sir. 68 1 JUDGE KELLY: So if there's damage out 2 there, folks, you've got to report it. You've got to 3 get it on that survey because that's what's going to be 4 reviewed by the State or the Federal Government. 5 MR. THOMAS: Yes, sir. 6 JUDGE KELLY: Just telling us is not going 7 to do it. That's why that -- we've got that website for 8 them to be able to report that damage. 9 MR. THOMAS: Correct. And it's not just 10 your home, your business as well. You can report your 11 business damages in there as well. 12 I also have a flow chart that -- for -- 13 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Let me ask one other 14 question. Just go back to what Don's experienced in 15 some of the ranches and all. So from an individual 16 rancher, okay, how -- if they have lost animals, 17 cattle -- 18 MR. THOMAS: Yeah. Sure. 19 COMMISSIONER MOSER: -- agricultural crops, 20 all that kind of stuff is important to report to -- to 21 that. 22 MR. THOMAS: Report it. Yeah, they need to 23 get in touch with -- we put that information out last 24 week. It's AgriLife or -- 25 COMMISSIONER MOSER: No. But still -- no, 69 1 keep it simple. Just go to the website as an individual 2 and file it, correct? 3 MR. THOMAS: No. You can't put that in 4 there. This is for your -- 5 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Oh, okay. 6 MR. THOMAS: -- your primary residence or 7 your business. 8 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. That's the 9 reason I asked the question. Okay. 10 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: But we did post stuff 11 for that help. 12 COMMISSIONER BELEW: It's included in the 13 same press release. 14 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Yes, it is. 15 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. 16 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Agriculture is a 17 little different. 18 MR. THOMAS: Agriculture is different. 19 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. Thanks. 20 MR. THOMAS: So I'm going to try to access 21 some of that information today. But one of the things 22 that I'm particularly interested in, the first time 23 that -- the portal was open one time and I got one 24 document to show 58 people. There's several folks who 25 say that their home is destroyed or -- not destroyed but 70 1 major damage and it's unlivable. Well, my question is, 2 how are they recovering? Where are they staying? How 3 are -- you know, we've gotta look after those folks and 4 try to figure out what resources we have available for 5 them so that they can get their recovery process going 6 on. So we're taking a look at getting some of that data 7 today as well. 8 On the public assistance side, again, Kerr 9 County's been approved for public assistance Category B, 10 which is emergency protective measures. Basically 11 shelter operations. Security and EOC, any emergency 12 repairs that were made. We're working on that. I know 13 that Tanya's office has already done the requested 14 public assistance and has already taken the training 15 course, and we're just getting all this information 16 coming in from the county entities. Mainly the school 17 districts, Road & Bridge, and Sheriff's Department and 18 those folks. And we're getting that included in the 19 disaster summary outline. 20 So -- and I can -- I can assure you that 21 we're probably going to -- once all the utility damages 22 come in, we're going to be well over our threshold. And 23 then once all that information is in the DSO, that also 24 helps the State get over their threshold and lets FEMA 25 know that we -- that the State of Texas needs more than 71 1 just Category B. 2 And we need Category A, debris removal. And 3 then under permanent work you've got Category C, which 4 is roads and bridges. Water control facilities is D. 5 Category E is public buildings and contents. F, public 6 utilities. Category G, parks and recreation and other 7 facilities. 8 So I made requests for these damage related 9 costs to all of the utilities, AquaTex, Southwest Water, 10 CTEC. They're -- they're working on them. That's a lot 11 of information for them to put together, but we can 12 update the DSO daily as those numbers come in so it's 13 not too -- not too difficult. I'm updating the DSO as 14 they come in, so -- 15 JUDGE KELLY: Remind everybody what DSO 16 stands for? 17 MR. THOMAS: Disaster Summary Outline. 18 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. 19 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Dub, some of the stuff 20 you talked about, were you even aware of that special 21 needs group of kids prior to this? 22 MR. THOMAS: No. 23 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Did you even -- so 24 you've had to juggle a lot of -- a lot of balls here at 25 one time. 72 1 MR. THOMAS: Yes, sir. 2 COMMISSIONER BELEW: And you've had 3 surprises and like curve balls all along the way. 4 MR. THOMAS: Yes. 5 COMMISSIONER BELEW: So I just want to thank 6 you. 7 MR. THOMAS: Well, I appreciate it. 8 COMMISSIONER BELEW: It hasn't been easy. 9 It's not easy to coordinate it. And you know, you're 10 kind of the epicenter of the whole thing. So thank you. 11 MR. THOMAS: I appreciate it. Thank you. 12 JUDGE KELLY: Well, and I think I 13 probably -- Dub and I have talked to each other, I 14 think, many times every day for the last two weeks. 15 COMMISSIONER BELEW: You getting sick of 16 each other yet? 17 JUDGE KELLY: No. But let me tell you, he's 18 done an outstanding job. He's always -- always 19 available to help with questions and responds to what 20 the people need to know. 21 MR. THOMAS: We had the -- we've done the 22 sheltering for Harvey. We did -- we had the floods two 23 years ago and now this. I've learned more about 24 disaster finance than I care to know. 25 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Crash course. 73 1 MR. THOMAS: Yeah, pretty much. Yes, sir. 2 COMMISSIONER BELEW: We have a sister city 3 in Palacios, is it? 4 MR. THOMAS: San Patricio County. 5 COMMISSIONER BELEW: San Patricio. So did 6 they ever call on us for anything, or did we call on 7 them for anything during this? 8 MR. THOMAS: No, they didn't call for us 9 this year. 10 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Okay. Because that 11 works on any kind of disaster, right? Not just when 12 they have to evacuate? 13 MR. THOMAS: Well, for them -- no, our 14 agreement was for a major hurricane, Category 3 and 15 above. 16 COMMISSIONER BELEW: Okay. 17 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. It's been a long 18 morning and we spent almost an hour and a half on this 19 topic today, which needed to be done. Let's take a five 20 minute break and we'll come back and try to get back on 21 track. Thank you, Dub. 22 MR. THOMAS: Yes, sir. 23 (Recess.) 24 JUDGE KELLY: Court will come back to order. 25 A couple of housekeeping things. We have a new 74 1 conference telephone here on the bench. And the number 2 for the public to call in is 830-792-2219. Let me 3 repeat that. 830-792-2219, and the extension is 1056. 4 And that's for the public. 5 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I'm with you about 6 BR549. 7 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. The next thing we're 8 going to do on the agenda is we're going to go to the 9 timed items. For those of you that are unfamiliar with 10 how we do this, we have an agenda, we have a lot of -- 11 we try to put things on there that are not timed so that 12 we get to them when we're -- when we reach them, but for 13 the timed items we have to break and take those because 14 they are given priority. 15 So the 10 o'clock docket, the first item is 16 1.13 consider, discuss and take appropriate action for 17 the court to grant a 15-foot wide utility easement for 18 the Kerrville Public Utility Board across county owned 19 property on Spur 100 to serve the Kerrville Independent 20 School District property located on Spur 100. Ms. 21 Evans. 22 MS. EVANS: I have reviewed this and worked 23 with the attorney on this. It's going to go through -- 24 they're running a power line, a three-phase tower to the 25 new AG barn that's being constructed out there. It will 75 1 be between Road & Bridge and the Little League field. 2 COMMISSIONER MOSER: KISD AG barn. 3 MS. EVANS: Yes. Yeah, that's right. 4 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Yeah. 5 MS. EVANS: And this is the best route to 6 save trees and get power to it. 7 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I think they're taking 8 down one big tree and that's -- that's about it? 9 MS. EVANS: I don't know which -- which 10 tree. 11 COMMISSIONER MOSER: I move for approval. 12 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Second. 13 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. Motion's been made by 14 Commissioner Moser, seconded by Commissioner Harris to 15 approve the utility easement for KPUB to access the KISD 16 property located on Spur 100. Any discussion? Those in 17 favor raise your hand. Four zero. 18 Item 1.14 consider, discuss and take 19 appropriate action regarding the Texans for Responsible 20 Aggregate Mining (TRAM) and Resolution regarding same. 21 Commissioner Moser. 22 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Thank you, Judge. I 23 think -- Bruce, I think we've got this set up here. We 24 had three guests that came over from Austin, Austin 25 area, okay, who are representing the Texans for 76 1 Responsible Agricultural(sic) Mining. The thing that's 2 interesting, and I think they're probably going to cover 3 part of this. There are 37 counties in Texas which 4 are -- represent about 42 percent of the Texas 5 population which are involved with TRAM. Okay. 6 Again, TRAM is Texas -- Texans For 7 Responsible Agricultural -- Aggregate Mining. I said 8 agricultural -- Aggregate Mining. And why is that 9 important? Is because we've talked in here many times 10 about -- and I'm just going to say it like I say it, how 11 the -- a lot of the aggregate mining just rapes the 12 land, walks away from it. 13 Our Representative, Andy Murr, has had -- in 14 the last two legislative sessions has introduced 15 legislation at the subcommittee or introduced a bill to 16 have mining operations to recover those when they're 17 finished. It's never even got out of subcommittee to 18 get to the full committee and to the House. So it's 19 gone nowhere. 20 The other thing just in background is, 21 there's -- there's like the Aggregate Production 22 Operations, APO's, okay, in the last five years in the 23 State of Texas has increased from 50 to 1000. So that 24 shows you the significance -- that's a 20-fold increase 25 in the last five years. 77 1 43 states have adopted things of which are 2 legislation and laws, which helped control this. And 3 the biggest thing is, and I think that these gentlemen 4 will present this, is something called best management 5 practices. Okay. 6 And then I'm going -- when they get through, 7 I'm going to talk about what's -- if they don't talk 8 about it, talk about what the interim report by the 9 Texas legislator -- legislation that was just finished 10 last month, in January of this year, a 77-page report, 11 which I read this past weekend. It's extremely good. 12 And I'll talk more about that in a minute. 13 So if you would, gentlemen, just give us 14 your name, and -- and where you're from and tell us 15 about TRAM. 16 MR. ORTIZ: Yes, sir. 17 MR. FRIESENHAHN: I'll hand these out. 18 MR. ORTIZ: I appreciate it. Good morning. 19 My name is Fermin Ortiz and I'm from Llano County, just 20 down the road, and I am the spokesperson for TRAM. And 21 appreciate the introduction, Commissioner Moser. 22 On behalf of TRAM, the Texas -- Texans for 23 Responsible Aggregate Mining, we would like to thank 24 Judge Kelly and Commissioner Moser and you all for 25 taking this -- the full court for taking this issue so 78 1 seriously. 2 It is a difficult issue because we have to 3 balance Texas's growth and the need for aggregate 4 industry production materials with the need for the 5 APO's to be better stewards of our wonderful state. 6 This is a complicated issue and requires 7 responsible and thoughtful negotiations to balance this 8 three-legged stool. One thing is abundantly clear, it's 9 a nonpartisan issue. There is not anything that's going 10 to be involved on one side or the other of the aisle. 11 It's a nonpartisan issue that requires a bipartisan 12 solution. 13 Our members run the full gamut politically. 14 We have Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and 15 frankly some apolitical members that could care less 16 about politics. We have doctors, ranchers, engineers, 17 teachers, retirees and just good old working folk like 18 myself. We have large cities like Houston, small towns 19 like Llano and Kerrville. 20 The thread that binds us is our love for 21 Texas and our sense of responsibility to keep Texas as 22 beautiful as she is today for future generations. Our 23 members representing 37 counties across our state are 24 all being negatively impacted by irresponsible APO's. 25 These 37 counties account for 42 percent of the total 79 1 Texas population. 2 To be fair, not all APO's act irresponsibly. 3 Some have adopted the best practice management that 4 Commissioner Moser discussed a second ago, protocols as 5 part of their business models, and are doing it quite 6 successfully; however, unfortunately, many do not. We 7 need to level the playing field. 8 Currently, the good guys operate at a 9 disadvantage in comparison to the bad guys. We're 10 looking for better stewardship, better oversight. And 11 as y'all probably have already discussed, that will have 12 been helpful with ERCOT if we had better oversight, 13 better regulation. Not going crazy where they can't get 14 a permit for four years, but getting to where they make 15 accountable, responsible decisions for the rest of us, 16 not just the profit line. 17 Recently our TRAM Committee -- technical 18 committee worked with the highest House Interim 19 Committee report as Commissioner Moser said. Our tech 20 team is comprised of engineers, geologists, hydrologists 21 with many years of experience in the industry. I would 22 put our technical team up against any in the state. My 23 colleague, Mark, will expand on that in a minute. 24 As you discussed, State Representative Terry 25 Wilson chaired the committee and our own State 80 1 Representative Andy Murr served on it. 2 The community had both Democrats and 3 Republicans on it and they examined this issue for an 4 extended period of time. This was not a two-week rush 5 through situation. The bipartisan report concluded that 6 the APO industry needs to address many of the key issues 7 that we've been highlighting, and we will be 8 highlighting in front of y'all today. 9 The final report is on our website, 10 tramtexas.org. Again, that's tramtexas.org. We will 11 also provide a video that hopefully we'll have a chance 12 to -- 13 UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: We can put it up, I 14 believe. 15 MR. ORTIZ: If you all have the 12 minutes 16 and will allow for that. We appreciate the time that 17 the Court has allowed for us to present our case for 18 this nonpartisan goal. There is nothing partisan about 19 expecting to breathe clean air. There's nothing 20 partisan about expecting APO truck drivers to drive 21 safely. There's nothing partisan to expect the APO 22 industry to repair the roads that they damage rather 23 than expect our counties to pay for the damage with our 24 limited tax dollars. 25 And we appreciate your consideration and 81 1 passing the Resolution before you. And I'll turn it 2 over to Mark, our tech team chair. 3 JUDGE KELLY: Before you make your 4 presentation, somebody's trying to call in on the line 5 and we're in the middle of an agenda item that I can't 6 interrupt. So I'm not really sure how to do this. I'm 7 going to get my IT guy to explain to me how we're going 8 to do these things. Bruce? 9 MR. MOTHERAL: Yep. 10 JUDGE KELLY: But no, I mean, if people call 11 in right now then we're on their schedule. 12 MR. MOTHERAL: Correct. 13 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. If somebody's calling 14 in about this topic, we can take it. But if they're 15 calling in about something else. 16 MR. MOTHERAL: It needs to be screened then. 17 JUDGE KELLY: Yeah. And so what you were 18 talking to me about was they leave a message and we call 19 them back when we are ready, when we have time to listen 20 to their comments. 21 MR. MOTHERAL: Uh-huh. Yeah. 22 JUDGE KELLY: And so can they leave a 23 message at the number that we have? 24 MR. MOTHERAL: No. It's not set for a 25 message. It's supposed to be live. 82 1 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. For those of you out 2 there that are trying to call in, and I apologize, but 3 at least I've got a tech guy to take care of technical 4 problems. For those of you that want to call in, we 5 can't take your call and interrupt the presentations, 6 like we're doing right now, and I apologize. 7 Call my cell, which is 830-792-6161. That's 8 what was on -- that's what has been published to the 9 public before, and leave a message. A voice mail 10 message. And then when we get to the point that we can 11 talk to you, we'll call you back. So I -- we'll get all 12 the bugs in this worked out. But I just wanted to make 13 sure, whoever is trying to call in, we're trying to get 14 you but we need you to leave a message and we'll call 15 back. 16 So I apologize for the interruption but as a 17 tech man I'm sure you understand our frustration. 18 MR. FRIESENHAHN: No problem, Judge. 19 JUDGE KELLY: So please proceed. 20 MR. FRIESENHAHN: Okay. 21 COMMISSIONER MOSER: You can take your mask 22 off if you want to while you're talking. 23 COMMISSIONER BELEW: You can take that hat 24 off too if you want to. 25 COMMISSIONER MOSER: No, no, no. 83 1 (Laughter.) 2 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Leave that hat on. 3 MR. FRIESENHAHN: As long as you don't throw 4 me into College Station, I'll be totally fine. 5 Judge, Commissioners, and staff, thank you 6 for giving us time to talk about an issue that's really 7 important to us. I'm a fifth generation Texan. I was 8 born here. I worked hard in major industry and I came 9 back home to retire and become a pecan farmer when I 10 grew up, only to find that we have a massive industry 11 that is dominating a lot of things in our rapidly 12 growing populated areas. They're called APO's, 13 Aggregate Production Operations. I have a number of 14 charts that for me it is talked about and alluded to. 15 Some of them are just pictures and we'll go through them 16 quickly. 17 APO's, a massive industry in Texas. Go on 18 to Number 2, please. And by the way, I've handed out 19 copies of this material so you can look at it on the 20 screen. Looks like we went dead there, didn't we -- 21 There it is. 22 Number 2. I have handouts that show the 23 same thing that are on the screen and it may or may not 24 stay on there. Apple and Microsoft don't always get 25 along. 84 1 APO's. I want to make four points on page 2 two. Let's see, did it stay up there? 3 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Why don't we just go to 4 the handout. 5 MR. FRIESENHAHN: Yeah, let's do the 6 handouts. That was my -- my fallback plan. Paper still 7 works without electricity. I'm -- I want to make four 8 or five main points in this chart. I'm not going to 9 cover all the details. 10 But the key points are, starting with the 11 bullet points. Aggregate Production Operations, they 12 became the acronym APO's, are a really big business in 13 Texas, $2.5 billion. They cover the different 14 activities shown. Open pit mines, aggregate mines, sand 15 mines, river basin sand mining, hot mix asphalt plants, 16 and so on, on the list. 17 The industry is big. It's 70 percent larger 18 than the next state, which is California. It's growing 19 rapidly to meet demand. And it's imposing on the nearby 20 landowners and residents in ways that are not very 21 equitable in our view. 22 As Commissioner Moser mentioned, Texas does 23 not have comprehensive APO regulations. And we'll cover 24 that a little bit more in detail. But what it means 25 basically is to mine or become an APO in Texas, you 85 1 simply have to get an air permit for the rock crusher or 2 the facility, and a stormwater permit for any runoff 3 that may leave your site. And the -- in the meantime, 4 the mining operation, including the blasting, the 5 trucking, the hauling of the large chunks of rocks to 6 the crusher is completely ignored in the Texas 7 regulatory environment at present. 8 So lower left is a map that shows the 35 9 plus 8, 43 states, that have either comprehensive or 10 partial regulations apply to aggregates. Texas does 11 not. In Texas, only uranium and coal meaning are 12 required to follow a comprehensive mine plan, 13 environmental impact, water use and so on, all the way 14 through to reclamation, which means putting the land 15 back in a state similar to the pre-mining condition. 16 On top of all that, the APO's that are 17 working here and moving here are large international 18 nationwide, and large local state companies. Lower 19 right is a chart that shows these companies. And most 20 of these industries are large. They operate in all 21 those clean states with comprehensive regulations, and 22 yet when you go to Austin and listen to them speak, they 23 will tell you -- or they will sound like a pig stuck 24 under a gate that we're going to devastate the industry, 25 end up with shortages of materials to support our rapid 86 1 growth and so on. 2 We feel, and we strongly feel and have data 3 to underpin that statement that that is not correct. We 4 feel like the industry is not even near its full 5 capacity. In other words, the demand versus the 6 capacity of the industry to generate demand, we think is 7 somewhere down in the two-thirds or three-fourths 8 factor. There's a lot of room there to add supply to 9 the supply chain, even with comprehensive regulations. 10 The last point on this chart. The industry 11 is large and it has a really strong influence on the 12 state legislature, as Commissioner Moser pointed out. 13 Bills are presented by our concerned representatives and 14 senators, but they have a hard time moving through the 15 process to become law. 16 Okay, page 3, the TRAM organization. For 17 me -- 18 (Commissioner Belew exiting meeting.) 19 MR. FRIESENHAHN: -- talk about TRAM as a 20 large group. I'm going to just briefly mention some key 21 points. TRAM is now 17 member groups covering 34 -- 37 22 counties, and I'll show you a map in a minute, and we're 23 growing. There are a number of groups that we're 24 talking to about becoming members and so on. We -- we 25 meet regularly. We have legislative communications and 87 1 membership focused committees, subcommittees and so on. 2 What's interesting, all these members once they become 3 educated and familiar with the APO industries, realize 4 that they're addressing the same issues and concerns, 5 and I'll show you what those are in a minute. 6 In the meantime, each group retains its 7 individual identity, and the current activities of that 8 group continues in whatever fashion the group decides. 9 TRAM's position. I'll cover a few key 10 points here. We seek to use dialogue, education and 11 legislation to seek equity for all the stakeholders 12 involved. We're working with legislators, the state 13 level, and good faith industry operators. Our goal is a 14 healthier, safer, and more desirable community for 15 Texans, as well as a more efficient APO industry that's 16 aligned with the concerns of the communities. 17 For me, mention the best -- APO best actors 18 tend to follow best management practices, many do not. 19 Unfortunately, best management practices are voluntary 20 in this state. They're well documented, well understood 21 by the technical and business leaders in the industry, 22 but they're voluntary in this state and not always 23 followed. 24 And basically, our aim is to achieve equity 25 for all stakeholders. It's pretty simple. We're not 88 1 trying to put this industry in a -- between a rock and a 2 hard spot or put them out of business; we're just 3 looking for some middle ground and we feel like we're 4 more to the side of the APO's and we need to move it 5 more to the side of the landowner and resident 6 stakeholders. The main statement at the bottom, 7 bipartisan intervention to resolve nonpartisan issues is 8 our goal. 9 The next page is a map. I apologize, you 10 all may have seen this in pretty small text before. 11 Hopefully this is readable. It's simply a map 12 delineating the counties in Texas. There's 17 member 13 groups listed in the lower left, color coded. Showing 14 the counties in which they're -- these groups are 15 present. 37 counties. And those counties account for 16 42 percent of the Texas population. And that's using 17 2019 and early 2020 census data. 18 In other words, we have good representation 19 across the State in the highly populated areas. And 20 we're growing, clearly a large presence in the 21 San Antonio/Austin metropolitan area and the Houston 22 area, we're growing in the Dallas area. 23 Okay, next page is technical team. This is 24 where I started. I retired, decided to go back to my 25 farm and be a -- you know, a happy pecan farmer, enjoy 89 1 my beloved Hill Country. My dad was a farmer. He 2 taught us to leave the land in better shape than we 3 found it and that's my goal. And I do that on my farm. 4 Unfortunately, I find myself surrounded by APO's. And 5 when I sought questions -- or sought answers to 6 questions, where are the permits, where are the public 7 hearings, I found that that's largely not the case. The 8 entire regulatory climate is slanted to rapid approval, 9 rubber stamping, in effect, permits for these APO's. 10 And that occurred to me with hot mix asphalt 11 plants, aggregate mining, and now I'm going to have a 12 concrete batch plant that use the same techniques to 13 avoid the public hearing and civil disagreement process 14 that's present within the agencies. 15 So I decided to look into this thing. And 16 you know, serendipity is a wonderful thing. I found 17 that my nine years of surface mining experience as the 18 headquarters engineering contact for our Imperial Oil 19 Field in Canada, all of a sudden was front and center. 20 I spent nine years helping put our affiliate up there 21 into the oil sands mining business in North Fort 22 McMurray in Alberta Province. 23 And I came home to find, gee, I have a 24 mining operations in a world class -- about half the 25 size of those massive mining chains we built up in -- in 90 1 Alberta in North Fort McMurray so I started studying it. 2 I drug in my colleagues who taught me the mining 3 business. I spent most of my career doing oil and gas 4 work and mining is totally on the other end of the 5 scale. It was quite an experience. 6 We ended up with eight members and I've 7 listed their experience here. And over the last couple 8 years, we've brought that technical team together with 9 TRAM, and we support TRAM with dialogue, education and 10 assistance with pushing legislation forward in Austin. 11 And you can glance at the skill sets, 12 they're quite a spread. I almost surprised myself when 13 I pulled these off of the CD that each of our group 14 members had the other day. It's the first time I kind 15 of put them on one list. A lot of skill there, a lot of 16 gray hair. And this for me said, we'll put this team up 17 against any of the industry's mining engineering teams, 18 and I can give you a high degree of confidence we will 19 win. It's just going to take a while. 20 Activities. We -- we provide technical 21 assessment, data, and guidance to TRAM members and 22 legislature and others. And what's interesting, we move 23 from the emotion of windshields being cracked, dust on 24 my cars, aggregate trucks running me over when I try to 25 get my tractor out of the -- on to the farm to market 91 1 road. We moved from that to an understanding of the 2 issues by all our group members, and they then can 3 comprehensively and with a good underpinning of 4 experience talk to the legislature about their problems. 5 Our goal here is we don't want screaming 6 citizens hollering at you guys. You get enough of that. 7 We want to come to you with understanding and data and 8 that's what we're doing. 9 We built a reclamation cost model that 10 basically says you will not notice the difference in 11 cost of a home or a mile of highway if these 12 comprehensive regulations are put in place. We know 13 that for a fact. Some of our team members spent their 14 early half of their career working coal mining in places 15 like Wyoming after the federal laws for comprehensive 16 surface mining rigs were put in place in the late '70s. 17 And they know for a fact that it's a minuscule unit cost 18 addition to electricity to the cost of a home for 19 concrete or to the cost of a highway for aggregate and 20 concrete and asphalt. 21 State by state regulation analysis. You saw 22 the map with the green and the red on an earlier chart. 23 Expert witness testimony. We dove in. We were near 24 fights. We were asked by legislators to hurry up and 25 finish so they could read. In other words, there was 92 1 very little interest. We're turning that corner. 2 They're starting to listen to us. 3 We testified before the house interim 4 committee on APO's that was conducted last year. As it 5 turns out, I didn't know this, I'm learning, the State 6 Legislature holds interim committees on various topics 7 in the off year. So that they have a report with 8 recommendations to feed into the next legislative 9 session, which is the current one. The 87th 10 Legislature. 11 We testified. We had -- ended up drafting 12 the bulk of the House interim committee report on APO's 13 and I'll show you a summary of it in a minute. We're 14 helping some of the legislature staff draft bill 15 language. That's very interesting for an engineer of 16 sciences to do that but we're learning. We have the 17 data and we're learning how to talk that language. 18 And as someone mentioned, we're developing 19 surface mining best management practices, which are at 20 about an 85 percent draft stage. Ready to support 21 whatever direction the legislature goes with the new 22 legislation. 23 Okay. I'm going to try to move through this 24 pretty quickly and then show the -- use the time to show 25 the movie. And I think these charts here will set a 93 1 stage for this film, if we get to show it. 2 We end up with what -- within Exxon Mobile 3 we call key issues. And those are the major issues for 4 which all our smaller worries and concerns become 5 subsets. And we define a major issue as an issue large 6 enough to require the attention of all the stakeholders, 7 including the leaders and managers. And if you can 8 resolve those issues with all those stakeholders, 9 including the managers and leaders, you will likely 10 achieve equitable resolution. It won't make everybody 11 happy. It will be consensus. You know what that means. 12 That means the middle ground that we can live with. But 13 it will largely solve the issues. 14 What's interesting, as we built TRAM and 15 introduced these key issues to our members, we quickly 16 honed in on the first six which we had built as a 17 technical team, and I have a backup sheet here that 18 shows the order of wording behind each one. And we 19 added number seven to reach a total consensus without 20 our TRAM group. So we have 17 issues that underpin our 21 condition. 22 Okay, what's next. We worked on this house 23 interim study committee on APO's. I thought it would be 24 kind of useful to look at the cover page and the 25 signature page for that report and you'll find a note 94 1 there on the left. All seven House Reps -- that's page 2 7, Commissioner Moser. Okay, all seven house reps 3 signed the report. 4 The two industry members did not. They 5 chose to remain silent. They chose to provide minimal 6 input to the committee. The committee generated a 7 report, which is shown on the next page. The table of 8 contents. Page 8, yeah. That thing is not -- 9 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Yeah, we're not -- 10 we're not up on the screen. 11 MR. FRIESENHAHN: Yeah. And just go to your 12 handouts there, those of you that have them. On Page 8, 13 and I'm not going to cover all the words, you can glance 14 at it here. I listed the table of contents for this 15 report. It largely parallels our key issues. It covers 16 the topics shown. 17 And what we found very interesting, and a 18 bit of hard work was to help build each of those 19 sections which, down at the bottom there it says, 20 committee action, background, current regulatory scheme 21 or background and recommendations. That report 22 submitted to the state leaders has 40 total 23 recommendations, all of which are detailed and 24 actionable. 25 Our feeling is, if the legislature on the 95 1 Senate and the House side submit bills that said 2 implement this study, we can all go home and practice 3 being retired. That's going to be a hard row to hoe. 4 We don't think it's going to happen this session. But 5 we have put a mark on understanding and definition of 6 what we think the recommendations are and they're in 7 this report. 8 By the way, I think Fermin mentioned, if you 9 simply go to tramtexas.org, which is shown on the upper 10 right of each of these charts, at the very top of our 11 website you will see a link that takes you right to this 12 report and to our video. 13 And the rest of my material is supporting 14 material. And I won't cover it. You can just glance at 15 it. There's a page there that has a sentence describing 16 each key issue. A table of contents for the best 17 management practices. There's three sections to that. 18 And then a list of the acronyms that I use on these 19 sheets here. If you're like me, acronyms are -- if you 20 don't have a word search tool to find the damn place, 21 the first place the acronym was used, you can't figure 22 out what it means. So here they are. 23 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. 24 MR. FRIESENHAHN: And that's our 25 presentation. I don't know if we can put that video up. 96 1 We can try if you want. 2 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I'll tell you, one of 3 the first things you learn in sales if -- if you make 4 the sale, you quit talking. So that might be the case 5 here. 6 MR. FRIESENHAHN: I think so, yeah. We -- 7 we -- 8 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Good point, Don. 9 MR. FRIESENHAHN: That video is -- is pretty 10 simple, it's 12 minutes. It covers all of this stuff in 11 a little bit of detail. 12 MR. ORTIZ: But it is on our website. 13 MR. FRIESENHAHN: It is on our website. 14 MR. ORTIZ: I know y'all have got a lot of 15 other business, and we really appreciate y'all, your 16 consideration. 17 COMMISSIONER MOSER: I think -- 18 MR. ORTIZ: Any questions? 19 COMMISSIONER MOSER: I've watched the video. 20 I think it would be a bit redundant and I think Don's 21 right. I think you made an excellent presentation. I'd 22 just comment on a couple of things. Number one, in 23 their report and TRAM both, and the interim report it 24 talks about balance and I think that's the key. Is 25 balance between the industry and the neighbors, okay, in 97 1 the private sector. 2 We've had two town hall meetings -- three 3 town hall meetings in Precinct 2 on -- on aggregate 4 productions operations. I think we have reached balance 5 with Martin Marietta, West Texas Aggregate that said the 6 right things. They've said good things about -- they 7 will reclaim the land when they're through. They're 8 listening to the -- to the neighbors. 9 We had a conference call with the Airport 10 Board who has real concerns about the ag production 11 operation being so close to the airport and what it 12 means as far as radio frequency interference, dust, 13 lighting. So that was a very constructive telecom this 14 past week, again, trying to balance. 15 The aggregate production operator said we 16 hear you, we'll do some things, and there's going to be 17 a visit for the Airport Board to the operations to 18 understand better what's there. 19 So I think that's the key. I think that's 20 what TRAM is trying to do across the State. I think one 21 thing is interesting in the interim report. And it 22 concluded with -- if you can't -- they have specific 23 recommendations on every one of these 17 or so 24 recommendations that you made in the interim report. 25 But what they're saying is, let's start with 98 1 the State buys a lot of aggregate and the products from 2 the APO's. And let the State buy only those aggregates 3 and products that are produced with best management 4 practices. And if that were to happen, you may not need 5 a lot of regulation, okay. It may be the balance that's 6 needed. To be determined. But I thought that was an 7 interesting conclusion out of that 77-page report that 8 knowing that all of these recommendations to -- to the 9 legislature may not come to fruition as far as law, at 10 least there would be another step to go in that 11 direction. 12 I think it's -- what you guys at TRAM have 13 done have been fantastic and I don't know if you have 14 anything -- I have a Resolution here. I think the -- 15 I'll take a minute to read the Resolution, or two 16 minutes. 17 It's whereas, Aggregate Production 18 Operations, quarries, concrete batch plants and hot mix 19 asphalt plants are necessary for the growth for Kerr 20 County and our State -- and I'm not going to read all of 21 the whereases. 22 The Aggregate Production Operations, APO's, 23 have been in an attempt to be good neighbors. Aggregate 24 Production Operations can be detrimental to our Hill 25 Country beauty. APO's can be detrimental to air and 99 1 water quality. APO's, when located near neighborhoods, 2 can present nuisance impact and quality of life and 3 property values. There's no local or state requirements 4 and regulations regarding reclamation of the land once 5 quarry operations are complete. 6 Kerr County has no authority to regulate 7 APO's outside of flood plain administration. The TCEQ, 8 Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, is 9 permitted -- is the permitting authority for such 10 operations and the Court acknowledges and supports the 11 rights of all stakeholders. That's the balance. 12 Therefore, be it resolved, that Kerr County 13 Commissioners' Court encourages existing and potential 14 APO's to adopt best management practices in order to 15 minimize adverse health effects, nuisance issues. Best 16 management practices assure industry profitability, 17 shield citizens, schools and businesses from dust, 18 noise, traffic, water, and river degradation; and be it 19 further resolved, that Kerr County Commissioners' Court 20 does hereby urge the State of Texas Legislature to enact 21 legislation to protect the interests of aggregate 22 operators, provide materials necessary for growth and 23 maintain quality of health for Hill Country residents 24 and visitors. 25 That's the -- that's the proposed 100 1 Resolution. I think that it's appropriate to do so; 2 therefore, I'd make a motion that we adopt the 3 Resolution. 4 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Second. 5 JUDGE KELLY: Motion's made by Commissioner 6 Moser, seconded by Commissioner Harris to approve the 7 Resolution supporting TRAM. Any discussion? Those in 8 favor raise your hand. Three zero. 9 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. Thank you, 10 gentlemen. I thank you, and I'll encourage everybody to 11 go to the website. And Jana Colgate is here. Jana, is 12 there anything that you want to say? Jana and Francis 13 Lovett have been really instrumental in understanding 14 all of this. They stay on top of it representing the 15 County and trying to do as much as they can. So Jana, 16 thank you for your help on that. So -- 17 MS. COLGATE: Thank you so much. 18 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Thank you, gentlemen -- 19 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Thank you, guys. 20 COMMISSIONER MOSER: -- for coming over. We 21 appreciate it. 22 COURT REPORTER: Excuse me, what's your 23 name? 24 MR. FRIESENHAHN: Mark Friesenhahn, 25 F-R-I-E-S-E-N-H-A-H-N. 101 1 COURT REPORTER: Thank you. 2 JUDGE KELLY: The last timed item on the 3 agenda is item 1.15 consider, discuss and take 4 appropriate action for the Commissioners' Court approval 5 regarding three Kerr County agreements for storage of 6 Kerr County owned materials and/or equipment. And the 7 locations are at 150 Ace Reid Road North, 240 Southway 8 Drive South, and 516 Kelly Creek Road. Miss Hoffer. 9 MISS HOFFER: Thank you. I have three Kerr 10 County agreements regarding storage of Kerr County owned 11 materials and/or equipment. These agreements, if 12 approved today, will be good for one year from the 13 Commissioners' Court approval date. 14 These agreements are for us to be able to 15 store materials and equipment at our project sites in 16 order to avoid unnecessary trips when working on a 17 project. 18 Each waiver has been signed by the legal 19 property owner of each property. And as you said, the 20 properties and owners are as follows: Thomas Brown, 150 21 Ace Reid Road North in Precinct 1; Grace Bible Church, 22 240 Southway Drive South in Precinct 1; Cesar Alvarado, 23 Jr., 516 Kelly Creek Road in Precinct 4. 24 At this time, I ask the Commissioners' Court 25 for their final approval regarding the three Kerr County 102 1 agreements for storage of Kerr County owned materials 2 and/or equipment, and to have the Kerr County Judge and 3 the attorney and clerk sign the same, Precinct 1 and 4 Precinct 4. 5 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I move for approval. 6 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Second. 7 JUDGE KELLY: Motion's been made by 8 Commissioner Harris, seconded by Commission Moser to 9 approve County entering into these three storage 10 agreements. Is there any other discussion? Those in 11 favor raise your hand. Three zero. Thank you, Miss 12 Hoffer. 13 MISS HOFFER: Thank you. 14 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. Now we're going to go 15 back and pick up the regular agenda. And let's just go 16 ahead and start with 1.1. We passed that temporarily so 17 let's go back and pick it up. Item 1.1 is to consider, 18 discuss and take appropriate action to review pay policy 19 for employees that are required to work on 20 administrative paid days. Miss Doss. 21 MRS. DOSS: This all started from the County 22 closures of the ice winter storm of 2021. We paid our 23 employees 40 hours or actually 32 hours that week for 24 admin leave. We had quite a few Road & Bridge 25 personnel, IT, Maintenance, and Animal Control -- I'm 103 1 sorry -- work those hours. And it's -- we would like to 2 pay those people, but that is against state policy. We 3 can't -- the policy in place to retroactively -- 4 MRS. STEBBINS: It violates the State 5 Constitution. 6 MRS. DOSS: Yeah, it violates the State 7 Constitution, what she said. 8 JUDGE KELLY: I learned all about this on 9 the school board decades ago, and you just can't do it. 10 MRS. DOSS: So the only thing that we can do 11 at this point is to offer those folks admin leave 12 earnings, and we would like to do that. And we set up 13 codes last week and employees were told to put their 14 time in that they actually worked during County closures 15 as admin leave earned time. 16 But going forward, we'd like to discuss a 17 pay policy if this were to ever happen again where those 18 folks might get paid for the hours worked plus the admin 19 leave time. So that's my proposal. I know -- I don't 20 think we were planning on, you know, passing something 21 like that today, but just to start the conversation. 22 JUDGE KELLY: In talking with Commissioner 23 Letz, that's my understanding also, that we're trying to 24 get this discussion going. And so that the public 25 clearly understands what we're talking about, the 104 1 courthouse was closed four days last week -- week before 2 last because of the storm. 3 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: One day was a holiday. 4 JUDGE KELLY: One day was a holiday. And 5 for those four days, no one came to the courthouse to 6 work except these certain groups that we just talked 7 about. And so everybody else was staying home and they 8 got paid administrative leave and the ones that were 9 working got paid the same amount as those that stayed 10 home. And there's something basically inequitable and 11 unfair. 12 And the only way we can address that legally 13 under state law is to offer the people that work 14 administrative leave more leave for the time that they 15 worked. It's like comp time. Because they worked. And 16 we don't have a policy for that, but we -- we're going 17 to need one in order to treat everybody equal. 18 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Uh-huh. 19 MRS. DOSS: And I think I shared just a 20 rough, rough, rough draft, it's something I put 21 together. I think I e-mailed that to you. 22 MRS. STEBBINS: You did. 23 MRS. DOSS: Well, this is just something to 24 start with. 25 JUDGE KELLY: So this is really an 105 1 information agenda item. 2 MRS. DOSS: Correct. Correct. 3 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. And this is a good 4 place for us to start and for County employees and for 5 the public to know that we do plan to put a policy in 6 place to address this inequity. 7 MRS. DOSS: Okay. 8 MRS. STEBBINS: Jonathan asked me to discuss 9 with y'all taking action to authorize the department 10 heads to give an administrative day to those employees 11 so that they knew they had the ability to do that. It 12 may take a court order. And while it's not required 13 necessarily, it would -- he suggested that the 14 department heads would like to have that authority from 15 the Court. 16 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So right now they do 17 not have that authority. 18 MRS. STEBBINS: They do. They have the 19 authority. But because it's sort of special 20 circumstances that we haven't done this in the past, no 21 elected officials, we can -- we can give that 22 administrative day but the department has really looked 23 to you all for that guidance. And so if you approved 24 them and gave them this authorization today, they could 25 have something in writing, the court order to go back 106 1 on. 2 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: You got the go ahead. 3 MRS. STEBBINS: Right. 4 MRS. DOSS: And I've talked to all the four 5 directors that we're talking about their employees 6 worked and they know -- 7 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: But we wouldn't know, 8 you know, wouldn't necessarily go by this 9 recommendation. 10 MRS. DOSS: Correct. That's just for future 11 thoughts. 12 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Okay. 13 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So what would your 14 wording be to that court order and authorization? 15 MRS. STEBBINS: You would authorize -- you 16 would authorize the directors to provide the employees 17 who worked during the winter storm to provide them an 18 administrative day sometime in the future. 19 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So move. 20 MRS. STEBBINS: Okay. 21 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Second. 22 MRS. DOSS: For administrative actually 23 hours to equate to how many hours worked? Are we 24 talking about just one day or -- because these guys 25 worked like every day. 107 1 MRS. STEBBINS: Administrative days for the 2 days that they work. Now, if it's overtime, they can 3 have that has comp time. So I think that it's the 4 regular hours. 5 MRS. DOSS: Up to 40? 6 MRS. STEBBINS: Yes. 7 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So we have to -- we 8 have to amend -- 9 MRS. DOSS: Yeah. If they worked 40 hours, 10 then they can have 40 hours of admin leave earned to 11 take at a later time. Anything over that 40 hours is 12 going to be considered comp time. 13 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So I amend the motion 14 with that change. 15 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: And my second is still 16 good. 17 JUDGE KELLY: Motion's been made my 18 Commissioner Moser, seconded by Commissioner Harris to 19 approve the administrative leave for those employees 20 that worked through the storm for -- is that right? 21 MRS. STEBBINS: Correct. 22 MRS. DOSS: Correct. 23 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. Do I understand 24 correctly that they can do that now? 25 MRS. STEBBINS: They can absolutely do that 108 1 now, yes. 2 JUDGE KELLY: And so why are we doing this? 3 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So why -- yeah, that's 4 my question. Do we even need a motion -- 5 JUDGE KELLY: And the reason I'm asking is 6 because this is the second week in a row, and this 7 concerns me, that we're dangerously close to not have a 8 quorum. And this should be a full court decision, in my 9 opinion. 10 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Right. 11 MRS. STEBBINS: Jonathan asked that I ask 12 the Court -- 13 JUDGE KELLY: I talked to him too. 14 MRS. STEBBINS: Okay. 15 JUDGE KELLY: And I understand. 16 MRS. STEBBINS: So he gets that. 17 JUDGE KELLY: I understand what we're trying 18 to do, but do we really need to take action? 19 MRS. STEBBINS: Not necessarily, no. 20 COMMISSIONER MOSER: If we don't, let's just 21 hold off until we get the policy. 22 JUDGE KELLY: I would rather have the full 23 Court so that we can make a full policy. 24 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. With that -- 25 with the authorization there, okay -- 109 1 JUDGE KELLY: So the department heads are 2 here. 3 COMMISSIONER MOSER: -- and then that we 4 establish the policy, I'll withdraw the motion. 5 JUDGE KELLY: That's with the 6 understanding -- 7 COMMISSIONER MOSER: With the understanding. 8 JUDGE KELLY: -- that they're authorized to 9 do that -- 10 MRS. STEBBINS: Right. 11 JUDGE KELLY: -- as we speak. 12 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Correct. 13 JUDGE KELLY: And we don't have to take 14 action. 15 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Correct. 16 JUDGE KELLY: And then we'll come back and 17 put the policy there. 18 MRS. DOSS: And the pay period ended this 19 past Saturday. Those employees that entered their time 20 in -- already in their time sheets with the admin leave 21 earned code. 22 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Right. So that -- 23 MRS. DOSS: That will be tracked. 24 COMMISSIONER MOSER: -- authorization 25 already exists. 110 1 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Sure. 2 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. Good. 3 JUDGE KELLY: And we appreciate what you're 4 doing and appreciate you bringing this to us and we know 5 we've got to tweak this policy. 6 MRS. DOSS: Thank you. 7 JUDGE KELLY: Thank you. 8 Okay. Item 1.3 is to consider, discuss and 9 take appropriate action regarding the Local State of 10 Disaster due to Severe Winter Weather that was signed by 11 me on February 22nd and extended until terminated by 12 order of the Kerr County Commissioners Court on February 13 23rd. 14 And what this is is I put an emergency order 15 in place on Monday the 22nd. We had an emergency 16 meeting on Tuesday the 23rd, in which the Court approved 17 that emergency order, and the purpose is -- and that 18 will continue until terminated. So we have to revisit 19 this, and it's good for seven days. So we have to 20 revisit this routinely to see whether or not the Court 21 wants to terminate it. 22 My recommendation is that with all the 23 claims that we're filing and at this point that we keep 24 the order in place until we know exactly where we are on 25 this stuff. 111 1 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I move for approval. 2 COMMISSIONER MOSER: We don't have to do 3 anything, do we? Do we have to? 4 JUDGE KELLY: No. No action. 5 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Good. No action. 6 JUDGE KELLY: Unless somebody moves to 7 terminate it. 8 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: No. 9 COMMISSIONER MOSER: No. 10 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I thought we had to -- 11 JUDGE KELLY: We're just giving everybody -- 12 giving the Court an opportunity to terminate it if you 13 so choose. 14 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Okay. 15 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. Let's move on to item 16 1.4 consider, discuss and take appropriate action 17 regarding availability and administering COVID-19 18 vaccine, and discussion of county health unit. 19 Commissioner Moser. 20 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Thanks, Judge. We 21 spent an hour and a half this morning talking about the 22 disasters that we went through, the emergencies 23 associated with the storm, electrical power, etc., etc., 24 and we've had another one. Okay. And that is -- I 25 think Judge, as you said, we're talking about the 112 1 earlier issue was we don't need to talk about who 2 spilled the milk. 3 JUDGE KELLY: That's right. 4 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. And that's -- 5 that's the reason I'm bringing this up for discussion 6 this morning in Court. We don't need to talk about why 7 Kerr County got the short end of the stick right now on 8 vaccine. But we clearly, clearly have gotten the short 9 end of the stick on vaccine and the administration 10 thereof. Gillespie County gets more than twice as much 11 as we do. Uvalde County gets more than twice as much as 12 we do. They both have -- were HUBs or whatever. I 13 don't know all the stuff that goes along with that. 14 But what I want to focus on are lessons 15 learned. What have we learned -- and we're not over 16 this yet. There's still a lot of vaccines to be 17 administered. So what do we do to improve the vaccines 18 that we get in Kerr County? What do we do to make sure 19 that when we get those vaccines that they are 20 administered or injected into people's arms as quickly 21 as possible. 22 I have gone back and -- or not gone back. 23 Let me check that. I've read and reread the Addendum H 24 of our Emergency Management plan. I think it's 25 extremely good because it talks about medical 113 1 emergencies, which this was. So I think there's a 2 couple things we can do and I'm going to suggest. 3 Number one is, we can make sure that we did 4 everything that was in Addendum H to the Emergency 5 Management plan in executing it. Or there's another 6 thing that we may consider, and that is establishing a 7 county health unit. That's not any different than a 8 county health authority, but it's legislation that 9 exists. 10 There are a lot of counties in the State of 11 Texas that have county health units that I think 12 benefited a little bit better than Kerr County did by 13 having those units established. And I don't know that 14 that would help us, Judge, in -- in a situation -- 15 we'll have this same kind of thing again someday. We'll 16 have an emergency medical issue, whether it's a pandemic 17 or whatever, but I think we should take a look at what 18 we did, what our lessons learned are, and how we might 19 improve that. 20 And I hate the idea of committees but maybe 21 there's a committee -- I don't know, I'll open it up for 22 discussion, Judge, of what -- what -- and I think you 23 and Dub and Commissioner Letz and the City and hospital 24 has been ver diligent in what we've done. I know 25 everybody's worked hard to do it, but I think there's 114 1 some improvements that could be made and I don't know if 2 looking at establishing a county health unit is -- would 3 be of benefit. I don't know if that's been discussed or 4 not, but I will -- I'll just ask that question. 5 JUDGE KELLY: We haven't discussed. This is 6 the first discussion about that. 7 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Yeah. Okay. It -- it 8 may be something, again, I'm not here to criticize or 9 anything. I think everybody has done everything that 10 they can. But still we have a lot of people without 11 power. We have a lot of people without vaccinations, 12 too. Because we haven't got our fair share of the 13 dosages. So we could -- we could have -- my thought was 14 is to have the Judge, Emergency Management Coordinator, 15 somebody from the City, somebody from Peterson Regional 16 or a medical doctor involved, and have a citizen. Like 17 five people take a look at what do we have and what 18 would we do to improve this. 19 JUDGE KELLY: Well, why don't we put this on 20 the agenda for the stakeholders meeting. We meet every 21 two weeks. 22 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. 23 JUDGE KELLY: We've got a meeting coming up 24 on Thursday afternoon. 25 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. This Thursday? 115 1 JUDGE KELLY: And then -- I don't know. 2 It's every two weeks. We met last week so -- 3 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. Well, I -- I 4 think that would be fine. 5 JUDGE KELLY: And to start a discussion. 6 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Sure. Absolutely. 7 Well, take a look -- take a look at -- the legislature 8 is quite detailed. There's a lot of things that 9 emergency -- I mean that a county medical unit can do. 10 A lot of things we probably would never want to do, but 11 if we could isolate perhaps forming such an entity as 12 that it would help us. 13 And the other thing is, it doesn't have to 14 just be for the Kerr County. It can be -- it can be the 15 county and municipalities. It can be part of it or it 16 can be multiple counties. So I think there's a lot of 17 flexibility, so -- 18 JUDGE KELLY: I do know that there's been a 19 discussion between the City and the County with regard 20 to a local health authority, which is what Uvalde has. 21 That's authority. Not a unit, but an authority. 22 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Yeah. Right. 23 JUDGE KELLY: And most of that has -- 24 discussions have centered around the costs -- 25 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Right. 116 1 JUDGE KELLY: -- associated with that. 2 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Right. And there -- 3 there could be costs associated with -- and again, I 4 think it's a broad subject, but I think it's worth 5 taking a look at. And I -- a county health authority is 6 a medical doctor. He's the authority. So I'm not 7 suggesting that that's the answer, but look at the -- 8 look at the -- take a look at that legislature, if you 9 could, and see if there's any way we could improve what 10 we have. Because, you know, several people in the 11 community have recommended we form such a health unit. 12 I don't know if that's the right answer or not, but it's 13 what we need to do, look at lessons learned and how we 14 move forward. 15 JUDGE KELLY: Yeah. All right. 16 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. That's it. 17 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. So no action on that at 18 this time. 19 So we'll move on to Item 1.5, and I see that 20 we've got Gary Noller is signed up to speak. Is that 21 correct? This is 1.5 consider, discuss and take 22 appropriate action regarding Kerr County Veteran 23 Services Office services. Gary Noller and Commissioner 24 Moser. 25 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Yeah, while Gary is 117 1 coming in, let me just -- this is primarily for 2 information for the Court. And that is our Veterans 3 Service Officer Marty Mistretta is out, okay. You're 4 looking at me like I shouldn't say that. But I can -- 5 she's doing some other things right now. So she's not 6 serving as active 100 percent time as Veterans Service 7 Officer. I can say that. 8 So that -- that's the case. And she will be 9 not serving in that capacity until July, I believe July 10 the 12th, something like that. So that's to let the 11 veterans know that that's there. Jenna is here doing -- 12 doing -- managing the office, taking care of things. 13 And I think there's also another thing to 14 bring this up for information for the Court because 15 there's more demand, okay, for the County Veterans 16 Service Officer, because more people are going to the 17 Veterans Hospital and saying they would like to 18 participate and get the vaccine. They can't if they're 19 not a participant in the medical facility out there. 20 So, therefore, for them to enroll Jenna and Marty's 21 challenges have increased and their workload has 22 increased, and I think Gary Noller and the advisory 23 committee have offered to step in and help where they 24 can. 25 And so I'll let Gary bring us up to date on 118 1 that. But then I'm going to ask a question about what 2 do we do to enable them if their volunteer help is -- is 3 desired, what do we need to do to make sure that we can 4 do that and be covered by -- and not have insurance or 5 anything else? Go ahead, Gary. 6 MR. NOLLER: Thank you, Commissioner Moser. 7 Gary Noller, 140 Ray Drive, Center Point, Texas. And 8 one of the things that has happened is the Veterans 9 Administration has got the vaccine, and San Antonio was 10 one of the first hospitals in the country, there was 11 like 167 VA hospitals and only about a fifth -- about 30 12 of them got them right off the bat and San Antonio was 13 one. 14 Since Kerrville is part of South Texas 15 Veterans Healthcare System, it came to Kerrville. So 16 Kerrville VA has been distributing the vaccine since 17 about the first of December. There -- the residents out 18 there that received it first, the employees in the VA 19 received it. But about the end of January, they started 20 vaccinating veterans according to mostly your age. And 21 so they had a big distribution on February 6th, that's 22 where I got my first shot. I waited three weeks and got 23 my second shot. So all four members of the Veterans 24 Advisory Committee here for Kerr County have had both 25 shots and we're doing fine. 119 1 But when Veterans found out that the VA had 2 vaccine, many of them wanted to get it. Well, you can't 3 get anything from the VA healthcare if you're not 4 enrolled. So those veterans who weren't enrolled came 5 to the Veterans Service Office and say what do I need to 6 do to get enrolled. So your service office here, Marty 7 and Jenna, saw a spike in business. Phones ringing off 8 the wall again. So they're doing all they can to help 9 these veterans get enrolled as well as keep up with 10 their other duties. 11 And then Marty gets called away for active 12 duty in the Air Force. She's got a commitment that she 13 has to take care of. She'll be back in a few weeks. 14 So what the advisory committee thought was, 15 well, we know there's all this pressure on the service 16 officers. We're all retired. Most of us are somewhat 17 connected in the community with veterans and potentially 18 we could act as volunteers to, you know, answer 19 telephones, greet people when they come in, you know, 20 stuff envelopes, help take a little bit of that load. 21 And we've offered that, but there may be a process it 22 has to go through as to whether that's allowed and we 23 can do that, and what's your access and all those 24 things. So that was kind of one of the questions that 25 we were looking at today as would that be possible and 120 1 what would the process be we might have to go through if 2 Jenna and Marty would say yeah, we could use some help 3 from you guys. 4 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Have they indicated 5 that, Gary? 6 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Yeah. I've talked to 7 Jenna and there's -- the intensity and the workload is 8 increasing. They haven't reached that point yet, but I 9 think it's important if they do reach that point, in 10 light of the increased needs, that we've set in place 11 the capability to do it. 12 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: County Attorney? 13 MRS. STEBBINS: I'm sorry. I was not -- 14 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Do we -- do we need to 15 do any -- 16 MRS. STEBBINS: That last part, they're 17 volunteers. They're covered under our workmans' comp. 18 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Say again? I couldn't 19 understand. 20 MRS. STEBBINS: Our -- our -- we have -- 21 workers' comp covers volunteers. 22 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. 23 MRS. STEBBINS: Workers' comp does cover 24 volunteers. 25 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. All right. So 121 1 we -- there's -- no action needs to be -- I mean, we 2 don't need to do anything if they choose to volunteer to 3 have them covered under workman's comp. Is that 4 correct? 5 MRS. STEBBINS: I don't -- workman's comp or 6 workers' comp is -- covers them. I'd like to have 7 something where they at least knowledge some of the 8 information that they are processing is private 9 information -- 10 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Oh, sure. 11 MRS. STEBBINS: -- and that's not to be 12 released, so I think -- 13 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. 14 MRS. STEBBINS: -- that it's wonderful if 15 they'll come in and volunteer and -- and that's a great 16 service to our community. 17 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Can you draw something 18 up that -- 19 MRS. STEBBINS: Sure. 20 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: -- as they come in 21 they can just sign it and they'll keep it on file? 22 MRS. STEBBINS: Uh-huh. Absolutely. I can 23 do that this week. 24 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. 25 MR. NOLLER: I think that the role that we 122 1 would take as volunteers would be somewhat like a 2 receptionist. So you answer the telephone, yes, we'll 3 take a message, thank you very much. If somebody was to 4 walk into the office, whether the service officer be 5 there or not, I'm sorry, they're not in the office, 6 they'll be back. So try to give them somebody to talk 7 to rather than a phone rings all day and nobody answers 8 it. 9 So we know and understand there's pressure 10 out there on all service officers, everybody. There's 11 pressure on the VA. A lot of it due, again, to the 12 vaccine. But we wouldn't -- obviously we couldn't help 13 anybody file a claim but it -- 14 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Right. 15 MR. NOLLER: So it would be more -- more 16 equivalent to what a receptionist would be as to kind of 17 just help the flow of greet a little bit, prioritization 18 of who needs what. 19 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. So we may not 20 need to do anything special then as far as -- 21 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: It wouldn't hurt 22 just -- maybe possibly overhearing conversations or what 23 have you, you know, it wouldn't be a big deal. 24 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. 25 JUDGE KELLY: So no action? 123 1 COMMISSIONER MOSER: No. I think -- I think 2 it's just a recognition that they're there to volunteer. 3 And Judge, I would say if that's the case, if you do 4 come in and volunteer, then coordinate with the County 5 Attorney to make sure -- or HR to make sure that we've 6 got all the bases covered. 7 MRS. STEBBINS: We'll work together to get 8 something -- 9 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. Good. 10 MRS. STEBBINS: -- something drafted. 11 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Good enough. So I 12 don't think we'll need a motion or anything. It's 13 just -- 14 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. 15 COMMISSIONER MOSER: -- enabling it. 16 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Appreciate you guys. 17 MR. NOLLER: All right. Well, we appreciate 18 our service officers. And the other thing is cuz 19 sometimes we -- we wonder how -- due to the -- they want 20 to do a good job and sometimes customers, clients can be 21 very demanding. So if I call you right now, you answer 22 your phone. And if I want you to fill this form out and 23 send it in, you have it in the mail by six o'clock 24 tonight. 25 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Exactly. 124 1 MR. NOLLER: And -- and it's just -- you 2 know, some cases aren't humanly possible. And so we 3 admire them and we want them to do the best they can. 4 We know that there's some dissatisfaction out there. So 5 if we can take just a little bit of that, we're willing 6 to do it. 7 COMMISSIONER MOSER: And -- and I think 8 that's key, too. Because, you know, I know sometimes 9 it's difficult to reach, just with the two ladies there 10 and now with just one person in the office, it's -- you 11 know, you don't get an answer on the phone. And so your 12 supporting that would be greatly beneficial to the 13 veterans of Kerr County. 14 MR. NOLLER: Did you have a point you wanted 15 to make? 16 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: That program at the 17 Kroc Center -- 18 COURT REPORTER: Excuse me, I can't hear 19 you. 20 COMMISSIONER MOSER: He's just talking to 21 one of the -- 22 MR. NOLLER: Well, there was one thing Jenna 23 sent a message out. And as an advisory committee, we 24 try to act as a sounding board. We understand they work 25 for you. You're the employers, you have direction of 125 1 them, but they kind of want to test some things out. 2 And so there's a community event coming up 3 that opened up to some community agencies and Jenna was 4 invited to come up and set a table up as the Veteran 5 Service Officer for the County to -- to meet and explain 6 services. 7 My point of view of that is, yeah, that 8 probably ought to be done once in a while, it's part of 9 what I call outreach. You don't do that once a week. 10 Maybe you do that once in a quarter. If somebody's 11 holding an event like at the Kroc Center and they're 12 meeting the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross 13 and Dietert Center and then you're trying explain what 14 use your services are. Yeah, the County Service 15 Officers ought to go once in a while, so that was one of 16 the examples of something that might get thrown to us. 17 I don't know if they may come to you at some point and 18 say can we do that. I hope that's in their job 19 description. It needs to be in their job description. 20 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Sure. 21 MR. NOLLER: That you can sit in your office 22 all day long, but you're not going to catch everybody. 23 So once in a while you need to go someplace where people 24 are already at so the people that don't come to the 25 courthouse, they still have access to talk to you and 126 1 see what you might be able to do for them. So once a 2 quarter, that's fine. Do it every week, that's probably 3 too much. 4 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Just under the subject 5 of outreach. 6 MR. NOLLER: Yes. 7 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Good deal. All right. 8 Okay. 9 MR. NOLLER: Thank you. 10 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Thank you very much, 11 guys. 12 MR. NOLLER: Okay. Thank you very much. 13 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Appreciate all the 14 Advisory Committee does. 15 MR. NOLLER: Thank you. 16 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. How are we doing? Do 17 we need a break yet? Okay, let's go ahead and go with 18 item 1.6 consider, discuss and take appropriate action 19 for the Court to approve the contract between Computer 20 Information Concepts, Inc. and Kerr County. Bob Reeves. 21 MR. REEVES: Good morning, gentlemen. 22 Computer Information Concepts or CIC is the software 23 which my office uses for the accounting system in the 24 Tax Collection Department. Among other things, CIC 25 provides a method to disburse the funds to the taxing 127 1 entities which I collect for. The annual cost of the 2 software and support is $5,220, which is unchanged from 3 last year. The cost will be paid out of the IT budget. 4 I have provided the IT department with a copy of the 5 invoice on February 8th and requested that it be paid in 6 early March. 7 The current contract is set to be renewed on 8 or before April 1, 2021. The contract has been reviewed 9 and approved by the County Attorney. At this time, the 10 HB 1295 paperwork has not been returned; however, I 11 respectfully request that the Court approve the contract 12 and authorize the County Judge to sign the appropriate 13 documents once the HB 1295 paperwork has been returned. 14 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So move. 15 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Second. 16 JUDGE KELLY: Motion's been made by 17 Commissioner Moser, seconded by Commissioner Harris to 18 approve the -- entering the contract with Computer 19 Information Concepts, Inc. Any other discussion? Those 20 in favor raise your hand. Unanimous, three zero. 21 COMMISSIONER REEVES: Thank you, gentlemen. 22 JUDGE KELLY: Thank you. 23 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Sorry for the wait. 24 JUDGE KELLY: Item 1.7 consider, discuss and 25 take appropriate action to approve the amendment with 128 1 Tyler Technologies for Tyler Jury Manager. Ms. Lantz. 2 MRS. LANTZ: Good morning, Judge, 3 Commissioners. This is an amendment that Tyler 4 Technologies sent me. They overcharged us for some 5 services that we will be credited on. I did give the 6 amendment to the County Attorney for her review, so I'm 7 just asking for approval today. 8 COMMISSIONER MOSER: How much are they -- 9 MRS. LANTZ: They charged us $3,502.70 and 10 it's for services that we already paid for. 11 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. So that will be 12 a credit or a refund? 13 MRS. LANTZ: Yes. 14 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So move. 15 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Second. 16 JUDGE KELLY: Motion's been made by 17 Commissioner Moser, seconded by Commissioner Harris to 18 approve the contract amendment with Tyler Technologies 19 for Jury Manager. Any other discussion? Those in favor 20 raise your hand. Unanimous, three zero. 21 MRS. LANTZ: Thank you. 22 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Now can we take a five 23 minute break? 24 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. Let's break for five 25 minutes and then we'll come back and finish up. 129 1 (Recess.) 2 JUDGE KELLY: Court will come back in 3 session -- back to order. The next item on the agenda 4 is Miss Dowdy, 1.8 consider, discuss and take 5 appropriate action to accept annual report from the 6 County Clerk's investments as it regards to the Registry 7 Accounts of the County Court to comply with the Texas 8 Estates Code. Ms. Dowdy. 9 MRS. DOWDY: Standard procedures. I'm 10 supposed to come to the court technically prior to 11 March 1st. I had this on the agenda for the February 12 22nd agenda; however, court was canceled. Anyway, so 13 I'm here today to report the numbers on these registry 14 accounts for minors and other guardians. 15 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. 16 MRS. DOWDY: Are there any questions? 17 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I move for approval. 18 JUDGE KELLY: Do we need to take any action? 19 MRS. DOWDY: Yes. 20 JUDGE KELLY: Accept your report? 21 MRS. DOWDY: Correct. And I heard a motion 22 from Commissioner Harris. 23 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. 24 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I'll move for 25 approval. 130 1 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Second. 2 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. Motion's made by 3 Commissioner Harris, seconded by Commissioner Moser to 4 accept the report of the County Clerk regarding these 5 Registry Accounts. Any discussion? Those in favor 6 raise your hand. Unanimous, three zero. 7 MRS. DOWDY: Thank you. 8 JUDGE KELLY: 1.9 consider, discuss and take 9 appropriate action to renew the ACA Reporting and 10 Tracking Service Program Agreement between Texas 11 Association of Counties and Kerr County. 12 MRS. DOSS: Yes, sir. This is an annual 13 renewal for the Affordable Care Act to -- for TAC -- 14 the Affordable Care Act Reporting and Tracking Service 15 for them to mail out 1094C's to the employees. And I 16 just ask that you approve it and sign it. 17 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. 18 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I move for approval. 19 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Second. 20 JUDGE KELLY: Motion's been made by 21 Commissioner Harris, seconded by Commissioner Moser to 22 approve the report. Any discussion about it? Those in 23 favor raise your hand. Unanimous, three zero. Thank 24 you. 25 MRS. DOSS: Thank you. 131 1 JUDGE KELLY: 1.10 consider, discuss and 2 take appropriate action to accept the annual Racial 3 Profiling Reports from Constable Precinct 1. 4 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Judge, I read that and 5 make a recommendation -- or motion to approve. 6 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Second. 7 JUDGE KELLY: Motion's been made by 8 Commissioner Moser, seconded by Commissioner Harris to 9 approve the annual Racial Profiling Reports from 10 Constable Precinct 1. Is there any discussion? Those 11 in favor raise your hand. Unanimous, three zero. 12 Item 1.11 consider, discuss and take 13 appropriate action to accept the Kerr County Sheriff 14 Racial Profiling (Tier 2) State of Texas Mandatory Form. 15 Sheriff Leitha. 16 SHERIFF LEITHA: Let me give y'all a copy. 17 I don't know if y'all had one. This is from 2020. It's 18 pretty self-explanatory. 19 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Yeah. We have it in 20 our backup. 21 SHERIFF LEITHA: Okay. 22 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. 23 SHERIFF LEITHA: All right. 24 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I move for approval. 25 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Second. 132 1 JUDGE KELLY: Motion's been made by 2 Commissioner Harris, seconded by Commissioner Moser to 3 approve the Sheriff's Department Racial Profiling Tier 2 4 report. Any discussion? Those in favor raise your 5 hand. Unanimous, three zero. 6 SHERIFF LEITHA: Thank y'all. 7 JUDGE KELLY: Thank you. 8 Item 1.12 consider, discuss and take 9 appropriate action to accept the annual Racial Profiling 10 Report from 216th District Attorney. Candice Flores. 11 COMMISSIONER MOSER: That's in our backup, 12 too. 13 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Yeah. We've looked 14 through it, Judge. I'll move for approval. 15 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Second. 16 JUDGE KELLY: Motion's been made by 17 Commissioner Harris, seconded by Commissioner Moser to 18 approve the 216th District Attorney's Racial Profiling 19 report. Any discussion? Those in favor raise your 20 hand. Unanimous, three zero. Okay. 21 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Judge, if you could 22 recall item 1.14, please, sir. 23 JUDGE KELLY: Very well. The Court calls 24 Item 1.14 Consider, discuss and take appropriate action 25 regarding Texans for Responsible Aggregate Mining and 133 1 Resolution. 2 COMMISSIONER MOSER: The Resolution that was 3 approved and -- earlier was regarding aggregate 4 production operation in Kerr County. Uniquely, there's 5 another Resolution that I failed to bring up and I'd 6 like to bring up right now. And that is a Resolution 7 supporting Texans for Responsible Aggregate Mining. 8 And I'll not read all the whereases because 9 we heard that in the discussion. But what it does, 10 essentially, is it resolves the Kerr County 11 Commissioners' Court support the adoptions of laws that 12 strengthen Texas communities, as well as the APO 13 industry, by addressing the seven key issues associated 14 with aggregate activities. And they are air pollution, 15 water use and availability, surface and groundwater 16 contamination and flooding, rapid development of APO's 17 without adequate regulatory oversight, truck traffic, 18 nuisance issues, including noise and lighting, and 19 visible blight, and economic impact. 20 And it's further resolved that supports TRAM 21 pursuit and such laws through thoughtful collaboration 22 with policymakers and industries for the benefit of all 23 Texans. So I make a motion that we adopt that 24 Resolution also. 25 JUDGE KELLY: So -- 134 1 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Second. 2 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. Motion's been made by 3 Commissioner Moser, seconded by Commissioner Harris. 4 And what we're doing here is clarifying the Resolution 5 that we passed earlier? 6 COMMISSIONER MOSER: No. This is two 7 Resolutions. One was -- one was unique to Kerr County 8 and our concern about APO's in the county. And the 9 second one is in support of TRAM at a state-wide level. 10 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Right. 11 JUDGE KELLY: So this is a second 12 Resolution? 13 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Correct. 14 JUDGE KELLY: Is there any discussion? 15 Those in favor raise your hand. Unanimous. 16 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Thank you. 17 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. I think we're down to 18 the approval agenda, right? 19 2.1 pay the bills. 20 MRS. SHELTON: Good morning. For today's 21 approval for Treasurer's disbursements, we have a total 22 of $860,941.78. 23 JUDGE KELLY: I move that we pay the bills 24 as presented. 25 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Second. 135 1 COMMISSIONER MOSER: One question. It's 2 typically like about 500,000. Why is it 890,000 this -- 3 MRS. SHELTON: We have a lot of our 4 one-times again. We've combined it down. Now we're 5 only paying twice a month. 6 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. Gotcha. Okay. 7 Good. Thank you. 8 JUDGE KELLY: Any other discussion about 9 bills? Those in favor raise your hand. Unanimous, 10 three zero. 11 Okay, 2.2 budget amendments. 12 MRS. SHELTON: Yes. We have three budget 13 amendments for your consideration. Two of them were 14 just to transfer money for some overtime, and one of 15 them is just a small reclass between a couple of line 16 items for Indigent Health. 17 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Move for approval. 18 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Second. 19 JUDGE KELLY: Motion's been made by 20 Commissioner Moser, seconded by Commissioner Harris to 21 approve the budget amendment as presented. Any 22 discussion? Those in favor raise your hand. Scared me 23 there for a minute. 24 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: I know. I'm reading. 25 JUDGE KELLY: Three zero. 136 1 2.3 late bills. 2 MRS. SHELTON: There are not any. 3 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. 2.4 Auditor reports. 4 MRS. SHELTON: Yes. We performed a couple 5 of -- or two precisely independent audits over the past 6 month and present the report. One was J.P. Precinct 1 7 and then Justice of the Peace Precinct 4 also. And we 8 just ask that you accept the report. 9 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So move. 10 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Second. 11 JUDGE KELLY: Motion's been made by 12 Commissioner Moser, seconded by Commission Harris to 13 approve the Auditor report that's presented. Is there 14 any discussion? Those in favor raise your hand. Three 15 zero. 16 Monthly reports. 17 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: None. 18 JUDGE KELLY: Court orders. 19 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Yes. The court orders 20 have been reviewed by Commissioner Letz and found to be 21 fine. Court orders 38567 through 38592 from Monday, 22 February 8th, 2021, regular session. Also court order 23 38593 from Tuesday, February 23rd, '21, special session. 24 I move for approval. 25 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Second. 137 1 JUDGE KELLY: Motion's been made by 2 Commissioner Harris, seconded by Commissioner Moser to 3 approve the court orders as presented. Any discussion? 4 Those in favor raise your hand. Unanimous, three zero. 5 Information agenda. Status reports from 6 department heads. Shane. 7 MR. EVANS: Good morning, gentlemen. I'd 8 like to give y'all an update on the generator. On the 9 12th the water pump froze up -- froze and seized up, 10 shredded some of the belts. Last week the technician 11 was able to finally get people on the phone to, you 12 know, order parts. And it's going to be about two weeks 13 to get that water pump. And it's going to be shipped 14 from Canada. So as soon as he has all the parts 15 necessary, then he will be out here to replace the water 16 pump and get that thing back online again. 17 And the painting company was actually going 18 to start painting that generator, or start on it, the 19 week that we got the bad freeze and everything. But 20 they're -- they're going to start working on it to get 21 that thing repainted. 22 Also, we did have some buildings that had 23 water damage -- 24 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Shane, back on the 25 generator. 138 1 MR. EVANS: Yes, sir. 2 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Back up. So in an 3 emergency the freeze, the backup generator froze? 4 MR. EVANS: Well, no, I -- I -- 5 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So -- so what's the -- 6 what's the corrective action on that? 7 MR. EVANS: The water pump didn't freeze 8 from the -- from -- from cold. It was -- I did ask that 9 question. He said it very highly unlikely because it 10 does have a block heater that was working perfectly, you 11 know, that keeps the the fluid and antifreeze warm and 12 moving. Also the same thing with the oil temp. It just 13 was a mechanical failure that happened at a bad time. 14 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Oh. So it's nothing to 15 do with the freeze itself? 16 MR. EVANS: No, sir. 17 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. Good to know. 18 Okay. 19 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Yeah, that's what I 20 first suspected. 21 MR. EVANS: Right. So, yeah, I did ask that 22 question and he -- he said not likely. Because, you 23 know, and also -- 24 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. 25 MR. EVANS: -- the antifreeze levels worked 139 1 because he checked the antifreeze level and also to make 2 sure that they have the right percentage of antifreeze 3 and water, and that was -- 4 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So the mechanical 5 failure could have happened any time? 6 MR. EVANS: Yes, sir. 7 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Got it. Okay. Thank 8 you. 9 MR. EVANS: So -- and we had a building -- 10 our River Star building was flooded Thursday. We 11 estimated that it had been running for a full 24-hours 12 in there and it's a building that we -- that I had 13 checked earlier. The guys from Global Spectrum, they 14 had checked that building also. So in between the time 15 we had checked it and that Thursday, it blew two 16 half-inch couplings off and they were suppression so we 17 had two half-inch lines pumping water inside that 18 building after the freeze was over with. 19 And I had asked how that could have happened 20 when the plumber was there to look at it and he said 21 well, during the freeze the copper pipes could have 22 frozen and then weakened the fitting. And when we got 23 back to normal water pressure, it could have sometime at 24 that point blew those water fittings off. 25 COMMISSIONER MOSER: So should we drain 140 1 those lines whenever it gets to a certain temperature? 2 Because that same thing happened there happened in my 3 house, too. So -- 4 MR. EVANS: Yes, sir. And that's kind of 5 like where another issue I think we're going to have. 6 Since we've never run across this problem, we didn't 7 have any procedures for maintenance. 8 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. 9 MR. EVANS: Now, this is probably a perfect 10 time to work on some kind of a shutdown procedure for 11 County buildings that are not in operation. 12 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Good. Lessons learned. 13 MR. EVANS: Lessons learned. Yeah. 14 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Good deal. Good. 15 Okay. 16 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Back to River Star. 17 There was lots of stuff stored in there. Documents and 18 stuff? And I think y'all were going to put them on 19 pallets and move them over. Where are we at on all 20 that? Some people come get theirs or what? 21 MR. EVANS: We had moved everything that 22 wasn't damaged. Now, I think that as the e-mail said if 23 it's a wet document, you need -- the department head or 24 an elected official has to determine whether they can 25 keep it or -- or throw it away. So once they make that 141 1 determination, if they can get rid of it or save it, 2 then we'll -- we'll take further action from there. 3 And then there was one other damage. There 4 was a backflow check valve at the Juvenile Detention 5 that cracked. And it's a pretty heavy duty, but it did 6 crack. Well, the good thing is it has a redundant 7 system that has two pumps with two backflow check 8 valves, so the Juvenile Detention Facility will still be 9 in operation and we don't have to shut that facility 10 down due to sewer problems or anything. It's basically 11 just a lift station to get sewer to the City. But one 12 of those did crack. 13 And Saturday, I also worked with the 14 representative from Young & Associates for insurance 15 purposes and showed those damages at the Juvenile 16 Detention. There is some damage there at the jail at 17 the public restroom, the new public restroom, and then 18 also the River Star building. 19 JUDGE KELLY: Okay. 20 MR. EVANS: That's all I have for right now. 21 JUDGE KELLY: Any other department heads? 22 MR. MOTHERAL: Good morning. We wanted to 23 make y'all aware that we had quite a bit of electrical 24 damage to some of our equipment. We have brought 25 everything online but there's going to be some parts and 142 1 pieces that we're going to have to replace. I've 2 already ordered the replacements and they should be here 3 shortly. 4 JUDGE KELLY: Just keep us updated. 5 MR. MOTHERAL: All right. I appreciate it. 6 Thank you. 7 JUDGE KELLY: Any other department heads? 8 Elected officials? Liaison commissioners? 9 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Well, I think he spoke 10 and that's about it. 11 JUDGE KELLY: I thought I would share one 12 thing in response to the discussion about the County 13 health unit. The stakeholder group with the City and 14 the Mayor and everybody. We've done a pretty exhaustive 15 search to find out what happened on these Hubs. And 16 what we've been able to discover is that the decision 17 for designating HUB's was made in Austin without 18 consultation with the counties. 19 In fact, Judge Stroeher in Fredericksburg 20 was shocked that we weren't the HUB. And when we called 21 Sammy Sikes who's the head of Region 8 for DSHS, he 22 didn't even know that Fredericksburg -- that Hill 23 Country Memorial hadn't been designated the HUB and he 24 was shocked because we put a thousand shots in arms a 25 day, they're doing a couple hundred. So all this was 143 1 made -- these decisions were made in Austin. 2 And I offer this because one of the 3 recurring themes, you remember Judge Pollard always had 4 his constant reminder of unfunded mandates. Well, I am 5 very, very upset with the poor quality of state 6 government and how these -- these two crises are being 7 handled. And I'm just going on record, that -- 8 COMMISSIONER MOSER: It's a good thing 9 that -- 10 JUDGE KELLY: -- and we're going to take it 11 to them. 12 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Good. 13 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Well, I was at a 14 conference in College Station last month and the -- one 15 of the heads from the Texas Health Department came and 16 spoke to us. And he said they had designated 19 Hubs 17 and they didn't want anymore. So that was -- 18 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Bless their heart. 19 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Yeah. And they were 20 griping about -- you know, we've been griping about how 21 many vaccines we get, he was griping how many Texas was 22 getting. Period. You know, from the feds, so -- 23 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Well, I remember six 24 weeks or something like that asking Dub, again, just 25 based on what he knew, how does it flow from the Federal 144 1 Government to the State to the Counties? And -- and I 2 can see now why he didn't have a good answer. Because 3 he didn't know. Okay. Because it's not obvious. 4 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Exactly. 5 JUDGE KELLY: Washington is doing us no 6 favors. Austin is doing us no favors. 7 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Right. 8 JUDGE KELLY: We're on our own. Just for 9 what it's worth. 10 COMMISSIONER MOSER: Okay. Well -- 11 JUDGE KELLY: We don't have any executive 12 items, do we? 13 MRS. STEBBINS: No, sir. 14 COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Okay. 15 JUDGE KELLY: Anything else that we need to 16 discuss today? Then we stand adjourned. 17 * * * * * * 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 145 1 STATE OF TEXAS * 2 COUNTY OF KERR * 3 I, DEBRA ELLEN GIFFORD, Certified Shorthand 4 Reporter in and for the State of Texas, and Official 5 Court Reporter in and for Kerr County, do hereby certify 6 that the above and foregoing pages contain and comprise 7 a true and correct transcription of the proceedings had 8 in the above-entitled Regular Commissioners' Court. 9 Dated this the 15th day of March, A.D. 2021. 10 11 /s/DEBRA ELLEN GIFFORD Certified Shorthand Reporter 12 No. 953 Expiration Date 04/31/2021 13 * * * * * * 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25