The Commissioner’s Court of Lamb County held their regular meeting Monday morning in the Commissioner’s Court Room at the Lamb County Courthouse in Littlefield to discuss a 13-item agenda.
The meeting was called to order at 10:03 a.m. by Lamb County Judge James DeLoach and he also gave the invocation, before leading the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance and Texas Pledge of Allegiance.
There was nobody present for public forum.
Consent Agenda: (a) Consider and take appropriate action on the minutes from the previous meeting( s); Judge DeLoach stated there were two sets of minutes, one for a regular meeting on June 10th and one for a special meeting on June 10th, both appeared to be in order.
(b) Consider and take appropriate action on budget and salary amendments and/or line-item transfers; there were none.
(c) Consider and take appropriate action on bills presented by the County Auditor; Gina Jones asked the Commissioners to approve bills in the amount of $1,026,944.63.
(d) Consider and take appropriate action on payroll; Jerry Yarbrough asked the commissioners to approve payroll for Lamb County ending on June 14 in the amount of $168,533.41, and for LHC ending on June 15 in the amount of $226,429.70.
(e) Consider and take appropriate action on departmental reports; there were none.
The motion to approve the consent agenda as presented was made by Commissioner Danny Short and seconded by Commissioner Lee Logan. The motion carried.
Item four on the agenda was to consider and take appropriate action on Tracking system for the Sheriff’s Office.
“What we have is the same basic tracking system that we’ve had in the vehicles for several years,” said. “It tracks the movement of the vehicles while they are out on patrol. We use this system for the safety of our officers, so that we can know where they are at, at all times. It goes through dispatch and it shows up on their monitors, so that if we need to get out there in a hurry, we know exactly where they are. Also if we get complaints from people saying we never have people in a certain part of the county, we can go back and look and see where we have been. Same thing with out driving habits; I’ve noticed over the years that our driving habits have improved tremendously.”
He added, “We’ve had this for a long time, we were out of it for about a year or so because of a dispute, but we’ve since gotten the contract and sent it over to DA Rickie Redman and she has approved it with the exception of having my email wrong on there and one other thing, that will be fixed. We’re looking at 13 units to put this tracking system in.”
The motion to approve the Tracking system for the Sheriff’s Office was made by Commissioner Kent Lewis and seconded by Commissioner Short. The motion carried.
The next order of business on the agenda was to consider and take appropriate action on the Burn Ban.
The Burn Ban is currently not in effect and after a brief discussion, the Commissioners chose to leave the Burn Ban off.
No action was taken. Item six on the agenda was to consider and take appropriate action on Fiscal Year 2023 Audit.
A presentation was given on the 2023 audit by John Merriss, CPA of Doshier, Pickens & Francis, LLC.
The motion to approve the audit was made by Commissioner Logan and seconded by Commissioner Lewis. The motion carried.
The next order of business was to consider and take appropriate action on Lamb County’s 20242025 Renewal of Employees Health Insurance.
“I want to keep exactly what we have right now,” Yarbrough said. “It is going up $33.20 per person per month, which will be basically $30,000 per year. We would be going from paying $873.94 to paying $907.14 per person.”
Judge DeLoach added, “If health insurance rates keep going up – and I’m not advocating that we change insurance companies at all – but at some point and time we’re going to have to take a look at things, but today is not the day to do that. My recommendation is that we leave it like it is.”
The motion to keep the current Employees Health Insurance in place was made by Commissioner Logan and seconded by Commissioner Short. The motion carried.
Item eight on the agenda was to consider and take appropriate action on Out of State travel for JPO from July 14-19, 2024.
Chief Juvenile Probation Officer Toni Montes, stated, “This is going to be paid for with LEAF Grant money. I was unable to attend the one that you all approved in January, because I had New Chief Conference, so this is just in place of that one. Since it was such a big gap, we brought it back to you guys.”
She added, “I plan to take two youth with us, so that they can bring the information back for their student council. They will do their own conference stuff over there and get their own material and will be able to bring all of that information back to their school. The conference is in Chicago.”
The motion to approve the Out of State travel for JPO from July 14-19, 2024, was made by Commissioner Logan and seconded by Commissioner Lewis. The motion carried.
Chief Juvenile Probation Officer Montes also introduced the new JPO Secretary, Amanda Cantu. District Attorney Rickie Redman also introduced Ryder Needham, who just completed his first year of Law School.
The next item on the agenda was to consider and take appropriate action on LHC funding.
Dylan Brown talked to the Commissioners, stating, “Some of these things are good things, but they are still cash going out that we don’t have right now. We’re not in a position to send off a quarter million dollars and be able to operate well,” he explained. The 340-B repayment, that was an issue last year or prior year due to a contract issue. The recoupments from CMS as well, that was not really an issue, but a retroactive thing and that big payment has come up. And then, our regular operations, three payrolls and three AP’s coming up over the next month. We also have the investment of those sleep lab units.”
He added, “When we spoke a while back and requested some additional line of credit, we kind of got a little less than we requested last time. At the time, I was thinking I don’t know if that was going to do it for us, but, we’ve been able to operate on our own two feet since then. With all of these things that have come up, we’re getting real lean again.”
Judge DeLoach added, “Last time they asked for a line of credit they asked for two million and we gave them a million and a half. They’re not really outside of what their expectation was, and we asked them to wait until June or July and they’ve gotten farther then they expected and what I expected, honestly. The first three are IGT’s that we’ve traditionally funded; we get that money back pretty quick.” The $76,000 payment for 340-B was a contract discrepancy that they had. The big thing is the $155,880 for the balloon payment for the recoupment. That happened last year about this time, they gave LHC a year to pay that off. They’ve been making the payments that they could make on it; the total amount was $564,000 and they’ve paid down $237,000. Part of it was from 2018 and part of it was from 2020.”
The motion to extend a line of credit to LHC and follow the plan that Yarbrough and Jones have presented was made by Commissioner Logan and seconded by Commissioner Short. The motion passed with a vote of 4-1, with Commissioner Cory DeBerry voting against.
Item 10 on the agenda was to consider and take appropriate action on plan for the Flatland Music Festival.
Buddy Holmes presented plans for the Flatland Music Festival, saying, “This year we’re going to do BYOB on our alcohol, partly because our vendor wanted to have $9 beers, which doesn’t make it a very budget friendly deal for families to come to our event. We’re going to be doing some things that haven’t been done before when it was BYOB, we’re going to restrict cooler sizes, we will also have TABC certified people there to ID people. Under 21 will get X’s on their hands and over 21 will get a wristband.”
The motion to approve the plan for the Flatland Music Festival was made by Commissioner Lewis and seconded by Commissioner Logan. The motion carried.
Future agenda items were discussed.
Authorized by the Texas Open Meetings Act, and Pursuant of Government Code 551, sub-chapter D, the Commissioners went into Executive session to discuss personnel at 11:09 a.m. They returned to regular session at 11:28 a.m.
With there being no further business to discuss, Commissioner Short made a motion to adjourn and it was seconded by Commissioner Logan. The meeting adjourned at 11:44 a.m.