Meeting of February 10, 2026

Good afternoon everyone. Uh just a a quick check of your cell phones would be appreciated and I probably should do that myself. That'd be embarrassing I guess wouldn't told myself to do it. All right, so let's go ahead and get started. This is the [clears throat] February 10th, 2026 Harden County Fiscal Court regular voting meeting. Let's begin and call this meeting to order. We'll start with a roll call. — Squire Clim — here. — Squire Hicks — here. — Squire Muse — here. — Squire Pennington — here. — Squire Saltzman — here. — Squire Thompson — here. — Squire Whitehead — here. — Squire Yates — here. Just tall — here. Next, we'll help our invocation by Magistrate Saltzman and the pledge of allegiance, Magistrate Muse. Father God, we thank you for this beautiful day you've given us. Uh we thank you for this uh snow and ice melting away and all the water running down across the streets. Father, we uh thank you for this time that we can be

here. Uh we pray for uh this county that we continue to grow and uh continue to uh work and do the the the duty that we need to do for our citizens here in Harden County. I pray for the decisions made today that they would be wise and beneficial for our citizens and I just thank you again for your son Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen. — Amen. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. — Wow, that sure is great to hear that many people say the pledge of allegiance in here. It's good to see all of you and um I wonder what the occasion is. H we're going to get to that in just a few minutes. So again, thanks for being here. Um I do want to uh review the agenda and just to make sure we're all on the same page here. Uh after finish up some comments, we will vote on last

meeting minutes. uh we have some a very importantformational item that we'll cover and then we have a couple of presentations reports. After that we'll have a moment uh that we can have some uh citizens concerns or any comments. Then we have our consent agenda that I'll review those items and then uh any comments at the end before we adjourn. So that's that's the agenda today. All right. So, um I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't mention uh this uh nasty little storm that we've just been through. It's been a long one. Uh that's for sure. Not that the storm lasted that long, but the aftermath of ice uh that we have been able to um you know, try to work through has been absolutely just it's just crazy of what we've had to deal with. and what all of you have had to deal with as citizens of this county. So, I know that the uh it's been a lot of frustration and u heck, my own driveway was uh a hazard to go up and

down just a sheet of ice basically. So, it's been it's been rough. And I just wanted to say um I'm sorry for all of the uh inconveniences and the issues that people have been had to deal with uh between the roads and garbage collection has been has been rough. Um thankfully, our ambulance u our EMS department, they there's been no injuries. uh they've been able to get to the residence or the location that they need to to go to and uh they've had problems of course just once they get there is getting up the drive or getting into the house. So you can imagine uh looking outside some of our doors at some of our sidewalks uh without a pickaxe, it' been pretty hard to clear some of those. So, it's the there's been a more of a safety hazard for sure for for these uh paramedics and EMTs that are out there trying to serve us, but uh I'm happy to say that we haven't had any accidents because of this storm by any of our EMS personnel and they've been able to perform their duties, uh admirably and have done a great job. So, u just a lot of uh thank yous at this point. Of

course, our road department is the ones that have taken as far as uh as far as county employees have taken the brunt of of time that they've been spending out in trucks and various pieces of equipment spreading, I believe, a little over 1,600 tons of salt. And uh so that's about four times more than what we usually do or need to. And uh so it's we've we've contracted out uh graders uh to go out and use their equipment. We've the state has pitched in and helped us out with some of their equipment, a grater that's been uh out working. Um you know, we've had our own grater. We had some some uh maintenance problems with it, but uh we've used it uh whenever we could. And uh so we've tried to reach out and and pull in as as as much help as we as we can. Um, I'm sure there will be much uh that we have learned [clears throat] and uh whenever we have our um our review of what happened, uh we'll we'll

learn from it. And if we, God forbid that we have another one of these storms, uh we'll be better prepared with some things that we've learned from this storm. And that's what I'm always searching for, um continuous improvement and things that we can do better. So, uh, we're not perfect. We didn't do everything perfectly by any means, but we, uh, we were, it's not from a lack of effort. And so, I I just want to, uh, say thank you to, uh, our road department, Dwight Morgan, the supervisor, and and all the team that were out there every day, uh, Saturdays and Sundays, every day, uh, to to work on these roads. So, moving on to another another topic. Um the u a press release went out today regarding our EMS and um and we're going to get into this in more detail at the next meeting, but I did want to make mention of it since um the press release has gone out that uh we have received our EMS department has received the American Heart Association's mission lifeline EM

gold achievement award. If you remember last year we received the silver award. So this year is the gold award. Uh this is uh I hope an encouragement for all of our team uh in the EMS department. You know 70 or so of them and they uh work every day to help us in our in our time of need. So uh much appreciation for them and this is just an award saying hey you're doing a great job. You're out there. you're working hard and you're well prepared and trained and they um so we will actually receive this award very soon, the the physical award and then we will uh have a um a celebration a bit of a celebration at our next meeting later this month. I just wanted to mention them in that. And like I said, there's a press release that went out, so you can look at our um Facebook page and and see more information about that. And then finally, the last item I have today to to talk some about is we've been I think I've mentioned several times about the need for some jail reform and uh to be

able to bring our the the amount of money that that fiscal court has to subsidize our jail is is u overwhelming. And as I've said before, when I took office, we were somewhere around two $2 and.5 million dollar subsidy, which I thought was a lot of money. And uh in just a few years, it's grown to almost $6 million. $6 million. We bring in about 11 million in property tax. Okay? So, kind of give you a feel for the for how much of an impact that is. So, what that does, it makes it very difficult for all of us sitting up here to uh look at our budget to try to figure out how we're going to continue to provide the services that we need and are required to provide and and do them adequately and uh even exceptionally. And it costs money to do that. And we struggle we have each year and we we will this year coming up. So, uh, this bill, which is HB557, is, um, not perfect by any means, but it