Meeting of December 21, 2023

reminder for the cell phones if you would mind to turn those off or um put them on stun whatever you'd like to do there uh this is the December 21st 2023 Harden County Fiscal Court regular voting meeting so let's begin and um call this meeting to order all right let's have a roll call Squire clim here Squire Hicks here Squire Muse here Squire Pennington here Squire Saltzman present Squire Thompson Squire Whitehead here Squire yakes here judge tall here uh today our invocation will be magistrate Larry Hicks and Pledge of Allegiance led by m Mist paty Whitehead let's pray Heavenly Father we just thank you for the time that we come together we just thank you for this special season where you sent your son uh so he could die on a cross for our sins we just thank you I just ask you to bless all the families and bless the families that's here today Father just watch over them give them good health keep them safe and we just pray that everybody will have a great

Christmas and remember what the season is all about in Jesus name I pray amen amen please join me in the pledge I pledge Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all okay just a few opening comments again thanks for joining today um and this is uh yeah this is our final final Court meeting for 20123 so uh We've almost made it through a whole year here uh this um this was I I believe from what I hear anyways typically a fairly short agenda to clear up some Financial items for the year end but this year we have some kind of some unique business to take care of and to address so just a quick review of the agenda um we have uh the typical department and office reports that we'll be going through and any citizens

concerns or comments we have several uh resolutions and different things to uh to vote on that will roll through and uh then we have our our consent agenda uh and then some comments at the end of the meeting okay so uh at that uh our first item of business is to approve our Harden County Fiscal Court uh 122 2023 minutes is there a motion to approve so move okay second second all right motion second uh any discussion uh judge just want uh correction yes on the uh minutes uh I'm not the minutes but comments under resolutions uh it states that I said uh the new industrial tax would expand to all areas of Harden County it should be all areas of the unincorporated areas of hard C okay all right very good any other um revisions all right then uh we will vote on the minutes uh as amended then and U

so we'll go ahead and have a roll call Squire clim yes Squire Hicks yes Square Muse yes Square Pennington yes Square Salzman yes Square Whitehead yes Square Yates yes judge tall yes motion passes all right let's move on into our department office reports um presentation so let's um I think first up here is our coroner uh Pat Elmore afternoon judge members of the court and the audience it's always a pleasure to be here we'll be going over October November reports this in this presentation um for October we had six accidents you'll see the manners under there it's overdose fall drowning motor vehicle collisions another overdose and then motor vehicle collision homicide we had one homicide uh one suicide and undetermined was an infant that were still still pending aot Topsy results on and then we had 92 natural deaths for November we worked 86 cases six

accidents one was a fall three motor vehicle collisions and again overdose overdose and Naturals were 78 and we're still pending one of those for Toxicology U manners of death you'll see our accidents were down just to date so far um our homicides were a fair amount of hit on homicides this year already um and then suicides that took a pretty good jump too U cremations autopsy our autopsies really spiked this year that was pretty much our close to our number for all of last year and uh just because of the manners of in accidents and so forth uh we had 40 460 cremations uh so far we've had zero County cases this year so that's kind of always a plus and then this our transports were up fair large PL 133 transports um overdoses we were down somewhat just to date so far so we're hoping that since sees a trend keep going that way but certainly positive thing there um residency again Elizabeth Town will seems as always in R it kind of goes by Geographic areas and population one item I want to talk to you about Computing Partners uh this was

a slide that we had taken we got back into Corner's office partnered with Baptist Health and we conducted a hats off to Shane and Norton she kind of spearheaded this but we conducted an overdose simulation all the high schools they basically went in and showed U students different scenarios from the person from the time they done an overdose till the time our office took care of them so that seemed like it had done a lot of good we were really proud of that and we hope to get that going again next year um any questions I saw that you you all won the tree competition we did we did congratulations if we hadn't it would have been under protest because Stephanie she was solely responsible that she last year she was the MS winner and she said if she hadn't wanted to she was going to protest so yeah we appreciate that I think instead of a trophy next year we're going to have a belt come a wrestling belt and so forth um in closing half the corners also we'd like to thank you all for support all throughout the year uh and wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Year thank you all right Pat I just want to say I don't I don't think there was any bones about it I think y'all had the best yeah that was a comment that was made and and the tree will be up we really don't want take it down but it's it is pretty neat so she took a lot of time leave it up your rounds right yeah P I'm going to talk a

little bit about the tree too uh sure I think you had told me a story about a young man who saw it on Facebook uh with autism I'm I'm glad you brought that share that story for us so sure and I'm glad you brought up I almost forgot that so yeah the comments that's how the obviously how they get the votes and and a lady responded it she voted for because her son liked everything that involved bones and she shared with us he had autism he was five years old so we reached out to her just to see if uh she'd want to bring him by to see it and he actually spent Tim Gibson we were actually out on cases but Tim Gibson spent about an hour with a young man he took one of the ornaments home with him and I told Stephan after that and the rest of Step said if you don't win you've already won with that because just to see that I mean it's we shared that with Megan for our our website too but it it it was really pretty neat he came in he spent some time with us so we really enjoy that so thank thank you I thought that was a great no no I appreciate that I almost forgot that thanks all right thank you all right next up is uh sheriff and uh Sheriff Ward and we got the um 2024 budget okay first of all I'll go through our U October through November report

um in law enforcement arrest once first of all I jumped right into it I better good afternoon uh judge members of the Court Clerk county attorney guest and fellow Harden County it U good to see you all today now I'll get started on the law enforcement side uh 179 arrest 268 citations issued 91 warrants 746 civil proc or civil civil papers 1,346 complaints 143 ACD 90 criminal cases investigated 2756 other activities 1,3 school safety checks 97 violation warnings 1,646 attempts to serve in office operations 87 records checks 136 Concealed Carry Permits issued 1,27 three vehicles