Meeting of December 9, 2025

phones. Make sure that their volume's turned down on those. So, let's go ahead and begin. This is the December 9th, 2025 Harden County Fiscal Court regular voting meeting. Let's begin and call this meeting to order. Roll call, please. — Squire Clem, — here. — Squire Hicks, — here. — Squire Muse, — here. — Squire Pennington, — here. — Squire Saltzman, — here. — Squire Thompson — here. Squire Whitehead — here. — Squire Yates — here. — Judge Hall — here. Uh, next we'll have our invocation by Magistrate Muse and Pledge of Allegiance, Magistrate Chris Yates. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, of the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Dear Lord, we thank you for this day. We thank you for many blessings and the opportunity to gather today. We thank you for this Christmas season and all the hopes and wishes this season brings. Help this court to make fair and just decisions and continue to work together to make this county and community the very best 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. [clears throat] — Join me in the pledgece 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 us for all. — All right. Very good. And um so uh thanks again uh for everyone being here and appreciate you joining us today here in person and those that are watching on on TV. Um think that um appreciate that we have uh a few other elected officials here with our sheriff and we have a mayor and u yeah I'm pretty pretty sure that um that part of our county is still there. West Point is still part of Harden County, right? Just confirm me. Okay, very good. We have our jailer here. Thank you for being here today. I have a report I

believe. So, um I don't think I missed anybody. All right. Well, let's go ahead and um I did want to mention just a couple of things. Just kind of an update. Uh our recent activity with the um uh White Mills station ambulance. Uh we had that pushin ceremony. It's been over a week now. And just kind of give everyone a a quick update. Uh we have 17 responses so far and the average response time has been reduced down to right around 14 minutes uh from where it was around 30 minutes in that area of the county. So we're we're already seeing a fantastic just an exciting uh change there and u I know everyone's excited about that especially those in that area of the county. Uh, one other just note uh for those some of you may know but probably most of you don't that there was a a a group of of folks from from this county that made a trip to Washington DC um uh last week and I was one of those that went and it's pretty large delegation of

about 15 Hardenians um leaders uh that met with officials at the Pentagon and also visited Senator McConnell's and Congressman Guth's offices. Um, and the purpose of the visit was to promote Fort Knox. So, um, as as we all know that there's always pressures, other bases that would like to have the missions that are already that are there at at Fort here at Fort Knox. And uh so we wanted to make sure and try to be as proactive as possible to make sure that those officials and people that make those decisions realize how important Fort Knox is to this state and to this uh area, this county, and that we are um the best base. We're the we're the best of all all of those opportunities. And so a lot of good information was presented. It was it was a I believe a successful trip. All right. So, we're going to go ahead and move on then to uh approval of Harden County Physical Court minutes of November 25th, 2025. I need a motion to

approve, please. — So, move. — Second. — Move and seconded. Did you get that? — Yes. — And uh any discussion? — All right. Hearing none. Roll call, please. — Square Clim, — yes. Square Hicks, — yes. — Square Muse, — yes. — Squire Pennington, — yes. — Squire Saltzman, — yes. — Squire Thompson, — yes. — Squire Whitehead, — yes. — Square Yates, — yes. — Judge Tall, — yes. Motion passes. — All right. Next, we have some presentations today and we're going to start out with animal control. Mike McNut. — Good afternoon. — Good afternoon. Good afternoon. — [clears throat] — Um, so for the month of no November, we uh adopted 41, returned 17, and sent five to rescue. For the year to date, our adoptions are at 230. That's down 28 from the previous

year. Um, rescues um are at 12% and that's on the rise. Um, I hope it continues is all I can say. We're we're keeping all of our animals up for rescue. When we started this morning, we had 123 animals to care for. um our sweet spot is anywhere in between 60 and 80 depending on their size. So when I I can't give you a f, you know, can't say a actual number, it's because the bigger the animal, the more it takes to take care of them. Um so our sweet spot is 60 to 80 that we can take care of with the staff that we have. We have 123 and I had four people call out sick this morning and we we met and we discussed what we were going to do because when you only got eight staff members for the day and it's down that low it's that's a it's a hard road to ho. Uh, but it was decided that we were going to open and we were going to open on time because if

we can't get them out the door, it's a negative for us. And that's just me wanting to talk about how good that staff is. It would have been a lot easier for them to go, okay, let let's not open today. Uh, and with four people short, it would have been understandable, but instead they're fighters, and they wanted to fight and get open, which made my day. And we actually got a couple animals out of there. So tomorrow hopefully it won't be 123. Maybe it'll be 118. And that's something I'm going to celebrate just because the flu is going through my shelter. So [snorts] uh so for the year to date, dog adoptions are at 49%. All places are are are low, but rescues are starting to pick up. So I'm hoping for, you know, to see that the rescues go up. If that number stays there, that's fine. But I need the rescues to go up. Um, dogs return to owners at 27%. Uh, the complaints for the fiscal year are at 841. That's down from last year. [clears throat] Um, so the November pie chart, unincorporated is at 46%, incorporated's

at 54. And for the year-to- date, unincorporated is at 42%, incorporated is at 58%. Um, for the year-to- date on the shelter alive release rate, which is how many animals we actually get out the door alive, we're at 88%. We need 90% to be classified as a no kill facility. So, we're right there. We still have time to make it up for the year, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we can do it. Uh the CAT live release rate is at 89%. Um the monthly live release was 87 and the monthly cat live release was at 90%. We had 716 visitors to the shelter in November. Um that's additional information. Uh at the discount [clears throat] of rabies clinic we saw 221 animals uh 189 rabies uh were given 31 microchips and 72 dog licenses. Any questions? — All right. Thank you. Appreciate the