All right, we're going to call the meeting to order at 902, January 21, 2020. We're going to have
Supervisor Kanan, lead us into pledge.
And now we have a brief moment of silence.
All right, could would you please make sure all cell phones are on vibrate or silent, please?
We did make that announcement last time and it happened, so you don't get an excuse this time.
Do we have any roll calls, first, district one, district two, three, four, and five, all present.
We have any amendments to the agenda.
Thank you. Any other amendments? Yes, sir. On my report seven, aye. I believe in the number 12. It's approved for attendance at the National Hurricane Center.
Excuse me, the National Hurricane Conference.
And that paper six to eight on nine in Orlando.
There'll be under aye.
12, aye. 12, yes, sir. Aye, Mr. Bill.
There'll be eight, eight, one in B1, or the two, actually, and B1 and B1 and B1.
I also seem to. Any any other amendments?
I think we want to have a partial table on five, a five.
We will maintain the ARFF chief salary and benefits, I believe, on this agenda, the other of the table, until the first meeting in March.
All right, we have any any further amendments?
I need a motion to accept the agenda.
Speaker motion by district one, second by district five, any further discussion?
VNN, district one, two, three, four, and five, motion carries five, zero.
I'm sorry, it was district two and five.
You sound like Theresa.
Anyway, I had announcements.
That track was scheduled board. Board of Supervisors meeting will be held at nine a.m. on Monday, February 3rd.
By weekly payroll, period ending January 4, 2020 total 733,723 dollars and 31 cents.
And this will be received this morning until 10 a.m. for the Hancock County Beach Maintenance Rebed.
All right, and vids will be received in a board of Supervisors office until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, February 18th, 2020.
For the following annual term vids, these are rebids from the original request for vids,
arutiles on November 27th and December 4th, 2019.
Yeah, culverts and couplings, cold by two minutes pick up, double by two minutes surface treatment,
high polymer micro servicing, hot by two minutes in place, and picked up.
And micro servicing and seals.
All right, first up on the agenda external businesses must be a court with a port and harbor.
Good morning, everyone. First the morning. First item is a approval of our January 15th,
talking about district five, any further discussion? Be a nine district one, two, three, four, and five,
motion carries five, zero. Thank you very much. Next one is a short term use agreement spread on the
minutes with good night terminal services for use of the lanyl dock rail access for any amount of $2,000 per month.
This is my district two. Second, my district five, any further discussion? Be a nine,
district one, two, three, four, and five, motion carries five, zero. Thank you. The next is a
a tight on agreement with culverts. A VH for the use of a single tight on location.
That's an international airport for $50 per month. Payton and six month advance of $300.
These are standard rates and charges and culabries is one of the flank structures out the airport.
Motion by district one. Second, second by district. Any further discussion? Be a nine,
district one, two, three, four, and five. Motion carries five, zero. Thank you item number four is a,
another use of, it's actually an interim use agreement with a company called Jet A transport.
It's actually a fuel truck. This is one of the fuel drivers that brings in the aviation fuel into
the airport. They just want to place the park to truck. They'll go get the fuel, bring it there. But it's
kind of an on-sart site job or contract. So, a little land lease there to house the truck.
Motion by district five. Second by district three. Any further discussion? Be a nine,
district one, two, three, four, and five. Motion carries five, zero. Thank you. Before we do item number five,
I wanted to take a point of personal privilege to introduce my wife, Nina's here today.
And she saw the agenda and saw my compensation was on it. So, she decided to come down here and protect her financial
interests. I also like to introduce Madeline Walker, Madeline Walker's a new Ronnie Wade Robertson in our office.
She's a great lawyer from Gulfport. She started a week ago and coming to check us out and see how we run our
business and she's a new valuable member of our team. Item number five is a budget amendment to address
a new archief. We hired a, the normally the way we do our fire department is that everybody's a 1099 employee kind
of a contract. And with the increase in the DOD aviation work that we're doing out there, the MRL activities,
the Nav air form military sales contracts, the firefighting requirements, training, inspection,
regime has really, really gone up. The tenants pay for these services. Okay, but we've been doing this so far
with, with, with part time, part time type employees. So we went out and put on a job description for a new
fire chief went out into the universe to try to hire another contract employee. What we found was was a gentleman who
is a deputy fire chief for Harrison County who's got massive experience in DOD fire protection.
It has a background in the DOD and really is a, really the problem one of the more competent firefighters on
the coast. Coming in with some great ideas and has really hit the ground running. But some of the things
that he wanted to come on board here was to get his purse credit and some of the benefits as well as a part time
contract. And so that's not something we had contemplated in our budget, but really want to take advantage
of this opportunity to, you know, kind of get the guy what he needs in order to keep him around and keep him happy. So
our commission go to unanimously to offer this and to bring it up to you as both a budget amendment
under personal services and then also to authorize that position. So that's the point. The other part is my
compensation as you know, right, and ongoing negotiations. So ask that you table that until further notice.
We'll be the approval of 53,000, six, seven hundred and thirty four dollars.
Need a motion a second?
The insurance benefits per is at all included within that. This is a part of variable part time contract.
We're just getting him his purse credit, but it will not be other but otherwise benefits eligible.
We looked into this and figured out we can do it. So the number, I think the Gary referred to includes
the fringes on the other compensate.
Said that that's the ARF athlete boy, right? No, no, the 87 includes both pages and salary for both.
And I think the Delta's 53, six, very fort. But that includes the fringes on the
and the other compensation as well. No, no, there's a two and I mean it includes both of them.
But whatever that number is, if you could send it to his bill, I will be happy to do that.
Yeah, just we'll amend the record. We'll sign up and revise resolution with all these
Johnson titles on it and get, get you the breakout. Yeah, I've got a question about district two.
So I could. Second, by district one, any further discussion?
Be a none district one two three four and five motion carries five zero. Thank you all very much. Have a great week.
All right, next up, we have a presentation by your honor, bro.
I'm sorry, Trent, how would we just want to say we want to go ahead and do the appointments for the.
I think I apologize, Trent.
Yeah, so, so we have a one, this would be a motion, I guess, I sympathize with district one.
What would be the name you would want for that motion? Robert Martin.
I've got a motion by district one. Second, by district two, to approve Robert Martin as district one appointment on a important
hall of commission, a fact of January 21st, 2020. I'm sorry, district five. Sorry.
Okay, let thing a little closer to you. Any further discussion? Be a none district one two three four and five motion carries five zero.
All right. Next up, we have a motion by district two to approve the reappointment of Paul Jordan.
As district two's commission, appointment on a important hall of commission. Second, by district one.
Any further discussion? Be a none district one two three four and five motion carries five zero.
All right, the one's the district three.
And supervots of district three, what would be your name for the insert in that appointment? Derrick me case. Derrick me case.
All right, we got motion by district three.
Sorry, I can second by district five to appoint Derrick me case as a representative for district three on a important hall of commission.
Any further discussion?
Be a none district one two three four and five motion carries five zero.
Motion by district four to reappoint Derrick or Nail as my appointment on district four on the
important hall of commission. Second, by district five. Any further discussion?
Be a none district one two three four and five motion carries five zero.
All right, and we got a motion by district five to appoint Michael Bennett to the
important hall of commission. Second, by district four to be effective January 21, 2020. Any further discussion?
Be a none district one two three four and five motion carries five zero.
That takes care of all the report report over the points and what is your next.
Good afternoon. Three, three, three, three, three.
All right, now we have a presentation by Judge Trent Farf. Good morning.
Thanks for having us again this year. I think the presentation will be a little shorter than last year.
I think it's important for me and my role is youth court judge to provide you all with
information yearly. I'm not aware of another county judge that undertakes this annually but given
where our youth court came from and where we are today.
I think it's a good idea to keep you informed. Plus, you also annually authorize our budget because of that. I feel like there's some accountability that I need to have to you also that you know that you're spending the taxpayer money properly.
I threw this slide in to just make sure that everybody understands that I have multiple roles.
I'm here today to report on the state of the youth court that I wanted to remind you all, and I think you all are aware.
I'm also the county court judge, which presides over all the civil cases.
It filed a haircut county, and the criminal appeals from the lower courts.
So that's one of my responsibilities, and typically I'm in term the second Monday of every month in the big court house.
I'm taking care of those matters, and then the other weeks of the month, I'm in the youth court.
So under the youth court, there are actually two divisions.
So most of you all are familiar with and most interested in the abuse and neglect side of things.
But there's also the delinquency side. So when a child commits a crime, that will come to youth court.
Okay.
Like last year, I wanted to just share some statistics to show you where we've come from.
In January of 2018, when I took the bench, we had 389 children in custody.
In January of last year, I stood before you and pointed out that we had 165.
And this year, we had 108 children in custody.
So that's a 72% reduction in the number of children in custody of our two year period.
There is a website, if you want to jot it down, it's called fosteringcourtimprovement.gov, fosteringcourtimprovement.gov.
And this is a website maintained by the Children's Bureau, which is the agency in charge of child welfare for the whole country.
And they retrieve data from our system through CPS and study our numbers.
If you go to that website and look at the information, you will probably realize that we still have a lot of progress to be made.
Okay. We've come a long way, but there's still a lot of work to be done.
In two years, we have been able to reduce the number of kids in custody.
And when you look at that number, that 72% reduction, that's just looking at January 1st of 2018, the number in the number today, that's a 72% reduction.
But what you need to keep in mind is as we worked through the backlog, we were still taking children in at the same time in processing those cases.
So we were working old cases and working new cases and the approach that I took was to work aggressively move cases forward so that we could get to where we are today.
I wanted to just walk you through the numbers of the 108 children we do have in custody.
34 of those children are on a reunification cycle. So what that means is that we are working with their parents to try to reunify the family.
There are strict timelines in our statutes. So if a child is under the age of three, we have six months to work with that family.
There's an extraordinary and compelling circumstance that CPS shows us for children over the age of three, it's one year.
It's important to adhere to these timelines because children need permanency.
So we need to make sure that we're moving forward so that children can either be re-unified with their parents or a family member or move on to the adoption process.
But a lot of the numbers in a voucher show you are a lot of the older cases and the pending TPR TPR's termination of parental rights.
So if they don't do, if the parents do not do what they are supposed to do within the time period, then we move to termination of parental rights.
So 28 children are that 108 are on a TPR track.
40 of those have been TPR. They're parental rights have been terminated and they're waiting for an adoption.
Okay.
Six are in Apla, which is another permanent plan living arrangement.
These are children that typically have not been adopted, but we're preparing them for the next step adulthood.
So when you look at these numbers, I think it's important to look at that top number and see that we've got 34 and I call them in the hopper that we're working with.
We meet with them monthly.
I meet with the parents monthly and try to move those cases towards reunification.
The reason that number is important is it's a low number are that 108 and it's been consistent.
We are taking fewer children into custody and we'll go through that in a second.
When you look at fosteringimprovement.gov, if you go there, what you'll see is that our numbers are still off for accounting our size.
Okay. Now, what I don't know is our drug problem worse than Warren County.
Warren County is of similar size.
Geographically, kind of similar.
Has a population center of Vicksburg, similar to the Bay of St. Louis and Wavelin.
Has a rural area, has an interstate that goes through it, 20, and is a border county to Louisiana.
So you have a lot of transient folks. So it's a similar size county.
Their numbers are much clearer in the 80 range.
Look, when you're talking about numbers, I get it. Every county is different.
But these are national numbers, these are state numbers that we look at.
And we just still have too many children in custody based on the numbers.
We should probably be in the 60 to 80 range.
And I think we will be there. We've been consistent over a two year period.
And I think we will get there. It's just going to take a little bit of time on the pending TPR number.
So what happens when a kid is referred to TPR, the state prepares a pocket and that goes to the other division of county court,
where we have a hearing, and I have aggressively set these cases to move them forward.
And so most of these cases will be heard in this month, and then some in February and some in March.
There are still out of that 28, probably six kids.
That have cases still pending in chance record.
I have taken some back because they were so old.
But if they were pending in chance rate before, they stayed in chance record.
And so you've got six kids that have had their cases pending for years, and they're for different reasons.
They're just not resolved.
But hopefully that number, the 28 trinks in the next two or three months, and then we'll flow into the next number.
Of that 40 there, about 18 kids will be adopted in the next 30 to 90 days.
Okay?
And the, just to put a new members previously, it was a youth court, not in a county court.
So it was a referee system, which is why they got transferred for TPR to chance reinstall to begin.
Under Judge Farve now is all under one court.
Right.
So according to the latest data published by CPS, we're still a number 11 in the state for a number of children in custody.
So that's not scaled down by size.
That's total number of kids.
So we're behind Harrison, you know, Hines, Latterdale for the bigger counties that are two, three, four times bigger than us.
We were, we were a number one and number two for a long time.
Or I guess number two in this, in this stat, behind Harrison County and then Marion County was another problem county.
But we've dropped to number 11, which is really good.
Here's some of the key indicators that I wanted to point out to you.
If you look at three or history, a shelter hearing is the first hearing we have after custody is taken.
It's required by a lot of be held within 48 hours.
In 2017, there were 242 kids who had a shelter hearing.
So that means they were removed from their parents and had a hearing.
In 2018, I took the bench in January of 2018, it went to 59.
So we took fewer kids into custody, 61 in 2019.
So you can see some consistency. They are not a big variation.
And the number of adjudications and adjudication is a trial.
So the parents were found to have abused or neglected their child.
At 437 and in 2017, 2018, it was 97 and in 2018, 89.
Some recent trends.
Since July 1st of last year, we've taken in 22 children through shelter hearings.
So if you think that through, we're much more consistent now with the number of children we take in the custody.
And I'm going to explain a little bit why we're taking fewer kids into custody.
In case you've got some reservations.
If you look also reduction in number of cases referred for termination parental rights.
In 2019, only 19 children were referred to TPR.
So if you think back to the graph, I just showed you hopefully the number of TPRs will decrease.
Okay. And we want our reunification number to increase, right? That sounds humane.
But I will tell you after talking about this with Judges throughout the state.
If you're taking fewer kids into custody, that means you're taking the tougher cases.
Okay? Which means it's going to be harder to reunify.
So we don't want to bank on or get geared to thinking that our reunification rate has to, I want it.
I want it to be high. But it is harder to have a higher reunification rate with the cases that we're taking in.
There's just harder. But we're going to do everything we can because I think everybody is redeemable.
Every parent deserves a chance. Every child deserves their parent.
So we'll do everything we can. And you'll hear later about some of the resources that we have that make us unique in Mississippi to accomplish reunification.
So why the continued decrease? This is the most important thing. It's safe at home initiative.
So this is a national and state trend to provide in-home services instead of removal due to the trauma of the child.
Everyone, the buzzword is trauma in the child welfare industry.
And we know that when you remove a child from their parents, it's one of the most traumatic events that they can experience.
The second most traumatic event, a second to actually losing a parent.
So the goal is to keep kids and children with their parents while we work with them.
So if the report comes in to CPS, it's investigating the same way that it's always been.
But a decision has to be made. And CPS has to determine whether or not there's a safety risk.
And we've done a lot of training on this to make sure we're all on the same page.
But they assess for safety. If the child can be safely maintained in the home and provided services, then we can prevent custody.
This isn't really new. If you go back and look at Mississippi Law and federal law, the law has always said that the agency, CPS, has to make reasonable efforts to prevent custody.
That has always been the federal standard. So we have to make our best effort to try to prevent taking that child into custody.
The 75 children currently have in home cases.
All right, so it's possible to say that there's 75 children may have come in custody under the prior court.
But 75 children, which is 33 sibling groups, there may have been substantiated abuse from neglect, most likely neglect of some sort.
But we have put services in place to take that safety risk out of the home.
Another reason for the decline is we've had more adoptions.
In 2019 the state really pushed a lot of adoptions through in 67 adoptions happened in Hancock County.
So those are mostly the older cases.
I think another reason for the decrease is the adherence to statutory timelines that move the cases through the system.
We have months to month hearings, as I pointed out earlier, this provides accountability.
Accountability both ways. Parents have a voice in the courtroom, and they're eager to be in the courtroom.
On a month to month basis, instead of wondering what's going on for three, six months at a time,
the law only requires us to meet with those parents every six months.
But we do at months to month, and I think it really does give them hope to see that there are cases moving forward.
If things are not progressing, the sooner we know about it, the better, right?
So if the parent is not meeting some goal, we can hear about it in the courtroom and figure out why.
Provide more resources.
Another reason I think we have a decrease is family representation.
We have our family attorney here, Mr. Usel.
You pay half of that salary, the other half is paid through a grant.
There's a big push statewide to make sure that every court has a family representative attorney.
That this really does make a big difference.
We are testing something in Hancock County.
We have a few cases where we're appointing the attorney to an in-home case.
So typically, when a child is taken into custody, the attorney is appointed and the attorney will appear at the shelter hearing at that first hearing.
But we're going to try to appoint the attorney on some of the in-home cases just so that the parents have legal guidance through that process.
So we're looking at five different cases just to see how that works.
That's also a national trend.
But we're on the forefront of that.
Lastly, resources.
We have more people and resources for fewer families.
This is something to be proud about in Hancock County because if you go to other counties, they do not have the resources that we have.
When I go around the state and talk about what we have here, I almost feel bad because other other judges don't have access to some of the things we have.
You all know about CASA.
There are only six CASA chapters in the state.
So we have one of them here and it's one of the best in the country.
We have a child advocacy center, who are pavement.
There are only 13 in the state.
So we have one here.
We have a resource center, Hancock Resource Center.
Not every county has a resource center.
We have a visitation or a family center first in the state.
So we have a lot of resources that other counties don't have.
And we are steadily becoming a model for other counties in the state.
So I think that is a big thing.
If you can think back some of the older supervisors.
Years ago, the ratio of case worker to kids was out of whack.
There just weren't enough case workers to handle all the families, the volume.
And now we have, you know, those ratios in check.
And so really what every parent gets is a better shot.
Because they have more resources and people resources to help them through the process.
And I'd like to say if a parent doesn't make it here,
it's not from our lack of trying.
Okay.
They've gotten our best.
I want to just point this out because these are some interesting numbers.
As anyone can tell you that's here.
I like numbers.
I like compliance.
I think it's important that we focus on compliance.
The statutes were written to produce a good output to produce a good product.
So if you follow the law, it is likely that you're going to be doing things correctly.
So in fiscal year 1617, our court system had a 57% compliance rate.
Now the compliance rate is calculated over nine different factors that are monitored by the state.
And I can pull those that information from our computer system.
In 17 and 18, so this would have been half of my year.
Our compliance rate went up to 72%.
Now the one of the issues I found is, as I corrected issues,
if I corrected it in my year, it was a non-compliance in my year.
So that whatever happened that went wrong in 17, if I corrected it in 18,
it shows up on my report as a non-compliance.
For the 18, 19 year, we went up to 86%.
That was number eight in the state.
So we went from the bottom 82 to number eight.
That number still gets under my skin.
If you know me, 86% is not something to be proud of yet.
But look where we are right now.
Through the six months of this year, we're at a 97.5 compliance rate.
And we're really proud of that.
It's a good number.
I talked to one of the directors in Jackson yesterday,
and that number puts us up with Ranking County in Madison County.
We're going to be number one.
Here are some of our highlights.
Last year, I was asked to participate in the state's performance improvement plan.
So the state assembles a team.
The state has to do an improvement plan every couple of years.
And I was 104 judges asked to serve on the improvement plan,
which really gave me an opportunity to learn about some of the things that
we need to correct and fix in our state system.
Again, I had to start implementing some of those things in our own court.
In the beginning of last year, I was recognized as Mississippi's champion for children,
for the entire judiciary in the state of Mississippi.
We unveiled the halls of Hope Art Project last year,
and we brought three panels for you all to see.
This has really changed the court room aesthetic.
And so when you walk into a court room now, you see Hope, and you see artwork,
and that points people to a positive direction.
We converted Brenda's house from an emergency shelter to a family center,
and that's the first of its kind in the state of Mississippi.
I think that's going to see reap the benefits of that.
And that's your commitment that you made.
And I appreciate that very much in the families that are served by it.
In the middle of the year, last year I was recognized as a re-enification here by the child welfare
and child advocacy committee of the Mississippi Bar.
We also held Hancock County's first re-enification day of that.
Lawrence attendance by the public, not a large attendance by families that have been re-enified,
but we think that's because it was the first of its kind,
and to put yourself back out there after you've been through the youth court processes a big step.
But for the families that came, it was very meaningful.
And I think this year we'll have a pretty good turnout.
We created a court book room.
I'm sorry, a courtroom book program for children who attend hearing,
so we're able to provide a book to children in the courtroom when they come for their hearings.
And just to point out prior to 2018, children were not coming to their hearings.
And we think it's very important for children to have a voice and say in their case.
So when they come to court, they can leave with a book.
We recently added a third D.Y.S. counselor.
So this is on the link-wincy side.
We wanted to add a counselor last year, and I talked to Mr. Farve about that.
And what do you know? We found it.
And you didn't have to pay for it.
This is a state-funded position.
So that was good news.
We also entered into an MOU with Harrison County,
Do you have an old attention center?
If you're interested, you can go back and look and see what we've paid in the past for a detention.
Having to commute, drive children to Adam's County.
It's it.
They do.
There keeps them off the road, keeps the children off the road for a long cruise time.
And also it reduces travel mileage.
But the rate is expensive.
It's $175 to send a child for a day at the detention center.
Adam's County was $120, but they caught on, so they raised their rate to recently.
And just so you'll know, because we get some slack about this.
It is not popular to send a kid to detention.
It's not restorative.
There are three measures that we use when I get a call in the middle of the night that a kid has committed a crime or allegedly committed a crime.
They need to be a threat to themselves, so they're threatening to harm themselves,
which typically means they're probably not going to go to detention.
They'll probably go to some type of treatment immediately.
A threat to others, or they're a flight risk.
And so your law enforcement helped me with that assessment.
We've reduced greatly the number of children that go to detention.
So I think it's important for everyone to understand that just because I get a call in the middle of the night that a child allegedly committed a crime.
Does not mean that they automatically go to detention.
And there are a lot of people out there that think they should just go to detention.
So I'll draw this comparison.
If one of you got arrested in the middle of the night and you were taking a jail, what would immediately happen to you?
You'd be able to bond out, right?
Well, children, there's no bonding process for children.
And so our goal is to find a safe place for them to go.
And typically the parent will receive the child back in the home.
And I've been very impressed with law enforcement.
As we've worked together, their ability to calm the children down or calm the parent down and get things back in line.
And allow the children to stay in the home rather than sending them to detention.
And because of the cost, it's something I have to pay attention to.
$175 a day adds up quickly, doesn't it?
All right.
I'll breathe through these.
We've had a number of speaking engagements this year.
I was asked to speak at the judicial leadership conference at Ole Miss.
The beginning of last year.
I've spoken at a child welfare conference at Mississippi College.
I've spoken at the Portland Impact Group.
I've spoken at a child by five.
Speak to the grand jury.
Every time it meets various costs of events.
I presented with the staff and stakeholders at the Mississippi Youth Court Judge and Referee Conference.
This was a big deal in a big honor.
But this is all the youth court judges from the state come down for convention.
And they chose our court to do the presentation.
And we had a three hour segment where we walk through how to process a case.
And I had all the stakeholders there.
And that's we were able to to show what we do.
And talk about compliance and what we do to comply with the law.
So this was a really big deal to be able to present to all the judges in Mississippi.
And then I presented at the National Judicial Summit in Minneapolis.
The judicial summits do not happen annually.
They're kind of a special called meeting.
And I was asked to speak by Dr. Jerry Milner.
So Dr. Jerry Milner paid me a visit back in July or August.
And Dr. Milner, if you can think about it.
I mean, he is the he's the just Dickinson.
He was the commissioner for Mississippi.
He's he's the commissioner for the whole country for child welfare.
So he's he's one under a cabinet position to the president.
And he came to Hancock County, Mississippi, to meet with me and see what we're doing in our court.
And then he asked me to speak in Minneapolis.
And I tell you all this because I'm really proud of the work that we've all done.
And in the credit goes to the people that you will hear from shortly.
But to be sitting in Minneapolis at this conference,
knowing I'm speaking later in the day.
Dr. Milner gave his opening address.
And he's talking about everything that's going wrong in our country and child welfare.
And all the things we know about and all the things that we're trying to fix throughout the country.
And then he says, but there's hope.
And he said, for example, in Hancock County, Mississippi.
In our table with Mississippi delegates, we all started looking at each other.
And he began to tell our story.
And all I could do was cry.
But it was a huge honor to be recognized on a national stage and then be able to present later that day.
And I was asked to speak about engaging with parents in the courtroom.
And this is where the rubber meets the road, I believe, for our court success.
And that is making sure that we talk to parents in a civil manner,
respectfully, and let them know that we care.
So we use those words.
We tell them we care about you.
And we want to make a difference in your life.
That's what they need.
And I believe that's what's making a difference in our quorum. We do a lot of training, a lot of training. And I think this is the other thing that really helps achieve good outcomes. Last January, we had a multidisciplinary training on risk assessment. So we're all learning at the same time. What does it mean to look at risk in the home and how do we make these decisions of whether or
how to be removed or not? But it's 75 stakeholders for that. We have monthly staff meetings where we specifically train on issues. It is not uncommon for people to have questions in the courthouse and my typical response is let's get the rule book out. Let's get the statute book out and let's read what it says. We have a couple trainings. One week long technical assistance training with the administrative office of courts.
We completed darkness to light training, which was taught by Hupavin. We've done a lot of different in services. One with Guffport Behavioral Health and they taught us about their mobile assessment unit that will assess if we do think there is a child who is a threat to themselves.
I visited the Audrey Hepburn Center, which is a child advocacy center in New Orleans.
I attended the one loud voice conference. We had staff there. That is a conference that is sponsored by the Child Advocacy Center, the state Advocacy Center.
We did some team building with Mississippi Power, of course, attended the Mississippi Judicial Comments.
We attended it with teamwork our kids when training and this was at Michael Memorial Baptist Church in Guffport.
I think six or eight counties were in attendance. We had 65 people there. I think we counted ten tables, maybe eight or ten tables.
We were half of the room and the other counties were the other half. It was impressive to see that we had law enforcement there.
We had teachers. We had, you know, all of our regular shareholders, they are stakeholders there to learn this again, this material about trauma and safety and assessment.
I attended the Casa National Convention, where our Casa Director, Cynthia Shivan, was honored with the National Casa Director of the Year Award.
I hosted the Casey Foundation in June.
Christopher Church did a data review of what's been happening in Haincock County and he pulled information from CPS and his words were remarkable what has happened in Haincock County.
We've done in service with Gulf Coast Mental Health who is one of our partners to treat kids, but they also provide service to us as listeners in the courtroom were subjected to hearing trauma.
So we have secondary risk, secondary trauma risk. So we do things to ameliorate those risks.
We did an LGBTQT training in the late fall and had ever 70 stakeholders present for that.
We did an in-service with Gulf Coast Center for non-violence.
I attended a reasonable efforts academy in Nashville and I was one of four judges selected to do that.
Staff members have also done various training online and going to different trainings throughout the Gulf Coast visited various residential treatment facilities throughout Mississippi.
Those are where kids replace if they have some type of mental health diagnosis, so they may not be in a foster home, but they'd be in a residential treatment facility like Mill Creek of McGee.
I went to these places because I wanted to see where these kids were.
And I was shocked to learn that there's only a handful of judges that have ever stepped foot in these buildings.
I felt it was important to see where these kids are living and let those kids know that I'm there and I'm paying attention.
And as a result of some of these visits, we now get monthly reporting from the facility and they provide us with monthly reports, which is good for us and also help CPS and getting the information they need to know about the child.
We hosted with CASA 2-day conference on trust-based relational intervention, it's called TBRI, it's a trauma informed court and system approach to child welfare.
We had close to 100 participants in that. So that was learning about trauma. It was a two-day training.
We had Judge Carol Clark from Texas and Dr. Winston from Texas.
Every court in Texas has to be certified in TBRI and there are no certified trauma courts in Mississippi that I'm aware of, but we want to be the first.
And I think this was a good step in formulating a plan to determine how we can implement trauma informed practices into our court room.
We have lots of partnerships. We have monthly meetings with CPS.
I'm made within monthly, coordinate meetings with CPS and school leadership, also with law enforcement and the NBT.
We've conducted in-service and periodic meetings with CASA.
We've continued focus on MDT that MDT is the multi-disciplinary team.
And so when a case comes in, if it's a felony case, the MDT, which is housed at or facilitated by hood pavement,
they monitor that case to make sure that it's moving appropriately through the legal system,
but also that the children and the families are getting the services that they need.
And while I'm here, let me just mention this.
Where you need in Hacau County and that when a report is filed with CPS, that report comes to our court.
And so we have an intake officer who reviews that report.
And so that gives us the heads-up that there's something that's going on with that family.
But that report is also law enforcement, it has it.
But the MDT gets it as well.
So there are a lot of eyes on what's happening in our system.
And I just think that's important and comforting to know because it does not work like that.
I mean a lot with school leadership, so having good partnerships with the schools is very important.
We've recently begun to address the needs of children that have IEPs.
And I've partnered with the school rights attorney in Jackson and we're about to become.
We're trying to develop a protocol for using his services when children have IEPs.
So an IEP is an individualized educational plan.
And so if your child had one, you would be at the school, right, advocating for them.
Or kids and custody don't have that parent.
They have a foster parent.
But they don't have that parent to do that.
So we're going to specialize in this and create a team that will be able to advocate for that child to make sure that that child's best interest in school or being met.
We have lots of interface with law enforcement.
We've hosted coffee with a cop.
One of our big ticket items this year that I was to provide training within law enforcement.
We've done the night out of crime, night out against crime.
We hosted Mandy's room, which went over really well.
We hosted that with a resource center.
That was a trailer that was brought to our facility for parents to go through to see if they could.
If they could identify issues with drugs.
Things to be on on the lookout for.
The last one is partners at the table.
I meet monthly with the stakeholders.
And this is an opportunity.
It's called our Pat lunch.
And so director of CPS, Casa, mental health.
All we all sit around the table.
And there's no formal agenda.
But it's an opportunity for us to talk about what's going on.
What's happening.
What's coming up.
What projects we're working on.
What needs people have.
And inevitably at every meeting.
Something gets solved.
Or people walk out.
You know.
Working on projects.
Or figuring out that that can help one another with a project.
So I have several folks that are going to come up and speak.
The first of which is Rhonda Reds.
I've instructed them to stay about a minute about what they do and how they serve the youth court.
That's right.
This speaks used to vote for a minute, director.
Good morning to everybody.
So I spoke to you as a little bit about the program that we have last year.
And I'll just sort of mention for the for the new folks.
We were on the task force that looked at looked into the issue initially when we had this huge
huge influx of children into custody that weren't moving through.
And one of the things that we realized is that we had a lot of services and advocacy for children.
But there really wasn't a process for parents to get help.
At that point we didn't have a family representative attorney.
And so we created this program to help parents move through the process of of doing what they need to do on their service agreements in order to get their children back.
We have spent a lot of time over the last few years doing that.
We've worked with a hundred and nine families over that time and we've had been involved with 59 reunifications.
We are now serving 11 families with children in custody.
But then we are also working this year.
We sort of moved our services upstream.
So we can now work with families who have prevention cases.
So in being part of the approach to try to avoid children from being removed from the home in the first place.
We're working with families with prevention cases.
We provide services.
We help them find the services in the community that they need to get themselves to a place where they can focus on their children.
And that's really what the navigator program is about.
We're also working with Judge Farb on creating a program that will be primarily for kids in the DOS system.
But also it may be some of those applicants that he talked about older children who need help moving from the youth court system into self-sufficiency as adults.
And so this will be a mentor program that we are developing.
And so that's something you'll see this year.
We'll be looking for volunteers and other other help as we develop that program.
Any questions for me?
I'll write you a question.
When you're taught or a group to deal with the kids that are transitioning into adulthood I guess.
Yeah, I mean.
And you know those kids have, if they've been in the system,
have been involved with the system for a while, they're a lot older in their experience that a lot of kids their age.
And so it is much harder to work with those with that age group.
Any other questions for me?
Well again, a lot of information occur.
I'm going to do it very briefly.
Hopefully.
We have at Gulf Coast Center for Nonviolence.
We've had an ongoing relationship here in the county and with the courts for quite a while.
Just to kind of give a really broad quick overview of the things that we're able to provide for youth court.
We are able to provide resources to families where they were family violence, domestic violence sexual assault,
intersex with the family violence that we're seeing at youth court.
And so we have number one are domestic violence services including shelter.
We do not have a physically located shelter in Hancock County, but we have a shelter that serves Hancock County.
And so and we can also help facilitate transportation where that becomes necessary.
So we are able to provide for adults and their children emergency shelter in cases of domestic violence.
And everything that comes with that we provide comprehensive services.
So if they come into our shelter, we're able to provide them with their personal items, child care transportation, case management,
counseling, all of that.
Whether or not someone comes into shelter, if they are a victim of domestic violence, we're able to provide them with counseling, individual and group counseling.
We have in Hancock County an outreach adult counselor and an outreach youth counselor.
So people in Hancock County who need counseling services because of domestic violence, sexual assault, even human trafficking,
can see a counselor here, they don't necessarily have to come to us over in Harrison County.
We do have full time outreach counselors here.
Sexual assault victims, we do the hospital crisis response 24 hours a day.
So if someone is sexually assaulted in Hancock County, we have people who will come meet them at the hospital.
Even if they don't go to the hospital, we'll meet them anywhere that they want to be.
We can come to jail.
We can meet them at a waffle house.
We can meet them anywhere that the client wants to meet in order to speak with someone about advocacy and find out what they want.
We have justice programs.
We do have advocates that are in the courts.
Sabrina Sheppens here.
She is our court advocate, but we meet with victims of domestic violence going through court cases.
And we can accompany them through the court process and provide them with resources.
And then we have our survivors of homicide programs.
So for those who have lost someone to homicide, we have a full range of counseling support.
And then the last thing is our outreach community program.
So we have adult and youth training.
We provide training as Judge Robert mentioned.
We did an in-service to the court.
We talk with them.
We have.
A youth outreach and an adult outreach person come out and provide training in the schools or to adults or law enforcement.
So, we've got many different areas that were involved in handcuffs County to provide support to the court and to the families that might need us.
Real fast. That was a lot of information and a little bit of time. Any questions?
Thank you.
All right, Diane. She has some really exciting things to tell you about.
Good morning. I'm Diane Bennett. I'm the director of Gulf Coast Christian Women's Job Corps Magdalene House.
And I'm exciting news is that in June of 2019, we were able to acquire some property in handcuffs County, which has enabled us to be a permanent location of the site where the women that are seeking our services and needing our help.
They have a place that they can come because we have our mentors, there we have our teachers, we have our classrooms, we have our counseling and we have a safe space for these ladies.
So, the ladies that you see tell the story about who we are and what we're doing.
But, behind that story, I want to share with you the number of women that are not on that screen that today are experiencing sobriety.
They are experiencing the first time of being with their families for the holidays at Christmas time.
Seeing their children, getting their children back to the home and completing their court required obligations.
Whether that be completing their probation, paying their funds, their work in our community.
They had jobs at Walmart. They have jobs at playboard heels.
They are back in their community and serving the churches.
Right now, our ladies are contributing over 100 hours a week.
At community service, they are either at Keynes Kitchen or at Shoreline Park Baptist Church, providing that community service back.
And they are taking care of themselves and therefore, once in their lives, they are recognizing what it feels like to be sober, to give back to the community, to reconcile their lives with their families, with their children, to be able to understand what it means to be redeemed and to be whole again.
We're looking at, we're working with Pearl River Community College to see how many of the women that we can get back into school and get them some education.
We're very proud to be working with all the different ones that will be coming up and speaking today.
Whether it be domestic violence, whether it be cost of, whether it be Hancock County Resource Center and the Navigator Program.
But we're excited to see what was happening in Hancock County.
There are many more women that need to come and receive our services, but we feel like they're with a permanent location that we're able to be more visible in the community and the ladies can come and see us.
We are a 5-0-1-C3 faith-based ministry, and we feel like that God has planted us here for a very special purpose.
I appreciate all the support that you give us in this community gives us to do what we want to be, to be what we believe that God has led us to be to the women and the children and the families in this community.
Can you share the location?
We're actually, we're actually on 6-3.
In Hancock County, we're located right close to the Keele Cutoff Road, and our sign-out side actually says the women's community resource center.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I think Lisa Wilburne had to be out of town today, and Erin Cobb is going to tell us what's going on at Brenda's house.
Good morning.
I'm the social worker at Brenda's house.
Judge spoke a little bit about it, but we transitioned from the emergency children shelter to Brenda's house family center in June.
And our current services are family time, which is the supervised visitation.
We transport kids to and from their visitations.
We have creativity and coping skills classes.
We have take out Tuesdays, which is more like take out every day if they come.
They're eating.
We do provide breast decay and yoga.
So the mission of Brenda's house family center is to coordinate and enhance positive and supportive parental and family relationships and experiences for children that will cultivate cognitive emotional and social development.
Especially for children who have been traumatized due to child abuse and neglect.
So we are able to supervise visitations as much as our schedule will hold with the approval of CPS.
So we really do take that off of the CPS workers and provide those services for them.
Some numbers that we have figured out that we have doubled our numbers and people that we have helped since we were an emergency children shelter.
So what stands out to me is the total individual served, which is 41.
But you can look at the numbers and they're steadily growing.
130 meals provided, 75 hours of respite care and 75 visits of family time.
Starting this month we are expanding.
We are beginning a DHS grant to provide our current services and outreach services directly to TANF and SNAP recipients.
To help me the goal of the DHS to preserve and promote the faintly units.
Let's see my have any questions.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Let me just point out how important this is because visitation was being conducted at the CPS building before.
So a mom or dad would go see their kid and be an office basically with very few toys if any.
And not really the place where you can really have a name.
Now they can get to a home setting.
They can be observed.
I mean there's there's a lot that she does.
I mean even educating parent observing them and they were pointing back to me.
So I see how those visitation is getting.
So we're seeing a lot of growth and the visitation is not just seeing the kid.
It's a productive visit.
Yeah and it really is like a home setting each room is themed.
So we have an art room, a toddler room.
They have full access to the kitchen.
I think that's the biggest thing that we've seen is parents are actually able to get in the kitchen and cook with their kids and sit down for a meal.
Things that they miss out one when they're in custody.
We have a full yard with a trampoline and a jungle gym.
So they've said multiple times that it feels like being home.
They have a birthday party.
So I increase in the frequency of visitation is important.
Because CPS policy only requires two a month.
So now parents can see some daily.
Yeah we have one parent that comes twice a week for four hour visits.
And we do provide breakfast and lunch for them.
Like I said it's one of a kind in Mississippi and it's really I think going to take off and be the trend.
Now we transfer from the transit in that a couple of years ago.
There are any other modifications that you kind of plan on that being used as it is now.
We plan on expanding.
We're looking at different options for parenting classes.
Support groups for foster kids.
We want to we want you to take off a lot more because we do have a yoga instructor that's trauma informed.
So it helps the kids sleep better at night and just kind of have a moment of peace.
But we are constantly trying to collaborate and evolve with different community partners.
And not at all.
It's operating at much lower level.
I think it's under the prior.
Closet is that.
Yeah and I was previously for the new members.
That was previously just a shelter.
We had a grant that funded that based on I think 67 children being there as a number of
decreased years ago.
Miss Wilborn came and we kind of worked out this alternate plan.
I'm just being a shelter to something more productive given our numbers now.
So this is a commitment on your part to keep this.
The way it is and we really appreciate because it really affects these families.
Even being able to observe how a parent is interacting with child and giving some guidance.
Maybe you should try this or why don't you move to this and play with this in this area.
I think it's just a great resource because that's where the real part.
Parents can't learn how to parent if they don't have their kid.
And to have some eyes on them when that's happening and giving some constructive advice, I think.
Yes.
We've got a few calls.
Not really in Hancock County because we did take all children of all counties.
So Jackson County is called asking about it.
But not so much Hancock County.
Respect.
Yeah, we've had 75 hours of respite care for some children.
And we've been doing foster care date for the foster parents.
So the first Friday of every month we've been essentially babysitting foster kids.
So the foster parents can run out and you know, because they're women of who the kids can stay with.
So.
Keeping up.
You know, also more so to accommodate all ages of children.
Yes.
From zero to 21.
Yes.
That's important.
Thank you.
All right.
I hope eight and slide day they ask me to just present.
Then we have the new director.
Heather runs out.
Here.
I'm brand new.
So bear with me.
My name's Heather.
So I'm so happy to be here.
So.
So hope haven.
Child advocacy center does a lot more than.
Then forensic interviews.
We have served 500 in 40 kids this year.
Through helping hands, which is our emergency assistance program.
Anything that CPS needs us to provide so that might be a bed or clothing or school supplies.
We've served 146 people through our education programs, stewards of children, which is our sexual abuse.
Prevention program.
Training adults on what to see.
We have conducted 264 forensic interviews.
I know that right now we have extended our reach not only in Hancock County, but also to Pearl River County.
And I'm preparing some documents yesterday.
I noticed that.
We have projected that we would serve 250 kids based on numbers in the past, but we're doubling that as we move forward.
Advocacy services.
We encourage our families to come in for emotional support.
Just yesterday I was hearing a story about a woman that that just went through a program with us.
And she is now in school studying to be a social worker because of her experience with with us.
And then we have our Hancock County multidisciplinary team, which Tiffany dillardly.
And she coordinates everything so that there's no room for error.
But thank you so much.
And I look forward to working with you.
Thank you.
Then we have Casa.
Good morning.
I will I will be brief.
I'll say that before I start.
In in 2019, Casa of Hancock County served 229 Hancock County children in foster care.
By 103 Casa volunteers.
What a milestone for us for the first time in the history of our organization.
We were able to provide advocacy at 100% level to children that were in foster care.
Also in 2019, just far spoke a little bit about the number of outcomes that we were able to attain.
I'm so excited to say that 122 children in foster care.
She's foster care.
She's permanency in 2019.
122 kids.
We had a record breaking number of adoptions in the county as well as in the state of Mississippi.
We had over 60 adoptions.
We had 43 reunifications children getting to go back home.
And we had 12 other avenues in what children attained permanency.
Being guardianship or durable legal custody with another relative.
And those are just incredible milestones for us as a county.
Because over the last few years, we have seen a lot of kids staying in the foster care system for many years.
And I won't.
I could talk lots more about that.
But I won't.
I'm very proud that the 103 Casa volunteers that very diligently served.
There's 229 kids gave nearly 45.
I'm sorry.
Now, I'm going to be a 50.
5,500 hours of their volunteer time in 2019 alone.
When you think about the number associated with over 5,500 hours of volunteer time.
That is an incredible contribution to this county.
And two, those little ones that we serve.
Hit it, judge.
So what's the future hold for us?
What's the future hold for us?
We continue to have the goal of being able to provide an advocate for every child in foster care.
We're now at a position in which when a new child comes into custody, we have a volunteer
ready and willing and able to take the assignment, what a blessing, but we're not stopping
there.
A couple of things to share with you for 2020.
We have been approved as Mississippi's only host site as of the current to receive a courthouse
facility dog.
Judge Farf spoke earlier about the importance and the value of having children in court being able
To participate in their hearings and in the big decisions that happen about their life. But as you can imagine, that's got to be a pretty daunting thing for kids to be a part of. Even though they get voice and they get power and they get healing from participating and knowing what's going to happen, courtrooms are generally kind of scary.
So with that being said, we applied last year about this time through canine campaigns and we have been selected to be a host site. So one of my staff members will go to training in California as soon as we get the call and in 2020 we will have the only courthouse facility dog in the state.
And I'm so proud of that. And I really do hope that we become a pilot project and that other programs in the county as well as across the state kind of follow the lead because dogs and kids are good things.
And if we can help better serve our kids, we need to keep working towards doing that.
And just like as hope haven spoke about, they are also they have a staff member or two who is trained in the darkness to light stewards for children child sexual abuse prevention curriculum.
This is a curriculum that's evidence based that shows states that for every one adult who we train in this sexual abuse prevention curriculum up to 10 children are better protected from being sexually abused.
We have a goal in our program of training 200 adults in 2020 so that 2,000 hand-cut county children are better protected from ever entering the system are being victims of child sexual abuse.
Additionally, just far spoke for a few moments about TBRI that trauma trust space relational intervention curriculum.
Our dog handler slash staff member who also supervises volunteers has now been trained in TBRI and she is our only practitioner in the county and one of two in the state.
We will be working with the department with CPS to work with our children to hopefully stabilize them in their placements.
The trauma that our kids face is pretty real and most adults don't know how to manage it.
We wouldn't know how to manage it.
And so this particular evidence based curriculum is going to help as we teach foster parents and child welfare workers and all of our stakeholders how to manage these behaviors.
We hope that kids are going to have less frequent placement moves and they can maintain stability and that once they come out of the system all be it back home with their biological families.
Hopefully that's our goal but wherever they end up the people who are charged with helping to raise them are better informed and they can keep them safe and they don't have to bounce around from people because their behaviors are under less understandable.
And as we know the trauma doesn't go away. So we want these people to be short up into adulthood so they can be productive members of our community and of if they can cut county and kind of pass the torch so that we stop the cycle of many generations of abuse and neglect here and across the country.
You have any questions?
You didn't use a microphone to say you're event is Saturday.
I've got a lot of reflections this past weekend thinking about where Hank County has been and where we are today.
You know just as Judge Farve talked about the compliance that the court system has reached and what are 97.
Hank County CPS is working on our own compliance and we have standards that we have to meet throughout the year.
I think one of the best ones at Hank County has reached the past years is we now have some of the lowest turnover rate in the whole state of Mississippi.
The day I started in Hank County that I came back to child protection services and three and a half workers the week before I started work there seven workers walked out.
We have 25 front line staff about 13 or 14 case workers five four supervisors, a regional supervisor myself some support staff.
But as our numbers have decreased in Hank County the number of children in custody are need for case workers has decreased as well.
So we now have a fully staffed adoption unit in Hank County a fully staffed licensure unit in Hank County a lot of those have promoted and moved from front line.
We do the abuse and neglect investigations and work with families.
So no longer does relatives that get placement of the future children that we do take into custody.
They are now licensed within 90 days which is our standard for the state.
You know a lot of the things that CPS has to meet we not only do we meet the standard we succeed it.
A lot of the state standards are 80 to 90% a lot of the things that CPS does we're at 97 to 98% know we're not perfect we still have some things to do and you know we're continuously working to improve.
And you know we as Judge Farve talked about that we've been identified as a Mississippi miracle as I've done my reflection this past weekend I thought about what makes us that Mississippi miracle.
What led to that and I get emotional kind of thinking about it because it's really everything you just heard here today.
It's a true partnership in my opinion that has made the Mississippi miracle everything from the board of supervisors and supporting the recommendations of the task force.
The creation of the county court system the partnership with the court.
The partnership with this community you just heard from a lot of the service providers here in this community.
We have pulled together to make sure that we're not traumatizing children anymore than we have to.
And that has been the major thing yes we've done that within the law.
Mr. Farve said reasonable efforts has been this federal law for many many years.
I think I county is now meeting that I think we are probably the top at the state and yes I'm probably a little bit biased.
But CPS I believe has one of the best investigation units in case work units in the whole state.
We still have areas that we need to improve on and we're continuously as we identify areas that need improvement we're working to improve that.
It's just amazing we are the Mississippi miracle and I do believe the reason why is everything that you've heard here today, but also.
The board of supervisors has been a big part of that in supporting the development of the county court and supporting a lot of their community service providers.
It is unique and no other county as it's experiencing that because I believe they don't have the true partnership.
From the court system CPS the community and the governmental agencies and so thank you from the bottom of my heart.
For helping us create the Mississippi miracle.
Thank you.
Was that it?
I want to say something real quick.
Thank all the various agencies for your part and creating a different culture in the youth court system because I can tell you.
And with Trent Trent I had a lot of conversation before we went to the county court system and even after.
And I was getting numerous phone calls with people having issues and stuff and and due to his dedication all work and I hope we never lose you but I can tell you you're headed for a national.
Deal with head and up some of these plans and I hope you stay here I really do but thank all of you all for creating the partnerships.
Thank you with with Trans leadership there and what you all have done to change everything here in Hankau County has been tremendous.
Thank you all.
Thank you real quick I know we've gone over our time but just these are some of our initiatives for this year.
I'll just give click through and real quick.
We did write a protocol for children in the court room that will be implementing this year.
Continue training integrate TBR I last one is a real big win.
There are more options to become a treatment court and provide social workers for UIS and obtain grants for staff and programs.
We're we're looking to be out of the box and there are a lot of ways that we can seek funding that can be directly funnel to Hankau County so we found some of those avenues.
The new CPS commissioner is Taylor cheeseman and he and I have a lot of connectivity already and he had already scheduled a meeting to come down in February to meet with us.
I have meetings in February with a national consulting firm.
A national group that does treatment court throughout the country and we're going to explore some of the ways that we can get that direction with our court.
I think that will benefit our children and families.
Lastly I just want to thank you for your commitment.
You're one of our key partners.
I appreciate the financial resources that you commit to.
To you court and I hope that you find that I'm a good custodian of those funds.
I do monitor our expenditures and try to work hard to stay within our budget.
We do need some upgrades and improvements to our court room and our building.
But that's the last line that what I was thinking.
Doing here is thanking you for the ones that you've made.
We've just had a it's a totally different building.
It looks cared for now.
It's a it's a great court room.
I really do enjoy our court room.
It provides a place that's small and intimate for our family.
It's not overwhelming.
The judge isn't sitting 30 feet up on on a pedestal.
It's you're down connected with the families and that's where I like to be.
So it is a good court room is a good building.
But there are a lot of lots to it as you all can come see anytime you want it.
I encourage you all to come over and take a tour.
And we can talk more about some of the things that we can do to partner to improve outcomes for our families.
Thank you.
Sorry we're sorry if you have any questions.
Thank you.
I want to encourage you.
I went to the reunification day last year with Judge Farf.
And it's a very nice occasion to attend.
And I would encourage everyone to try to be there.
And Trent is his heart is truly in it for the kids.
I'll see in it which I've known him for quite a long time.
So but his heart is really in it.
Frank I count in the youth here.
So thank you for that.
Thank you.
And anytime you have questions, you know, I can't talk to you directly about cases.
That's prohibited by the law.
But if you have issues or things that you have concerns about,
we'll find a way to figure out a legal way to address the problem.
So anytime you have an issue, please let us know.
Or I'll call since you've been in there.
That's good.
You're welcome.
It's all about communicating and staying in touch with keeping people informed.
And y'all have done that.
All of you all.
Not just Judge Farf.
But he's created the culture with you all.
And the partnership to make that happen.
So y'all give yourself a good hand.
Because it's all the ones doing it not us.
I think the key to that is, like I said, parents need to be heard.
And they need to feel like the process is fair.
And so even if the outcome isn't what they want,
as long as they were treated with dignity and respect,
and felt like the process was fair,
then you can alleviate a lot of that angry issues.
We do have them from time to time.
We're dealing people that were traumatized themselves.
And so they don't know how to respond like we do to when things get wrong.
But as you think, the way that the demeanor of the court and the system and its entirety
is geared so that parents know that we are going to try to help,
that we are here.
In fact, good evidence.
One of our workers is out there.
We had a parent recently called to ask for help.
Well, that's the culture you create.
That is our goal.
If we can have parents reach out for help before they need it.
Before things get bad.
And now that we can be trusted to put a plan in place to help them keep their children
and better themselves, we win.
And that is our goal.
One of the best accomplishments in my opinion that we did in our first four years
was creating the county court.
And this is a testament to that right here.
Thank you.
Oh, yeah.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
We love it.
What's got to say that this is, we're just getting started here with this time.
We've learned.
I've heard a lot of, you know, outside conversations on the old company in here.
And truly thank you to all of you in which you do.
And I'm excited to get to learn a little more about that process.
It comes to down at all of you and gets to know you on a personal level.
But exciting, which you don't for Hancock County.
These opportunities that our families and now have years.
You know, it's got to work.
We appreciate everything you're all doing.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yes, ma'am.
Yeah.
All right.
Next we're going to have a bid opening.
That was supposed to happen at 10 o'clock.
But it is now 1032 for the beach maintenance.
First, we didn't have a motion to spread on the minutes, the publication, publication.
Motion by district 2, second by district 5. Any further discussion being none?
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, motion carries 5, 0.
We have a seal proposal by black diamond construction LLC, COR, 2, 0, 0, 4, 7, dash MC for the, and these are bid for the beach maintenance.
And no, no, agenda.
We have a total bid schedule price, a black diamond of 356,900, and zero cents.
That's 356,900, zero.
The bid doesn't include a bid bond, any amount of 5% from the Ohio cashily company.
Next, we have a seal proposal by both breeze construction, ink, COR, 1, 1, 0, 7, 0.
Received 943 AM this morning.
I think it's a bit of training on the,
Yeah, probably.
It doesn't include a bid bond from the great cashily security company.
State say total base schedule schedule 1 of 431,950,000, zero cents.
That is 431,950.
And those are the only two bits.
Received a record of black, we have no electronic bid.
Is there anyone else claim to submit a bid?
It wasn't a red allowed.
And it's valid if you can let the record reflect that there are no other persons claim to submit a bid.
If we have a motion to take these under advisement.
Motion by district 2.
Second by district 1 to take these under advisement.
Any further discussion?
Be in none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Motion carries 5, zero.
No, let's see.
Next up.
Next up, we have Mr. Jim Falk.
Thank you.
All right.
Be.
I feel good.
Good.
Yeah.
It's called the mayor's office.
That's good.
Hello, y'all.
Yeah.
All right.
Mr. Eddie Farb called me in for a meeting at his office and said that now that the law went through about
to get a salary to deputies that I had to appoint him each year one year of the time.
So I'm here to do that plus I need to tell you why I need deputies.
Number one reason is the law.
Mr. Cipi code.
Statue number 4, 1, dash, 6, 1, dash, 5, 7.
States that want a population of the county reaches a total of 20,000 or more of people.
There shall be one or more officially appointed deputies.
That's number one.
Number two is I've got other counties to compare us to if that's needed.
There's several times all the time where there's more than one death at a time.
I just did a quick thing last 30 days.
There's a five deaths on 12, 6 on the one day.
Three deaths on 12, 17.
Three deaths on 12, 30.
Three deaths on 1, 2.
On 1, 7, 1, 8 and 1, 10.
All three each.
All.
You know, on the same day.
Oftentimes they're at the same time and you've got multiple.
You've got law enforcement agencies.
You've got the fire department.
You've got AMR.
A lot of people involved that have to wait.
And if I did them, you know, consecutive lead.
And they had to wait two and three and four hours at a time to stand there.
It's just not good.
It won't work.
There's other counties that like I was talking about.
Pearl River is probably the closest one to us.
They have a population of 55,487, which is ours is 47,334.
They have four employees and three deputies on a full-time secretary.
They only have 8,000 more people than we do.
And George County is a half of this county size.
And they have a one full-time deputy.
It just gives an idea.
And I've got Melissa Taylorn who volunteered to learn forensic medicine, forensic science.
Must have been 34 years ago.
Yeah.
And anyway, she's been working for over a year now in paying for her vehicle and her gas and her expenses to get to over a hundred death investigations.
I think she's been paid per case like a hundred twenty five dollars a case for between four and five that whole time.
Just to be able to learn and to be able to diagnose natural deaths and of course other death manners as well.
And so I would like to officially appoint her.
And then we've got Mary Costa who works for the police on Wednesday on the court on Sunday and then spend time with her family stuff like that.
Who also could be a two-deck of these all together.
Anybody have any questions?
This could have been brought up during the budget time because I mean we didn't budget for this.
You know for you having two if we're required to have at least one we're going to do that.
We have to do that.
But as far as having two I don't think anybody up here is going to support having two.
As you know because it's not it wasn't budgeted come budget time now coming back in and we get ready to start our budget for the upcoming year.
Maybe so I think that'd be an appropriate time just in my opinion to address that.
I just don't think that having two I mean you say it's necessary.
But we're we're only required to have one deputy according to the law which the statute that you read.
And and have to pay them.
I mean anywhere from 300 to nine nine hundred dollars a month I believe it is which is up to us on what we pay them.
But to me I mean we we're going to have to address this I believe in October for the second one because we have a letter that actually from you.
About one of them doing it and there he has it is and about one of them when they were appointed.
Wouldn't call security a dime other than the fee that they receive for investigating a death if they're so what I told her was.
Correct.
If I might go back a little bit further than that.
Back in 2013 March of 2013.
There was a motion by the board at that time to remove deputy coroners.
Keith Everman and Harry Hamrick.
Due to lack of interest.
Yeah.
No they were eliminated.
But it was also leaving Dr. Patrick McCrosson.
Yes.
And and adding Mary Costa as deputies.
So prior to the last one there were already two deputies.
And I don't think I wasn't aware that we had a second one.
I knew we had in Miss Costa.
But this one back in 2013 says you have two deputies back then.
And then the the latest one was was was was with Melissa.
And it says that neither deputy is costing the taxpayer anything.
The fees that are paid.
It's going to get paid to somebody whether it's to you and to them.
But there were no salaries attached to any of the deputies.
Yeah.
There was no salaries until there was.
Correct.
And then when this latest bill was passed by the legislature.
Changing the various salaries for the mostly elected officials.
And some appointed.
It mandated number one that you have to have at least one deputy.
And that there is a mandatory salary attached to the deputies of between 300 and 900 per month.
That's correct.
And as President said, we haven't budgeted any of it.
So whatever we end up doing is going to mandate a budget amendment.
So that is going to be step one is authorized and.
Nancy to prepare a budget amendment.
To cover whatever it is.
My recommendation at this time would be.
Because of it being midyear none of it budgeted.
We've got to go to the.
Go through the amendment process.
Would be to a point.
One deputy at this time.
At the minimum salary.
And then revisit the issue when we get into the budget cycle.
Which will be starting in the May the May time period.
That's when we'll start working on next year's budget.
So I would that would be my recommendation.
At this time simply because it's not included in the budget and we've got to go back.
And so you say, I need to appoint one.
That would be my recommendation.
Jim is till point one.
At the 300.
Three hundred.
We will revisit the budget.
Kind of budget cycle.
We start discussion budget for next year.
And may or June.
Oh, I understand.
Yeah.
No.
There's not anything like this.
Yeah.
Not anything like this.
And during and during that time.
During during the as the budget cycle begins.
We'll also be looking at this year's budget.
To see if there's any room to do anything other than what the recommendation is today.
And not have to wait until the new fiscal year starts in October.
As a possibility, no guarantees on that.
Strickly depends on where we stand as we get into the budget cycle.
But that would be my recommendation.
Yeah.
At this time.
And as far as which one.
I could say.
According to this, you have three.
Not two.
According to this, you have three.
Right now.
Who's the third doctor?
Of my crossing.
My crossing.
Oh, no.
His teaching medical school that LSU.
Okay.
So if nothing else, we need to remove him from the approved list.
Yeah.
And since whoever you're going to appoint is going to be the only one.
We would remove the other one as well, whichever one has that you don't appoint.
And as the list, if you've been through the training already, that's the.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I want to make a motion to remove the doctor.
What's his name?
Crosse.
Patrick McCross.
Certainly.
There's the deputy corners.
I've got a motion by district four.
Second by district one.
Any further discussion?
Is there a bond requirement?
I'm not that I know.
I was problem.
I know I had to get a bond a long time ago.
Yeah.
I'm thinking everything.
I don't know the details.
Yeah.
I'm thinking a little bit.
All right.
Any further discussion?
Be in none district one.
Two, three, four and five.
Motion carries five, zero.
Need a motion to.
Approved miss Melissa.
Taylor.
The yellow one.
Melissa.
As a deputy corner.
At the rate of $300.
At the rate of $300 a month.
And we need to authorize count control to submit.
Budget amendment.
All right.
Need a motion to second?
Motion.
Second.
Second by district five.
Any further discussion?
Be in none district one, two, three, four and five.
Motion carries five, zero.
That'll do it.
Thank you, Mr. Jim, but thank you all.
One other cleanup item.
Mary Acosta was also one of the previous deputies.
So for the record, if we can remove her from payroll at same time.
To either add it to the motion to remove
McCrosson or as a separate.
We do a separate motion to remove Mr. Costa.
We need to do a separate motion.
We do a separate motion.
I need a motion to second.
Motion to my district 2.
Second my district 3.
To remove Mr. Mayor Costa as deputy corner.
Any further discussion?
Being none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Motion carries 40.
That's it.
Thank you, Mr. Jim.
All right. Thank you.
All right.
Now we're all to our left of the committee.
Yeah.
Mr. Mayor Costa.
Yes.
Mr. Mayor Costa.
Yes.
Mr. Mayor Costa.
Yes.
Mr. Mayor Costa.
OK.
I'm in the record reflect.
We have a full recusal on item 6A1 by Supervisor District 4.
He's left the room up to this meeting in discussion.
Yes.
I need to go to the next meeting.
The more.
I got you.
I need a motion to approve the F120 Mercy Management Performance Grant,
Application and Work Plan and Authorized Board President of the Sun.
Second.
I'm going to just move on to second.
Mr. 5.
Anything else?
Any time.
No, I'm not a car.
I'm the ENPG Grant.
Yes.
No, sir.
Thisigre's the grant.
We get every year that falls for the funds to part of our.
1, 2, 3 and 5.
Motion pay is just 40.
4 out.
4.
5.
1.
2.
Second item I have is, second item I have is the Reapointment of Position-385 Commissioner,
Bridget Manual, and Marra Lender to the Position-385 District Board for the time of five years.
Second, my district five, any further discussion, being none, district one, two, three, four, and five, motion carries five, zero.
Next item I have is the move dispatcher Richard Sawyer from the payroll effective immediately.
He went through the hiring process and never showed up to work.
I'm not even going to try to say that I'm much better.
Any further discussion, being none, district one, two, three, four, and five, motion carries five, zero.
Next item I have is the motion to approve the hiring.
I hope Taylor and Mindy.
I'm not even going to try to say that I'm much better.
Four times dispatcher, position, 1550 an hour, pending justice.
Second, my district one, any further discussion, being none, district one, two, three, four, and five.
Motion carries five, zero.
And the lifestyle of my hair is the re-appointment of re-appointment of Fenton five district commissioners.
Kevin Nowlet and Lester Kervin and T.J. Malley for the Fenton five rotation district for the time of five years.
Second, my district five.
Any further discussion, being none, district one, two, three, four, and five.
Motion carries five, zero.
And that is all I have for this.
Thank you.
Nothing left shall have something that we need to do.
All right.
Thank you.
Good morning gentlemen, ladies.
First, I have a motion to approve plan and commission meeting minutes.
Held on December the 5th.
Any further discussion, being none, district one, two, three, four, and five.
Motion carries five, zero.
Second item is a motion to approve the planning commission meeting minutes.
Held on December the 19th.
Second, my district one.
Second, my district two.
Any further discussion, one, two, three, four, and five.
Motion carries five, zero.
Third item is a motion to authorize county attorney to submit publication for
advertisement of the beach vending sites.
New boards, so we'd be at all sites out now for exactly.
And because I know the pineapple guys, I don't know.
I know he's pretty adamant about it.
Second, my district three.
Any further discussion, being none, district one, two, three, four, and five.
Motion carries five, zero.
Number four is a motion to authorize board president to sign the annual storm order report.
This is a storm order is handled by confidential engineering and they have their report done before the year.
Motion by district two.
Second, my district three.
Any further discussion?
Being none, district one, two, three, four, and five.
Motion carries five, zero.
On the last item, a little of the item where we had with this.
This was a right away permit that was requested by AT&T back in the end of last year.
And prior to the October 21 meeting, just had it on his agenda for that meeting to approve
this right away permit.
And it comes to our attention that AT&T had installed the utilities in the county right away
as of that date.
And just a letter to AT&T representative on November 11th.
So I'm communication back and forth.
I think they have a minute that it was there utilities.
But since then, we haven't really got any direction on which way to go with this.
It's in the ground already.
I don't know if we move forward.
Gary have any other questions?
Or they basically did this before getting the permit without paying for a permit.
So we had a line and it wasn't inspected either.
So your options are obviously wanting to tell them to remove it out of your right away.
And then it comes as we can do an inspection or we can try to work out something differently.
Yeah.
I mean, an inspection at the minimum.
Yeah.
And I guess we need to reach out to them and make sure that they understand the process for one.
I know they do.
Because they've been through this several times apparently.
But I mean, maybe we need to read it right to them.
Whoever their managers or whatever to make sure that they get here.
Before they do any work.
I mean, I would suggest you all thrust Jeffrey and I to send a letter back.
Making them indicate our intent is to make them remove it.
If we get a response differently, we'll bring it back to you and let you know.
He's going to go from there.
So if you all are okay with that, if you can authorize myself and Jeff to send a letter to
the letter to 18C requiring them to remove the line from the right of way.
And within a response, we'll bring it back to you.
In motion.
I'll make a motion.
Motion by district two.
Second by district five.
Any further discussion?
Well, that's okay.
Being a nine district one two three four and five motion carries five zero.
All right.
I think that's all right.
What we were needing some direction.
Which way to go?
Okay.
Thank you guys.
Anything for me?
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Next up, we have Mr. Kevin Ladner with Parks and Rec.
Come on.
It's still morning.
First up, I have a motion to approve creating an office manager position.
At McLeod Park, this will not require any additional personnel or a budget amendment.
So you're just moving someone there.
Yeah.
He's creating a position.
I need a motion to the second.
Second by district three.
Second by district five.
Any further discussion?
Kevin Ladner.
I'll show.
I'm going to get a house.
Yeah.
I'm going to do three taxes.
I'm saying you don't want to agenda.
I'm so pretty sure.
I'm dying.
It's in.
No.
I just my girl that's been there over 10 years.
She's getting some had of responsibilities with this new online reservations.
She can take it home.
She can do it from home and midnight.
You know.
And on the weekends when we have problems, she can handle it all from home.
That end Facebook.
We get a lot of her question.
Facebook.
And she answers all of our Facebook stuff and handles all of that.
All hours of the night.
Yeah.
I said that's it.
I'm so pretty sure.
I'm standing in the house.
Yeah.
No new hearts.
Yeah.
All right.
We got a motion to the second.
Any further discussion?
Me and none.
District one.
Two.
Three.
Four.
And five.
Motion carries five.
Zero.
Two is motion approved.
Moving April.
All of us managed a position at the rate of 14.
67 per hour.
Motion.
Five.
Second.
District two.
Any budget?
No budget amendment.
No.
Motion.
Any further discussion?
Be a none.
District one.
Two.
Three.
Four and five.
Motion carries five.
Zero.
And that's all I have unless you all have something for me.
Thank you.
All right.
Next up.
We have the inventory clerk.
Are you going to handle that?
Yes.
Motion to approve the removal from inventory and dispose of the assets listed on the attached exhibit.
Is there no longer needed?
Motion.
Motion carries.
Five.
Zero.
Next up is Nancy.
I have a motion to remove.
That's Nancy Harrison.
There's the secondary signature for Ricky Adam handcuff.
Can we share if accounted for first bank?
Motion.
Second.
Motion.
Second.
It's not the second error, so you let it go.
We're not the second error.
Any further discussion?
Be a non-district one, two, three, four, and five,
motion carries five zero.
I have a mention to approve the DACA of claims for January 21, 2020,
in the amount of 870, 728, and 48 cents.
I have a motion of my district three.
So I can make my district five.
Any further discussion?
Be a non-district one, two, three, four, and five,
motion carries five, zero.
This last one, Judge Farber requested me to add late Friday afternoon.
It's a notion to remove JP from credit from payroll,
if that's January 6, 2020.
Motion of my district five.
Second, my district four.
Any further discussion?
Be a non-district one, two, three, four, and five.
Motion carries five, zero.
Thank you.
Miss Valerie?
I have mentioned to approve two approve of regular baking minutes,
at Monday, January 6, 2020.
Second.
Motion of my district one.
Second, my district three.
Any further discussion?
Be a non-district one, two, three, four, and five.
Motion carries five, zero.
I Mr. Skinner, what's Sheriff's office?
Yeah.
I read away this long, haven't you?
No, no.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm ready to get going.
First, motion of the minutes.
The following person now changes.
Remove Sara Bell from payroll effective.
January 6, 2020.
Add the following payroll at the rate of 1573 an hour.
Effective, January 21, 2020.
Jason Bird, Jason Edmonds, and Reginald Flowers.
In a motion of the second.
Motion of my district five.
Second, my district two.
Any further discussion?
Be a non-district one.
I'm sorry.
Any further discussion?
Be a non-district one.
Two.
Three.
Four.
And five.
We're excited to have him back. Second motion, approve and authorize the Board President's sign, the second amendment to the master agreement between Hencott County Sheriff's Office and Secure of Technologies.
Motion carries five.
And this is...
That's the innate voice, our video chat and everything. It's just that we're moving along with the contract. It's already in place. We're just continuing on with it.
And this one will have to add a provision. It's intended for a 48 month contract. And so we'll have to just put in their typical provision that we can't buy the successor board.
And then also they have one hold harm, so we'll have to scratch out of there. And so I'll send you that word.
It's not going to be contingent upon those modifications that are stated by the county attorney.
I need a motion to the second.
I'm going to switch my district three, the second my district five, any further discussion?
Me and none, district one, two, three, four, and five, motion carries five, zero.
Third motion, approve. Mike Berkett to get a basic computer forensic examiner, course in Orlando, Florida, April 26th, through May 8th.
The tuition is 29.95 hotel state of the 1714.56 cents in advance payment of 728 dollars in food pretty.
And this is all budget.
This is all budget.
Second, my district one, any further discussion?
Be a none, district one, two, three, four, and five, motion carries five, zero.
Fourth motion, approve. Howard Parker and Christopher Robinson to get a certified examer, course in the Luxe, May 18th, through 22nd.
tuition in the cost of 7,785 dollars.
That's, so, I don't hear that, gas.
What that is, that's a CVSA, which is a voice stress analysis machine.
So, essentially, the tuition, we're buying the machine.
The machine comes for the tuition.
In other words, it's $7,000.
We're having two people plus the machine.
It's not just a class, because when we talk with Eddie, like $7,000,
since somebody to be lucky, he seems extreme.
It's actually the equipment.
It's sole source provider.
You can't get through anybody else, so that's why the cost, you're really buying the machine.
In the tuition.
When it's finalized, we'll have to come back to the board, because the price for the new equipment
is $59.95 of the $7,000, but that also includes a trade-in of the old.
The base price without the trade-ins, like $9,000.
So, come down to the finalize it.
We'll come back to the board and take in the old off authorizing it to be used as a trade-in.
Sure.
On a particular note.
It doesn't mean it's a false trade.
We do have a source letter.
Right.
We're one of the few on the coasts.
We're actually the feds.
The state all bring come to us to use this.
I mean, it's one of the things a grand jury loves.
When I come into our, what's that?
Yeah.
We get, we get help.
We get help.
Return.
Most of the Zagman.
Sold source letter.
From the shares department in there.
On the 317-13 indicated it's a source source.
And so, improving this president's Deal's $1,000.
We're making a fine of local treatment first.
And now it should be a source item.
We've got a motion to center.
Any further discussion.
B. and none or district 1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Motion carries five.
Europe.
5th motion to send previous motion in 514 made during the September 3, 2019 median proving
4 Chevy pursuit dihose due to availability, and this kind of goes along with number 6 as
well I can explain the whole.
So they're not available anymore.
The emotion of the second, most of my district 5, it's like my district 2, then we try
to budget that last year.
It was, it was budgeted.
What happened is we got a call from Chevy.
We were on the last production day, and they said go ahead, we're not going to make
them.
So that's why I'm going to do the next.
I'll see you at the end of the day.
It's my first district last fiscal year, and so we will need to authorize a budget
and you do not.
It's there.
Okay.
I did it last year for the purchase order, but it was something we budgeted.
Okay.
Well, then scratch that.
No, we got a motion to the second.
Any further discussion?
VN-9.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 motion carries 5, 0.
6 motion, number 6 motion to approve and the advertisement for a reverse option to purchase
4, 2020, 2020 Chevy Tahoe police package vehicles.
Any motion to the second?
Motion by district 4.
Second.
Second by district 3.
Any further discussion?
VN-9, District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 motion carries 5, 0.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jeremy.
Good morning.
Still.
One quick thing, just ask for a motion to approve, spread on the minutes, and authorize Board President
and Chancellor Clark to sign the increased decrease in assessments for the last month.
All right.
Second by district 5.
Any further discussion?
VN-9.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 motion carries 5, 0.
And that's all I have unless the Board has something for me.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Next up.
We tell.
Our new circuit clerk.
Ms. Keke.
Come on.
You're inaugural on graduations.
The first motion I have is to approve the compensation list for the circuit clerk's office.
Let's get to this one.
Yeah, can you mind doing it?
I'm sorry.
That's okay.
First motion I have is to approve the compensation list for the circuit clerk's office.
Second motion by district 5.
Second motion by district 1.
Are these all the same?
That's what it is.
It's within the budget actually.
There's a savings of a dollar 20 per hour for the county.
And a savings on a fee account of 424 per hour.
Overall, what we're doing is changing two employees if you know my country.
We're talking about adjusting Jolene 4, who was basically stepping up and taking
Kendra's place.
And then we have an addition for Jason Shayu.
And this also creates the new position at $11 an hour for the county in zero under the
fee account.
But overall, it's a savings for the county and for the fee account.
$5.
Almost $5.
$5.
And $44.
That's an hour for the entire part of it.
But that's the two changes in effect of Jolene and Jason.
Yes.
I've got to go to the second.
Any further discussion?
Be in none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Motion carries 5.
0.
Okay.
And the second motion I have is to approve the hiring of Sierra
Therio is deputy clerk at the rate of $11 an hour.
Effective upon completion of drug and physical testing.
Any motion.
Second.
Motion.
District 5.
Second.
District 2.
Any further discussion?
Be in none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Motion carries 5.
0.
Thank you.
Have a good day.
Thank you.
All right.
Next up.
Mr. Tim Keller.
Thank you.
Good morning.
I'll be requesting a motion spread on the managed
Chantric Roads December 2019.
Remember them.
So much check for $10,414.
27 cents to the general fund.
It's spread on the minutes.
So much report.
Motion.
District 2.
Second.
District 1.
Any further discussion?
Be in none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Motion carries 5.
0.
And that's all for me.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Next up.
We have Mr. Clemens.
Compton.
The county engineer.
Good morning.
The only item I've got is just a brief discussion on the
Kindleel Road Bridge.
And I talked with a couple of young and big as well.
We had a.
Went down the road of trying to fit in basically a new bridge while
leaving the old one in service.
Which is going to require some right away purchase.
And when we.
We try to fit this thing in to keep it.
Away from people's property structures.
And it just.
Closes are the furthest we could get.
The edge of the road is going to be like 50 or 60 feet from their houses.
So it just, you know, in good conscience.
I don't think that would be a.
A wise thing.
So we went back kind of full circle to.
We still know we really don't want to shut that bridge now.
So it'd be more like building a bypass bridge like we did with.
Here in Bay.
We've got it where we could.
Keep it with about a 35 mile hour speed limit once it gets constructed.
And then tear it all out.
Fill the new in place where it sits now and then.
You know, once it's open.
Get rid of the temporary structure.
So it'll be still some minor inconvenience for those property owners.
But not near as intrusive as.
As the other.
So it's going to be an edge of can it is something that we can try to plan on.
I know it's hard, but try to plan.
While school is out for the summer.
There's as much as we can.
I mean, you're talking about probably a year project.
You know, so it.
We will fit it.
With summer and the middle of it, best we can to save that time.
But they'll never lose access of crossing it.
And whenever it shouldn't have shut it down.
So it's going to be around the same.
Maybe a little bit cheaper.
Yeah, then because the other involved a lot of road construction.
Because you know, if we were moving it over.
That was going to change that entire curve.
And it was going to be, you know, several hundred or like a thousand feet of new road construction to tie into it.
So this way it'll just be new approaches with a new bridge.
And the temporary bridge structure.
You know, it's kind of.
It's a cost.
It's just to be a resort.
You know, we're going to really anything for it.
Other than the convenience and not have to close the roads.
So don't really need board action today.
We'll modify the program.
You know, these funds are not available yet.
Until they approve the next four year cycle of state aid funds.
Which should happen this month or next.
You know, we won't actually have the money to do it.
But as soon as that happens, the bridge is not changing.
We've got the bridge design.
We have to change the approach.
It's not changing the approach is not to get a modified program.
But we'll.
Time all that so that as soon as that money becomes available.
We can, you know, getting those last stages and getting that approved for.
To be as.
Now, we'll put in some safety improvements as part of the project.
Like some raise pavement markers and we may even be able to do some of the curve.
Indicators like that when in a safety projects it really light it up at night time.
But that the road will pretty much stay the same as what it is as far as alignment and in the curve coming into.
Do you put that temporary bridge north of south?
Yeah, we go to the south side.
Yeah.
Okay.
So about a year time on.
Yeah, once it gets started.
Now, that as from the point construction starts.
Yeah.
You know, they're right about the back of down here.
And that's there.
That's the portal.
Yeah.
And that's what was discussed.
You know, for the last couple of years was how to get the thing done without having to close it.
Because the detail routes not short.
You know, there's no good way around.
We did what we did with the capital off of bridge.
You know, they got that thing turned around.
And what?
21 days, 23 days?
Yeah.
A lot smaller bridge.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Time is to wear.
There's a lot of bridges.
It's close to completion as opposed to just get started during the beginning of that.
That's very things like that.
Yeah.
So yeah.
Some of it's at mercy if, you know, that the whole state A process.
But.
What's that?
Yeah.
This is the state.
Yeah.
It'll all be part of the same path.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess we'll get rid of that bridge.
They're going to have to move that as well.
Yeah.
I mean.
I guess we'll get rid of that bridge.
They're going to have to move that way.
Either way.
They've got to relocate.
This can't go back on the bridge.
I guess they've been made aware of that.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And actually, some of the adjustments of order.
They thought.
Coast.
Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah.
With.
With it without a permit.
They moved there.
Yeah.
But.
It's around the same.
It's just like just over a million dollars.
And he's like 1.2 is what.
I would just that part of it.
Yeah.
But.
You see that.
Oh, Bob likes property to try to.
And stack it right on top of somebody's house.
Yeah.
On either side.
So it's at the north side, too, and it gets.
You know it's.
Fifty feet from the guy's driveway.
So.
If he had anything.
You do this bridge.
Would it have any lines going through there.
To loud.
They heard up rocky here.
But they did.
But that's what they've already relocated there.
Yeah.
They.
Based on what we're going to do though not.
The previous plans.
It's.
in under-efficient areas.
Yes, but it is.
If you would just have to be diligent in the process of it, you know.
You have to give them a help start for their slow.
Yeah, very slow.
Okay.
So yeah, I mean, less, you know, there's a objection to it.
That's, well, finish making it end around on it and then come back with the modified program.
So.
And we need to think that finding will be made available.
Yeah.
Should be this month or next,
I should approve that the next four year cycle.
So, and even though, you know,
it got to think it gets distributed per year,
it basically gets advanced credits for it.
So, move ahead.
Let me have a bit of your projects.
It's been within the last two or three months. We've got almost a year before we'd come up for,
because I'm expecting those every year.
Last week from the DOT started to write tickets on that road because of that bridge overweight trucks.
Yeah, it's posted, it's a real posting.
I mean, it needs to be, you know, it here too, because...
Okay, that's all I had today, and what shall I have from now?
Thank you.
I will Mr. Greg Day, supposedly closed, closed season in the case yesterday.
Thank you.
So you're following me?
I'm following you.
I'm promised an idea.
Kind of by the phone.
I believe you.
Hey, we got the road manager, Mr. Vic.
Johnson up next.
First item on my agenda is, this was table to wildback,
and I'm just trying to bring it back up.
Motion to approve this in toss.
It says cover-alls, but it's actually uniforms for the road crew to wear when working with tar.
This is for my pot-hole patch increase.
Mm, second.
How's it about district 2?
It's like my district 3?
Yes.
Any further discussion?
Be a none district 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, motion carries 5, 0.
Thank you very much on that.
On if the board is okay, I'll just group all these, of course,
and held together and vote at once.
Number 2, motion approved,
and moving of Garrett Martin from San Beach, C.
Wall to road department, cruise south,
is truck driver labor.
Same rate of pay effective today.
Motion approved, moving David Dennis from road department to C. Wall.
As operator labor, same rate of pay effective today.
And in only a amendment, motion to transfer nascent whales
from building the grounds part-time custodian to road department.
North maintenance full-time pay adjustment
from 10 to 1050 per hour.
And in motion, the hard debt-brown need all is an
as part-time custodian buildings and ground to replace
missed whales at 10 dollars per hour.
Effective on completion of physical and road test.
Yes.
As asked by district 1, second by district 2.
Any further discussion?
Be a none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Motion carries 5-0.
Thank you all very much.
And the last item I have is a discussion item request for a
street light in a dangerous curve on a dominoid road near
395 supervisor.
But we had called me about this one.
It is a situation that has been a quite few accidents in this curve.
Not sure that the street light would help the speeds that they're
going.
But it's not a bad idea.
It's pretty bad.
If the board considers just have to make a finding of fact that this is a light that would serve
the general public and not an independent property owner and represents protection
of a safety hazard.
Ladies, correct.
The motion is second.
Motion of district 5.
Second by district 1.
Any further discussion?
Be a none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Motion carries 5-0.
Thank you very much.
That's all I have.
I want to show how something for me.
Thank you.
All right.
Next up.
We have Miss Maureen Anderson.
The first.
Thanks a lot.
I'll try to keep on from being too wordy for y'all.
This first motion is the same group of projects I explained at the last meeting about how
they come out of a separate bank account.
So they're presented before you.
It is invoice number 11 from Compton in the amount of $230 for praying Creek.
An invoice number 10 in the amount of $1,238 for season E case bridge.
Second by district 3.
Any further discussion?
Be a none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Motion carries 5-0.
Next is a motion to spread on the minutes.
The quarter of the reports for Department of Finance and Administration for the Crane Creek Bridge
Replacement Project.
Motion by district 5.
Second by district 2.
Any further discussion?
Be a none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Motion carries 5-0.
These next two motions is how we get our bond funds from Hinkhack Bank to positive into our general fund after we've made payment on these projects.
So the first one is WGN number 3.
Any amount of $13,477.
This is to finish off the Wagner Engineering Contract for the storm water program.
Motion by district 4.
Second by district 5.
Any further discussion?
This is the final payment for them.
Yes.
Be a none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Motion carries 5-0.
And last is...
I'm sorry.
What is she yet?
Yes.
The final report.
The last is draw to number 4.
And this is to the total amount for Passen Trail.
Motion by district 1.
Second by district 2.
Any further discussion?
Be a none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Motion carries 5-0.
Thank you.
Next up is Daddy.
I should have cooked some beans for today.
First item we have is motion spread on the minutes to AMR report for December.
Second.
Got a motion by district 1.
Second.
Second by district 3.
Any further discussion?
Be a none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Motion carries 5-0.
I'm sorry.
Second by district 3.
Any further discussion?
Be a none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Motion carries 5-0.
Motion by district 5.
Supervisor, Darren Liner.
To serve on the SMPDD Board of Directors.
Motion by district 1.
Second.
Second by district 3.
Any further discussion?
Be a none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Motion carries 5-0.
Next item is motion to spread.
The Phillips Pest Control monthly report for December.
In motion of second.
Motion by district 4.
Second.
Second by district 5.
Any further discussion?
Be a none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Motion carries 5-0.
Motion is spread on the minutes to county tourism.
Development, Bureau, financial statements.
For fiscal year 2018.
Motion by district 3.
Second by district 5.
Any further discussion?
Be a none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Motion carries 5-0.
Motion to ratify and spread on the minutes to U.S.
SBA.
Office of Disaster Assistance.
Lease with the County Board of Supervisors.
For temporary use of the stone prep building.
For term of occupancy from January 21st through February 18th.
The motion is second.
Motion by district 1.
Second.
Second by district 3.
Any further discussion?
Be a none.
District 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Motion carries 5-0.
Next item's motion.
Approved the request from the Mississippi Department of Health to install a generated transfer switch to the health and human services building.
I talked a little bit about it and we don't see a problem.
It's that no cost to the county and it'll put a minute position that in the event of a power outage.
Who's finding it?
Who's paying for that?
They are.
The state is.
Yes.
Those things are cheap.
Motion by district 2.
Second by district 1.
Motion by district 2.
Second by district 1.
Next item is request to approve the county administrative to act as the county's emergencies
design for the purpose of declaring local emergencies for purposes of section 3171 and also 3173.
This deal strictly with the emergency purchases and repairs.
Something to do with the EMA requirements, their position or anything else.
The Board still declares emergencies for disaster, or based on a bill that was passed 2 sessions
ago.
The Board president can declare and report back to the Board, but that's this is strictly
dealing with emergencies for instance.
If a road case in and we need a road without having to go through the normal to be able to
have emergency in designation.
Yes.
Kind of like we did with the tree at the cemetery.
The emergency situation was declared and we removed the tree report back at the next
year.
Should it be the emergency, the emergency, the emergency, the emergency, the emergency, I mean,
would that be?
Yes.
Or it's the statute, roughly 3171, 1, 2, 3171, 1, 2, 3171, 2, 3171, and then section 31, 313 talks about the government authorities,
emergency purchase procedures and that talks about acting through its designation.
So we can refer both it in the minutes.
The 317161, 1, if one first is the definition?
In 311713, K.
The first is the definition of the emergency.
Emergency.
The second is the exceptions to the public bidding statute that's has upon the fine name.
They spread out on the minutes and they ratify this.
I've got a motion my district too.
I can't.
Second my district three.
Any further discussion?
Any issue there is, because we have not following me in any qualified immunity, the board has
to make a finding that it's actually responsible for that, instead of, this is a statute
that generally relates to emergency purchases for county equipment, not for the necessity
to bring in that before the board, because we have immunity, and we have to basically, in
our waiver of our immunity, and say we're actually viable for that time.
Is there any such way to find a way to do with the next time?
That's a, that's a fine and it has to be made by the board.
I'm both.
Good deal.
Okay.
All right.
We've got a motion a second.
Any further discussion?
Be a none.
District one, two, three, four, and five motion carries five zero.
The next item is just hopefully to open a little discussion or communications with some of the
recreational leagues and the possibility of the cities.
My understanding that several of the ball leagues are talking about merging this year.
We've standard, knee case, maybe, or knee case, the kill.
One other one, kill Hencock Harrison.
They're all talking about merging this year and playing at the kill facility slash complex, complex,
sports complex.
And it was even mentioned about approaching the cities about doing a total county wide merger.
Still playing at two facilities at the bay and in the kill.
But the numbers apparently are dropping off big and even like to football leagues.
We have what two or three leagues now and we don't have participation.
Somebody gets upset.
They want to go create their own league now.
So if there's any way I mentioned it to Kevin, even if he gets to the point, we included money in the budget
for management at the complex.
Even if we up at some to deal with strictly a record director that can deal with all of the recreational programs,
including management at the complex.
But just to open the line of communications, if we can set up a little workshop and invite all of the players,
whether it's the leagues, footballs, baseballs?
Yeah, I don't think it would have.
I don't think that's going to happen this year just because it's time reasons.
But there is discussions ongoing with I don't know the county groups about that.
So I would suggest having lived through soccer meetings and football meetings seven or eight years ago.
I would tell them to get their minds wrapped around what they're.
And then we can kind of hold the work. I don't have 300 people in here.
Yeah. I guess the ones that I think they can hold the work, wants to merge.
And then the suggestion is if we're going to be merging some, let's look at the possibility of merging all.
You know, it gets to the point. Kevin's got to maintain, you know, football fields that had been used in how long.
And, you know, and stuff like that in other facilities. And we try to explain to everybody that, as long as we're having to maintain fields and facilities that aren't being used,
we can't provide a premier facility.
One facility that everybody could use and it would be a top notch.
We provide good fields and good services, but it's not necessarily the absolute best because we've got to maintain so many.
You know, it's gotten to the point where everybody wants one and nobody wants to drive.
And, you know, just trying to figure out what's best for the kids and how can we get more kids involved in it?
Yes.
Because we've lost it. Over the last years, part of it is because of the school situation.
Now the schools, at least baseball wise, they have the junior high program that eliminates most of your kids in the,
11 and 12 year old late group. And you know, no such thing as a 13 to 15, you know, 16, 18 because of high school ball.
You know, we're in a disadvantage because of our amenities that we lack there. Obviously, for some of these travel malls,
I don't know if it's a thing. You think it just pop off the interstate, it can outlacks it.
You know, the outfield's got one now and everybody's in a business for us.
We are in this pain. I'm not against, you know, somewhat more advantage or something we can do.
There was a tour of the report that was put out by tourism said that the knee and, and I don't know,
Oh, there's got it somewhere. But the knee was for flatfield, like soccer and stuff like that.
But because of the cross, because there's so many baseball complexes before ours was even built.
This report was done.
Yeah. So anyway, now we've got a complex. We've got traffic out and I've got an exact, and we have one and I'm all about that.
Haven't haven't chosen to play currently still in the travel scene and, you know, we'll be playing school ball this year.
We still utilize the travel wall scene as well. So having that right there is a huge asset.
So it's a big figure.
You know, one of the times in the last two years have been running out of five.
They're never, and this is just my opinion. I don't think they're ever going to be money makers.
But we need to make it used. We can do, yes.
Yeah. I'm all about that.
One of the things that was suggested is that assuming that we were able to merge beliefs,
then the possibility of going after different tournaments like we used to do here.
You know, you're district tournaments of district, whatever it is.
State tournaments were all series like we had for the girls before.
And then start using the complex and at least people would see it.
They would see what we have to offer. And then maybe few years down the road it would always.
Oh, I understand.
It's basically rebuilding our sports programs, recreation programs from the ground of countywide.
Like I said, the base talking about going independent.
You know, in the past, they've had a couple, a couple of teams in each age group.
If anything, the girls had a travel to Long Beach last year because of a lack of participation.
Yeah, absolutely.
But just just to get something going to enhance our programs.
And Kevin, I work on it and bring information back because we get it.
Just on that too.
Oh, but both.
In.
Like.
Legislative priorities.
At the last cog meeting, Greg and I were there.
Everybody else bailed on us.
And basically what we did is we we provided them with a list of five projects.
Priorities that we could come up with at the time.
For the five, I believe, or carry over from the current fifth or the previous fiscal year.
One was a new one.
It's talking about implementation of the storm water study program.
That's already in the works.
We're finishing it where.
Uh, advertising now or will be soliciting proposals for the administration.
The other one is the multi-purpose arena.
Phase one is in the 1670 million dollar range.
Uh, we were anticipating some funding.
Last year.
August September it didn't come in.
Hopefully we'll be back in line to get some funding this year that we can keep that project off.
I'm a cloud park.
Uh, roughly $2 million with the new programs and enhancements that we're using the gomason monies for.
Uh, buck in the apart.
We were successful in getting $2 million that was funneled directly to buck in the apart.
Uh, to help with the improvements they're talking about there.
And then the last one that we came up with was Texas flat road.
I don't know if anybody spent a lot of time riding on that road lately.
In addition to the maintenance problems that we have now that we didn't have before.
And I don't think we anticipated it.
The traffic on that road is atrocious.
And not just vehicular traffic.
The, the dump trucks coming off a highway 11 right above the, uh, the test site.
I've been traveling that road quite a bit lately and it's, it's dangerous.
It's, it's a lot more traffic than what's anticipated.
That if there's any way I know that money has gone, but you remember a few years ago.
Um, there was monies for a bypass road in the kill.
That money was taken and put over in the out of the.
Uh, nothing else if we can remind him died in some of the other folks that we had the money at one point.
Uh, we need to money back because of the situation for evacuation route for safety.
That's the road and it's, and I have no clue how much we can do.
I met with, uh, the one engineer from M.D.
I'm about there.
So I get his name.
But anyway, and it's specifically asked about using Texas flat for a comfortable road.
And they said it couldn't, couldn't be at that time.
Yeah.
You know, so I guess the shoulders wasn't good enough.
Yeah.
Why don't I follow what the situation was.
And at that time is one of the best roads we had to carry.
Yeah.
True.
But if, if we can look at him and, um, Senate more candidates, there's anything that he could do.
And I think he was at the meeting at the car meeting when we brought it up.
And of course everybody said, where's the money going to come from?
Well, I think we all realized there's a whole bunch of money sitting up there.
Yeah.
And, and some of it, there's a whole lot of hoops you have to go through.
Some of it doesn't have a whole lot of strings attached to it.
It's simply a matter of getting somebody to listen to us to consider what our request is.
And, and that one like I said, for several different reasons.
It's, it's bad.
And then of course, there's three years I've run with them in bad shape.
Well, that's it.
And, you know.
You know.
I try to get big.
Yeah.
And that'll lead us into the next item, which is the tip program through Gulf Regional Planning Commission.
Any applications for that are due January 31st.
And that's for the funding period through 2024.
What it does, it gets on on their list.
And then they start funneling the money through MDOT for different projects.
And we have two of them that we'd recommend.
One is takes us flat road for two and a half million dollar project for improvements.
Mainly fixing up what's there and going with that.
That have to be state aid stuff.
Does it have to be a state aid road that they work on?
I don't think so.
Well, that's a lot of stuff.
Yeah.
Well, so that's what I try to do.
Flat top.
They didn't tell you what.
That check until our check and we'll get flat top.
Come on.
You know, we've got four to three.
But they, they've done it.
They've done it.
They've done that.
But they've explained.
I'm not going to use that to plant.
But this would get us two projects.
The one would, like I said, would be Texas flat.
Yeah, Texas flat.
And then the other would be Lakeshore Road.
Finishing up on Lakeshore Road.
That project would be 600,000, 120,000,
20 percent match.
And the other would be Texas flat.
Would be two and a half million dollar project.
I'm sorry.
Lakeshore Road.
Yeah.
So it would be two, two, one would be a two and a half million dollar project.
600,000 would a 20 percent match.
And that would be two recommendations if we have any others.
If not, if we can get more approval to approve these two to be submitted.
Before the December, I mean January 31st deadline.
May the motion?
Yeah.
Second.
We got a motion by district two.
Second by district one.
If we get it's out of copper, we can spread on the menace.
Yes.
Red on the menace.
I'll get a motion of second.
Any further discussion?
Be a nine district one, two, three, four, and five.
Motion carried five, zero.
Okay.
Quick update on the Gulf Coast Mental Health Center funding issues.
At the last meeting, we talked about a crucial deadline.
A critical deadline was going to be the middle of January.
Two weeks ago, when we were in Jackson.
It's got a ten of the meeting with the State Department of Mental Health folks.
And some of the Harrison County folks.
I think at that meeting, it was talked about they were going to provide the
funding that was being requested or that was being delayed at the time.
So at least the January 15 disaster deadline has passed.
And they got that on the 13th and they payroll.
Yeah.
The next crisis from what I understand was that that amount was like $4,000.
Yeah.
And so to that they actually need for that.
I want to say it was in 200.
Yeah.
To something range.
And the indication was that once you got passed there, the next critical timeline is more
large.
Yes.
There are a lot of money that they're talking to.
There are fairly different categories.
From the state, it was a reimbursement from the State Department of Mental Health that they
were suspended.
And it was being delayed in reimbursement.
They're basically for it.
And then they finally got it into.
Should have been in the first of the year.
The next issue was going to be in March.
That's going to be the serious one.
One of the questions that was brought up at our meeting with the State folks was, if all
else fails.
And we still need some one-time money.
Does the State have anything available either through the mental health or going to the
legislature.
A couple of the Harrison County folks expressed the concern that nobody's going to give the
mental health forward any money because it messed it up so bad.
And my answer to him was, well, no offense.
We messed up by not monitoring what they were doing.
Now the legislature needs to understand that we're involved.
And we're not going to let it happen again.
But still didn't get an answer to saying there is money.
There isn't money.
Again, out of all the pools of money, that's up to you.
If we needed one-time influx, where would he come from?
So it's still on the table that the money could come from.
Or would need to come from the counties if not from the State.
Several options of being looked at to possibility of privatizing possibility of moving in
with one of the other county entities.
We have a meeting scheduled for Thursday with Pine Belt District 12 to talk to them about the
possibilities of doing the same thing that Harrison Kent, I mean, excuse me that
county did.
They dropped out of Gulf Coast and joined the Harrisburg area Pine Belt.
We have a meeting to discuss that as an option.
We're still waiting to see what is done with the other county counties.
As far as any advertisement for privatization.
Just weighing all of our options now, but we don't have a lot of time to do it.
We still have, hopefully, at least a couple of months before.
Now, what was the amount of money for March that they're going to need?
$600,000.
It's around $700.
And this is the, do we know if Harrison County and Stone County?
Because right now, based on the money we typically give, we're at about 75% of what we typically
would give them for the year, or we should only be at about 35.
So we're way ahead of what we're supposed to be given on.
As the other, as Stone and Harrison given them ahead, or did they just give the first six months?
My understanding is they gave the first six months last August.
And it's like we did.
And have not started.
Pro-rated the other at every 50% of the balance of the 50%.
They won't start making that payment until April 1st, which is the last six months of the fiscal year.
We started after we made the initial 50%.
We took the last 50%.
And pro-rated over 12 months to start payments again.
And we've already, and through January with that.
Correct.
So we're way ahead of schedule as far as what we appropriate to, just can the other Harrison
County out?
I don't know if they're willing to do that.
Well, they need, there's different ways to cut it.
They basically give you three different options.
Come down to the need of from them.
And again, the concern I still have is whether that's the true number is 70 or 40,000.
Harrison County is contribution to this.
It's roughly a million, three, Mr. Eddie, something like that.
So they've given the 650 so a failure.
We'll see if they've funded the other 651 in May. I mean, the problem is you've got a cash fund. How's that get? Where's that get you to? So, at some point, but they can start generating money. So, I don't know if another $650,000 pledge from the Harrison County who has a lot of deportion or some contribution, but the general ask is $740K, but I mean, just, you would think though, that's the right number that if you have an earlier cash influx, number larger amount.
It would help you for a longer period of time to where you're generating more income. You may not need $740K.
Correct. I think part of it as well, the new control, the core, we can't remember this last thing.
Appears to be pretty good as it's job. The unfortunate thing is he hadn't been there very long. He's only been there for a month or two months.
Something like that. Even the state folks are confident that he will be able to get into it and do all of the things and answer all of the questions that we all have, like, what happened and what can we do to make sure it doesn't happen again.
And the most important part is what we've all been asking, what is it going to take? What is the real number?
If we do another $750,000 collectively, how long is that going to last? And here it talks about if we'd get $840,000, that'll carry it into July. If we get $740,000, that'll carry it to this.
But there's still some concern.
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. You're building your collections.
And I think the good thing is that being able to buy some time with the payment that did get me by the 15, we now have till some time in March, April.
And that's another couple of months that core, you'll have to get in and evaluate what and hopefully find some of the information that he provided for the last meeting.
Because I still have to believe that there is a fix, it's just a question of when and where and how much.
And at this point, I don't know if anybody in spite of what's in the core,
but I don't know if anybody has a real firm idea of what that is.
So we need to acquire or request monthly financial reports from them.
Yeah, I think, I think, as we get forward.
Yeah, absolutely. I think we have appointments.
Our appointment and we can ask him to come to each one of our meetings after he goes to them and provide that information.
But it is being provided now or on a regular basis.
And I'll make sure we get copies for the board on everything that is being presented now.
That's what I say. I think there's so much that's changed in the positive.
It's almost like you hate to give up on it.
You have a new board, a folks much more.
I don't want to say the other ones weren't caring about mental health,
but I don't necessarily think they were worried about the financial part.
They were too trusting of the folks that ran a position to see a phone to see you.
And it worked for a long time.
Then it quit working.
And it went to hell and a hand basket.
And it fairly quit up here.
That's it.
Absolutely.
So the base is you can see it coming for an all.
Correct.
Absolutely.
And I think that's the intention now with the new folks that are in.
I don't know very much about the new CEO, but the CFO,
like I said, seems to be very calm.
But all the credentialing has been corrected or whatever that situation was,
but now how long does it take for you to see the collection's rolling?
And I guess from you feeling, you know.
What's the timeframe there?
Thanks.
Is it truly one of you?
Is it?
No.
There is a time, there are no, there are there.
There's so much thought.
There're not a short staff, there's there's that vicious cycle.
We can't afford to hire new staff,
because we don't have the money yet.
And without the new staff, we can increase the billings,
but we don't have the staff to do the work that's going to generate the bill.
So, it's that cycle that somewhere along the line,
and we've talked about it.
There is that magic number of what is going to take to get us to that point.
But it's not what we also need to have other options available.
So that's what we're working on.
That's what we need to discuss.
Other options that no service, there's no last service, we need to write it.
There will be no lapse in service.
So that's been committed to by everybody to lay any fears.
There will be no lapse in service.
Whatever it takes to get that at point.
Harrison County's made that commitment.
I think stone is made it, and we've made it here previously,
that there will be no lapse in service.
It's just a question of figuring out what avenue we're going to have to take to get to him.
So, I like, you know, officers, that are the hostility important.
We'll be.
We've talked to them.
They're willing to look at pieces of it.
Small pieces.
But not the entire package.
Other entities, I think, would consider the same thing.
The ultimate goal would be if we could find somebody that would basically come in and privatize it.
You take everything.
In the shape that it's in, I don't know if that's going to happen.
So we may have to write it out a little bit until we can get that at point.
But again, we're looking at every option we possibly can.
Any idea?
I think, for the sake of the news, especially.
I just think that they are important, because those are really, really,
that we have to do a lot of good things.
We all have a couple of things to have place to send these people who know the commitments.
But the real issues that we're doing with this is, like, we've got good problems here.
That's under the government of health.
We've got low-end clinics that appear for people to keep them from getting to the point that we've got to do in voluntary use for that.
That's a work that will assist them if we can never get back on our feet.
Yeah.
The fact that we've got so far with that, financially.
They, at the end, that they're just not able to get both around.
Hey, the new thing that's been in my mind.
Is there any chance for anybody to discuss, possibly, of looking to see if they would be able
to be able to do anything else or really type of on it?
They can show a business plan, or the money's going to be in here eventually.
You know, that's what counties that had to do with public entities to do out in bond money,
to get an influx of money to be able to operate until that money comes in.
And then a pay off to pay them back.
There's a meaning that's just...
That was discussed at our meeting with the state folks in what Harrison County was.
If push come the show, if state middle health folks had any money, just doing it on a loan.
Some kind of a loan type basis.
And then recoup the money set up a reasonable repayment plan.
But whatever that number is to get the money, if there's no intention of doing an outright one-time grant deal,
do it as some sort of a loan.
Again, nothing finalized.
But that is one of the considerations that has been tossed off as a way in.
And I think it's reasonable.
Again, but the bad thing is until we know how much it is, it's tough for anybody to consider any sort of relief.
Well, a permanent or short-term type thing.
And for some of the big board members, there's that story of primates from the country.
So this is not what it does.
It's the deal I was in.
It's not optional.
It's not what we've got to provide.
We've got to get people straight from the side of the suicide.
We're at the society.
We've got to get a place to provide.
People walking before they get to that point of having the involvement here.
So that's that story.
Yes, correct.
You heard Judge Fall Verlia and somebody other folks making a presentation with him of the reliance on
of Coach mental health for some of their services for the kids.
So it is.
It's it's read reaches out to quite a few areas for the need for services.
We haven't, to my knowledge, we haven't heard anything back from the Harrison County Board to see what their latest action is through their attorney, Trisha, Tisdale, I believe.
And so that would be one of the other things as well. In addition to the meaning that we have scheduled for Thursday, if there's any way Gary could reach Tisdale and see if anything's available to meet with them, get an update from them.
And again, put our heads together, us going to them, them coming to us, whatever it ends up being, to where we could sit down and get that as well, because they're the big dog in the game.
You know, they pay 80% of the funding, whatever it is, 75% whatever it is, whatever it is, and don't pay the balance of it.
But it still, Tim can tell you what it used to cost accounting, before we joined Gulf Coast Mental Health was in the, and this was back then probably in a half million dollar range.
So the 250,000 we pay now is considerably less than what it used to cost us, and then factor in all the increases and everything could very well be a lot more than half million dollars if we did it on our own.
So that's something we'll keep you posted, we've got it a meeting Thursday, and anything else that comes up we'll keep you posted on our own.
So that's something we'll keep you posted, we've got it a meeting Thursday, and anything else that comes up we'll keep you posted on that.
So that's the latest on mental health.
Next item's approval for attendance at the Hurricane Conference.
April 6th through the 9th in Orlando for those interested in attending.
If we get approval.
Motion by district five second by district one, any further discussion.
And none district one two three four and five motion carries five zero.
One last item that I didn't get added.
Nancy got some great news this morning.
We received our first check any amount of a hundred and three thousand seven and thirty nine dollars and.
25 cents and that's for the use tax modernization program for them all this extra sales tax that they're collected from these outside.
Out of state vendors and merchants and it's supposed to come in.
Over what a four year period in one fourth this year and then two four next year and four years from now we'll reach the whole amount.
I'll reduce your two fours to a half.
Three four seven.
True.
And one of the things though is it's got to be spent this year by standing.
I don't know all the restrictions on what it can be spent on.
It's there.
It's it's road department.
Whether it's just paving or paving and bridge.
Whatever it is.
It's not just.
I agree.
No.
Just say.
Oh, yeah, I got that started anyway.
We'll have a report at the next meeting.
Pick it up.
Get together with Jeff and see what all we have to do on it in.
More and be involved in that as well.
Because it's it's some particular details of which you have to do.
And I wouldn't quite expect it now.
So we didn't.
Yeah.
It was.
I.
Briefly tried.
I think we need to vote.
We need to vote.
We need to vote in the national hurricane conference.
To be both.
Yeah.
We did.
Yeah.
Five.
Yeah.
Okay.
Uh.
Yeah.
One way.
And then we vote.
Yeah.
I'm causing problems.
Um.
First, I have some motion to renew the resolution.
Authorcy and the Spursments to the three.
Inca County cities of the additional 50% of the road and bridge money.
This is one.
The prior board did.
I think actually the last two boards are done.
There's a ability.
And this is related to taxes for road and bridge that are inside the cities.
We they get half of it by statute.
We have previously given them the other 50%.
Um, they would submit a request to us for the funds.
We would disperse in that manner.
So this is just for your consideration.
If you'd like to renew that.
The Spurs.
The full 100% of the road and bridge funds.
To the cities or statutory officer.
Keep half of it.
In the Spurs.
You're well.
So this is just for your consideration.
I'll make motion.
Second.
Motion.
Motion by district four.
Second by district five.
Any further discussion?
Yes.
They soon forget.
We give.
I don't know.
Fifth percent.
We give them the honor.
I'm not just like the Washington.
Breast.
Roads.
That's right.
Come on.
But you say demand.
We give them.
I do costly.
I can't forget.
Very fast.
Yes.
They just.
They got a good memory.
It's just real short.
That's okay.
There's just given monthly because they're bond.
Right.
Yeah.
The other ones are given all at once.
They did.
They did kind of.
Typically requests say with like for example they would come and say we want to do this on serious
Avenue.
Yeah.
They would.
We had this project in mind.
We coordinate with Jeff or wherever we need to and it's kind of done that way.
It can be done however you want.
Sometimes it's.
It's every few months.
They've put a paper and program together.
Commit and say request.
We've accumulated.
Whatever.
Our diamond head.
The last request for them.
They had like a year and a half worth of money.
And they came in and said we want all of fiscal.
Eighteen's money because we don't do.
So we pretty much.
My plan was.
We know what's being done with that.
Absolutely.
We have it.
And they tell us what the project is. And that's why it's written to say, upon request of the city to the supervisors. And now what you still know, they still come before you say this is what we're planning.
I've got a motion, the second. And if further discussion, be a none district one, two, three, four, and five motion carries five, zero.
Second item, we receive at the sign copy of the MOU Secretary of State to concern in the Sand Beach. The only amendment we had in this is to include within it, our ability to place fire pits, which relates to the next item.
So I'm just spreading that on the minutes, which was previously approved.
Motion by district two, second by district three, any further discussion?
Be a none district one, two, three, four, and five motion carries five, zero.
That's as a motion to authorise construction of these fire pits on Sand Beach per the map of locations in waiver of any applicable fees.
Mr. Kinney-Mati is funding no cost of the county.
Fire pits similar to what they have in Harrison County on the beaches. The locations of these, I can get your map.
But it's a long sequence of the major rights of way. Now where we know we don't have any right, Perry and I choose.
So now it's a purpose of the amendment with the MOU. So this would be to authorise and construct that way of any permit fees to the county and authorise that construction.
Motion by district two, second by district one, any further discussion?
Yes, sir.
Does that, does eliminate where you can have fires now?
As far as do they have to, and the fit is a question.
I would, I think that that's your call. You can't eliminate today.
Yes.
Well, the mess, the mess.
Yes. Okay.
And so if we have a motion to amend the agenda to limit the place of fire use on the beach to those locations of the two be constructed.
Fire pits upon their construction completion.
Which still require permit from the city fire department?
Yes.
Now I have had conversation with their fire chief and he would ask for us to take that over.
Well, I have that discussion. We need to meet with him.
And out of it, but currently it's going to be done through the base angle with fire department here and base angle us.
And I'm assuming wavelength anywhere and wavelength.
Right.
Okay.
Let me see it for a minute.
I should have one base angle as far as possible.
Okay.
So basically if you want to bonfire, you can only be constructed at that to there.
Now that's what we're saying here.
Yeah.
Let's go.
Which is it.
Listen.
Because people go out there and just they burn in silence.
They're not supposed to be.
And it's just creates a mess.
And this can help control that.
Thank you.
Probably as we clean.
Yeah.
So.
Exactly.
But how many fire pits we talk in fire?
I don't know there.
Probably.
But I mean, it's basically a thing.
It's a year.
Okay.
So I think there's one like Nicholson.
There's one at Washington.
And so.
Probably down by coalman.
That's not a good idea.
That's a good idea.
That's not a good idea.
We can do the same thing.
We can go back to some historic even.
Yeah.
That's what I'm pulling.
I can probably pull it here.
There's right here.
You see, somebody covers it one.
Obviously.
Pull that.
Okay.
So you have one.
You have one at Nicholson.
One at Washington Street.
One at Omen.
One at David.
Steve.
Oh man.
It's.
Oh my god.
There's.
On the.
Yeah.
It's.
What's.
Yeah.
We're.
Right.
Yeah.
We're.
Yeah.
We're.
Yeah.
We're.
Yeah.
We're.
We need.
Yeah.
We're.
And I don't think there's anything problematic with us.
It's you and Department of the obvious questions,
problem, as we don't have far departments down there.
So let's try it.
If they're going, if there may be some process,
we can do where the Department of the Department's,
but we can notify them of that, of the department.
That way, we maintain control of how we know that they're now,
with the documentation.
Because if not, it's first come first serve here.
I'll talk to the far chief officer.
I'll tell you what that.
About that, I mean, Wavans never approached me about us doing that,
basically what they say as, because all they do is take it
a positive, and they get people to deposit back after they clean up.
But.
Well, anyway, we've got a motion of the second.
And there's just too many of them.
Okay, just to many of you down any motion of the second.
Motion of the district, too.
Second, the district, five.
Any further discussion?
Be a non district, one, two, three, four, and five.
Motion carries five, zero.
That's just a motion to renew.
You know, a cool agreement among, I think, a county way,
when, basically, there's some time ahead for sharing
of resources, concerning road work.
Public folks from related items.
So this is a renewal of an interlocal, you know, this is, for example,
they have striking trucks.
They have some entities have some equipment that others don't have.
And this is just a one that we've had a lot of resources to share resources.
They just coordinate allows, for example, someone from, say,
have done, have wants to use some of our equipment that's up to,
beck about whether that's appropriate at the time and at the what,
to what when we're in line.
And so this is just a renewal of that interlocal agreement.
Second.
Got a motion to my district one.
Second, my district three.
Vicky, okay with that.
District one, two, three, four, and five.
Motion carries five, zero.
I'm going to question that.
Do you guys go in next y'all for it?
Or you just turn it over to it.
But we can do it.
It depends.
Okay.
That's right.
Yeah.
Don't get on the other side.
That's right.
To have stuff out there.
That's all.
Yeah.
The next four items, you can, I'll ask you to consider together.
These are all related to the coalition that we're working through with the present
complaint.
We have against the honor of the engineers.
Some of these.
For example, the special management area, the fish reform bills, or some things that we can
implement, which if the MR approves those ultimately, those in spite of the federal issues
require some will require the Army Corps, which you see, sorry, permission from the MR, that
part of the opening of any spillway, not just the, the immediate one, but any other features
spillway.
Five is a proposed federal statute, namely the Mississippi Senate of Lake, the Poncta-Train
Protection Act.
Ms. Murray's Franks is intended on receiving this and sponsoring this.
This is an amendment after crypt from one previously done to protect some fisheries in adjacent
to the Grand Canyon, so it's modeled after that, so we'd be requesting our federal
delegation to support that, implement that, to make this a designated federal air protection.
And I like why it's the lower pearl freshwater project is a similar request.
So if we could, and these are all being presented to the coalition entities today, or just
week at their meeting, respect the meetings, and the plan is to try to get these to DMR
for consideration and state level this next week and to Ms. Murray's Franks for sponsorship
by the federal designation this week.
I need a motion of second.
Move.
Motion of my district five.
Second, my district three.
Any further discussion?
Be a non-district one, two, three, four, and five.
Motion carries five, zero.
And that's all I have.
I think the discussion here on the possible.
I think we've heard of that last time.
Of course.
That's, yeah.
I think on that, the only thing we were waiting for was the agreement from Brad, the amendment
to agreement to include before the end.
And that was waiting.
Okay.
I think that's all we have.
I thought we were last week.
So I got that.
Yeah.
That's all we have.
You took the songs now out there.
Yeah.
Thank you.
All right.
Moving on to supervisor items.
District one.
Thank you.
We've already done your appointment for the important harbor.
District two.
Good.
District three.
We need to do your.
We need to.
I got a motion by District three to appoint E.J.
Bites as the election commissioner to replace District three.
Commissioner Mr. Gary Gilmore.
So I can.
We've got a second by district five.
Any further discussion?
And to that authorization.
To attend the training program that starts tomorrow morning.
For the election commission.
All right.
We've got a motion to the second.
Any further discussion?
Be in none.
District one.
Two.
Three.
Four.
And five.
Motion carries five.
Zero.
District four.
I'm good.
District five.
Got it.
I talked to hoody.
He said he's good with Timmy.
So I'd like to make a motion.
Reapoint Timmy.
Cameron.
Kill utility.
Okay.
We need a motion by district five.
Second by district three.
I just.
I would like to make sure that we reiterate to them.
And including their attorney.
And Gary.
I'll care if you have to send a letter.
There's a board.
There's a board of order.
From.
I don't remember if it's.
It's right before we got in.
That all these fire district appointments are to go through the EMA office.
Well, hoody did tell me.
Yeah.
I understand.
I just want to make sure they know that because they've done this in the past.
Their last appointment.
They did this and didn't catch my didn't catch anybody's attention.
Right.
I'll get with them.
We need to make sure that they understand the process.
Yes.
You know, since he's he's the fire district,
or whatever.
The fire coordinator.
I mean, all these appointments are to go through his office.
Yeah.
And then he brings it to us for approval.
Because he's going to have a few more.
Some of these other.
Yes.
But they don't come up for a day.
Yeah.
Make some today.
And there's a few more than some of the other ones.
That.
All right.
We've got a motion to second.
Any further discussion.
Being done.
District one.
Two.
Three.
Four.
And five.
Motion carries five.
Zero.
All right.
We have any.
Public comment.
Mr. Brian.
Good to have you here.
I thought you'd brave in the cold this morning.
All right.
I thought you'd brave in the cold this morning.
All right.
That's obviously walking every Sunday.
Walking to church.
Right.
All right.
I do have one thing.
And this is concerning the.
The issue with the zoning.
The zoning issue down there.
I know.
Yeah.
I'm.
So you've had a motion to consider executive session.
Yes.
Or any.
We need a motion.
Can you move?
Yeah.
Motion by district three.
Second.
I'm in a motion of second to enter entry.
Executive session for any medical education,
Vice-conditioner, considering Ross Bellillilly.
So that I got a motion of second.
Both, check it by district three, check my district five, any further discussion?
The others are one, two, three, four, five.
I'm looking to carry five zero.
One, two, three, four.
Two, three, four, five.
Three, four, five, six, six, six, eight, six.
Two, three, five.
and that's what we say.
I need a motion in a second to exit executive session with no action taken, got a motion
from a district 3, second by district 2, any further discussion, be a non district 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Now, okay, if that's all, we'll entertain a motion to adjourn.
Got a motion by district 1, second by district 3, any further discussion, be a non district 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, meeting adjourn
at 1238.