Meeting of December 19, 2024

e e start uh good afternoon again if you wouldn't mind to check your cell phones and make sure they're turned off or whatever and we'll go ahead and get started this is the December 19th 2024 Harden County Fiscal Court regular voting meeting Let's uh begin and call this meeting to order roll call please Square Clen here

Square Hicks here Square Muse here Square Pennington here Squire Saltzman here Squire Thompson here Squire Whitehead here Squire Yates here judge tall here next is our invocation uh magistrate clam and Pledge of Allegiance magistrate Pennington please pray with me our most gracious and loving Heavenly Father we indeed thank you for this beautiful day that you've given us and father we come praising your holy name and thanking you for all the many many blessings that you have bestowed upon us and father we just ask forgiveness for all those times that we have failed you both by commission and Omission father and father we just uh lift up those at this time of the year that Our Miss and loved ones always ask that you give them a special measure of your grace and love and mercy father we thank you for this nation and for our state and our community father we just ask for protection on that each one of those bodies and father all those that are standing guard day and night and those that are home waiting for those that are standing guard father go with us through the fur exercises of this

meeting you lead and guide and direct all the things we say and do in your son Jesus name I pray amen amen please follow me the pledge I pledge the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liy and justice for all all right so thanks again for joining us today it's good to see all of you um just a quick review of the agenda it's pretty basic agenda today uh we have the minutes we have some department and office reports uh kind of a a theme of budgets calendar year budgets that we'll be talking about uh citizens concerns or comments time we have uh three resolutions to vote on and then we have um fairly lengthy uh sent agenda and go through fairly quickly though and and then our typical comments after that okay so that's our agenda today um move on and

and just um uh I think that there are a lot of people that have been impacted uh recently and it's kind of a reminder uh of of some of the difficulties and and hardships that uh many of our families and friends are our feeling uh this time of the year um but I would like to have uh just a time of silence and some prayer for for really um all the families I believe there's about 38 drug overdose deaths in 2024 in Harden County and so a recent death that uh I'm aware of and I know many others are uh is a reminder of of the many families and and friends and and that have been impacted by um by this um these occurrences and and the terrible things that have happened and people um uh dying from drug overdose um and there there'll be some more discussion U of some things that uh our qrt U person that will be presenting a little bit and talking some to try to hopefully in the future we'll be able to

see uh some reduction in those numbers um each one of them representing a person and a lot of people around that person so if you would just join with me just for a moment of silence father I just want to uh ask that you help all these families and friends that have been impacted and are going through difficult very hard times especially during this Christmas season be with them Lord help them give them peace in Jesus name amen amen okay next on the agenda is to

approve our Harden County Fiscal Court uh December 10th 2024 minutes is there a motion to approve second second second by use uh discussion a roll call please Squire Clen yes squire yes Square Muse yes Square Pennington yes Square Salzman yes Square Thompson yes Squire Whitehead yes Squire Yates yes judge tall yes motion passes okay we'll move on then to some reports uh we'll start out with our coroner Pat Elmore good afternoon judge members of the court and the audience I'll October November report may have on their in October the Corner's office responded and worked 103 cases you'll see the uh the list will go over the accidents we had six accidents motor

vehicle collisions were two one incident result fall result in the death and the overdoses you'll see those that were broke down into categories one item I am going to briefly touch on and we see this we hear this in the Daily News every day it's fentel and just really want to brief you on something in that nature this fentel that you're hearing about people said well it's laced or whatever but fentel is basically a pharmaceutical drug that has a use it's it's for pain and so forth these fentel that you see and it's this I can assure this page is not long enough to list all the derivatives of that fenel I'm not going to get into a long drawn out chemistry lesson with you but you know that when we see a toxicology so it's not the fentel that's that you normally think about pain patients have it's the fenel and like I said you'll see flu fenel and Justin keeps up with a lot of these too but you know we see this is just a laundry list of things I want I wanted to kind of clear the air with everyone that it's not the fentel you see this fentel well my an was prescribed F that's not the case but going further like I said we we'll be kind of providing some updates on that as addresses but just wanted to clear one item on that so those are the list of the overdoses we had 94 Naturals one

suicide and two homicides um in November uh we responded to 87 cases uh accident again into the hydrocodones and aam those are prescription drugs methampetamine of course anine not 81 Naturals and we're pending three toxicologies and that that's when you see that pinning toxicology these are folks that we have drawn toxicology on it and we're waiting for the results of that that may either a go into a natural or into an overdose situation um this is a breakdown you'll see our autopsy cases are way up this year we're already at 24 and that that'll that number will increase as we update the log here um and that's just unused circumstance anytime a homicide and some of these other unnatural cases they're taking for autopsy cremations they're holding about the same um we had had to have 8 EMS transport we now have our second vehicle in service so that's that should go down and we have 146 transports by the Corner's office um next slide please drug overdoses year-to date we're it's looking like we're right about where we're at but again those three that are pending toxicology we're anticipating they may be so that's where that number could tick and we'd be one over our average from last