The Commissioners Court of Lamb County held their regular meeting on Friday at the Lamb County Courthouse located in Littlefield.
The meeting was called to order at 10:05 a.m. by Lamb County Judge James DeLoach and he also gave the invocation.
There was nobody present for the Public Comment portion of the meeting.
(a) Consider and take appropriate action on minutes from previous meeting(s); Regular Meeting, May 13, 2024.
(b) Consider and take appropriate action on budget and salary amendments and/or line item transfers; None.
(c) Consider and take appropriate action on bills presented by the County Auditor, Gina Jones. She requested that the Commissioners approve bills totaling $1,010,982.20.
(d) Consider and take appropriate action on payroll; Jerry Yarbrough asked that the Commissioners approve two sets of payroll the first; for Lamb County ending on May 3rd in the amount of $163,203.60 and for LHC ending on May 4th in the amount of $200,673.90. The second set for Lamb County ending on May 17th in the amount of $155,306.03 and for LHC ending on May 18th in the amount of $202,584.01.
(e) Consider and take appropriate action on departmental reports; In Packet.
The motion was made by Commissioner Lee Logan and seconded by Commissioner Danny short to approve the Consent Agenda. The motion carried.
Item four on the agenda was to consider and take appropriate action on out of state travel for Chief JPO Toni Montes to Buffalo, New York for Alcohol and Drug History Society Conference (Leaf Grant Funds).
“With our Leaf Grant, our Drug Free Coalition is ending in September,” Montes said. “ We needed to get some conferences in, so I started an inter-county with Garza County, so we are going to continue the coalition just without the grant funds when the grant runs out. This trip will not cost the county or the state any money, it will come out of the grant money.
She added, “The information here, I can use it for my other hours, so I get hours for JPO without having to apply any of our funds to it. It is a great conference, it is almost the psychology of the addiction in the children and what we can look for and ways we can help them before we ended up putting them in placement.”
The motion to approve out of state travel to Buffalo, New York, for JPO Toni Montes, was made by Commissioner Logan and seconded by Commissioner Short. The motion carried.
Future Agenda Items were discussed.
Judge DeLoach stated that budget packets will be going out by the next Commissioners Court.
Brandon Albus gave an update on Lamb County 4-H and all the activities they have going on this summer.
The County Pool party will be July 2nd from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Dylan Brown gave an update on the hospital saying, “April was a pretty good month for the hospital. Our audit was finalized, completed and presented to our board this week. Our cash collections were the best they’ve been in a long time for April. Just from operations, we brought in about $1.1 million; besides that and not counting tax money, our previous best was February, which we brought in about $700,000.”
He added, “Our revamped 340B program brought in six figures for the first time in a while. For the past four months we’ve been averaging about $83,000 coming in per month. Considering we lost about a quarter of a million last year, that is fantastic. Business at the sleep lab is booming, we had 92 referrals last month with 34 studies ran, which generated about $82,000. So far for the month of May, we have had 66 referrals, 41 studies ran and 27 scheduled. They’re projecting over $200,000 for the month of May. Our billing and collection company has started to show signs of improvement. Last year, our average collection rate was about 25%, this year for April it was 28%. A 3% increase isn’t big, but considering our annual revenues are $20 million, three percent of that is pretty substantial.”
With no further business to discuss, the motion to adjourn was made by Commissioner Logan and seconded by Commissioner Short. The motion carried and the meeting was adjourned at 10:21 a.m.