Meeting of October 14, 2025

It's good to see everyone here today. All right, my cell phone just beeped, so that's a good reminder to turn our cell phones off or down on volume. [Music] All right, so let's go ahead and get started. This is October 14th, 2025 Harden County Fiscal Court uh regular voting meeting. Let's begin and call this meeting to order. — The roll call, please. — Squire Clim — here. — Squire Hicks — here. — Squire Muse — here. — Squire Pennington. — Squire Saltzman — here. — Squire Thompson — here. Squire Whitehead — here. — Squire Yates, Judge Executive Keith Tall — here. Uh, next we'll have our invocation by Magister Kenny Muse and Pledge of Allegiance was going to be uh Magistrate Yates, but uh Larry Hicks, if you would take care of that. — Be glad to. — Let us pray. In the name of the Father

and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Dear Lord, we thank you for this beautiful day, this great country we live in, and the privileges we enjoy. We thank you for many blessings and the opportunity to gather today to make decisions to improve our county. Help this court to make fair and just decisions on items before this court. Help us consider all alternatives and come together to make the best choice possible. May this fiscal court continue to work together to make this county and community a better place to work and live. We pray that you protect us all each and every day and especially our first responders and the servicemen and women that protect our country here and abroad. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. — Amen. Amen. — 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. [Music] — All right. Thanks again everyone for joining today. It's great to see everyone here and also those that are

watching on TV again. It's uh always good to have uh our mayor from West Point, Mayor Saresi here. So, thanks for joining today. And u so yeah, everything's good here. So, let's review the agenda. Um uh we have quite a few things to vote on today. Uh we'll start out with our minutes from last meeting and then we have uh one special presentation to make today and then we have our department uh reports that we'll go through. Uh we'll have citizens concerns and comments as usual. Uh we do have a closed session today and then after that we'll be voting on I think it's eight resolutions or ordinances that we'll go through one by one and vote on those. Then we have our typical consent agenda to vote on and uh then we'll have our typical comments at the end. So that's the agenda today. All right. Um, we'll move on then and uh we'll need to approve our Harden County Fiscal Court uh September 23rd, 2025

minutes. Is there a motion to approve? — So move. — Second. — Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none. A roll call, please. — Square Clim. — Yes. — Squire Hicks. — Yes. — Squire Muse. — Yes. — Squire Saltzman. — Yes. Squire Thompson. — Yes. — Squire Whitehead. — Yes. — Judge Executive Keith Tall. — Yes. Motion passes. All right. Next, we have a presentation. I want to um just make a few comments before we um present this proclamation today. Um this is a pretty neat thing. We've got um Karsten Engles and he's here with us today. Uh he's 17, Rinville, high school senior. He was recently awarded first place in the ages of 16 to 18 category of the annual essay contest held by the American Battle Monuments Foundation. He was given a $10,000 check for his essay topic, the World War II Battle of Midway, June 4th through 7, 1942.

The organization, which works to honor the fallen of World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, is hoping to spread awareness of the organization and a uh with this annual contest. Uh Karsten said the cash prize will be used for college. He is interested in pursuing a law degree with a likely emphasis on constitutional or criminal law. Carsten is homeschooled and enrolled in numerous dual credit college courses as well. His parents are David and Jod Engles and uh he has a twin sister Karen and three older siblings. Carson is active in archery, teen court and enjoys leather work and smallcale farming. So pretty impressive young man and uh I just want to uh read this proclamation and after that I thought we might try to get a picture and get all this up here in the front after I go through this. So this is a proclamation. It says whereas Carson Engles was recently awarded first place for his age group in the annual essay contest held by the American Battle Monuments Foundation. And whereas the American Battle Monuments Foundation honors the fallen

of World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam Wars. And whereas Carsten was given a $10,000 check for this essay. Whereas Karsten will use his cash prize to help pay for college. Now therefore, be it resolved on behalf of the citizens of Harden County in recognition of Carsten Engel's achievements and for being an inspiration through his hard work, I do hereby proclaim on this monumentous day as Carsten's day. Let's go ahead and gather up here. I need to sign this. [Music] [Music] You all are welcome to hang around or if

you need to leave that's okay too. All right. Next, we'll move on to our department reports and we'll start out with animal control and our director, Mike McNut. — Good afternoon. — Good afternoon. — Good afternoon. — Let me see here. So for the month of September, uh we adopted out 29, we returned 25, we sent 13 to rescue, which is the highest number we've had in probably three or four years. Um for the year to date, our dog adoptions are at 151. That's down 21 compared to last year. Um, and we returned 86 of the dogs to their owners in the field. Um, if you look the we're at 10% on rescue. That number like it shows you right there, that's the highest it's been for quite a while. Um, so maybe we're seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. I'm hoping so. Uh, the euthanasia rate was at 10%.

Uh dog adoptions uh are at 51%. Um the for the year to date return to owners are at 29%. So I was hoping to see that higher, but uh what's happening to us is a lot of people that know that we have their dogs, they're not coming and claiming them. Even when we find them, they're just leaving them there with us. So there's not a lot I can do about it at that point. on the we investigated 532 complaints for the year to date. Um for the September pie chart, you'll see unincorporated was right around 39% and incorporated was at 61%. Uh for the year to date, unincorporated at 42%, incorporated at 58%. for the year to date on our shelter live release rate is sitting at 90%. If we can maintain that for the rest of the fiscal year, um we'll still be considered a no kill facility by my numbers, but it doesn't