At the April 25 meeting of the Bandera County Commissioners'’ Court, the county accepted a bid of $5400 from ACN Properties LLC to purchase Avalon K Block 56 Lot 1012 in Lakehills, a property that was previously gifted to the county.
In other business, The Chamber of Commerce, who was listed on the meeting’s agenda to request use of the Courthouse lawn for Memorial Day weekend events, motioned to pass on the request.
Justice of the Peace Lynn Holt withdrew his request for a merit increase for Chief Deputy Clerk, JP #4, due to not reading a time-sensitive email that was sent to him from County Judge Richard Evans’ office.
Holt explained, “I apologize to the court. I submitted this to be put on the agenda, and we moved over to the new building, and I was catching up on the court backlog and everything, and I didn’t see Marcia’s email until last night about submitting her qualifications to you. So, I can give them to you here, or we can just consider this a dead horse if I made a fatal error.”
Evans told Holt that a written justification for the increase is required.
“That’s what our rule book says”, concluded Evans.
“I don’t want to violate the rules,” responded Holt.
Evans reminded him that the court will be conducting the salary surveys and that those increases will be across the board.
“I take full responsibility for not checking my email like I should have,” said Holt.
Later, the court voted all in favor to approve a request from County Attorney Janna Lindig to use grant funds from SB22 to distribute money to Investigator Trevino and Victim Assistance Coordinator Johnson from the County Attorney’s Office.
“This is not really an increase in their salaries. It functions as that, but it is a grant,” said Lindig.
Lindig continued, “It is money that is given by the Comptroller to the County for these specified uses and nothing else, and when it goes away and the two County employees here, today, will confirm this, it goes away. It’s nothing but, like, between now and September of this year, money that can be provided to basically benefit County employees that have gone above and beyond and what they have done. And the two areas that we can apply for is the Prosecutor and that is the Investigator, as well as the Victims Assistance Coordinator, which is kind of an interesting thing to me because the job description, which I’ve never paid attention to that much before, gave her the title of Victim Impact Coordinator, which I have no idea where they came up with impact instead of assistance, it’s all statutory. “Basically, the amounts that I came up with was based on what employees in surrounding counties were paid just to do that one job. This would bring Miss Johnson up to the level that is commensurate with what they do.
“That is no money coming out of the pockets of Bandera County taxpayers. That is simply grant-oriented, including the benefits, it comes all out of the grant; and the money that’s left over is going to be written by check back to the Comptroller.”
Rutherford emphasized that the county cannot maintain the additional income that is granted to county employees from the State’s SB22 funds.
“People in Austin send us all this money, and we’re thankful for it, but then all of the sudden, we don’t have it, then we’re raising taxes or cutting someone else’s budget to pay for it. And you just clarified it. It goes away if they don’t keep funding it.”
Lindig stressed to the court that the employees do understand that this is a gift and a one-time opportunity.
Per the Texas Comptroller language, SB22, a Senate Bill, establishes a grant program that provides financial assistance to sheriff’s departments, constable’s offices and district and county attorney’s offices in eligible counties to ensure professional law enforcement and legal representation of the people’s interests throughout the state.
The law provides supplemental salaries for several positions in rural areas.
Eligible counties were able to apply for grant funds in January regardless of a particular county’s fiscal start-date.
In future years, counties and prosecutor’s offices will apply online according to the start of their fiscal year.
