December 6, 2024 - The Shelby County Commissioners approved a road use and repair agreement during their December 4, 2024 meeting between Shelby County and BTA ETG Gathering LLC, a Texas limited liability company, for repair of road damage in Precinct 3 and for acceptance of funds to be held in trust.
John Price, County Attorney, gave some description of the needs in play and the agreement presented to the commissioners.
“Essentially, what the agreement is, BTA is agreeing to place in trust with us the funds to cover the costs to replace or repair the roads at the conclusion of the work that's going to be performed here by this particular company,” said Price. “Those funds, the amount of those funds has been agreeable with Commissioner Smith, subject to approval of the commission. I think it more than adequately covers the amount of materials that would be required as determined by Commissioner Smith to do these repairs. These repairs, obviously, which will also include a certain number of loads of oil sand will have to be done later on in next year in the spring or early summer. Obviously, the oil sand can't be utilized until then anyway.
Price explained that the contract further provides in the interim that there will be ongoing road repairs performed by the company. Precinct 3 Commissioner Smith will make what were referred to as temporary repairs, such as moving materials in, and filling potholes to keep the road in as good a shape as possible until work is completed and the final repair can be done.
To Price’s understanding the work that will be done by BTA will require the use of a number of loads of cement which will all be done at one time and then there will be a very large heavy load compressor being brought in.
According to Price, there are provisions in addition to the amount of money that Commissioner Smith has determined would be necessary to obtain and use materials that are instrumental to do the repair and to possibly repair any additional damage done to a specific culvert crossing that might occur.
“Frankly, we don't anticipate anything occurring but the company has agreed to deposit additional funds bringing the estimate of what will definitely be agreed upon with a little over $43,000 for the materials, including the oil sand up to $50,000,” said Price. “The additional sum being deposited, just in case there's any damage to the culvert, in speaking to Commissioner Smith, and he has done his due diligence and work determining that the amount that's being deposited will be more than sufficient, even if there is a necessity to replace that culvert so we feel like it's a good contract. The money will be in our hands available to be utilized as soon as completion of the project takes place.”
Troy Bergeron, with Enterprise Products, the sole owner of BTA ETG Gathering LLC addressed the court, “We did have damage out there. We do want to make good on that, so we’ve brought two checks for you for that. And then in the interim, we do have more work anticipated over the next three or four months. So, you know, we do want to make sure that precinct three is taken care of and the roads are taken care of. So we brought a roller on site, so that we can constantly roll the road to keep the roads passable. And at the end of the project, we'll meet Mr. Stevie again and, you know, make sure that this covered it. If it didn't, we'll work out something with you on any more.”
Commissioner Stevie Smith stated it was not a situation of negligence on the part of Enterprise Products, rather a tremendous project that the county roads couldn’t sustain.
Commissioner Smith moved to approve the road use a repair agreement and it was met with a second by Commissioner Bellmyer and the motion carried.
Earlier in the meeting when the commissioners approved the weekly expenses Ann Blackwell, County Treasurer, indicated the final payment toward the pugmill in the amount of $127,122.25 plus shipping cost of $3,500 split among the four precincts had been paid.
During the Commissioner Court Reports portion of the meeting, County Judge Allison Harbison shared that the furniture for the Commissioners’ courtroom is now ready and the hope is the furniture will arrive in one to two weeks.
Blackwell noted for the court that the Courthouse Annex is switched over to ETEX fiber as of the meeting day.
Commissioner McSwain referenced an expense for the Pugmill that was $3,500 and he went forward with it because he thought the price was very reasonable as he was expecting a cost of $5,000 to $6,000.
Commissioner Bellmyer referenced several bills that Jim Allison, General Counsel of the County Judges and Commissioners Association of Texas, has indicated are what he calls “good bills.”
Out of the over 2,000 bills that have been submitted for the legislature to consider, the bills mentioned specifically by Bellmyer included SB 854, HB 1367, HB 790, HB 1109, and HB 1461.
“One that I think is really interesting to us is HB790 by representative Spiller increases the bid limit from $50,000 to $200,000,” said Commissioner Bellmyer. ”So last legislative session, they tried to get it from $50,[000] to $100,[000]. So now they're making another run of it and they actually increased it to $200,000.”
Another one that has returned which Commissioner Bellmyer said the court has discussed before was HB 1109 to exempt counties from state motor fuel tax.
HB 1461 also seeks to reimburse counties for some expenses they otherwise haven’t been able to recover.
“HB 1461 by Representative Frank, requires the state to reimburse the counties for mental patients, juveniles, and parole violators. So those are big ones,” said Commissioner Bellmyer.
In reference to being reimbursed and parole violators, Judge Harbison mentioned that Panola County no longer is housing any Shelby County inmates as of the meeting and that there are “50-something” inmates in the jail.
The meeting adjourned into executive session at 9:55am and returned to open session at 10:33am.
Judge Harbison stated that during executive session they discussed the jail now being in compliance, there are no prisoners outside of the county now. There was no action to be taken on those items. She said they spoke of some other things and that those would be added to the agenda in the coming week
The meeting was adjourned at 10:33am.
Agenda items approved during the meeting include:
1. Pay weekly expenses. 2. Pay current Payroll. 3. Road use and repair agreement to be entered into between Shelby County, Texas and BTA ETG Gathering LLC, a Texas limited liability company, for repair of road damage in PCT 3 and for acceptance of funds to be held in trust. 4. Adjourn.
