Shelby County Today

April 3, 2024 - Law enforcement officials report the recovery of a stolen vehicle on Saturday, March 30, 2024, in the Joaquin area on Haslam Strip.

Roy Cheatwood, Constable Precinct 3, received a call regarding a stolen black Acura at 4:30pm on Saturday, March 30, 2024, and he requested the assistance of Josh Tipton, Constable Precinct 5.

The constables located the vehicle on U.S. Highway 84 (Haslam Strip) and a traffic stop was initiated.

According to Constable Cheatwood, the driver had been seen near Smith Towing and Recovery on Haslam Strip where the Acura was parked before one of the tow truck drivers left the shop. Upon returning to the shop, the driver passed the Acura traveling west on Haslam Strip and alerted law enforcement.

The constables arrested Aaron Brazzel, 27, of Joaquin and he was charged with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, state jail felony.

Constable Cheatwood thanked Constable Josh Tipton for assisting him in the recovery of this stolen vehicle. Constable Cheatwood encouraged residents to be aware of their surroundings at all times, and be sure to lock doors and remove your keys.

April 3, 2024 - The Shelby County Commissioners took action on several SB22 items involving the Sheriff's Department, District Attorney, and County Attorney during their Wednesday, March 27, 2024, meeting.

Clint Porterfield, County Auditor, spoke with the commissioners about SB22 grant in reference to the Sheriff’s Department, District Attorney’s office and County Attorney’s office, which were items 10-12 on the meeting agenda.

“You'll see some exhibits that have been prepared for each of the salary grants we have received. And I would like to go over these individually, slowly, so that everybody understands the money we've received and what it can be used for,” said Porterfield. 

He described for the commissioners’ court if they were to take action on each of the items and approve their exhibit with potential conditions, then the budget would need to be adjusted accordingly because the changes have not been budgeted.

First Porterfield addressed agenda item 10, which is the Rural Sheriff's Office Salary Assistant Grant, and he described an exhibit presented to the commissioners called SO1 for the Sheriff's Office, which received $350,000. Porterfield described how the money from the grant can be used and some of the previous action the court has already taken previously.

“This particular grant can be used for four different things. The first thing is to provide a minimum salary for certain individuals at the Sheriff's Office. You have to provide a minimum $75,000 salary for the sheriff before you can do number four,” said Porterfield. “You have to provide a $45,000 minimum salary for each deputy who conducts motor vehicle stops in the course of their duties, and a $40,000 minimum salary for each jailer whose duties include safekeeping of prisoner's security of the jail and so forth.

“Once you've done number one, which is the first domino to fall, as I keep saying, then you can do two, three or four, but you have to do number one first. You have to use it for those salary increases. Once you do that, you can then use the money to increase the salary of a person described in number one you can then number three hire additional staff or number four purchase vehicles firearms and safety equipment.” 

Porterfield then summarized what the county has already done through the commissioners’ actions in court.

“When we adopted the budget for fiscal year 2024 in August of last year, the court announced that we were going to apply for these grants. The sheriff's grant was the only one discussed in that motion to adopt the budget. Mr. McSwain actually led the discussion concerning the minimum of $75,000 and the court made a motion upon adopting the budget to budget for the sheriff's increase,” said Porterfield. “We actually made the amount $75,600; we went just over to make sure we were compliant.” 

Porterfield reminded the court they discussed the possibility of having to provide matching funds from the county for the grant, but that has been determined to not be a part of the grant and the county doesn’t have to provide a match. 

“We did mention that we were not going to take action on deputies or jailers because they already make the minimum,” said Porterfield. “If you look at the exhibit, we need $17,228 to increase the share of salary to $75,600, including benefits, you will see that that total on the right side of your page in the dollar figures, the total with benefits is $19,903.”
 
Porterfield explained that, “number four,” which is for the purchase of vehicles, firearms, and safety equipment has $330,000 available for use, and this grant ends on September 30 on the application process. 

“We have six months to expend $330,000 or we will return it. With that being said, you can also understand that the $17,228 is a rate to get the sheriff to $75,600. The sheriff will not receive $17,228 in the next six months. He'll get half of it,” said Porterfield.

Porterfield described if you take the $17,228 figure and divide it by 26 pay periods, that will be the rate to get the sheriff to the $75,600, and that the county will not disperse $17,228 in six months, meaning half of that amount of money will be reimbursed to the state.
 
Porterfield said that going forward on each of the agenda items, the court would need to make each item (10-12) effective March 25, 2024.

Making the effective date March 25 would allow the county to expend the most amount of money they can from the grant in the next six months.

Commissioner McSwain questioned, as an example, if the county even waited until September for the effective date for the salary raise of the sheriff the county could still spend the $330,000 available to them.

“If we can spend $330,000 in the next six months, we don’t lose any of that,” said Porterfield. “It’s only on the salary items we’re talking about for these agenda items, that only half of it’s going to be expended.”

Last fall, Porterfield reminded the commissioners, the court talked about buying tasers and they were waiting on a grant while also discussing in October and November talked about going ahead on the salaries, which would have allowed the county to begin spending the $330,000; however, the county didn't have that money for the salaries. 

“If we had started it, it would have been retro, we could have already reported that money spent but we didn't do that,” said Porterfield. “We decided let's wait till the grant application is actually done, let's see how it goes.”

Porterfield elaborated that once work has been paid for, the Texas Constitution prohibits the county from going back and retroactively increasing the pay or providing a bonus. That's why the county is only going to have a six-month window for the salaries, because it didn’t start sooner and only half of it will be expended this year. Next budget year the full amount will be able to be expended. The full $330,000 is available.

“You opened up that can of worms. I want to say what I feel I need to say for the public to hear. Yes, that was an agreement that we would buy the tasers out of these funds last October or September,” said McSwain.
 
Porterfield said he only used the tasers as an example since it was something they had discussed previously.

McSwain persisted he still had something he wanted to say on the subject involving the tasers for the public’s knowledge, “That was an agreement with the Sheriff's Department, their tasers was working. They said, ‘we have no problem using the tasers we’ve got till we get the grant money provided that we get the things in the budget we need.’ Well, they went six, eight weeks and they say, ‘our tasers don't work,’ and they forced us to pay out of county funds for tasers months ago, instead of waiting to what they said they could live with. And now, in this year's budget, we expended $47,000 or $62,000 for tasers that we didn't have budgeted. It's just that kind of BS that continues to cause us trouble keeping our budget in line.”

Additional information provided by Porterfield to the commissioners was a definition of what sort of ‘safety equipment’ could be purchased using the grant for the sheriff’s department and that included ballistic helmets, plate shields, batons, helmets, shields, body armor, medical gear and masks and likely a number of other things.

Commissioner Bellmyer asked how the receipts from the Sheriff’s Department would be accounted for in reporting to the Comptroller’s Office.

“I’d like to go ahead and open up that can of worms. No grant we ever receive in reimburses or pays your treasurer or myself to administer the grant,” said Porterfield. “So, I will be collecting the receipts, I will be tracking the expenditures, and I will accumulate the data for whoever goes into the portal to submit the grant information.”

Without a designated grant administrator for the county, Porterfield pointed out this will continue to be a difficulty when handling grants.

“So that is always an issue going forward as to who's going to report it. We don't have a grant administrator,” said Porterfield. “I will tell you that my position is the auditor, should not be the person who reports it because the auditor is the one who should audit it and submit the information to the person who puts it in there. It shouldn't be a dual role in a dual function to keep everything credible.”

Commissioner McSwain stated the appropriation for the funds would be through the court and not through the Sheriff’s Department, and he reiterated it would have to go through commissioners’ court.

Porterfield said he was glad that was mentioned by the commissioner and stated that brings up additional subjects for to discuss. He stated a gentleman by the name of Russell Gallahan works in the comptroller's office and is the individual who administers this grant at the comptroller's office and has offered opinions on the processes of the use of the grant. When the grant first was presented, the commissioners’ court was the applying authority for the grant. The District Attorney and County Attorney versions of the grant actually require those office holders to fulfill reporting responsibilities.

“Mr. Gallahan has issued some opinions that basically say that regardless of what the grant Senate bill states, this does not relieve the commissioner's court of their budgetary authorization and approval of pay raises that they normally would do in any other situation,” said Porterfield. “So yes, that's why we're going to go through this one by one and commissioners court is actually going to approve everything that happens and when it comes to the $330,000 expenditures. Yes, commissioners court will go out for bids, commissioners court will get quotes, commissioners court will approve the purchases just like they do any other budget item we have and go through the same process we do weekly.”

Commissioner Bellmyer moved to increase the sheriff’s salary based on exhibit SO1 effective March the 25th and adjust the budget accordingly if we needed, and the motion was seconded by Commissioner Stevie Smith. Upon a vote, Commissioner McSwain voted against, and the rest of the court voted in favor of the motion.

Commissioner McSwain stated he voted no because he doesn’t think it’s the appropriate time to move forward with the item, and he would like to have discussed more with deputy pay and things of that nature in weeks to come.

“I think we should have looked forward to using some of this money if we're going to give raises to other things and deputies, use it out of this money and that might help us in October with our new budget. Having some coverage with this and not have the county fund all of it.”

McSwain said he would like to have seen some of the money used to raise deputy pay, because competition for bay elsewhere is much higher in comparison as he described.

The commissioners were then presented with DA1 for the assistance grant for the District Attorney, providing the District Attorney’s office with $175,000. Porterfield shared he has spoken with District Attorney Karren Price and that she has issued a plan for the expenditure of this money.

“This money can be spent for two things. One is to increase the salary of an assistant attorney and investigator, or a victim assistance court employed at the office or to hire additional staff,” said Porterfield. “The plan for the District Attorney is to do a little bit of both.” 

The plan includes a recommendation to increase the pay of the current assistant District Attorney, $40,000 with a stipulation of the start date to be determined by the District Attorney.

There's also a pay increase of $15,000, which will be effective March 25 for the Victim Assistance Coordinator. Also there will be a budget of $85,000 for the possible hiring of an assistant district attorney.

The aforementioned amounts come to $140,000 plus benefits with a new hire for an additional attorney in the District Attorney’s office including insurance.

“So, you see a grand total budget of $173,087.76 of the $175,000,” said Porterfield.

He said that particular amount will give a little leeway next year if the county gets the same grant, but there is the possibility of a health insurance increase. 

“You will realize we're only going to expend this in six months. We will send half of this amount back to the Treasurer's Department,” said Porterfield.

Commissioner McSwain moved to approve the rural prosecutor's salary assistance program grant, exhibit DA1, approve DA1 exhibit to increase the salary of the assistant DA or a date to be determined by the District Attorney to increase the salary of the victim assistance coordinator, effective March 25, and to approve possible additional staff of an assistant DA and adjust the budget accordingly. The motion was seconded by Commissioner Bellmyer, and the motion carried.

Auditor Porterfield presented exhibit CA1 for the County Attorney which he explained follows the same guidelines and uses as the District Attorney. He described a plan of action to increase the salary of the current DA/CA investigator by $20,000, to increase the pay of the victim assistance coordinator by $15,000 and to hire an additional part-time staff at $18,000.

The possible hiring of an assistant County Attorney was also included for $85,000. The total payroll of $138,000 grossed up to $171,098.16.

This was once again, just a little bit below the $175,000 that was received. 

“Going forward, again, that gives us a little leeway in case we have an insurance increase, which would be a health insurance increase, which is applicable for the assistant County Attorney, if we so hire one,” said Porterfield. 

Commissioner McSwain moved to approve CA1 for the amounts just listed and for the current staff members, effective March 25. The motion was seconded by Commissioner Bellmyer, and the motion carried.

Karren Price, District Attorney, spoke during public comment and apologized for her absence during the March 13 meeting. She thanked the commissioners for honoring her request and thanked them for moving forward with her request.

“On behalf of the kids that we work for today, we really appreciate what you've done. Thanks so much,” said Price.

During the March 13 meeting, the commissioners approved the purchase of the Guardify Program for storage and access to forensic interviews, as requested by Price.

Shelby County Judge Allison Harbison opened a bid for the purchase of a truck for Precinct 4 from Center Motor Company. There was another bid received; however, it was received 17 minutes past the deadline and the court didn’t open it as a result. 

Judge Harbison announced the price quote from Center Motor Company was $66,757.62 for a 2023 F550 Super Cab 4x4 and bed.

A motion by Commissioner Tom Bellmyer to accept the bid as presented by Center Motor Company and use ARPA funds for the purchase, and the motion was seconded by Commissioner Stevie Smith. The motion carried.

The court reviewed quotes for the purchase of a 32’ tandem axle trailer for Precinct 4 from ARPA funds.  

Per Local Government Code, Section 262.023 the purchase is less than $50,000.00 therefore, bids were not required.

Three bids were received and considered with one for $15,605 CarTex being the lowest.

Commissioner Bellmyer moved to accept the bid from CarTex on a 32’ trailer, the motion was seconded by Commissioner Jimmy Lout, and the motion carried.

Commissioner Bellmyer thanked Blackwell for her help in getting the truck and appreciated the work her office put into that effort.

The disbursement of the Child Safety Fee was considered by the commissioners and Clint Porterfield, County Auditor, recommended a motion to distribute the$10,532 based on past distributions, with 2/3 of the funds going to the Shelby County Children's Advocacy Center, and 1/3 to CASA.

Shelby County Advocacy Center (SCCAC) would then receive $6,845, and CASA would receive $3,686.

Commissioner McSwain then moved to distribute 2/3 to the Children’s Advocacy Center and 1/3 to CASA. The motion was seconded by Commissioner Lout and the motion carried.

Denise Merriman, SCCAC Executive Director, was present with board members and employees of SCCAC. She introduced board members Matt Snider, Tanner Peace, Collin Matthews, and Karren Price, as well as SCCAC employee Anna Register.

The court discussed the possibility of replacing the roof on the Courthouse Annex on the square and 

Commissioner Roscoe McSwain moved to seek bids on what it would cost to replace the roof on the Annex with a structure like the Sheriff’s Department and court house received when it was replaced, and the motion was seconded by Commissioner Stevie Smith. The motion carried.

Ann Blackwell, County Treasurer, presented the commissioners with a plan to move the Sheriff’s Department fiber contract from AT&T to ETEX for an annual savings of $6,000. The plan would also be increasing their speed from 100mb to 500mb.
 
“We connected the JP -1 office to the sheriff's office. Well, it's not working like we hoped it would because they are really using the juice over in the Sheriff's Office,” said Blackwell. “They're having trouble at JP -1 with their connections and their phones are connected to that also.” 

Blackwell said a quote was received from ETEX, and before the meeting the AT&T bill for service to the Sheriff’s Department as $1,020 a month. The quote from ETEX put the bill for the Sheriff’s Department at $499.99 a month to switch their phones and internet and go up from 100mbps to 500mbps from ETEX.

This would be a savings of $6,000 a year to the Sheriff’s Department phone and internet expense.

Commissioner Bellmyer moved to move the contract from AT&T to ETEX. The motion was seconded by Commissioner McSwain and the motion carried.

Commissioner McSwain then moved to put JP1 office on its own contract with ETEX at a cost of $149.95 for 250mbps upload. The motion was seconded by Commissioner Bellmyer, and the motion carried.

Constable Pct. 5 Josh Tipton, and Shelby County Sheriff Lt. Chad Hooper were on the agenda to discuss radios with the court, but were not able to make it for the meeting.

In preparation for the discussion, Judge Harbison had contacted representatives with DETCOG and Mike Claude, Director of Public Safety with Deep East Texas Council of Governments, spoke with the commissioners about grant funding which has been used for radio equipment involving numerous counties. He also spoke of the potential for towers being added to Shelby County, which could possibly help with communications on the west end of the county; however, the reality of that discussion was that something like that is years down the road, and radio communications in Shelby County are in serious need of attention.

“That's what we're up against. We need something now. That's why we're here what you got to say and I want we need to really know where we're at and how we get there,” said Commissioner McSwain.

Claude explained that the engineers have told DETCOG towers need be no less than 400 feet to prevent the signal from being impacted by pine trees.

“So we're kind of in the position where we got to do something and I hate to invest in a failing system but we've been investing in it for the 16 years I've been here, and we ain't got nowhere yet,” said McSwain.

The issue of radios was tabled until the next meeting. The meeting adjourned at 10:49am.

Agenda items approved during the meeting include:

1. Pay weekly expenses.

2. Current Payroll.

3. Start date of April 1, 2024 for the new 911 Addressing Coordinator-Commissioners’ Secretary.

4. Center Motor Company price quote, $66,757.62 2023 f550 super cab 4x4 for Precinct 4 to be paid for out of ARPA funds.

5. Review the quotes and possibly purchase 32’ a tandem axle trailer for Pct. #4 from ARPA funds.  Per Local Government Code, Section 262.023 the purchase is less than $50,000.00 therefore, bids were not required.

6. Disburse the Child Safety Fee Fund.

7. Seek bids on what it would cost to replace the roof on the Annex with a structure like the Sheriff’s Department and court house received when it was replaced.

8. Commissioner Jimmy Lout to sell a 2007 GMC 2500 HD Truck on Purple Wave.

9. Take action on SB22 Rural Sheriff’s Office Salary Assistance Grant.

10. Take action on SB22 Rural District Attorney Prosecutor’s Office Salary Assistance Grant.

11. Take action on SB22 Rural County Attorney Prosecutor’s Office Salary Assistance Grant.

12. Move fiber contract from AT&T to ETEX for an annual savings of $6,000. This would also be increasing their speed from 100mb to 500mb.

13. Put JP1 office on its own contract with ETEX. Cost will be $149.95 for 250mbps.

14. Adjourn 10:49am.

Agenda items tabled during the meeting include:

1. Constable Pct. 5 Josh Tipton, Chad Hooper and a representative of Bobcat to discuss radios with the court.

April 2, 2024 - The Tenaha Police Department is seeking information/help Identifying the individual in this photo! 

The suspect is believed to be operating a white or tan Chevrolet or GMC truck, according to surveillance from Monday April 1, 2024 at around 2:30am. 

If you have any information that may help identify this suspect please contact the Tenaha Police Department at 936-248-3841.

April 1, 2024 - The Jury summoned for Monday, April 15, 2024 for the 273rd District Court, Honorable James A. Payne, Jr., Judge presiding, has been cancelled. All Cases have been passed or settled. Anyone receiving a summons for that day is released from jury service until they receive a future summons.

Lori Oliver, District Clerk