Meeting of April 22, 2025

Let's all stand for the pledge of prayer. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. This morning, we're pleased to have with us our state representative, Mr. Josh Callaway. And you asked to lead us in prayer, Josh. Thank you. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for the privilege that we have to be here. Thank you for the time of the year that we get to celebrate the fact that you got out of the grave, Lord, that you did that for us and we're so grateful for it. Thank for the life that we have, the liberty that we have in this nation to be able to pray. God, I pray for our leaders in this county, God, that you would give them wisdom, give them direction to do what you would have them to do, to lead us in the good and the right way. for all those that serve throughout the county. Lord, our MTs, our police officers, that you would keep them safe, those that have been devastated by the flooding, that you will watch over them and help them. Give wisdom throughout this meeting and throughout this day. It's in Christ's

name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Josh. Okay, this time this time we'll call have a roll call, please. Squire Armstrong Square Bev Squire Greenwell Judge Lucas Squire Albright Square Moore Square Henning. Okay. Let the record reflect everyone's present. The first item business is approval of March 17th, 2025 minutes. I'll entertain a motion to approve those minutes. Okay. Motion by Squire Greenwell. Second by Squire Albbright. Any questions? Hearing none. Take please. Squire Armstrong. Yes. Squire Beavenon. Yes. Squire Greenwell. Yes. Judge Lucas. Square Albbright. Yes. Square Moore, yes. Square Minnie, yes. Okay. All yeses. The minute to approve. Next item is transfers. And I a motion to approve transfers. I'll make a motion. Motion Square Moore. Is there a second? Second. Square Albbright. Any questions? Hearing none, please. Squire Beavenon. Yes. Square Greenwell. Yes. Judge Lucas. Squire Albbright. Yes. Squire Moore. Square Penning. Yes. Square Armstrong. Yes. Yes. Is transfer approved. Next item are the claims. I'll entertain a motion to

approve claims. Motion was required. Green was there. Second was Henning. Any questions? I sent you all guys. I just wanted to bring to to everyone's attention the invoice for from the lawyer that you all hired that went to the sighting board. I want you all to just look at that and see what how he charges and so forth, which I had told you all about that. He even charged to to read a text tenth of an hour. We can't waste our money like that, guys. I'm telling you, I don't understand why you all did that, but that's neither here nor there, but you see what they charge almost $5,000 to attend there. So, I just wanted the people of the county to understand what's going on with that. So, any other any other questions? What was his hourly rate? 325. Any other discussion hearing? None. Take a vote, please. Squire Greenwell, yes. Judge Lucas, yes. Squire Albbright, yes. Square Moore, yes. Squire Henning, yes. Square Armstrong, Square Be, yes. Okay. All yes. It's plain to approve. Next item is the first item new business. And that is a presentation from our Mr. Pat

Henderson on our soil conservation service. Okay. The conservation district is your wires on your special purpose district and we believe it's important to give a report to fiscal court annually and so we try to do that and that's what I'm here to do. Uh just to remind you uh it's the same story I tell every year that there's this is a unique office and that it has a federal, state and local component and through the various programs it puts a lot of money not into the county but into farmers pockets. Okay, close to $4 million with the various programs that are coming through. Um, I also wanted to remind you that we are audited. Every dollar that we put through there, uh, is audited. And I think that's important, too. And I want to thank Representative Galloway. uh the amount of funds that are going through the conservation district just keep have have gotten pretty large over

time and the audit numbers uh didn't keep up with the increases in funding. So, our association proposed and and Representative Callaway helped get past a an amendment that would move our annual audits from 500,000 a year to a million a year. And what that means is that every dollar we spend will still be audited, but we won't have to go through an audit once every four years. Therefore, going with your bill, we don't get more one bill over four years. So, it saves the money and all that means is that we have the capacity to uh to put more money in farmer's pocket. We can prove a few more capes, those kind of things. So, uh the cape is the tobacco money. Again, representative Callaway helps allocate, you know, 50% of the tobacco settlement dollars were allocated to the egg development fund. And uh we had 149 applicants approved for $273,000 in 24. And this year,

uh, we've already paid out $39,000, but we're just starting the K program. So, it it runs basically the way that thing works, and a lot of people don't necessarily understand it, but what happens is we have a state provided application. Several of you all probably have filled them out. And then we hire because the board is not allowed to score the applications and receive. And quite frankly, it's kind of a secret rule because the way we scored them before is we took every application and we passed it around the room and nobody and and before you even did that, we had the secretary, if you remember that, you had your name on one page and everything else. We had the secretary duplicate that without the name and scored by number. Number number one and number two, uh, nobody scored a whole application. It was as good as you can get. But anyway, the state rule requires how to to hire somebody. And then out of that, we get a list of people that are

approved. And as Brandon turns his application in and he doesn't use the full $2,000, then that goes into kind of a pool and we get where we pick up another number. We keep trying to spend all that money. And honestly, you usually end up sending back money because people will promise you will indicate they're going to spend the money even on this extension time. And if they don't spend the money, they keep can't get reversed for it. Uh also, uh the conservation security program uh covers over 20,000 acres in this county. 20 24 payments for 1.2 $2 million. Uh CSP, a grassland program is $122,000. And the equip program, which is the mo biggest and most universally applicable program in the country, uh $2.2 million total, like I said, there's $3,895,615 that we put through that all the programs. And I can tell you that when farmers come in there, they don't

give an R where the P money comes from. All they want to know is it's there for them to draw and our staff is able. One other thing, u we are in a position to hire a extra help for the office through a program that is 80% funded by the federal government. And it's a great deal for them too because they don't have to pay benefits. Uh they pay 80% of top sorry that's all they pay if we give any insurance or anything that district has to pick that up and then they hire those people. It's designed as a trainer program. So we don't we're glad when our employees can go off fulltime. It's a better job than 8020 program. And finally, I want to uh just tell you that there's a a local planning process uh statewide and uh it used to be a regional concept and this year they moved it to a state to a countywide and May the 6 y'all may get some invitations for a local planning meeting that's going to be held at the ex that be agreement the extension office and uh or at that back building May the 6th. I