The Louie Minor Show
Texas politics from Killeen to Belton to Austin and beyond. Join the conservation with Bell County Commissioner Pct 4 Louie Minor as we dive deep into local government. Interviews with community leaders and the public.
The Louie Minor Show
Bell County is growing, but are our services keeping pace?
Commissioner Louie Minor provides a comprehensive look at Bell County's budget planning process and critical decisions affecting taxpayer dollars. He examines major capital projects, emergency services funding, and potential solutions for rising healthcare costs through a proposed hospital district.
• Overview of upcoming Commissioner's Court meetings and agenda items including budget discussions
• Details on the $101 million jail expansion adding 600 beds while facing 52% increase in medical costs
• Examination of the new $9.8 million Killeen Annex opening fall 2026 and plans for a new Temple Annex
• Discussion of Bell County's rapid growth to over 404,000 residents and the strain on county services
• Analysis of the current tax rate and budget requests totaling over $208 million for personnel, equipment, and projects
• Explanation of the disabled veteran tax exemption impact on county revenue
• Proposal for creating a county hospital district to handle indigent healthcare and jail medical costs
• Review of Emergency Service Districts as a solution for rural areas needing better fire and ambulance coverage
welcome. You are listening to the louis minor show. I'm your host, bell county, commissioner, louis minor. Today is july 5th, 2025. Welcome back. Happy, belated fourth of july. And uh, you know we've been away for a little bit, been busy with budget and just everything going on. You know, like I said many times, that I am doing all this all by myself. I do have some interns this summer so they're helping out and helping me catch up. So but, uh, yeah, we are back, got a lot to catch up on and I will close out the show with a budget town hall. That I did not too long ago Last week I believe with a bunch of residents at Texas A&M, central Texas. But we do have a budget meeting, I'm sorry, a commissioner's court meeting on Monday, july 7th. So let's get to the agenda real quick for that meeting. We have invocation, pledge of allegiance, consent agenda items. Uh. Regular minutes of uh, monday, july 7th. No, that cannot be correct because we don't have those minutes yet. Then we have approval of the minutes of June 16th 2025. Budget, personnel amendments, claims, accounts, payable, payroll restitution and jury pay. Then we have for consent agenda consider authorizing change order number one to the original agreement dated january 2nd 2025 with target solutions to add new insulation, drywall and laminated wall panels in the assembly hall at an additional cost of $153,326.08, with appropriate budget amendment. Ratify the submission of the FY25 Help America Vote Act HAVA election security grant application in the amount of $52,000 with a funding match in the amount of $10,400 for election security measures to the State of Texas Office of Secretary of State, designating Bell County Judge as the authorized official for the grant. Then consider approval to pay invoice milestone 6 from the City of Temple for the first cut over go live niche RMS at a budget amount of $64,585.42 for the Constable and Sheriff's Record Management System. Then we have a presentation, proclamations and awards. Presentation and proclamation by Melissa N Benoli, executive Director of part of Central Texas Alliance, on July 26,.
Speaker 1:Two lot one block subdivision located in Precinct 2. Our next item would consider and approve the final plat of Hackberry Ranchettes being 52.807 acres 52.807 acres 10 lot 2 block subdivision located in Precinct 2. Item C consider and approve a minor plat of Salado, 1.074 corner, being a 1.074 acre. 1 lot one block subdivision located in precinct two. Item D consider and approve a final plat of Stennett Mills Estates being Stennett Mills Estate, phase two being a 28.19 acre 36 lot five block subdivision located in Precinct 2. Then item E consider and approve the final plat of Casa de Rudez being a .7904 acre 1 lot 1 block subdivision located in Precinct 3. And finally, for Engineer, we have item F consider and approve final plat of Watley Acres, replat number 1, being a 35.221 acre 14 lot 1 block subdivision located in Precinct
Speaker 1:1. Now Regular Agenda Items. Consider and approve the retirement of Ron Luxinger, secretary on the Bell County Youth Fair Executive Board. Consider and appoint Lindsey Strait to the Bell County Youth Executive Board. Item C consider approval of a petition for voluntary annexation for a portion of Bob White Road into the City of Temple from Bell County, as the owner of the adjacent 4.8607 acres of the right-of-way to the 702.0564-acre track is also petitioning the City Council to take appropriate action to annex the 4.8607 acres of right-of-way. Oh, that was a
Speaker 1:lot. Item D consider authorizing the county judge to enter into a contract with Texas Customs for the installation of security screens at the Loop Jail Tower for a cost not to exceed $35,529. To exceed $35,529. Item E consider authorizing the county judge to execute an interlocal agreement between Bell County and the City of Harker Heights for the regulation of subdivisions in the extraterritorial jurisdiction of Harker Heights. Item F consider authorizing the county judge to execute an interlocal agreement between Bell County and City of Rogers for regulation of subdivision and the extraterritorial jurisdiction in the City of Rogers. Item G Consider the appointment of Bell County Commissioner Bobby Woodson as representative to serve on the K-Tempo TAC Board. Item H consider the appointment of Amanda Organ, director of the Salado Chamber of Commerce, to serve as the Development District of Central Texas Board. Item I consider establishing a temporary regulatory construction speed limit on State Highway 195 in the unincorporated portion from 75 miles per hour to 60 miles per hour for the duration of the road improvement project by the Texas Department of Transportation, pursuant to Texas Code 545.355. Item J consider approval to cancel the July 21st 2025 Commissioner's Court meeting and workshop and reschedule the meeting to July 28th 2025. K consider authorizing the IT department to purchase security cameras, software, license, camera mounts, network cables and SD cards from various vendors for the Temple Annex at an estimated cost of $9,915, with associated budget
Speaker 1:amendment. Then we have item L Closed session pursuant to chapter 551.087 of the Texas government code to discuss or deliberate regarding commercial or financial information that the governing body has received from a business prospect that the government body seeks to have business prospect that the government body seeks to have locate, stay or expand in or near the territory of the governmental body and with which the governmental body is conducting economic development negotiations in order to deliberate the offer of a financial or other incentives to a business project. And I believe that is it for our regular agenda. Let's go to our workshop agenda. Now we have, let's see reports and updates from various county offices and departments capital improvement projects. Update on jail expansion and temporary jail facilities. Clean annex FY 2025 CIP
Speaker 1:plan. Then we have submissions discuss application to the FY 26-27 solid waste grant. Next item is discuss allowing JP4, place to temporary hire a district a temporary hire a deputy clerk. Then we have discuss school resource officer contract renewal for Academy ISD. Next item discuss entering into an interlocal agreement with the City of Belton for document storage at Bell County Archives and review associated fees. Next item is discuss moving countywide phone system from Mitel to Cloud Solutions Ring Central. Next item is discuss and review the petition and request for the call for a general election relating to the Bell County Emergency Service, district no 3. Next, discuss request from the Bell County Emergency Service, district No.1 relating to office space for the Bell County Emergency Service District Number 1. Relating to office space for the Bell County Emergency Service District Number 1. Fire
Speaker 1:marshal. And then we have FY26 budget discussion and that's all in the morning. I don't know if we're going to get to all that in the morning. Know if we're going to get to all that in the morning. Next item is in the afternoon, budget planning, implementation, budget follow-up hearing and departmental update workshops at specifically listed times, at 9 am and 1.30 pm in the Bell County Commissioner's Court. July 14th, 9 am to 12, and 1.30 to 5, budget discussions. And that is all of our meetings. We do have some meetings that the commissioners may or may not attend. We had July 4th, yesterday. Everyone attended that one. July 17th we have the Power of Us, presented by Bell County Juvenile Services at SITCOG. July 21st through 24th we have the North and East County Judge and Commissioners Association Convention Conference. That's in Waco. Then July 30th we had Children's Advocacy Center. I don't know what they're doing there. But that is everything on the agenda for this coming Monday. So thank
Speaker 1:you. Next, like I told you earlier, I did a budget town hall, kind of explained to the people. I also, um, posted it, uh, did a Facebook live event with it, so I was able to get information out there so people can hear and understand and kind of understand what the process is that we go through and decisions we're making. So I want to play that for you. Hope you enjoy it and we will see you. Maybe next week. I am going to the National Association of Counties annual conference that's going to be in Philadelphia. I'll be leaving on Thursday yeah, thursday the 10th, and I should get back by the 14th or 15th, but I'll definitely want to do some interviews while I'm there and talk to some people and hopefully be able to share those with you whenever I get back. So, enjoy the Budget Town Hall and we will see you next week. Yeah, it's good right now. It's good enough.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Well, we'll go ahead and get started and as people trickle in, they'll be able to settle down and settle in. Welcome. My name is Louie Miner, bell County Commissioner for Precinct 4, and I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to come here and hear about the budget that we're currently working on at Bell County. That's going to affect your property taxes here and I need input from you to see what is important to you and what you think is not important as we make decisions on our property taxes. First, I want to thank Texas A&M, central Texas, for allowing us to use this space, this beautiful space. They've always been helpful with the county and any requests that I have. So thank you, texas A&M. Thank you, texas A&M, you know. So I wanted to start just give you a little update on this is our mission statement for the county. I also want to take a moment before we get too far into it is. I want to thank my two interns from University of Texas, elliot and Lily. Lily put all this stuff together, slides working with me, so thank you, lily, for all this. So this is our mission statement. The government of Bell County, texas, exists to promote and sustain a superior quality of life in Central Texas. In partnership with communities and citizens, we pledge to deliver cost-effective services in a personal, responsive and innovative manner. Now, it's that innovative manner is the thing that I like to focus on, because sometimes we forget about that. This is Bell County and this is the precinct maps for the county commissioners In Bell County. Well, in every county in Texas, you only have four county commissioners, regardless of the size of the county, and one county judge, and that makes up your commissioner's court. So these are the boundaries. If you want to know who your commissioner is, my name is Louie Miner. I'm Commissioner 4. And then you can see the boundaries for all the other ones. This is your commissioner's court. Right here We've got County Judge David Blackburn. Precinct 1. County Commissioner Russell Snyder. Precinct 2 County Commissioner Bobby Woodson. Commissioner 3 Greg Reynolds. So these are the people that will be making decisions on your county tax rate and priorities. That we're going to be, and you only need three votes to make something happen at the county level. So just FYI, so you know that the magic number is three. So these are some of the highlights that we're going to go over. You'll see these same things on the agenda that I gave to you. What I want to do is just do this presentation it's going to be about 30 minutes for this part and then I want to hear from you questions that you might have or any ideas that you might have as well of what we can do at the county to make Bell County better. So we'll be going over the county jail, the Killeen Annex and Temple Annex, the population in Bell County, where we're starting with our tax rate, the budget that we're currently working on, and then all the budget requests that we got in for this year, so you can see decisions that we have to make and where we've got to cut and where we're going to spend. And then we'll talk about the disabled veteran surviving spouse tax exemption, some of the other things that were mandated by law to pay for, and then I wanted to end it talking about a county hospital district and emergency service districts in the county.
Speaker 1:Does anyone have any questions? Feel free. I want this to be interactive. If you have any questions, you can stop and ask them at that time. So this is the Killeen Annex.
Speaker 1:We did a groundbreaking last week. A lot of people showed up there. Thank you for those that came. It's going to open in fall of 26. So the timeline that I've seen says September. So that's when we're kind of looking to be opening the doors there. So it's going to be about a 14-month turnaround.
Speaker 1:The project award costs $9,853,590 that the county is investing in downtown Killeen. So why is that important? I think it's part of the comprehensive plan. I was on the comprehensive plan committee whenever it was started, so we did historical look and government investment. A government node has always been in downtown, so it's good that Bell County is the one starting starting this consolidation there. It's gonna be over 28,000 square feet and that'll move everything, just almost everything, off of Priest Drive onto Gray Street. Right now the only thing that's really gonna stay on Priest Drive is the adult probation. Everything else is gonna move. The Help Center will be there too. The Help Center is staying where it's at Temple Annex.
Speaker 1:So I have a lot of question marks here on the Temple Annex. I'm not working on this, but we currently have a renovated Temple Annex. Now it's an older building, but we did renovations on it a couple of years ago. The city of Temple wants it. I don't know why. I'm sure other people will do so. What the city of Temple offered to do is to find us a new location and to give us some money to build a new temple annex. So I think it's around $4, five million. Don't hold me to that. I don't know exactly how much it's going to cost that they're giving us, but it's supposed to be cost neutral. It's not going to cost us anything because City Temple is supposed to cover all these costs. There might be some costs here and there that the county will have to absorb, but we're going to get a new annex out of it.
Speaker 1:So currently, right now, the annex is on central. I think it's on central downtown, off central, uh, in temple, yeah, uh, there, the. The proposed location is going to be off of mlk, so you know where the mlk fairgrounds is in temple. It's going to be right right across the street from that. So, like I said, I don't know a lot about that. I do know they're working on plans for it. I do know that it will probably be going out to bid the end of this year, beginning of next year, and they'll be starting construction. So it is in the works. Yes, ma'am, we're getting there. We're getting there. We're getting there. Yeah, we're getting there. So that's the Temple Annex, new Killeen Annex, new Temple Annex I think it's both. Both are great things.
Speaker 1:Precinct 2, salado. They got a new annex a couple of years ago, and so everything in the county, at least for the annexes, will be new for our residents. Yes, ma'am, yes, they are moving the location, the current annex where Temple is at. We're going to give that to the city of Temple. What they're doing with that, I don't know, but they're going to build the county a new annex off of MLK Street.
Speaker 1:How long has it been there? Oh, decades, decades. I don't know exactly how long the Temple annex has been there, but it's been there for a long time. Yeah, so this is the population in Bell County. Every 10 years we have to do the census, and in 2020, bell County's population was was little over 370,000. In 2025, it's over 404,000 now. So that's according to my math that I did prior to this meeting. That's over 34,000 residents to Bell County in just under five years. So that's a lot of people moving here, a lot of people needing water, electricity, housing, jobs.
Speaker 1:So those are the things that we look at and what we try to think about. Try to do some long-term planning. Oddly enough. The county doesn't have a long-term plan. We don't have long-term plans, like cities do Cities by law, they're required to have a comprehensive plan for every 10 years. The county does not. We could, we could, but that's something that we would have to make a decision on and vote on and at least get three votes to do it.
Speaker 1:So this is did I skip the jail? Okay, here we go, here we go. I'm sorry you, you're, you're right, I because, yeah, we got a little bit too. Okay, now we, we went back to there. So the jail expansion the jail expansion is behind schedule. It was supposed to be open already, but it's's not. It's going to happen. Schedules move here and there, but I think we're a little bit further behind than what we were anticipating, but it is what it is.
Speaker 1:So, for our budget that we're currently working on, now we authorized 66 new jail positions and that was to fully staff the new jail. The new jail expansion is almost 600 new beds coming online. Currently we're at around 1200 beds, so we'll have a total of 1,902 beds for the jail whenever it opens. Now you're probably thinking the same thing I thought whenever I voted on this budget. We don't have 1,912 inmates Currently we only have 1,200 inmates in the jail roughly. So what is all that excess capacity is going to go for? That's why I voted against this budget, the current budget that we're working on.
Speaker 1:The commissioner's court. They want to turn our jail into a private prison and lease out jail space. Now that decision was made, we have to work. I want to make sure our employees are successful and safe. So I want to make sure that they have the tools that they need to be safe and do their job. So the decision was made that this is what we're going to do. So I have to support our employees now.
Speaker 1:So, just taking that for what it's worth, the jail medical costs that has exploded. So our last company that we had work for the county that did jail medical turnkey they quit on us. They said our contract does not account for this, that they I guess they underbid. So they canceled their contract. We had to go out for a new contract. That new contract came in at $8,752,000. A 52% increase from the prior year when turnkey was in charge. That's a lot of money that wasn't accounted for in the budget. We had to go into fund reserves to cover that, but it's not going to be covered under fund reserves. This year they're going to go to the taxpayers to cover that cost.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir no it goes up every year. Yeah, it goes up every year. We have a five-year contract with them, so every year it'll go up. And it'll go up as our population grows in the jail, because the population isn't going to go to 1900 overnight, you know there there's benchmarks that you know. After 1400 inmates, 1500 inmates, that contract will grow. Melissa, you had a question.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot of comments about health and safety. I think that's a big part of the humanity of marijuana, but I think that most of the people who are in these groups are probably not, actually we could.
Speaker 1:And the reason why I say that is because there are some people that get arrested that have prior charges of other things that will not make them eligible for a PR bond. They should be able to get a commercial bond, but not a PR bond, a personal recognizance bond, one that the county would do. So, yes, they could be arrested and charged and being held in Bell County Jail for simple marijuana possession. To my understanding, I don't think the city of Kalina is arresting people for simple marijuana possession. I know I don't think the city of kalina is arresting people for simple marijuana possession. I know there's some here and there, but I I kind of track it a little bit, but I haven't seen a whole lot of arrest. No, they don't want to hold anyone in jail. They're trying to get people out of jail as quickly as possible. That's based off of our current population of about 1,300. It should open up this summer. I do have that figure based off of it, but I don't have it in the slide, but I could get it to you of what it would be based off of the population of the jail. So okay, randy, how much revenue are the judges going to make? We don't know. We don't have any contracts in place.
Speaker 1:I do know the judge said he's talked to other counties that are eager. He mentioned they mentioned $100 a day, $110 a day. I haven't seen anything like that. The state average is $75 a day. I really don't see counties in Texas wanting to pay Bell County a premium because we have a new jail. You know I don't see it. Harris County is mentioned Harris County, the largest jail in the county, obviously because it's the largest county in the state. They're shipping inmates to or not inmates. They're shipping people that are in jail Harris County jail, I think, mississippi but they're only paying $75 a day. Like I said, I don't know if they're going to do it in Bell County for over $100.
Speaker 1:So the total cost of our jail expansion is $101 million. Most of that was ARPA money. $63 million of that was ARPA money. $63 million of that was ARPA money, american Rescue Plan money. You know a lot of counties and cities did some innovative things with ARPA money, but not Bell County. Bell County decided to put all that in a jail and I went to a conference of urban counties meeting not too long ago where the director for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice that's in charge of all of our state prisons, said that is the last thing county should be doing is looking at building a jail, because there's so many other options out there to do before. That should be an option. The last resort is to build a jail, but obviously I don't think we consulted with him. Scott, I don't know that answer. It might have been given at one point in time during that process. This decision was made way before I got into office to office. But I mean, you know we're at 400,000 now and we're at 1,200, 1,300 inmates.
Speaker 2:So I guess we kind of do the math on something like that, ms.
Speaker 1:Sander, I don't have that, I can get it for you. So all these questions that they're asking, let's make notes of it and we'll have to get responses for those Brandy.
Speaker 2:Have they talked about? What is the estimated operating cost of this?
Speaker 1:jail space. No, I mean it's in the millions. I can tell you that I mean the no. No, I don't think so. They're expecting a profit, quote-unquote profit, by leasing out jail space. They're forecasting it to cover our expenses. But one lawsuit will get rid of any type of profits. One wrongful death suit, because they're going to sue the county that that inmate came from and they're going to sue Bell County and they're going to sue the sheriff and they're going to sue the commissioner's. They're going to sue the sheriff and sue the commissioner's court and most likely, they'll probably settle. So it will cost money, melissa. It costs $7,000.
Speaker 2:What are we?
Speaker 1:paying for the, for the medical uh. I mean they're considered indigent so we're required by law to provide medical. Uh. I mean they're getting basic. If there's anything life-threatening, obviously we send them to Scott and White. We got to send a deputy there with them and so any type of treatment like that. If they're on dialysis when they come to us we have to get that. If they're on HIV medication, we got to give them that Cancer treatment. We got to do all that stuff. If they come to us like that, I can't tell you on circumstances like that, the county does what it can to send them home because they don't want to cover that cost.
Speaker 2:If you come in and you have a physical insurance, are we able to bill the insurance for the person who's father has?
Speaker 1:a birth certificate? No, because they're considered indigent when they come. I don't think there's a mechanism for us to do that. It might be something that we could look at with the law. It might be something that we could look at with the law, but I think, as of right now, I'm not aware of any circumstances where we recover costs from people that have medical insurance.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:I have an idea for jail medical costs and we'll cover it here in a little bit, okay. So any other questions on the jail before we move on? Okay, because I know that's important, and once we do open it up, I want to let you know that we will do an open house. So if you want to come see what $101 million looks like, I'm pretty sure that we're going to put it out in the paper and all that stuff. All right, here's our pipeline. Okay, so this is what we're working with now.
Speaker 1:This is our budget that we have, now that we adopted your tax rate, a combined tax rate of .3445 cents per $100 valuation. That was a big increase. We went over the no new revenue rate and for those that don't know what the no new revenue rate is, simply put, it's bringing in the same amount of money that we did last year. Usually it's a lower tax rate because values of the property increase, so we can lower the tax rate and still make the same amount of money. So that's in, in essence, what the no new revenue rate is. And then we have what's called a voter approved rate. Anything above that number has to go to the voters for it to get approved. Cities, counties. They don't like doing that. They like because if it fails then we have to automatically go to the no new revenue rate. So they try to stay under that voter approved rate. But there are instances where they went to the voters. Harris County did it after their hurricanes and direct shows and flooding. They went above the no new revenue rate or the voter approved rate and it got approved by the
Speaker 1:voters. So what the county likes to do is to start out at the no new revenue rate. So that's what we started out working with this budget year. You know how much are we going to bring in with the no new revenue rate and then all all the outside agencies, all the elected officials, all departments. They send in their budget requests and then we start going through those. But you know we still have to do business during the year and during the year things come up that we have to amend this budget and that's usually an increase on what we're spending. So I had the auditor pull together how much budget amendments have we've done already this year. So we're already about to be seven months in. Well, actually we're over that because the budget year starts in October, in October, so oh, and also, before we get to that, one penny, one cent on the county that the county assesses equals about three and a half million dollars, just so you know. So every penny that the county increases your taxes, it's about three and a half million dollars to Bell County. This is a total. If you see at the top right, that's a total of all the budget amendments that we've done so far this
Speaker 1:year. Some of the stuff it's covered by insurance but we pay it up front and the insurance will reimburse us once we get that settlement. So a lot of these things are one-time things. Like the first one. We hired a new contract manager and there was a couple of months that we hired him early to start learning because the other one retired. That's $34,000. That's not reoccurring. The medical costs that will be reoccurring. The medical costs that will be reoccurring. If you look at the very bottom or close to the bottom, number 13,. We added some new district attorneys. That will be an ongoing cost. So some of these things are one-time costs. Some of them are ongoing
Speaker 1:costs. But just for the budget so far, what we've done this year it's $2.9 million. So almost a penny, almost a penny. So that's where we're starting, you know, the budget from. These are our current budget request totals that we got from outside agencies, from departments and other elected officials. Personnel requests four million, four and a half million dollars of departments and elected officials saying, hey, I need new jailers, I need new deputies, I need new clerks, you know those type of things, I need new deputy constables. It's just, you know, we're a growing county. We ask a lot of our employees and when we don't fund these requests, we're asking our employees to do even more, to do even more, without any help and without any additional pay. So those are things that we have to decide which ones are gonna get approved and which ones are not gonna get approved. Capital requests that's like equipment. You know, whenever we hire a new deputy they gotta ride around in something. So we gotta buy a vehicle and those vehicles ain't cheap. A Tahoe alone for the county outfitted is like ninety thousand dollars for one and that's very expensive. So those are the things that that affect the budget and those are the things that we're going through line item for, you know, for personnel, for equipment, and saying yes or no to our elected officials and department
Speaker 1:heads. Capital improvement projects that's a big number. That's not all stuff we're trying to do this budget year. These are things that we have to put and plan for five to ten years out. So some of the things on the Capital Improvement Project are the Killeen Annex that's in that number. The Temple Annex we're looking at, you know, expanding the animal shelter. We're looking at building a new juvenile facility. All those things are wrapped in that number. There's a lot of IT stuff in there. Bell County is responsible for the 911 Center. Bell County is responsible for the 911 center, at least all the capital stuff. So those are all things that that are in that number. Road and bridge equipment, you know, tractors, dump trucks, all those things, all those requests are in there. So it's a total of two hundred and eight million dollars that you know we got to pick from and what we're going to
Speaker 1:spend. What the judge likes to do is to do a percentage of our tax revenue and put it to CIP projects. So we could kind of, you know, start biting at the apple, taking that bite of the apple. This year we had our bonding company come and talk to us and they said even if we stay at the no new revenue rate, we can get an additional $20 million in certificates of obligation. So that just means we've been paying off debt and if we stay at the same rate we could go ahead and take out $20 million. So we're most likely going to do that because, like I said, it's not going to cost us anything, and then start probably taking out some of these CIP projects. Engineer building is one that I think that we're going to be doing, a new engineer building and selling the one that we're gonna be doing, a new engineer building and selling the one that we're currently in, because Belton likes all the downtown stuff to be on the tax rolls and to be little shops and
Speaker 1:stuff. I have the list up here of CIP and personnel requests, so if any of y'all wanna see them and look to see who's asking for what, I personally want more deputies on the
Speaker 1:road. You know how many deputies we have on the road at any given time in Bell County, a county of over 400,000 people Three, three and I think that our citizens deserve more, and I think that's our citizens deserve more. I know, since I've been elected, that the sheriff has asked for more every time. I've always supported those requests, but we don't have a majority of people to remember, we need three votes to give the sheriff more row deputies. He has a lot of jailers and his number is very big already If you look at his budget. So you know there's always hesitation to give them more. But you know, I I have constituents all the time that tell me I never see a deputy uh, and they live out in the country. So I want to try and add more, at least two, two, two deputies, uh per district. I think there's three districts, but it's going to cost money, it's going to cost money.
Speaker 1:Yes, If we stayed at the no new revenue rate? If we stayed at the no new revenue rate, we would still be eligible for the $20 million in debt. No, I don't think it would. I don't think it would. I'm not a bond expert. If we could cover it with the same tax rate that we're doing now, I don't see why it would increase in future years. But I don't know. It's a good question. I can definitely ask that question. So, anyways, you know we have to do something with the $20 million. So maybe you can help me figure that out.
Speaker 1:So this is our disabled veteran exemption here in Bell County. You see, last year we had over 15,000 people in Bell County. If you see, last year we had over 15,000 people in Bell County that are I guess I don't think that's 100% disabled veterans. I'm 50%, so I'm sure I would be in that number somewhere. But the total effect on Bell County's tax rate is four cents. We got two and a half million dollars this year from the comptroller's office and we lost what? 14 million. So I mean there's a significant loss in property taxes revenue from and the state's supposed to reimburse us and they were trying to raise that this year Texas revenue from and the state's supposed to reimburse us. And there were. There was an uh, they were trying to raise that this year and I'm sure Scott could talk, talk about that in more detail than I can. Uh, but, uh, one of our state representatives locally added because there's only a couple of entities that are eligible, I think it was like 11 or 12. They got three more added Parker Heights, lampasas and Nolanville, which they're all deserving. I'm not saying that they don't deserve it, but the state did not increase the allotment. So what does that mean for Bell County? What does that mean for Killeen? Our, our allocation is going to go down because now there's more people, more entities drawing from that bucket of money. So we're going to go down in that money and I would assume that account, that count of veterans getting that exemption, is going to continue to increase. So you got anything on that, right. And the house version, I think, had a whole lot more money, I think almost $90 million. Yeah, yeah. So Right, right. And so I know the county, I know cities. Every legislative year they try and go out and champion that and you know we'll just have to try again. We'll have to try again to get that raised. So this is some of the other services that the state imposes on counties to cover. Disabled veteran. You see that there Indigent health care.
Speaker 1:We're going to talk more about indigent health care in a little bit, but right now we're required by law to dedicate 8% of our budget to indigent health care. So and part of the indigent health care is in the jail, so that number is in there. But also we give five hundred thousand dollars to the Killeen Community Clinic to service indigent health care population and we give five hundred thousand dollars Actually, I'm sorry, five hundred and twenty five thousand dollars to the Killeen Clinic and five hundred and twenty five thousand dollars to the temple clinic to help care and manage our indigent health care population in belf county. Um, you see all the other uh exemptions, uh and costs that that the county has to do. You see that bottom one law judge salary increase. There's going to be another salary increase for district judges. This year they passed a law to raise the judges' pay. It was one of the last things that they did. There's always been a hesitation to raise district judge pay because it's tied to the retirement of state legislators, so they don't want to look like they're giving themselves a pay raise because even though they don't make a lot of money while they're in office, when they retire they make the same retirement as a district judge. So anyway, but that cost is going to come to the counties to bear. So the total of all these things for at least this budget year, $32 million, $32.4 million.
Speaker 1:Now, when I talked about the indigent health care, it's very important to remember we are getting taxed for it already. We are already paying property taxes for our indigent health care. Eight percent of our budget by law has to go to that. But there's another way of doing things. Other larger counties have county hospital districts. Smaller counties have county hospital districts and I think that's something that we need to take a look at doing. A county hospital district in Bell County. It has to be approved by the voters, so that's something that we would be voting on.
Speaker 1:And then there's three statutes that cover the creation of a hospital district, chapter 281,. It's a board that is appointed by the commissioner's court, and I think it could be 7 to 11. It varies by the size of the county of how many board members you have, but they're set by the county commissioner's court. Harris County, our largest hospital district in the county. It's called Harris Health. Their board is appointed by the commissioner's court. They're a over billion dollar hospital district but they set the tax rate for the hospital district and they set the budget. The commissioner's court approves it or disapproves it. They have no say-so over the budget and no say-so over the tax rate other than thumbs up or thumbs down. So they can't do line item vetoes. They can't do anything like that.
Speaker 1:Chapter 283, it would be the commissioner's court serving as the board of the hospital district. I don't think anyone wants that. We are not health care experts and I think people running a hospital district sitting on that board should be somewhat knowledgeable on health care threshold. The first two you only need 100 signatures on a petition to force a vote to the voters. The last one I think you need 3% of registered voters in the county. That's about 8,000, 9,000 signatures to create an elected position for the hospital district. An elected position for the hospital district. So the hospital district. They would cover indigent health care. They would be responsible for everything that the county is doing now for indigent health care.
Speaker 1:The opposite, or something different that the hospital district can do that the county is not doing or the cities, is public health. Right now we contract with the public health district and if you saw, they closed a facility in Temple. They're losing federal funding and to me the hospital district is like the hop. You know, when budgets are constrained, when federal dollars are constrained, entities that are paying in, they're going to be paying less and less. So those are less and less services for our residents. So everything that the public health district does now a hospital district can do, and then the same thing with jail medical. The jail medical would fall under the hospital district. So I think the hospital district is an answer for these rising costs.
Speaker 1:You know we can't go over three and a half percent of the tax rate from this year to the next, so we're capped and there's efforts in Austin to even reduce that more. They want to do any tax increase to be voter approved. Anything over the no new revenue rate, they want it to be voter approved. You know counties, cities, cannot operate like that. So you know they tried that this legislative session. I think they'll try it again. But what this will do is shift the burden of indigent health care from the county to the hospital district and that would free us of that 8 percent requirement.
Speaker 1:Another thing that we do with health care in the county is we tax all health care. A lot of people don't know that, but here in Bell County it's called the Local Provider Participation Fund. It started in 2016, but we put a six percent tax on all health care in the county and we do that at the request of the hospitals. They ask us to do that Now. They pay it. The hospitals pay it because they get one and a half times their money back from the federal government. So that's kind of a workaround. Medicaid expansion this is their workaround for that.
Speaker 1:But right now at the federal level they're trying to cut. It's called LPPF. They're trying to cut LPPF. They're also trying to cut Medicaid, medicare benefits and who's eligible. So I think there's going to be a bigger shift of medical and indigent care to counties. Cities are not responsible for it. It's the county that's responsible for indigent health care, are not responsible for it. It's the county that's responsible for indigent health care.
Speaker 1:One of the things right now that the LPPF allows us to do is to subsidize indigent programs. That's what the law says subsidize indigent programs. Historically, here the LPPF, baylor, scott and White they come and say hey, I want you to tax us. County commissioners say yes and that's it. We funnel the money to the federal government, to the state and funnel it back. It's just been a circle with Baylor Scott, white and the other hospitals in the county.
Speaker 1:But when I started looking into the law it says that they have to do more things to us. They have to give us their financials, they have to let us know what they're spending it on. And whenever I asked for it the county never had it before. So I asked for these reports that they have to give to the state and Baylorlor Scott and White and all of them started giving them to me. It covers the LPPF is good. It's supposed to cover their uncompensated care. So you know when you go to the hospital if you don't have medical insurance. If you don't have, you know if you're an immigrant they can't turn you down. They have to provide you care and that uncompensated care is supposed to be taken care of through the LPPF. They said since Bell County has started participating in LPPF we've got half a billion dollars back from the federal government in LPPF.
Speaker 1:That provision of LPPF where it talks about subsidizing indigent health programs.
Speaker 1:No one knows what that means no other county has used it, no other. Well, if you have a hospital district you could do your own LPPF so you don't have to go after that money. But so I brought it up to Baylor Scott and White in a meeting last week. What does that mean to them? What is subsidizing indigent programs mean to them? They said they have to talk to their lawyers first. So I think there's room there for us to get $4 million out of the LPPF and help pay for our jail medical so we don't have to increase your taxes. That's what I'm looking to do with LPPF. Their representatives it wasn't an attorney, I think it was some type of you know firm that represents LPPS to you know figure out what they think subsidizing indigent health programs mean and then come talk to us. So that's you know. We're working on that to see about lowering the costs of our indigent health care, our general medical, so it doesn't affect the county taxpayer. You had a question in the back.
Speaker 2:I'm going to start off with a, the country for a facility to develop, and then on top of that in a hospital district. A hospital district can also carve similar TLCs, but they can carve their own TLCs and just add it on to everything. In a hospital district there's no way that 75 cents will not be a more or less going forward. That, whatever that off sentence, either that will be off, or it will go to the next, or it will go to the next, or it will go to the next, or it will go to the next, or it will go to the benefit of everyone. And again, even if they don't have to go to the hospital, they're 100% disabled.
Speaker 1:So they don't. So we have almost $8 million that we're paying for indigent health care. The county is paying and uncompensated care. Last year we paid $180 million. So to me I think that's a little bit more the true cost of indigent health care here in Bell County $188 million. So what does that look like in a tax rate? You know, probably 30, 40 cents. So if you and there are provisions in the law in creating a hospital district that you can do a bond election at the same time but that's going to be something for the voters to decide the commissioner's court can call for an election on its own. I don't know if they would do that. If we would do that, I don't think I have three votes for that. But, like I said, all it takes is a petition of 100 signatures Bell County registered voters to force an election on a hospital district. Sure, sure.
Speaker 1:Right to do what we're doing now. You know the status quo. I mean it's going to get passed down one way or the other, either through uncompensated care or, you know, as the budget increases because we, you know, we increase value of our property, then that three and a half percent or that eight percent of our budget it'll increase every year because property values increase.
Speaker 2:But outside of that I don I don't see doing more as long as we have personal data, we can build yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm having a hard time. Yeah, va won't pay anything, they won't provide any medication. Same thing with TRICARE they won't pay anything, they won't provide medication. So if you're an active duty soldier, if you're a disabled veteran and you get put in the Bell County Jail, you're not going to get any medication. We got to give it to you even though you have a brand new bottle with VA on it and it hasn't been opened. You know the jail says you can bring it in, but you know it's not going to be right away. I don't know. That's a good question that we can ask, but I think, technically, if you're in jail, like your benefits stop, so but that's something that we can check.
Speaker 2:Scott, did you have a question? Right now, the local provider is making a tax.
Speaker 1:It's like they say we don't want to get a tax. The hospital is somehow ready to take a federal one, correct? So it covers uncompensated care. Do you sell it to get the tax cut? No, it goes to the hospitals. Is uncompensated care? No, it goes to the hospitals. So we have to. We assess the tax Now and I got into it with Baylor, scott and White. They're like, oh, we pay it. I'm like, okay, it doesn't matter who pays it, whether you pay it or the patient pays it, that we're levying a tax on health care. Now y'all opt to pay it. You decide to pay it so you can get that money back. But if you didn't pay it and we assessed it, you would have to collect it from the patient. So to me that money should be used for help offset, subsidize our indigent health care program, because if we do that then that's going to help lower our tax rate. So at least in the immediate we could do that in the immediate. Was there another question over here?
Speaker 2:I was just going to say so. Patients that are disabled. They're considered indigent.
Speaker 1:Right now they reimburse the county. So if we get someone new and they're eligible for indigent health care, what they try to do is get them on Medicare. If they're approved, they will reimburse us all the money that we've spent on them. So anytime someone new comes into the indigent health care program and they are a US citizen, that's one of the first things that we try to do is get them qualified on one of these other things because we will get reimbursed and we do get reimbursement money from them things because we will get reimbursed and we do get reimbursement money from from them. Any other questions on hospital districts? Okay, the last thing I want to talk about is ESDs, emergency Service Districts. They're created by voters and funded by property taxes. So emergency service districts are out in the rural parts of the county. If you're in the city limits, you don't have to worry about it, because you pay for fire service, ambulance service already, but if you don't, right now in the county, well, until a couple of years ago, everything was volunteer and we had all the vfds that perform services for many years uh, you know serving the residents of bell county. But that model is changing. What's changing? That is, the county is growing, the need is growing and the county doesn't fund fire services and emergency services properly. Right now Bell County only has one contract for one ambulance out in the entire county. Does that make sense? It doesn't. And we've been dependent on the city of Killeen, here on the west side of the county, to take care of all the ambulance service. And that's what we've been doing and that's been great, to take care of all the ambulance service. And that's what we've been doing and that's been great. That's been working well for the county for many, many years. But it's not now because the city of Killeen said they're not going to service Turnbow Ranch. Turnbow Ranch I drove through it today. There's tons of houses out there now. I mean just not even a year ago there were zero houses out there. There's probably 100 plus houses out there in some form of construction. So the city of Killeen said they're not going to service them. So right now, if they have an ambulance, the need for an ambulance is going to come from Nolanville or Salado, that's it. And to me that's that's not going to work. Uh, southwest bell fire, that covers that area. They don't have an ambulance. So you know, an esd would be able to handle fire and ambulance service. Uh, it's needed. Like I I said, we're a growing county.
Speaker 1:A lot of the other ESDs that were created so far they have not included ambulance service, because you have to include that in your petition the services that you want to provide. So if you want to look up the statute, it's chapter 775 of the Health and Safety Code for the creation of an emergency service district, of the Health and Safety Code for the creation of emergency service district. Hold on, we're getting there. We're getting there. So right now we have ESD-1. It was the first one created in 2020, and that's Salado, the Salado Volunteer Fire Department and the city of Salado.
Speaker 1:To my understanding, if I think correctly, they opted to become Bell County's first ESD. They've been there for a couple of years. That is their tax rate right now for the ESD. I think it could go up to 15 cents, if I remember correctly. So that's where they're at and I don't think Salado provides ambulance service because you know an ambulance can cost about $500,000 just for the box and then you've got to put the EMT and the paramedic and all that stuff and staff at 24 hours, seven days a week. So you know you're talking money. But this is services that we expect. You know, if you're out here in Turnbull Ranch and you have a heart attack or some type of medical, you don't want to wait 35-40 minutes for an ambulance to come reach you. You'll be dead and I don't. I don't want that to happen when we could do something about it. So this is ESD number one that was created.
Speaker 1:We have ESD number two that was created last year by the voters. Now there's still some. We don't know the exact boundaries of where it was, because the city of Troy was supposed to be in the ESD but they opted out of it. We're trying to figure out exactly where the ESD, but they opted out of it. So we're trying to figure out exactly where the ESD is, but it's kind of in the northern Bell County, that light purplish-blue area. North Bell County is the ESD number two. So how much money is the county paying for fire and ambulance Do you think? You know we're 400,000 people. How much do you think that we're paying for that? You said zero in the back. It's a little bit more than zero, but okay, we'll get there in a second ESD3.
Speaker 1:There's talks right now. We had a petition that came into Bell County this year to create ESD 3. What is gonna be ESD 3? Nolanville, sparta and Stillhouse. That's gonna be three creeks, you know three creeks out there off of 1670. All that area is gonna be an ESD if it gets approved by the voters in November. There was some stuff wrong with their petition so we denied it, but there's still time for them to fix it and I fully anticipate them to bring that corrected petition to us because we have until mid-July or early August to call for an election. So, another ESD in Bell County. If you go to Williamson County, travis County, there's ESDs everywhere. So just so you know, this isn't something that's new or novel. It happens in growing communities because the county cannot afford to pay for the services that are needed, because we're capped at 3.5% tax increase.
Speaker 1:Esd4, that's something that I'm looking to do. That would be in the lighter blue portion right here in the lower left-hand corner. That's Southwest Bell currently. Now they would still exist. Southwest Bell wouldn't go away, but an ESD would be created in that service area and that's what I'm looking to bring to citizens. Yes, ma'am, yeah, yeah, mm-hmm. Yeah, salato Volunteer Fire Department still exists. They didn't go away. They work with the ESD? Oh yeah, no, they, they wouldn't go away. The ESD is still there. I would imagine Sparta Volunteer Fire Department will still be there. They could incorporate into the ESD or they could still be a volunteer fire department. Yes, ma'am, property tax, there would be an additional property tax. Yes, yes. So you know what is your health and safety, you know, worth to you? That's what you got to think about. You know, are you willing to keep the status quo and wait 45 minutes for an ambulance to come get to you, or you want the ambulance there in 10? You know that's the decisions we're going to have to make here in the distant future.
Speaker 2:Not so distant future, yes, ma'am, but also the only individual who can actually afford it, and we are offering them within that.
Speaker 1:Correct, and they would be the ones voting for it.
Speaker 2:Right. So as a citizen and a incorporated woman of the community, I don't see any point in the school system for that result of itself. It does have a good Right, yeah, right.
Speaker 1:So real quick. Let me just finish off with. I asked you a question of how much does the county pay for fire and ambulance service out in the rural parts of the county. That's the number right there, the number that that's on there. Five hundred seventy five thousand dollars, that's how much we pay all the volunteer fire departments. We give them a little of money, uh, and it's it doesn't go to them. Just like you know, steelhouse, you get x number of dollars. It's based off of runs. So how many times they get called out and they go? That's what it's based off of.
Speaker 1:So we have that pot of money there. A hundred thousand of that is for grant matches. So you could take a hundred, you'll take a hundred thousand out of that and that's actually what we're paying them. That $100,000 helps them buy equipment and vehicles. So that's what that money's for. So they don't get a lot of money and I think they are underfunded and they'll never be able to catch up to the need funded and they'll never be able to catch up to the need. You know they can't have enough bake sales to catch up to the need to be able to buy a $500,000 ambulance or a million-dollar fire truck. So you know we have to look at other ways to fund that and that's going to be through property taxes. So that's about all that I have.
Speaker 1:You know the main thing is I wanted to engage with y'all, I wanted to let y'all know what our budget is looking like. I wanted you to know the requests that are coming in and you know decisions that we're gonna have to make, and you know I wanted input from y'all. So thank y'all for coming out. Are there any other questions? No, no, not really, other than at the juvenile center, whatever educational, but we just give them money. We don't do anything with the curriculum or anything like that. The chief juvenile probation officer does. Yes, ma'am, to the hop. I think it's I I don't know the answer the exact number. I remember I said on the hop board I think, if I remember correctly, the county's like 300 something. Thousand into the hop is very minuscule from for the need.
Speaker 2:So yeah, the HOPP should be able to qualify for federal.
Speaker 1:I think the revenue you might be talking about is from Fort Hood. Well, no, they get a lot of money from Fort Hood. Okay, okay, I'll look into that. I just got appointed to the board. I've only attended two meetings, but I'll make note of that. Any other questions? Any other questions? Well, thank you all for coming. You got a question now. Okay, thank y'all for coming. It's been great. I enjoyed spending this time and, please, we have cards back there. If you want to shoot me an email any ideas that y'all want any, I don't mind sharing the request that we got from the county departments and elected officials. I don't mind sharing the CIP list that we're going to choose from. So if you want any of that information, let me know and we'll share it with you. Thank you.
