Notes on Presidio County Commissioners Court Meeting, Wed July 11, 2018, 9:30 AM, Marfa

Notes on Presidio County Commissioners Court Meeting Wednesday July 11th, 2018, 9:30 AM, Marfa

Commissioners present: Brenda Bentley, Judge Cinderela Guevara, Loretto Vasquez, Eloy Aranda.
Absent: Jose Cabezuela

Meeting convened at 9:42 AM

Fist item will be payroll. Commissioner Cabezuela arrives at the courthouse before pledge begins.

Item 21: payroll approval
97,878.77 plus
87,000 in ancillary payroll such as Aflac, etc.
Judge motions to approve payroll.
Second by Aranda. Unanimous

Citizen Comments:
Judge reads letter from John Cornyn. Patriotic letter for July 4th.

Mayor Nafziger and city admin Brechtel: had requested to be on the agenda regarding calculating payments for EMS service for the County. Brechtel says that city is working on budget. 86 out of 326 runs were outside city limits in the county or in the city of Presidio.
Requesting opportunity to provide detailed information.
Judge apologizes for not having placed them on agenda. Will be on next agenda July 25 in Presidio. Still looking at countywide Emergency Services District. Any decisions to join or not join would be made by city councils and commissioners.
Ponton asks if city has an estimate of costs provided to outside city limits.
Judge says she has the numbers.
2017 323 patients treated. 86 in County, 11in Jeff Davis County. 6 direct assists to City of Presidio. Budget is 450,000 for EMS. Lots of ways to look at how to calculate costs. Costs per mile approx $22 after taking into consideration Medicare payments et al.
Estimated costs for last years runs to County if calculated by mileage is about $77,000. City of Marfa will prepare a formal presentation.
Mandy Roane: advocating for Marfa Public Library. Thanks commissioners for the $2,500 contribution this past year. Funding went to youth programs during the summer. Summer shake up. New computer. New shelving in teen area.
Please consider same funding for this year.
Victor from Texas Association of Counties. Presentation tomorrow at Sul Ross regarding systems for safety.
Employee safety equipment program: safety equipment for law enforcement and road and bridge crews. Money provided by TAC in an effort to reduce claims.
End of public comments

Item 5:
Judge’s announcements: trying to put a PIPA meeting this Friday but Jake is at a meeting in Delicias, MX. There will be a meeting as soon as possible but scheduling is difficult this time of year. Reba Griggs will be more involved in assisting the agriculture side of the port effort.judge and Gary Mitschke are working on designing a CBASE for the Texas Forest Service at the airport. There will be a meeting with the Texas Forest Service and a rep from Sen Rodriguez’s office.
There will be a fundraiser for Billy on the 21st in Presidio at the park across from El Patio. Last week there was a death on Chispa Rd. Dehydration, heat exposure after car breakdown. Perhaps there is a way to have a water tank on this road, work with border patrol to call for help.
Ponton recommends signs advising to take water, no services or cell phone service available. Aranda says that we do have signs out there.
Roads are not marked where there are forks in the road. Ranches are not labeled.
Commissioner Vasquez announces he would like to sponsor an employee picnic before the end of the summer.
Wants to modify the sick pool to where other employees can donate their time whether or not they are in the sick leave pool share system. Make it like the federal employee system.
Ponton says he needs more information from TAC as to how sick leave can be donated.

Item 6: approval of minutes. Some corrections to May 16 minutes. Minor wording corrections. June 27 item 11says Judge G made motion and seconded. Correction made. Unanimously accepted.

Item 7: Sheriff’s Office dispatch contracts with cities of Marfa, Presidio and Jeff Davis County. FY 2018-19.
Contracts say that nothing has changed but the dates. Approved unanimously.

Item 8: Contract approval for jail services between the County and City of Presidio. Nothing changes except dates. Unanimously approved.

Item 9: jail confinement services between Presidio County and the City of Marfa . Nothing changes except dates. Unanimously approved.

Item 10: Approval os contract with Total ID Solutions Tech Support contract to reflect dates of FY. Approved unanimously.

Item 11: reinstatement of burn ban, presented by Gary Mitschke, Emergency Management Coordinator.  Presidio is very dry right now although Marfa has received rain. Areas are very dry, some are not. Approved unanimously.

Item 12: Renewal of contract with Lubbock County Medical Examiner: Same as before, different dates. Approved unanimously.

Item 13: Update and status of sale of properties with Texas Land Communities Group, LLC. Delinquent tax properties being categorized and eventually listed for sale to benefit County and other agencies.
Lori Wilmarth presents. Have been working indexing trust property and finding them on Google maps. In next week’s paper there will be a press release with regard to these properties. Links to properties. For Sale signs will go up on properties within the City of Presidio. Website is already active.
Some of these properties do not have road access. Maps are attached to every property. Ponton asks if notices will be sent to neighbors. Answer is yes.
38 properties within City of Presidio. Unknown as to whether there are any people squatting within these properties but will find out when signs go up. Will deal with those people at that time.

Item 14: Admin cost share for regional water planning, Far West Texas a Water Plan. Approved unanimously.

Break at 10:51 AM.
Return at 11:02 AM

Item 15: Payment on item 14 issue. Unanimously approved.

Item 16: Agreement with Nectar Computers for cyber security system for all departments including anti virus and ransom ware.
69.99 per computer to update.
67 computers. $4690 approximately. This would be an annual expense.
Backup is separate. Money would come out of each department’s budget.
Approved unanimously. Will begin immediately.

Item 17: Vendor for Presidio County jail Software management system.
Vendors bidding for this were evaluated by team. Zircher (sp?) Technologies ranked highest. Gracie Parras has a preference as to what is needed.
She recommends Zircher, it is user friendly, although it is more expensive.
Zircher will move data from old system to new system with their own staff. Nectar says that the job is too big for them.
Modules to expand and contract services available. This would replace the CopSync system. Current software backup cuts off on July 31st.
Sheriff requests that funding come from jail reserves.
COG is also talking to this company regarding 911 services.
Approximately an extra $20,000 for this company but it includes data conversion and is more user friendly. Full time support.
Judge motions to approve. Send by Aranda. Unanimous.

Item 18: Eva Gonzales presentation for land locked parcel in East Heights, Marfa TX .
Asks for a public road in E Heights division. Has petitioners in addition to her. Current road is on private land.
Provides map of E Heights from 1913.
Ponton says he has examined this and property was platted and dedicated to the public in 1913. It was originally within City limits. He sees the streets there as public streets. County can improve public roads.
He thinks the road represented in the plat that was dedicated is public property.
Brenda says that the issue is that the interior roads are public but they are landlocked from the highway and by the railroad.
Ruben Carrasco says that a private landowner would need to donate land for access, ingress,egress to the highway. Says that is the County pays for this process there will be many other requests for same service.
Eva says the answer is El Paso St.
Discussion about conveyance of property. El Paso street has issues.
Ponton wants to do more research on this issue with commissioner Bentley and land owners in the area.
Judge asks if there is a petition from neighboring landowners .
Six signed, seventh promises to sign. Eight letters still out and have not been responded to.
Process is not quite ready. Judge reads the statute about posting times, etc.
Ponton says the interior road is already a public road. No petition needed for that.
General agreement that the internal roads are County roads. Ponton thinks that the County may own the easement. Judge disagrees, as former County Atty Fowlkes did a lot of research on this and recommended that Eva go to District Court for an easement, which she does not want to do.
This could have budget implications, Judge says. Ponton wants to do more research. Aranda motions to table the issue. Unanimous.

Finance Dept section of agenda:

Budget amendments: none
Line item transfers: sheriffs office , clerks office education expense, jp2 office supplies, tax office for education, service contract expense. Airport, fuel. Road and bridge for labor costs. County Judge service contract for copier. Sheriff, copier expense. Road and bridge, stepladder purchase. Communications costs shifting around in general. Road and bridge, temp labor for rainy season, repairs for vehicles. Approved unanimously.

Bills: some pulled by Auditor- judge wants to be sure Dept heads know when one of their bills has been pulled.
Bills approved unanimously.
Judge is asking about credit card progress. Auditor says that the vendor is through the State. Background checks and more have to be run. Process takes about eight weeks. Two years worth of audits need to be presented. Process is underway. Options for how many cards. Also cash debit cards could be used.
Process as to how these would be used has not been established.

Item 22- OMB. Next week HVAC will replace units at the jail. Heat comes later, but process is underway. Parker Weimers  now works at the jail as maintenance supervisor. Replaced Marco.
Approved unanimously.

Consent Dept Items:

Reports.
No reports from Facilities Manager Sam Cobos. Still out from knee surgery. Bentley asks is he is using sick time.  No, he says he is working remotely. Lots of questions about this and how. Judge says Chase did the same thing with his hand surgery. Judge says we will have to address this in the new employee policy.
Tax Assessor Natalia Williams says she has two reports for month of June. One reflects the rebate to the mine.
Presidio ISD would like to hold that payment and use it for 2018,so she has not issued rebate yet. Will have meeting tomorrow about it.
Emergency Management: National Weather Service wants to install a weather station around Marfa. Permanent installation. They prefer to be on government property. Possible near Vizcaino property. They will come out August 1st looking at choices for sites. Data collected every minute. Website updated every five minutes. It would be good if County could designate preferred areas over at the county property if County is interested. Judge says they can come out and if they are wanting to locate there then we can vote on it at that point.

River gauging site near Candelaria forecasting level is malfunctioning and they want to disable it. Installed in 1975 by IWBC. They are not gong to abandon it as a monitor, but will no longer be used for flood forecasting.

Reports all approved unanimously except for facilities manager.

Adjourn at 12:19 PM