The Commissioners Court of Lamb County, Texas, convened in Regular Session on Monday, Sept. 25th, at the Lamb County Courthouse in Littlefield to discuss a 12-item agenda.
Lamb County Judge James DeLoach called the meeting to order at 10 a.m. and District Attorney, Rickie Redman gave the invocation.
Nobody requested to comment during the public comment portion of the meeting. Consent agenda items; (a) Consider and take appropriate action on minutes from previous meeting(s); There was one set of minutes from the regular meeting on September 11, 2023, and Judge DeLoach said they appeared to be in order.
(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 presented bills in the amount of $504,760.98.
(d) Consider and take appropriate action on payroll; Jerry Yarbrough requested that the Commissioners approve payroll for Lamb County ending on Sept. 8th in the amount of $153,428.07 and payroll for LHC ending on Sept. 9th in the amount of $197,645.94.
(e) Consider and take appropriate action on departmental reports; None The motion was made by Commissioner Danny Short and seconded by Commissioner Lee Logan to approve the consent agenda items. The motion carried.
Item four on the agenda was to consider and take appropriate action on Intergovernmental agreement with Garza County.
“This agreement would be between us and Garza County,” Sheriff Gary Maddox said. “We are running out of places to house people. I talked to the Sheriff over in Garza County and he said they would do a contract, but they wouldn’t guarantee that they would be able to house for us, because they’re also housing for other counties and most of the beds are already contracted out. So this is one of those things where it may work out it may not. As of Monday morning, we have 55 in the jail right now, we are housing 11 outside of the jail. We moved two to Parmer County and we’ll have to get a contract done with them; he was kind enough to take a couple of ours, because of the overcrowding issues we’re having.”
He added, “The Jail Commission really doesn’t have much sympathy when it comes to it. If we cross that 48 threshold, then we have to have more people on the floor to reach our 54 beds. And if we cross that 54, we are totally out of compliance and will probably be immediately put in that status. If that happens, me and two or more of you all will have to go to Austin to the next Jail Commission Board Meeting to tell them what our plans are to fix this problem. I have spoke with Sheriff’s north, and there are no beds available.”
Sheriff Maddox stated to the Commissioners, “Something I never wanted to say, but we’re getting to the point where we are going to have to add on to the county jail. We can’t depend on somewhere else housing our inmates, because everyone else is for paving in Precinct 4.
“It’s Chester Road, over by the football field in Sudan; we put that road in probably 10-12 years ago,” Commissioner Logan said. “There are now five homes on that road and the people living on that road are donating $4,000-5,000 depending on the cost. My precinct is going to cover the other part of that donation to get that road paved. We’re looking at $55,000 to $60,000, so our part of it is probably going to be around $30,000. The School is also going to be able to chip in some money for the project as well. That road is highly, highly traveled.”
The motion was made by Commissioner Logan and seconded by Commissioner Kent Lewis to approve advertising for sealed bids for paving in Precinct 4. The motion carried.
The next order of business was to consider and take appropriate action on contract with Warren Computers for IT support for 2023/ 2024.
Ben Warren from Warren Computers gave a presentation to the Court, breaking down exactly what they were paying for with his services.
The motion was made by Commissioner Lewis and seconded by Commissioner Cory DeBerry to approve contract with Warren Computers for IT support for 2023/ 2024. The motion carried.
Item eight on the agenda was to consider and take appropriate action on SAVNS Grant.
“This is something that we do every year, we’ve been doing it as long as I’ve been here and probably even before that,” Judge DeLoach said.
The motion was made by Commissioner Short and seconded by Commissioner Logan to approve SAVNS Grant. The motion carried. The next item on the agenda was to consider and take appropriate action on renewing Lease on JP 4 Office Building.
“We need to go ahead and release that building until we decide how we’re going to proceed,” Judge DeLoach said. “It is a yearly lease, but it does have an exit clause, that asks for 90-days notice.”
He added, “Since we talked last, the owner of the current building said she was going to go ahead and try to clean that deed up.”
The Motion was made by Commissioner DeBerry and seconded by Commissioner Logan to approve renewing Lease on JP 4 Office Building, either party may terminate Lease by providing written notice to other party at least 90 days in advance. The motion carried.
Next, was a discussion regarding Lamb Healthcare Center operations.
Dylan Brown gave Lamb Healthcare Center financials report.
Hospital Board members in attendance were Carla Synatschk and Jason Spangler.
Synatschk gave update reports on various operations.
Item 11 on the agenda was future agenda items.
Future agenda items discussed: Auditor and Judge made small budget corrections and there will be an HR Meeting, Tuesday, September 26th at 8:30 a.m. in the Commissioner Court Room.
With there being no further business to come before this Commissioners Court, the motion was made by Commissioner Logan and seconded by Commissioner Short to adjourn. The motion carried and the meeting was adjourned at 11:08 a.m.