February 3, 2023 - The Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) introduced its new liaison officer for Shelby County to the Shelby County Commissioners during their meeting held Wednesday, February 1, 2023.
Jon Clingaman, Jr. TDEM District Coordinator introduced Seth Shrell as the County Liaison Officer for Shelby County and he described the purpose behind the TDEM’s efforts to place officers around the state.
“His primary responsibility is to represent TDEM on blue sky days and on disaster times for Shelby County,” said Clingaman.
Clingaman explained there is no cost to the county to have this officer. According to Clingaman the TDEM Chief, W. Nim Kidd came to understand there were a lot of people unaware of what TDEM was and questions people may have had were not able aways to be answered quickly. Clingaman compared the new TDEM County Officer to that of an AgriLife Extension Agent in concept.
“Chief Kidd’s vision is to have 100 county liaison officers across the state of Texas,” said Clingaman. “By adding these liaison officers that puts either a TDEM person representative in every county or contiguous county across the state of Texas.”
Shrell is a resident of Shelby County and currently is working out of the Precinct 1 Justice of the Peace office while he works with Luciana Barr, Shelby County Emergency Management Coordinator, and there are plans for him to move his office to the same one where the 911 addressing administrator is currently housed in the courthouse.
Clingaman described how helpful Shrell already proved to be during water outage issues the Paxton/Jackson Water system had in being without water. Clingaman described how they are not in Shelby County to be critical of local government, but to be a help when needed.
Shrell shared he is from Timpson and grew up in the area and is invested in helping provide positive outcomes for the area. Communication with Barr, EMC; and Judge Harbison has already highlighted some areas which need to be bolstered and he hopes to help keep the “ball rolling” on those items.
“Anything else you guys can think of that I can help with, let me know,” said Shrell.
According to Clingaman, Shrell will be working to bring area partners together and help them to meet all obligations with documentation for funding among other ways he may be able to assist with food banks and other entities.
“His goal is to be out identifying these partners such as school district partners, your local fire department partners, helping them understand the importance of documentation for reimbursement under federal and state disasters,” said Clingaman. “As you all know the federal thresholds continue to creep up, and when we say creep at that level it’s millions of dollars that it keeps going up.”
Judge Harbison asked Shrell to share some of his history and he stated he worked for four years as an EMT and paramedic around 12 years ago, before working off shore as a paramedic and then in the oilfield for a short time. After that he was with the Texas Forest Service in 2015 as a Natural Resource professional advising land owners, with wild land firefighting management teams and as a commissioned law enforcement officer for them before joining TDEM in December 2022.
A motion carried by the commissioners to approve an Interlocal agreement between Shelby County and Texas Division of Emergency Management for office space.
Bobby Pigg, Shelby County Appraiser, gave an update to the commissioners on the project to combine the servers of the Shelby County Tax office and Shelby County Appraisal District office into one server.
“The fiber line has been run to the tax office, and to my office and where we are right now is we’ve got a gentleman, Joey Orellana, is supposed to get the connections ready for Harris-Govern to come down,” said Pigg. “There have to be some converters in place to run the line to the server itself.”
Clint Porterfield, County Auditor, listed several items that are considered a shared expense for the project, which according to Porterfield include three numbers that total $28,583.
“$7,500 was the cost of the CAD to run their fiber line and they have requested that we pay half of that,” said Porterfield. “The $20,000 is the server, and the $1,083 is the IT services. I would just say this, in response to their request for us to pay half of their fiber line, we’re both saving money on this so I don’t think it would be an issue for us to do that.”
Porterfield further explained the county would pay the whole cost amount up front and then be reimbursed, this would include the total amount on the county’s asset listing and for insurance purposes to cover the contents of the building.
“We did not budget this for this year, we did not budget this for this year; however, we even last year talked about using contingency and those funds are available this year we can pay this out of our contingency and set up the asset from there,” said Porterfield.
Judge Harbison highlighted the savings to the county by purchasing one server for the two county entities to use and the need for each to have a new server with the tax assessor/collector needing one now, and the county appraisal district needing one in the near future. The initial savings are expected to be around $10,000.
“It’s going to be a savings to both the CAD and the county, which when we save the CAD money we save all the taxing entities money,” said Judge Harbison. “
Pigg also noted the addition of the city of Center to the fiber line, and so three local entities are expected to benefit from the connection.
A motion carried to approve the purchase order to move forward with the project.
The commissioners approved a $1,000 donation from the city of Timpson for the benefit of Constable Josh Tipton for installation of a computer system in his patrol vehicle.
“This equipment is equipment that we bought him. He is just wanting to get TCOLE to install that for him, instead of just somebody locally,” said Judge Harbison. “The city of Timpson agreed to have that installation done.”
A motion carried to accept the donation from the city of Timpson to Constable Tipton Precinct 5.
During the meeting the commissioners approved a motion to accept a $15,000 grant from the Sabine River Authority to be used for expenses incurred during the 2022 Holiday freeze event.
Judge Harbison said she has received both the check for that amount and a “stack” of bills. She also said Luciana Barr, Emergency Management Coordinator, has been in contact with both the city of Joaquin and the Paxton/Jackson Water Supply and as a result she explained the county is going to need to go over the combined bills to find out what bills need to be paid.
Stevie Smith, Commissioner Precinct 3, commented to Judge Harbison it grant would remain afterward, and Judge Harbison retorted if all the bills are paid, there won’t be any money remaining.
“The bills I got, Paxton was up to about $16,000 and city of Joaquin was about $7,[000] or $8,000 and we need to discuss with them and also with Seth on what the understanding of what that was to go for,” said Judge Harbison.
Judge Harbison stated it was her understanding the funds were intended to pay for purchased water, bottled water, as well as people to help.
“More than likely the whole $15,000 will be expended,” said Judge Harbison.
A motion was made by Roscoe McSwain, Commissioner Precinct 1, to accept the check and put it into the contingency fund. Porterfield then interjected a recommendation of putting the funds into a donation account for clarity in tracking the use of funds.
The meeting went into an executive session at 10:10am and returned to open session at 11:04am.
Judge Harbison stated there were a variety of issues spoken on during executive session and they will all be put on next weeks agenda.
“We just met with council and got some legal advice on some things, so we’ll have that open for discussion next week,: said Judge Harbison.
The meeting adjourned at 11:05am after which Judge Harbison expressed how glad she was to see Jimmy Lout, Commissioner Precinct 2, back as he has been away due to medical reasons.
Agenda items approved during the meeting include: 1. Pay weekly expenses. 2. Current payroll. 3. Interlocal Agreement between Shelby County and Texas Division of Emergency Management for office space. 4. Move forward with the merge of one server for Tax office and CAD. 5. Donation of $1,000 from the City of Timpson for the benefit of Constable Josh Tipton for installation of the computer system in his patrol vehicle. 6. Receipt of the $15,000 grant from the Sabine River Authority to be used for expenses incurred during the 2022 Holiday freeze event. 7. Shelby County to participate in the Texas Association of Counties Cybersecurity program. This program will put the County in compliance with Texas Government Code §2054.5191 which requires all county employees, elected officials, and appointed officials who have access to a local government computer system or database and use a computer to perform at least 25% of their duties to complete an annual cybersecurity training that has been certified by the Texas Department of Information Resources. The training has been administered by the County Treasurer the past 2 years. 8. Adjourn at 11:05
