The Commissioners Court of Lamb County held their regular meeting on Monday, March 25th in the County Courtroom at the Courthouse in Littlefield to discuss a 10-item agenda.
Lamb County Judge James DeLoach called the meeting to order at 10:02 a.m. and the invocation was given by Carla Synatschk. Judge DeLoach led the United States and Texas Pledge of Allegiance.
There was nobody present to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting.
The next order of business was the Consent agenda items; (a) Consider and take appropriate action on minutes from previous meeting(s); Judge DeLoach stated that there was one set of minutes from the regular meeting on March 11, 2024, and 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. Jones requested that the Commissioners approve bills totaling $1,403,972.80. The motion was made by Commissioner Cory DeBerry and seconded by Commissioner Lee Logan to approve the bills presented with the LHC IGT funding separate from the LHC increase in credit line. The motion carried.
(d) Consider and take appropriate action on payroll; Jerry Yarbrough requested that the Commissioners approve payroll for Lamb County ending on March 8th in the amount of $165,793.56 and for LHC ending on March 9th $189,088.49.
(e) Consider and take appropriate action on departmental reports; In Packet.
The motion was made by Commissioner Danny Short and seconded by Commissioner Logan to approve the consent agenda items, with section (c) approved later in the meeting. The motion carried.
Item four on the agenda was to consider and take appropriate action on the Purchase/Lease of a copier in Treasurer’s office.
“I’m actually going to purchase it rather than lease it; it is going to be cheaper for me to do it that way,” Yarbrough said. “ It’s $11,422.28 and the monthly maintenance it would be $65.42. Mine is a little bit higher, but I do about 5,000 copies per month.”
The motion was made by Commissioner DeBerry and seconded by Commissioner Logan to approve Purchase of a copier in Treasurer’s office. The motion carried.
The next order of business was to consider and take appropriate action on 2024 Public Assistance Eligibility Guidelines.
Cynthia Bussey stated, “We have guidelines as far as incomebased for public assistance. They’ve just set those for the upcoming year and I was going to post them to our website, so that people will know this is what you have to make less than per month in order to get assistance.”
The motion was made by Commissioner DeBerry and seconded by Commissioner Kent Lewis to approve 2024 Public Assistance Eligibility Guidelines. The motion carried.
Item six on the agenda was to consider and take appropriate action on request from LHC BOM for an increase in their credit line.
“I want to start with a brief update since we last met to get everyone up to speed since we last met,” Mike McNutt LHC CEO said. “Volume has been steady at the hospital, we actually got up to 10 patients in the hospital on one day. We hired two nurses about two weeks ago, which accomplishes a couple of things. One, it gives us a better continuity of care because they’re our staff as opposed to agency staff. Another thing is that agency staff costs us a lot of money, so that is two less agency nurses that we have to pay. Since November, we have cut our agency expenses in half as we try to reduce our agency usage.”
He added, “We recently signed an agreement with Running Water Draw Care Center, the nursing home there in Olton. We will be doing all of their lab work and we are looking forward to that relationship. I’ve also had some good conversations with City Manager Mitch Grant. 340-b continues to churn away and produce for us. We’re getting really close with Sleep Lab; we’re still waiting on accredidation, but I fully expect them to be here sometime in April. That will allow us to be full throttle. Until then we are only able to do home studies. In Feb., we did 24 home studies and we should be ahead of that pace by the end of March. Our equipment is in for the in-house studies and will begin being installed on March 8 and will take four days. We have hired a sleep tech, who will be training while that stuff is being installed. It looks like we’re going to hit a high for admissions in the ER for the third month in a row. We approved to pursue a employee retention credit, which could bring in about $1.3 million to the hospital.”
McNutt spoke about some unforseen costs that have come up.
The Motion was made by Commissioner Short and seconded by Commissioner Logan to approve request from LHC BOM for an increase in their credit line for half a million dollars, due to unforeseen payments due. The motion carried.
Item seven on the agenda was to consider and take appropriate action to bury water line in Precinct 1.
The motion was made by Commissioner DeBerry and seconded by Commissioner Lewis to approve to bury water line in Precinct 1, requested by Troy Don Allcorn. The motion carried.
The next order of business was to consider and take appropriate action on Assisting LHC with an IGT.
“The reason this is seperate, one is because the asks came at two different times, but two because there are a couple of different ways to handle this,” Judge DeLoach said. This would be paid back sometime in May. If we do fund this IGT seperately, we would get the money back as soon as they get the money in May. It is my recoomendation to fund it seperately and get that money back in May.”
The motion was made by Commissioner Lewis and seconded by Commissioner Logan to approve assisting LHC with an IGT. The vote being called for and all voting Aye, the motion carried and so ordered.
Future agenda items were discussed.
With there being no further business to come before this Commissioners Court, motion was made by Commissioner Logan and seconded by Commissioner Short to adjourn. The motion carried.