September 4, 2024 - The Shelby County Commissioners discussed the proposed budget for the county during their August 21, 2024, meeting in what developed into somewhat contentious debate. Discussion continued over issues with the jail and Delbert Jackson addressed the commissioners about his desire for a historical marker on the historic courthouse grounds.
The 2024-2025 Proposed Budget was announced as having been filed on Wednesday August 14, 2024 for public inspection in the County Clerk’s office as required by Local Government Code, Section.111.006. As discussion moved forward on the subject, tensions began to increasingly become apparent.
Judge Harbison remarked on some alterations that were applied to it before the proposed budget filing.
“We had a discussion here a while back and I did not go with those numbers, the only changes that I made was that everyone is going to be getting a one dollar an hour raise,” said Judge Harbison.
Harbison continued, stating she put $50,000 in the inmate fund for out of county housing.
Commissioner McSwain confirmed with Clint Porterfield, County Auditor, the proposed budget was filed with the changes Judge Harbison made and Porterfield elaborated on what the alterations were.
“The proposed budget was filed, as the judge said, with a $1 per hour pay increase for all county employees. That included Road and Bridge. We initially discussed $2 an hour for Road and Bridge, and we did include the $1 for the lead hand. That was also left in there but the additional funding for the Sheriff's Office in a number of line items, which is actually going to be funded by the elimination of some line items, that was taken out. But, they left the inclusion as the judge said concerning the inmate situation, line items. So there's an additional $50,000 in there,” said Porterfield.
Porterfield said some things that were mentioned in previous discussions over the budget such as an increase in the educational line item, and an increase in general supplies were taken out of the budget. McSwain questioned the purpose in taking those items out when the expenses were already over budget and two months remain in the current budget year. Porterfield said there were some discussions of eliminating some employee positions to fund that expense; however, those positions were left in the budget. Porterfield also concurred with McSwain those line items were over budget, but that they have been that way for years.
“If we're going to discuss the sheriff's budget separately we probably should have done that months ago in a budget workshop specifically for them, because as we know, even the amounts that we were talking about including in there would not have put them in the black they would still be in the red even with those increases in there, and we know that,” said Porterfield.
McSwain stated the purpose of talking about increasing the line items for the Sheriff's Department, even though they're over budget, would be to give the new sheriff an even playing field with an additional $100,000.
Porterfield asked for clarification, “So we're going to discuss this now, were we going to fund the extra $100,000 by eliminating two positions to obtain $100,000?”
“Yes, sir,” answered McSwain.
“I was not in favor of cutting him a position and a half going into his tenure I think that we should give him a chance to operate with what he has,” said Judge Harbison.
McSwain warned that in the next one to two years positions would be cut because they can’t be funded.
McSwain stated, “You can't keep funding positions and growth that you don't have income to cover. You can have all the reserve you want, but if you don't have industry or some kind of growth in Shelby County to broaden our tax base, sooner or later that reserve runs out and then what are you going to do?”
Porterfield said the budget issue with the Sheriff’s Department didn't happen overnight and that their budget has been in the red for three years in a row. He said it could have been addressed three years ago; however, the budget for the Sheriff’s Department hasn’t been changed in three years.
“Now, we have changed it in the labor salary line item because we have budgeted some additional staffing and some things in there concerning salaries, but we haven't really changed their expense line item. Now what do we fall back on? What do we fall back on when that happens? And we don't want people to fall back on something, but we do have a process at the end of the year which is called line item transfers, and every year at the end of the year we do line item transfers. And basically what we do is we take money from other departments and other line items and we balance the budget and put everything back flush,” said Porterfield.
Porterfield stated there is an understanding that there are going to be departments where things come up, whether it's vehicle repairs or inmate cost and they could go negative each year. If all of the 30 departments the budget covers were in the plus range, then there would be a very large surplus, and the main goal instead is to keep the general fund in the black which has been succeeded through budgeting.
McSwain felt compelled to further address the issue of tax increase and the need of more industry in Shelby County to help fund the county.
“We increase in the taxes nearly nine cents this year. We can't do that every year. We're going to run out of something to tax. So our growth has got to be stopped. We can't keep doing it. We have nowhere to get the money. I don't care that we've got $7 million reserve. We’ve whiddled at it. We’ve budgeted $600,000 or $800,000 of reserve, that's 20%,” said McSwain.
Porterfield interjected, “ We've done that for a number of years, and I agree with you Commissioner, because not only can we not do it, we're not allowed to do it, because at some point, there is you know, we have, what is it, 81 cents? There's a cap on property taxes, you can just go so high anyway.”
McSwain said the average household value last year was $77,000 and their taxes were $459 dollars. He said the value this year, because of the real estate increase, is $85,350 average while last year on that same house that the appraisal district increased the value of to tax it more. That combined with the the increase of eight cents on taxes, this year he said they're going to pay $583.
“We can't, as a court, continue to increase our outgo and do that to cover it, we just can't do it. We got to realize we're in a rural county with no industry, and we're limited to the funds we got to work with and we gotta work with what we got,” said McSwain.
Porterfield then questioned, “So with that being said then why would we propose a two dollar an hour increase for road hands and nothing for anyone else?”
McSwain said that wasn’t what was proposed, but there was discussion about it.
In rephrasing his original question, Porterfield asked, “Why would we have a discussion to put $2 in for road hands, a $1.25 for clerical, and no pay increases for law enforcement, elected officials, or anybody in our judicial system such as JP’s? How could you justify that?”
McSwain stated, “Because I can justify because we just gave them $2 of SB 22, and we have had discussions about maybe doing more out of SB 22 next year. How in hell do you give one group raises all the time like that and not everybody else, I ask how can you justify that?”
Porterfield retorted, “I would call that inequity, I would call that discrimination commissioner.”
After what seemed a heated debate, the discussion had almost come to a conclusion and the meeting was about to move on to the next agenda item, when Commissioner McSwain stated the discussion on what to put in or take out would be on adoption day when the commissioners get ready to adopt the budget and can then discuss those options.
“I’m glad you mentioned that, because the wording has been revised, you can't just change anything you want to, you have to do it based on what is required by the law or required in the interest of the taxpayers. So, you can't just change whatever you like commissioner,” said Porterfield.
“We'll see what we can change and what we can’t, we’ll follow the law,” said McSwain.
During the meeting, around 40 minutes after it had started, the commissioners went into executive session with Sheriff Kevin Windham, Chief Chad Hooper, Jail Administrator John Mills, County Attorney John Price and Auditor Porterfield at 10:10am. The executive session remained for around one hour until the meeting reopened at 11:10am and Judge Harbison explained some of what had been discussed.
“We went over that and had explanations of what had been started to fix all the problems and especially the paperwork problems and the reporting and things like that, and we did every point has been met at the Sheriff's Office to get all that back into compliance. It's not in compliance yet, but we were assured that it was going to be in compliance by the time we had to go down in November to meet with the [Texas Commission on Jail Standards],” said Judge Harbison.
No action was taken on anything discussed in executive session.
“We were satisfied that efforts were being made to get that back into jail standards inspection,” said Judge Harbison.
Judge Harbison said the county will have to establish a scope of work for the needs of the jail and then seek bids on that work.
“So, we’ve got some more work to do, I did not realize that we had to go through them before we actually even got the quotes. We’ve got to present a plan on how we’re actually going to remedy those situations and that plan is being prepared,” said Judge Harbison.
That plan will be presented to the TCJS for approval. If approved, it will be presented to Commissioners’ Court for consideration and to seek bids if required.
Commissioner Roscoe McSwain moved to table work on the jail lighting and the motion was seconded by Commissioner Tom Bellmyer. The motion carried.
As the commissioners reviewed the weekly expenses Ann Blackwell, Shelby County Treasurer, brought bills from Hagler Painting and Remodeling to their attention since the cost of the project on the second floor of the courthouse had extended beyond what was originally bid for the project.
“With the way that he's turned the bills in and what we've been posting we're over budget. So we talked about this, but as we've talked about it, there's stuff included what he's billed for that was not included in the bid, and that's electrical and plumbing. And so I got with him. We talked about how much time was spent on both of those issues through the project, and it's actually $12,320 total that was not included in the original bid.,” said Blackwell.
Blackwell elaborated that if plumbers and electricians had been called in to do the additional work on the project with Hagler, they would have cost around $150 an hour.
“Had we had electricians and plumbers come in and do that, which what it was was rerouting like as they were putting in the offices, they were having to move light fixtures, light switches, electric plugs, the kitchen, reroute the water for the refrigerator, take out, install the new sink, and I think there was some plumbing issues after that. So, I mean, those guys are $150 an hour. We just paid another plumbing bill that was $150 an hour. We paid [Hagler Painting and Remodeling] $35 an hour. So anyway, in the long run, it saved us money, but so technically he's not over budget,” said Blackwell.
Judge Allison Harbison commented that anytime they start a project it’s unknown what they’re going to get into, and Blackwell stated no leeway for discovery was incorporated into the project like has been with some others.
Clint Porterfield, County Auditor, stated in relation to the extra expense over the bid the issue has to do with the audit, asset tracking, our project tracking, our bid requirements and being in compliant with what is paid to the vendor based on what they said it was going to cost.
“We had a bid, so to me it’s irrelevant what extra X he had to do. But if we had change orders, and we had things extra that had to be done, they should have been discussed in court and approved ahead of time to approve that change order. So we can't get into a situation where we have someone working for us on a bid and doing non-bid work and just billing us as if it was because things came up,” said Clint Porterfield, County Auditor. “I was inclined to recommend not paying this today because there was not an itemization of what this extra work was. So what we need to do today is that we're going to need to have an approval for change orders and additional things that were outside of the bid.”
Roscoe McSwain, Commissioner Precinct 1, questioned who told Hagler to make the changes outside of the bid, and who told him to do the extra work without court approval. Judge Harbison said she didn’t tell him to do the extra work and that he had done some similar work at the Courthouse Annex.
Porterfield questioned a cost of $1,120 to disassemble podiums and make them shorter.
“The district judges asked me to ask him to do that,” said Judge Harbison.
“They don't run this court,” said Commissioner McSwain. “If you bid something out it'd be just like buying a car from somebody, you go get the damn car they want to five more thousand dollars but they forgot you wanted to x y z on it, but that ain't my fault if I approve the bid for $85,000 or whatever it was.”
McSwain reiterated Porterfield stating, if a change needed to be made it should have been presented at court.
Commissioner Tom Bellmyer moved to request a change order from Mr. Hagler with some detail back. No second was heard and the motion failed.
Commissioner McSwain moved to pay the weekly expenses with the exclusion of the extra [bills they discussed]. The motion was seconded by Commissioner Bellmyer.
“Before this and considered any further, I would like to have him in executive session or court, makes me no difference, but I got a lot of questions how we get to where we're at because this ain't our first row on this kind of mess up we just went through it over across the street, somebody needs to learn how the process works,” said Commissioner McSwain.
Judge Harbison stated she agreed. The motion carried with all commissioners in favor.
Delbert Jackson addressed the Court regarding Historical Markers for the Historical Courthouse lawn.
“A few months ago, I spoke with the judge about revisiting the marker installation on the courthouse square because we received other information that we weren't privy to at the initial asking for the marker,” said Jackson.
Jackson said that, through the assistance of the Equal Justice Initiative, the installation of the marker at MLK and Daniels Street was made possible to help people be aware of the “narrative.” Jackson is employed by Tyson Foods who he said donated over $1 million to the Equal Justice Initiative.
“Tyson Foods actually donated $1 million dollars to the Equal Justice Initiative after George Floyd was killed by police and to make a statement that Tyson Foods was against racism and social injustice, and it just was coincidental that I stumbled upon the Equal Justice Initiative when I couldn't get the marker placed, you know, by any other means,” said Jackson. “I just find that miraculous that my employer would make that kind of contribution, not only to the Equal Justice Initiative, but to four other nonprofits.”
Jackson said he didn’t arbitrarily come up with the idea of placing a marker on the square. He referenced the Blue Ribbon Tree ceremony that used to be held outside of the courthouse to honor the victims of child abuse by tying a blue ribbon to branches of a tree.
“Ribbons during the Child Abuse Awareness Month, which also coincided with Confederate History Month and that image is just right down the sidewalk from where the ladies of the Republic of Texas are located. And I felt that to have that type of representation and children involved in it without knowledge of the significance of that site was not education. So that's why I asked for the marker to be placed there so that when people come to that site, they would understand that a place of justice is a hollow or a sacred place,” said Jackson.
Jackson said he helped construct the active courthouse with George Ihlo and that Ihlo’s daughters have submitted letters stating they are desirous of a marker to be placed on the courthouse square.
Jackson’s address to the commissioners was more multi-faceted than just to address the marker. He spoke of a caricature map of Shelby County once sold by the Chamber of Commerce that he states had inaccuracies that he brought to the attention of the Chamber, which then ceased to sell the map.
Leonard McCowin, who it was alleged was struck in the head with a rifle by a City of Center Marshal name Ryan McCallum, died due to injuries he received while on the Center square in 1947, was another individual Jackson mentioned during his address of the commissioners.
According to Jackson, the lynchings of Lige Daniels and Buddy Edmonds were the only ones documented on the square, yet they weren’t shown on the map by the “hanging tree.” A man named Joe Shields who, according to Jackson, was known for swindling people out of land was hung in Timpson and his name is depicted on the caricature map.
“We would like for the county historical commission to grant permission for a historical marker for the victims of racial terror to be placed on the courthouse square,” said Jackson.
The names of Judge R.L. Parker and Sam Weaver are on the courthouse square; however, Jackson says the names of his grandfather Sam McCowin, and five other black men are not named in reference to the courthouse and their participating in bringing the county records from Shelbyville to Center.
“There's like a lack of diversity, inclusion, and equity in the usage of the courthouse square, and I'm recommending to the historical commission that that practice ends, and that even Leonard McCowin should be recognized,” said Jackson.
Judge Harbison asked Jackson if he has ever made any type of application to the Texas Historical Commission and Jackson said he did initially and it never went through just a month before speaking with the commissioners.
Teddy Hopkins, Shelby County Historical Commission President, addressed the court about the process of seeking a historical marker and being available to speak with Jackson in the future about making an application for a marker.
“You first deal with the Shelby County Historical Commission for preparing an application for a marker, and I would be happy to have that kind of conversation with you any time I'm at the museum,” said Hopkins.
Shelby County Constables gave an update to the commissioners on handheld Rapid Radio units which were purchased for them to test and see if they would be useful.
The constables reported the internet/cell phone based radios are working really well and Commissioner Bellmyer used one of the radios to contact Tracy Broadway, Justice of the Peace for Precinct 5, on the radios during the meeting and had a very clear communication. Constables agreed there was around 90% coverage with the radios.
Debora Riley, Shelby County Tax Assessor-Collector, spoke with the court about the 2024 proposed tax rate, recording the vote and scheduling a public hearing for September 11.
Judge Harbison verbalized the motion of to include the separation of the general fund rate of .616400 and a special road and bridge rate of .066800.
Commissioner McSwain made the motion in response to what Judge Harbison stated and his motion was seconded by Commissioner Stevie Smith. The motion carried.
Riley reiterated the rates and stated a total of .6832 being the proposed with the date of proposed and possible adoption being September 11.
The commissioners discussed filing for Public Assistance on DR 4798 Hurricane Beryl, and decided it wasn’t necessary for them and not filing for it doesn’t impact other available support for residents and businesses.
Commissioner Smith moved not to file for the assistance and his motion was seconded by Commissioner Jimmy Lout. The motion carried.
The meeting adjourned at 12:10pm.
Agenda items approved during the meeting include: 1. Approve weekly expenses, with the exclusion of bills from Hagler Painting and Remodeling. 2. 2024 proposed tax rate, record vote and schedule Public Hearing for September 11. 3. Adjourn. Agenda items tabled during the meeting include: 1. Discuss and possibly request bids to repair lighting, electrical, and water issues with the Shelby County Jail cells.
