What is there? You getting one? Oh, yeah.
Looks like we're in order. All right. Well, I want to welcome everyone. We love seeing all the faces here. It's Randall County Commissioner's Court, February 27, 2024. It's now officially in session. We're going to begin with an indication with Commissioner Robinson, and then we're going to fall with the pledges of allegiance. And then we have some certificates to hand out.
Let's
pray our most gracious Heavenly Father, we came to you this morning and ask you that
in thanksgiving for our first responders throughout Randall County and the challenges
that they will face with these inflamed weather that we're experiencing right now, please
watch over all of our first responders and watch over all of our citizens that
are at risk in a crucial day such as today.
We thank you for the many resources that you have provided us in order to protect our citizens
throughout Randall County.
Dear Lord, we thank you for our democracy and for our right to vote in this fine country.
We hope that all of our citizens will practice the right to vote.
Dear Lord, please forgive us for our sins and thank you for Jesus Christ to our salvation
In that name, we pray. Amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the light of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible.
So we'll start off with, and I'll probably put you this name, a Clay Coulter, two years
from the fire department.
We'll be here between the two.
We'll connect
this to one.
Congratulations.
Next is Ruston Scarborough,
two years from the fire department.
Linda Galvan, two years from the sheriff's department.
This
is Cody Mays.
How
do we miss him?
I don't know.
Brown, two years with Texel.
I would say lovely.
She just hurt more than she wore today.
Thank you.
Well,
as Judge Dyer said,
it's always exciting to have a full house here
and we're so grateful that y'all are going to stay till the very end.
And we hope you enjoyed that this morning.
Now, in all seriousness, we're going to celebrate some folks who are celebrating five years
and 10 years here.
We're going to start at the youth center, five years, Eric Hulson.
They
come across farmers insurance, and they've seen a lot of you have seen a lot of us.
The
Sheriff's Office celebrating 10 years with us, Stephen Torres.
We're
excited for this.
And
the last person we're going to celebrate for 10 years at least at the youth center.
A lot of youth center folks today, Jared, you must be pretty nice to them.
Vicente Gonzalez.
I'd like to echo what Tam said.
I continually hear good things about random county employees.
Thanks to each and every one of you for all you do each and every day.
When I talk to people, citizens out there, they say everybody is so kind, they're so
good, and they took care of my situation, so that's really appreciated.
it. So, thanks again. Okay, from the mental health department. 15 years, we have Nan Smith.
I don't ever think about that. Going to the courthouse, most times not very pleasant experience.
Say they're going to, you're in trouble, or he's going to cost you money.
And so, when we receive compliments from all of our,
that's pretty powerful, because in
In an environment like this, you make sometimes your professionalism and your training sure
shows that thank you for all you do.
Judge, tax office, 20 years of service, Paul and Meph are in this.
I'm good.
Thank you guys.
Don't know Paul.
She's one of the most playful kind.
Always has a beautiful smile on her face.
So we're very glad to have her.
Thank you, Judge.
So now you can see how we can send a crowd out.
They got work to do.
Right.
We're going to begin with item one, discuss and take action,
improving the minutes of the February 13th,
2024 meeting of the Randall County Commissioner's Board.
Has everyone had time for a view of the minutes?
Yes, ma'am.
Is there any corrections or changes?
Hearing none.
Then is there a motion?
I'll move approved.
I'll second it.
Second.
All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye.
Hi.
And the motion carries 5-0.
Item number two, discuss, excuse me, discuss a request by Love's Travel Stop to discharge
a fluent into the Arnot Road and County Road 34 right away.
Good morning, our team from Love's.
Good morning.
We're going to have you come up and do your presentation.
We also have some citizens here that want to speak afterwards, so come.
Please sit down.
Make yourself at home.
Absolutely.
What we would have asked for you to do is go around and identify each other for the court
and for the record.
Yes.
Good morning, commissioners.
My name is Boyd Mouse.
I'm the counsel for Love's Travel Stops.
We're going to have each person identify who they want.
I'm Amelia Jordan.
I'm with APEX companies for consulting engineers for Love's.
I'm Chris Welden.
I'm one of the environmental managers for Love's.
Gerald Haney environmental manager for loves. Thank you all. Thank you. So we're here today. I understand we're not on a gender
Action item per se rather here just to have a discussion
introduced commissioners
What we will be requesting down the line
But just for I'm going to do a little bit of brief background and I'm going to turn it over to
Jordan
Loves has had a store, this is the I-40 West store
near Arnott Road, west of Amarillo for decades.
In 2020, Loves did a substantial upgrade
and remodel of that store.
And I think that was rolled out in December of 2020.
In connection with that, prior to that substantial upgrade,
all of the wastewater was contained on site.
In connection with the upgrade, Love's put in a wastewater treatment plant to treat the
waste as a fluid.
And then in connection with that, for any of that wastewater fluid to be released off
site, Love's applied for and was granted a permit from the Texas Commission of Environmental
quality TCEQ to do just that and that was in 2018 about five just over five years
ago. Also in connection with that the route of the effluent that would be
leaving the loves property to travel on right-of-way property, property initially
along the road on Arnott Road and we're gonna have some maps for you here in a
minute to give you a little more context and Ms. Jordan will go through those but
The affluent would travel solely on right-of-way property initially in Potter County crossing
over going south into Randall County and then turning east for a good distance.
So for the first 1.4 miles of that route, that's solely on right-of-way, county right-of-way.
In connection with updating the facility, Loves has plans to make substantial updates
to its wastewater treatment facility, and those were kicked off last year. In connection with
that process, it was discovered that five years ago, Love's never approached Randall County for
any authorization or any affluent to travel across any of its right-of-way should the
affluent get that far. And so we discovered that last year,
and that's basically why we're
today to introduce ourselves to discuss that. So prior to that Potter County
did give a resolution. The Commissioner's Court passed a resolution five years ago
granting loves permission to discharge this treated wastewater onto the right
away in Potter County. But due to an oversight love did not approach Randall
county for that same permission. The initial path, based on the top of
graphical maps, showed that the effluent would go east, cross the Randall
the Potter County right away only briefly, and then perhaps go east on the
neighboring property. But in connection with the updated application process, we
saw what was happening. It's going down our net road, which it's been
doing that for a number of years. So in connection with all that, we want to come to Randall
County to let you know the status. We have applied for an additional permit which Ms.
short and can walk you through.
For our upgraded facility and upgraded discharge parameters. The TCEQ has
ordinarily held public comment. Numerous parties have had opportunity to comment,
including some here from Randall County. And the TCEQ just recently, a couple weeks ago,
the executive director found and concluded that Love's upgraded permit, if you will,
meets all legal requirements. So there's going to be an additional period for
parties to be heard if they wish with the TCEQ, but we're heading towards
approval with the TCEQ. So with that said, I'm going to be real honest. We're going
to be asking one for permission or affluent to be coming across the
right away Randall County and just to be real honest need to have for a little
forgiveness too because there was an oversight five years ago they're just
floods so Miss Jordan is going to go over some maps with you and kind of show
you the flow path what's what has occurred what we proposed to occur and
it's it's bottom line it's this would have to travel one point four miles
before entering any private property we'll lay that out for you on the
primary path. So with that said I'm happy once we've heard from Ms. Jordan and our
other folks to follow back up with answering questions you may have but with
that said I would turn it over to Ms. Jordan. Ms. Jordan before you begin I
just want to talk to the clerk. So Brandon you have that thumb drive will
you be able to pass that on to the clerk for the official record for
whatever they're presenting.
So as Boyd mentioned, lots of rules and
operates a waste management plan on the Hormat Road on the west of town.
It's permitted for 15,000 gallons per day treatment capacity and over the years
traffic has increased and the flows have increased that are produced by the store.
Hormat was granted for five years in 2018. It was up for renewal last year so
when we went for the renewal we also asked for an increase of flow. So the
The flows that we are asking to be permitted for is 22,500 gallons per day to the right of discharge.
As Boyd mentioned, as we were going through the permit, we discovered the flow path was not –
the original permit was not correct, and now that has been corrected and put in public notifications
and publications on newspapers.
As part of the increased traffic and increased flows, we are doing some improvements
to the property. So, yeah, that one. So, in the red clotted area, that is the new equipment
that's going to be going in. There's a solid separation tank, some additional tanks to more
thoroughly treat the existing system, which is just south in the kind of the gray or
lighter gray. That's what's there now. And then a new train that includes membrane
treatment, which is highly treated effluent. It's very clean effluent at that point,
and we're going to blend those two flows for average daily flow of 22,500 gallons per day.
And that only happens in the summer, and it only happens once in a while, and it's at 22,
but they've gone over their 15 so many times that they need an increase for the average.
They typically run around 10,000, 9 to 10,000 gallons a day
during most of the year. So we're looking at finding an additional treatment
train improvements to the existing plant to more thoroughly treat the water and it's going to have
membranes in the new system.
So if you want to put the one that says with irrigation,
there's
one that says
with irrigation, there's two maps like that. There you go. So let's put in an irrigation system
a few, a couple years ago and it irrigates approximately 9 to 10,000 gallons per day,
So most of the effluent stays on site most of the time and that irrigation system is
going to be revamped and make more efficient to even door more water on site if possible.
And so if they're irrigating the path that the water takes at 22,500 gallons per day,
which like I said only happens occasionally during the summer, is the blue line that
goes down Arnot Road and just gets to the intersection of County Road 34. So
you see across it goes about 900 feet down Potter County right away and then
down through the Randall County right away on County Road 34. It stops
approximately the intersection of those two roads. The purple line is 40,000
gallons per day. That's their peak. So that's the peak about that the plant
that would be able to treat efficiently.
So that's not a permitted level, but it'll be our peak
that the designers go to call for.
So if on occasion it gets that high for whatever reason,
the purple line shows where the affluent goes.
So it goes part of the way down,
kind of around 34 to the east,
there's a culvert that also goes south on Arnot Road
that we just discovered as well during the purring process.
Our rental company was kind enough to go out
and investigate that for us and say yes,
Indeed there is water that goes culver cycle in two directions and so as you can see the water never gets on the any
properties stays in the right way
And this was done through modeling hydraulic software
It's called SWMM. I believe is the RSWM. I didn't do the modeling, but anyway, if that's the model that's done based on
percolation nitrogen loading and
So, this is a scientific model that is run based on the topography in the area and the
films we're looking at discharging.
So, I just want to point out the county line.
I wish we had a pointer.
Yeah, the county line is there just south of the property for the RV park.
It's off to the east there.
So that's where it crosses over to Moreno County.
So where
we're at right now is, as Boyd mentioned, TCEQ has approved the draft permit, has heard
all comments, and has determined that we were recommending a final permit to issue the next
30 to 60 days.
They could get another 30 days period to have parties be heard if they wish.
And so that will be, hopefully finalized in the next 30 to 60 days.
As Boyd mentioned, also Potter County has granted permission to, and he granted
in 2018 to discharge their to their right away and so where we are right now is
we're just about to finalize our permit and we're here to talk to you about
requesting permission to discharge to Randall County right away from the
distance it goes. To have a question you said that Potter County had approved
it in 2018 but it doesn't it come before them again now? They haven't
requested. It wasn't dated with the limit. I can address it. Yes, there was there was
a resolution passed back in 2018 by Potter County to discharge specifically into the
right of way. Resolution doesn't have a sunset period. You've had to be
occasions with Potter County. We've been to the commissioners meeting as well.
They're spoken with the county attorney as of right now that that
resolutions in place maybe the official records just weren't correct but I
thought what I saw was that it was on their agenda and then they decided they
were not going to take it up the county took no action on there was an agenda
item in December to revoke the resolution and the county took no action
yes so therefore the resolution remains in place as a result of comments
that were received by Potter County they elected to reach out to TCEQ for public
hearing and TCEQ denied that and then had to just review the permit and address
the comments that were brought forward and found that they would have raised
a speciality in
compliance with the regulations. Correct. The county made
comments through council during the review process. And those comments were addressed
by the executive director of the TCEQ. And the final comment concluded that
loves a dated application meets all requirements. So the county did come forward with the TCEQ.
The 2018 plan that you submitted, you said it, you initially thought that it was going to go
through Potter County, never go anywhere else, and then flow across into another private
property owner? Who is that private property owner and did you get permission from them as well?
No, your honor. Again, this is back in 18. Permission was only given by Potter County.
What actually happened on the ground was that it never entered east of the facility,
the love store. It always went down the right away. So the only approval obtained was Potter
So if you look at the EPA water map or maps, it shows a path that's actually occurring in the topography that goes across the, right across the street is the Oasis RV Park.
It's that gray area that's just north of the cutting line. Again, what actually happens because it probably improvements to the road and some ditches being dug, it actually rerouted the down south.
So if that permit was done by a different engineering firm, it apparently was an oversight.
They were looking at the maps that the EPA presents, and we noticed it goes south by just somebody being there
and seeing where the route has actually changed.
Please proceed.
That's all I have.
All right.
Anyone else?
All right.
And see a request to Randall County?
Yes.
I'd like to follow up with a few more comments if I may.
So I know we have property owners here.
we've dealt with some of those property owners in connection to Potter County. I just want to
point out a couple of things on that. We're here. We'll ultimately be requesting an action item,
I suppose, at a subsequent meeting for Randall County to approve via resolution permission
or loves to discharge treated wastewater. If it should get that far on to Randall County
right away along the routes that we said, which would be along highway or county road 34 and then further south on or not road.
I just have one comment about that. So we did submit quantity and quality information to the roads and bridges department at Randall County.
To give them an idea of what was going to be in the water, how much water we're talking about, and they came back with no questions.
So they were satisfied with what we presented.
What I wanted to point out was, I know we're going to hear from some landowners.
I just want to make clear that per the CEQ specifically provides that it's the responsibility
of loves to obtain property rights from any affected landowners as may be necessary.
If they're affected as may be necessary.
Our analysis has been that the given that this stays on the right-of-way for up to 1.4 miles
Before it turns into under a culvert and up to even I think 1.75 miles down our not road
Our position has been we want to be a good neighbor. We'll talk to any property owners
We've had some dialogue with some property owners
But as of yet our position is that nothing is necessary in terms of
for acquiring any other rights from any private property owners.
And we're always happy to have dialogue with any property owners.
If they feel there's any impact in the image or anything of that nature,
we're not aware of any of that evidence.
I haven't seen any, but I just want to point out what we're going to be asking
the commissioners is for approval just on the commissioners right away.
The TECQ provides that.
If anything additional is necessary, one of two things, whatever may be necessary.
and two, if a property owner believes they're affected,
they have common law rights.
If they think there's been any issue with any discharge
or this treated wastewater on their property,
they have common law rights.
And so I just want to make clear of that.
Love's wants to be a good neighbor.
We'll talk to any and all property owners.
We believe based on our analysis,
this stays within the right-of-way.
And-
If it leaves the store at all,
right now it's surprised it's not even discharging.
It's been here again.
Sure, sure.
So a lot of this is discharged on site for sprinkler systems, which are being upgraded.
So Loves wants to do everything he can to keep it on site.
That's always goal one.
We know there are peak times that can't happen, but so there is some discharge hence the
need for the permission from the applicable counties for the right one.
So there has been some frustration since 2017 in Randall County with commissioners
who had landowners who reached out to them, who had concerns, met with the loves representatives
in TCEQ and were dismissed and told that they had no voice in this matter.
And so there are a lot of questions from this Commissioner's Court because we've had
to sit silent, but yet take the water as they came down our thoroughfare.
So I'm going to begin with Commissioner Clarnes, and each Commissioner will be able
to ask loves. The questions that are on their heart at this time. I will point out, I saw
your book open. That is not a presentation from them. It was one that was delivered from
a propion. Okay.
Okay. All right. I think you mentioned in the beginning you had permission to discharge
15,000 gallons per day and then got it up to 22,000.
That's what they were going to do for a minute.
Business increased and you went up to 22.5. You know, just looking at this and the big picture,
I'm wondering how this all came about in the first place. If you put any loves in anywhere,
they have to have an issue like this to take care of. If Joe Smith puts in a 50,000 foot warehouse
that he does business out of, he has to have a way to discharge that sewage. So
So, I don't understand how this works, that's why I'm asking, why is this an issue now?
And we have photos here that show, as you say, from citizens that show the sewage out there
and they have complained about it, which I would too.
So how did it come to happen in the first place?
Well, first off, it's treated, it's a fluid, it's treated wastewater, first off.
So yes, at times there will be moisture or water or treated a fluid in the right
away. For sure. And I would just point out the city of Amarillo treats its
wastewater and discharges down plain if you will. So it's not an uncommon thing.
Loves is a one very small contributor here to what this is. This is a natural
thing. This happens with large municipalities. So for that reason the
DCEQ steps in and governs this and they have stringent requirements and
And that's what we have done to satisfy those requirements.
So yes, there will be water in the right-of-way on occasion, or it will be.
That's contemplated.
That was contemplated in Potter County when we got there at Ruble, for certain.
So let's go to the loves on the east side of town.
Can anybody address how that's handled over there?
Do we have any issues like that?
Do we have people complaining?
No, they have city sewer services.
City sewer.
So is that the key to all of it?
Loves would love to be on city utilities.
There just aren't any available out at this location.
Okay, you take it loves on I-40 between here in Oklahoma City.
How do they handle it?
It's case by case, whether they have services or not.
They don't have.
So LUS has quite a few wastewater treatment plans.
Right.
So it just depends on the location and circumstances.
And for example, as I mentioned before, this store was substantially upgraded and expanded.
It had its own leach field on site, was able to handle everything on site.
So many occasions, that's what you want to try to do first, of course, if you can.
So that's how it's handled on many occasions.
But as Ms. Jordan mentioned, LUVS has multiple wastewater treatment facilities and various
jurisdictions where we have to get the approvals before anything can leave off
site.
I think what happened here is the store was substantially modeled and the showers were added.
Is that correct?
The showers were added in more space.
So that's why there was an increase in flow.
And you're not even going to keep it all on site because there's limits to percolation.
There's limits to vibration.
There's limits because there's a well across the street at the RV park.
So you have the setbacks for, you know,
if you're in compliance with setbacks for property lines, for irrigation even.
So, that's why the flow is increasing by there.
They were not able to catch them.
I'm
good for the moment.
Mr. Robinson.
Can we agree that the borrower ditch belongs to Randall County?
Excuse me?
The borrower ditch, commonly called borrower ditch.
Correct terms, the borrower ditch.
Are we in agreement that that belongs to Randall County?
I believe it's in the right of way, yes.
The borrowed ditch belongs to Randall County.
Okay.
Now tell me how you maintain a wet borrowed ditch.
How are we supposed to maintain a muddy borrowed ditch?
The majority of the time it's not,
there's not going to be F1 going down the back.
Right now I walked it out of the polyester.
There's no F1 leaving the plan.
There's no-
You're asking for a quarter, one and one,
one and one fourth miles, right?
In Randall County.
before it gets to its destination. And you're saying that at times it will be wet.
How do we maintain that ditch?
For the safety and for the of our citizens. You're
the engineers. How do we do it? I'm not asking about it. I'm saying about a wet
ditch. I'll get to the water quality in a minute. If I may. So this has been
being done it for since 2020. And if there are any issues with with maintenance, I think
with any other ditch, I don't think you can mow it when it's wet or or shape it or do whatever
anything else. Right. But the question I think you maybe get is how often Randall County with
that ditch have standing discharge or rainwater things of that nature. I don't know
without going out there and actually looking at it, but it would be maintained just like
the county would maintain any other ditch. I suppose when it's wet you can't
mow it. But the question really is how many days, you might be asking, how many
days out of the year has this impacted Randall County's ability to maintain its
bar ditch? I don't know the answer. We haven't had any complaints. I don't
think from Randall County. We're happy to address any.
To be clear also, that's also the stormwater ditch. And so with storms,
Here, there's about a thousand acres that drains into that same ditch.
So love's piece of that is initial, compared to what a storm would create for wetness.
So that's, I mean, we're talking orders and orders of magnitude, like 20,000 gallons
a minute.
In addition to that, you know, we have to have weak control.
In our intersections, which there's a major one right there, the weak control prevents
sites lines or stop signs etc okay and so I just don't I've got a real problem
with that okay I got a problem that permission was never so soft from us and
I've been around there's quite a bit of time and most of the time you need to
keep your wastewater on your own property okay so we're accepting you're
asking us to accept the excess water that's not being able to be held on the property.
Is that correct?
All right.
Why don't you expand your property to take care of your waste water on your further irrigation?
That's certainly an option.
They would have to, they're locked in with property owners all around them.
So that's certainly, let's maybe speak to that more, but there's been some discussion
about talking to the next door neighbor to the west or to irrigate from their
property. So that's certainly it.
Okay next thing I'm very concerned about is
water quality and what is the procedure for monitoring water quality in the
borrower ditch in Randall County? So the responsibility of LOVES is to monitor
their influence at their discharge point. So it's on, it's right at the pump fault.
So the permit is for 10 milligrams per liter of BOD, which is biological demand of oxygen.
So it's very, very low. There's 15 parts per million of solids, which is, you know, it's
almost nothing. And very, very low. It's chlorine and water, so it's going to have
very, very low bacteria, it's actually plant stormwater.
So it's, we've got the data from the city of Amarillo.
It's cleaner than their stormwater, their outfalls.
So because we're putting in membranes,
is it going to be better quality than it currently is?
So they have to monitor, I believe, monthly for clothes
and for their various contaminants,
which would be like ammonia, biological VOD,
and suspended solids.
So that's, they have an operator, a server operator that runs the plant, it's there at least three or four days a week running the plant and maintaining it and taking samples.
And in addition to what you do as far as monitoring the flood, the TCEQ does also?
Yes, they report the TCEQ.
They report by city of Cattie Hill.
They report to the TCQ their quality of water and their flow every month and they actually monitor it continuously.
There's a continuous flow meter that's on the plant right now and so they can tell you at any time what the flow rate is
and you can go out there and take ramp samples and they do it weekly, I believe.
They test for BOD, ammonia, TSS, I believe every week.
Yeah, if I understood your question, the TCQ doesn't generally come in and take their
own scene.
No, they can.
They have the right to do that.
I can't call the last time the TCQ did that anywhere if that was your question.
Yeah.
And the destination for this water is, apply your lake.
It stays in the right-of-way.
The destination where does it end up?
In the right-of-way.
If it kept going, that right away leads to a storm.
Okay.
And was permission from the landowner of that lake gained from love?
No, that's 1.4 miles downstream.
And I addressed that originally.
But let me also clarify, when you ask for ultimate destination, I'm reading from the existing permit.
And the TCEQ has to look at the flow path.
It doesn't just stop at the Playa Lake.
They have to take into account the entire potential blowback.
So from the permit here, and this is the one that was issued on October 24th, 2018,
it has a little blurb here on the blowplath, very general, but just to perhaps address
your question, it says to the roadside drainage, then it's to a Playa, then
to a drainage, then it's to a playa, then it's to spring draw, then it's to
Palo Duro Creek, then it's to every upper Prairie Dogtown Red Fork River in
segment number 0229 of the Red River basin. So I'm not a scientist. I don't know
how far treated wastewater from this love's facility would actually make
it down that path. We don't know. But what we do know is the TCEQ takes that into account
because they map this out as well as to where this potential treated effluent could go. And
it would be the same thing for the city of Amarillo's effluent that is also discharged
many, many, many more times in terms of volume.
Can we agree that the first major place in the destination is the place you like?
I'll let you address that again.
So the whole route includes, if there's stormwater, any kind of storm,
and that's many, many times more magnitude of flow.
I mean, that's, yes, stormwater would go that way.
It would go all the way to the red river.
And it feels like we're going further.
Because if you get a major storm, yes, the water will go down, but the piece that's
contributed by logs is like eight gallons a minute.
I have no idea how much the plow you like, okay?
I do not know that, so I'm not afraid of it.
Was permission gained from the landowner of the plow you like to absorb the logs
of loot?
The only permissions that were obtained were the Putter County right away.
The question that you're asking is, how far downstream does one need to ask for permission?
That's left, as the CEQ says, as may be necessary under applicable law.
What does that mean?
It's left to the common law, for example, if a property owner thought some portion
of their property was being contaminated by a fluence or by anything for that matter.
fertilizer plan, anything that might be in business. But property owners have rights to
assert if they can prove damage. So that has always been out there for any business,
any property owner who's agreed or thinks their land has been impacted or affected.
They have common law rights. And that's what the TCQ says. So it's difficult to answer your
questions specifically, Commissioner, as to whether or not this affluent is ultimately
is housed in the Playa. We don't believe so. We don't believe really it gets there and if it does,
it's in infinitesimal amounts. When you talk about the watershed, when we do have rain here,
there's thousands of acres that drain on this same path in that Playa. So you're talking about
in the grand scheme of things, just a spec compared to everything else that comes in there,
fertilizer from barns, cattle. Who knows? Who knows? But yeah, all that stuff with gravity,
gravity, gravity takes over. And so all property owners have rights, if they think they've been
infringed upon in terms of their rights to go out and address that. And that's what the TCEQ
essentially says, that we're going to give you a permit to discharge up to this amount of
treated, a fluid, treated in accordance with the TCEQ specifications. It doesn't leave that property
until it meets the specs. That's what the permit does. And then as far as anyone downstream,
it's as whatever is reasonably necessary is required by law. So, love your position.
And that's reason, initially, in all these laws that we've dealt with in the last 50 years
is you better off keeping only own property correct that's what most of the
state it takes his laws were designed for to put it on keep it on your own
property yes yes that's why the TCEQ has these provisions I understand that
Thanks.
And not, but love wants to be a good neighbor. We want to be a good neighbor. If we have any
inkling or any evidence from a property owner down the street that something
untoward is going on, we want to investigate. But we're part of a large
watershed as well. It's kind of a, it's very difficult. You got fertilizers, you
got common dirt, you got everything. But we want to be a good neighbor. If
someone wants to come forward to love as a property owner with evidence that
Hey, there's an issue here.
We want to try to deal with it.
But at this point, we're not aware of that.
But what we're saying is,
we want to have a dialogue with folks if there's evidence.
It raises interesting questions.
How far, you have a little love's store here
in relation to the entire watershed.
How far downstream is one?
Some people want to map it all the way
to the Gulf of Mexico, but I know what you're saying.
That's, that's, but to address your question, I'm sure that's the, that's, that's, it's
difficult to, to determine where, where does this portion of the fluid end up, but the
law will say if there's damage caused property owners have, have rights.
Uh, and, uh, especially when we deal with the fluid, we have to be concerned about
the water quality.
Yes.
Thank you. I have a question. You're reading where this flows since it's public meeting.
I wanted to make sure that I understood it correctly and everybody else did too. When
you left off with the Prairie Dog Fork of the Red River, then after that I thought on
the permit it stated like Tangwood and then again into the Prairie Dog Fork of
the Red River.
I'm reading directly off the permit that from October 24, 2018.
I'm talking about the new permit.
New permit.
Yeah, I mean, I think there's two additional things that they're anticipating that it could touch.
And the final prairie dog fork of the Red River is Paladora Canyon.
It flows through there and then into Armstrong County.
Very well.
Very well could be.
I just wanted to read the existing permit.
Everything else is proposed.
If they added additional flow pad, then that's what they looked at, I'm not sure.
All right.
And then if you're out of, you talked about that you make sure that you monitor your water.
Let's say that you're out of compliance.
What's the procedure?
What happens with that?
You realize that you've had a failure.
We've had some Hollywood wastewater treatment from the city of Amorella that's had some
difficulties and struggles.
What would be your procedure?
Well, we evaluate what's going on, take some samples and get better data and evaluate what's
coming in and make sure that we figure out what's wrong with the system, because the
system's working right.
We shouldn't be busting those limits, and if we've – like we've increased our
flow in the 2018 permit, we realize we were having problems because we were simply
doing more business than we anticipated, so we would follow the procedures to ask
for more emission, in this case, for more flow.
And then if we're best in a specific BOD limit,
we'll figure out what's coming in into the system
that might be causing that.
And see if there's something we can do on the operation side,
like they changed cleaners,
if they're using a different type of cleaner.
During COVID, everybody was cleaning, you know,
20 times more than they used to.
We were overloading some of these systems with cleaners
and messing up the ammonia content.
So we had to get some special cleaners.
at sites where we have wastewater treatment plan.
We just evaluate and make changes that need to be made,
and in this case, we're adding basically
another treatment plan for all intents and purposes
with this membrane system.
We're adding more treatment to fix all the problems.
So Randall County doesn't have treatment facilities.
So forgive me if I ask a stupid question,
but the point of my question was,
if there's a failure and you release solids
that could be harmful to to the citizens. I know with the City of Amarillo, if they have a failure
like that, they have a notification and they have to go out and they have to sanitize and
treat the area. To my knowledge, I saw that there were some moderate failures that you guys had.
I don't know how they became aware of it, the TCU, but they had it in their records.
How would the notification come to Randall County on the right of way that there could
be harmful contaminants in the right way. How would we find that out and then what would
be the procedure to be able to treat it to keep it healthy?
I can address the first part. How would you find out if you were to grant this permission?
We could gladly build that into whatever resolution or approval that if there is a red flag
or a violation. Randall County ought to know about it.
Can you speak to the cleanup that was done in the very small?
I don't honestly remember.
In general, we've had a, if we have a sewage release from it,
we have systems where we just have lift stations that go to the city sewer,
but those lift stations malfunction and overflow and you have raw sewage spill out.
We have procedures to, we would call an environmental response company
company that's trained in that personnel and basically what they would come out and do is
shovel up what they could and haul it away and then treat the area with line to sanitize
it in a sewage situation. Now with nitrates, if we're best in our limit by a few parts
per million, honestly, I don't know that there's a remediation for that by the time
you know about it. It's in the Gulf of Mexico.
So, to address violations and within overages. So, there was a consent order that loves to
act with TCEQ, which means that they were fined and they had, because they had some violations,
and they were required to come up with a compliance schedule, and a compliance proposal.
You know, they looked at their operations and changed the ways, some of the things
that they were done, like the cleaners. They looked at cleaners. They looked at
how the plant is operated. And so, those was in monthly contact with TCEQ on their progress
to improve the affluent. So, they do monitor, TCEQ does monitor and require and let's take
action if there are some overages, excuse me, violations. And what actions are doing
is adding some treatment to the existing system and then adding some more treatment
that's even higher quality and so coming out of that to handle the higher flows.
So TCEQ is very involved with how the plant is operating and what kind of plants they're producing.
Okay, so what you're telling me is that you had found the original design was not adequate
and then had had violations enough from the TCEQ
that they monetarily penalized you or penalized, okay.
And then that's why you redesigned it
and what is the plan that you're bringing to us
is that it would be more efficient,
it would be able to clean the water better.
Now, if we, okay, my still my concern is
if we have a problem, what is the procedure
that would go through and how we could work together on that because the ultimate goal
is that the citizens are safe and our downstream partners. One of the things the City of Emeril
experienced was extraordinarily a lot of problems whenever we had our flooding in May. There
was a lot of water that came in, which allowed their treatment facility to not
operate correctly. And I was just wondering, with that in the month of May of last year,
how did your your plant operate? And did you see any difference?
Well, it shouldn't affect. We should be not treating stormwater. So it shouldn't affect
our discharge at all.
It would. Well, I would think that it would increase it because the soil would be saturated.
Well, we're not taking water from the soil. I mean, this is just what I'm trying to
Like when you flush your toilets and your showers, that's what's being treated here.
There shouldn't be.
So there's no drain field.
So when it comes out of the store, where does it go?
It goes directly into the treatment plant.
And how does that operate?
And then when does it come out?
And I'm asking a 30,000 foot view at home.
If you went and explained how expert you are, it would take too long and we wouldn't understand it.
But essentially it goes into a holding tank that is, and then goes from there or tell me how it works.
I believe it goes, there's a knockout tank.
It goes into, it goes into a stair screen to take out the major floor, just rags and things like that that comes through.
And then it goes into an aeration tank, which carries the ammonia and it's really ammonia.
And it takes care of the biological load that's coming in.
And then it goes to – that's done.
And that's designed around the worst case scenario for the highest flows for the –
and we've gone around, was went around and tested water or raw sewage from a thousand different storms
from the country, looked at what they're producing.
So we knew, you know, what's the worst case scenario?
What should we be designing around?
This is not normal sewage.
It's very high strength.
Because it is a system that's contained, it's not, we're not getting dilution from
other places, and so it is higher concentration than what a city would see.
So we take all that into account when we design and look at the highest worst case
scenario for ammonia, for beauty, and design the aeration system to take care of the
worst case scenario.
And so that, it goes through that, it goes through a clarifier which takes out cells
off the solids that are remaining and then it's chlorinated and it goes either to the
irrigation or whatever the irrigation can't take, it goes out to the right way.
And we're going to be adding some additional treatments to the existing system to handle
the nitrogen that's produced.
So the nitrogen is going to be very low coming out of there as well and the membrane plant
is also going to have some benefits.
I remember nitrogen is our problem, one of our problems that we learned.
There's no limit on nitrogen, but they're adding nitrogen removal to even treat the higher quality that is required.
They're doing more than it is required by their purpose.
My last question, I guess, I was under the understanding that there is a city of Amarillo water main that's about a mile from there.
Is that correct?
Excuse me, a sewer main.
There could be. There's been water towers just down the road. I drove to yesterday. I don't know what the law is in Texas, but I know if you're within so many feet, the law will read that if you're within so many feet of a main, you have to connect.
and loves and loved to. That usually is not more than 600 feet, so that's very
expensive to do miles and miles. So if you look at that when they're looking at
all the different options, because TC can requires that you look at all of your
options. You look at a leach field, you look at treated plants, you look at and
analyze the costs and the effects and the you know design required, and you
go through all that analysis and TC can requires that that you look at all
of that. But if it's a mile or two away, that's $2 million, probably, to connect to that sewage.
So usually it's 200 to 600 feet of your required to connect.
It would love it if it came up that close to the door.
And also, this was done, I mean, you got to remember this was done in 2018.
This permit was, so how far was that sewer line there in 2018?
Or was it expanded after that?
No, it's my understanding. It was there. So yeah
Commissioner well a couple of my big questions have been asked, but I'm gonna keep digging a little bit
So to your knowledge did I hear correctly that?
To your knowledge no affluent has landed or crossed any private property
Okay, so
This is my precinct and I've I've fielded a lot of complaints that it has and so I know that they've reached out to me
when they reached out to me, I've asked if they've reached out to you guys, which they
had.
So, if they have had complaints and they have reached out to you, how have you not heard
about them?
I mean, is there just such a filter that those complaints don't get to where they need
to go?
I can address what I have knowledge of, the Sodiowsky family, they're on the south
side of County Road 34.
And they have counsel, I didn't see them here today, there may be counsel from
from another firm, the Chris Jensen,
attended the Potter County commissioners meeting,
submitted a proposal, submitted a position paper.
I'm sure you have one.
I didn't get copied on that one.
But following that meeting, I spoke with Mr. Jensen.
This was December, I believe.
And basically along the lines of what we had said earlier,
hey, do you have any evidence
that there's anything contaminating the property?
Do you have anything?
We want to be a good neighbor. We want to listen.
And so that was the last call in December.
The answer was no at that time.
And that was it.
And that's what I can speak to, that I was involved in in December.
I have not heard, I believe, from Mr. Jensen since that time.
If there are other complaints, they certainly have not made it to me
or to folks here and to my knowledge loves.
I think I would have heard about them, but I certainly did not hear any from the Soviet
Council based upon that December conversation we had.
All right.
Yeah, and I think we could agree that neither party would lie about, you know, if a private
landowner did have some affluent on their land, they wouldn't lie.
But even if they didn't have proof, you know, they wouldn't go through all this
trouble to have council if there wasn't some history of that actually happening.
But in the agreement, it doesn't say that there has to be contamination or damage or anything like that.
It's if the affluent crosses their property, correct? If it gets on their land, they're supposed to have permission.
They were to have granted permission for that to have happened.
And that's why we did the modeling.
That's what may be necessary. It's a gray area to be frank with you. It is because it's hard to know how far down could you actually take that.
You take it to the Gulf of Mexico under that premise. So it's a gray area, understandably.
Loves has done some modeling, Amelia touched on that briefly up here, but it's not exact
science.
But am I inaccurate in reading the agreement that, again, it just has to be if the affluent
crosses their private property, that there has to be a signed agreement by that property
owner to allow that to happen?
I don't necessarily agree with that.
I don't believe so, but it's the first part of your question, as a fluid from that location is it crossing the property?
I'm not the scientist.
Whether it is or isn't. If it were to cross onto private land, isn't there supposed to be a signed allowance by the property owner for that to happen?
Or if the property owner believes they're damaged or have been trespassed upon, I'm not trying to dodge your question.
sure. Then they have rights. And if if if a court were to determine yes you
haven't agreed to have an agreement based upon this evidence and that would be the
answer but I'm not trying to dodge it. No I'm just trying to find it. I want to end up here and say
something as an absolute because that affluent traces of it which are we're
talking about treated a blue. Sure. Traces of it could be in the Gulf of
Mexico so I don't want to sit up here and bind loves and say we have to go
agreements all the way to the Gulf. Sure. I'm just trying to find the lowest common denominator.
I think there's a great area there. TQQ is not getting all the civil matters.
So they would be exactly safe as needed. So that's a state that they've told me, I asked them that.
And they said that's a civil matter. And so it's kind of a gray area.
And like what it was touching on, that court might require, there's nothing that says you have to have a signing agreement.
Okay, because like I said to find a lowest common denominator my understanding is that if any
of that affluent were to be on private property outside of the right of ways, which we also
know was not given approval at least in Randall County, that there would have to be a signed
agreement from every person in which that affluent touched.
I'm not going to sit up here and say yes to that.
Okay.
That's a different question for the simple reason that I don't know anyone I don't know how you would determine that other than if you have testing and some evidence
but it could be and I'm not the scientist. Fluent from that low, theoretically it's treated to flu, good quality.
That being the Gulf of Mexico perhaps. And so under that premise it's hard to answer that question.
and you're trying to get to, it would be great
if we all had a crystal ball, okay?
Here's where we think it's going.
Here's where that affluent would most likely travel
how far down.
If we had a crystal ball and then in the law
were to say, okay, you're discharging a fluid,
you have to get agreements from all those folks.
We just don't have that certainty that we'll be in the ball
perhaps even in science, I don't know.
Well, from my understanding,
that's what the complaints are
from the people living in my precinct
was that, you know, that was the agreement that, or that was the understanding that they had,
that's what the paperwork showed, and they had not been approached to have that agreement signed.
Now, you also mentioned that there could be a fertilizer that could be common or that can cross,
obviously from neighboring lands, neighboring sections, if somebody's got horses or whatever,
that's fine. My issue is that there's nothing regulatory with their neighbors that say that
that that can't happen, but there is an agreement with LOVES for this discharge and for this
affluent where it does need to be considered.
So I don't think those two things can be compared.
Right?
Well, we're just saying what effect it would have on downstream.
Sure.
The comment was, look at the watershed.
It's a large watershed.
That was the comment.
A granite, yes, is a horse farm.
I suppose a certain size or feedlot might have to have some things in place.
But the general comment is we're talking about a large watershed.
which loves on this particular page, and it's an infinitesimal contribution when you talk about the watershed.
Yeah, that's a great point. So since it's so infinitesimal, and I know that you've mentioned it numerous times that love wants to be a good neighbor,
have you considered keeping all this on your own property?
If it's infinitesimal, then it shouldn't be that hard to do, right?
In the testable, meaning the contribution in the watershed,
obviously, first preface will be to always look into the city.
Second, can we keep it on site?
And third, if we think there are times when we can't,
we have to go to the TCEQ.
So sure, ideally, you can keep it all on site.
It's limited by setbacks, that's the problem.
It's a large area that we can't use for irrigation because of setbacks from all the water supply wells.
And I suppose, yes, any business, truck stop or whatever, I guess you could acquire 10, 20 acres and do that.
But if you can't, that would, that'd be difficult for a lot of business to operate on I-40.
If you had to have that much front edge or back, you would.
I mean, the market probably wouldn't bear that out.
And so we have the law that comes in and says, okay, let's discharge.
All of the TCU requirements.
Correct.
TCU requirements.
And just for clarity, and so it's on record, there is a response to public comment given
by the executive director, which states on page five.
And if you don't have a copy of this, we're going to give you, yeah, the front page
of the draft of TPDES permit states that the permit, if granted, does not grant
the right or does not grant to the applicant the right to use private or public property
for conveyance of wastewater along the discharge route described in the draft permit that
includes, but it's not limited to property belonging to any individual partnership, corporation
or other entity.
Neither does the draft permit allow the applicant to invade any personal rights or violate any
federal state or local laws to the regulation.
It is the applicant's responsibility to acquire any property rights that are necessary
to use the discharge route.
So if there wasn't any clarity on where that came from, that's where it can be
found.
And the last question that I have is, if you're sitting on our – obviously, we – you
know, there's obviously many benefits for us to be able to discharge this, and we want
to be good neighbors as well.
The reason that it's come to this point where it's in court is because we've had
a lot of complaints from our citizens.
Could you explain if you were on this side of the bench why we would want to allow
you to do this?
Sure.
So, first off, great question.
We're asking for permission through the county's right-of-way, and only the county's right-of-way
for these purposes.
You've got to balance your decision, of course, with your constituents.
I understand that.
You're elected officials.
I understand that.
I would say, again, as loves,
is there evidence of issues or damage or anything
of that nature that the common law might address?
Are there serious questions? Is there evidence that we need to look at?
Okay. We're not aware of any. We're happy to look at it.
So, at some point, Loves is operating a business. You've got to balance your concerns with
your constituents. I understand that. But again, I would say this, we've complied
with the TCEQ permit requirements. We think they're going to issue an expanded permit.
They do say acquire property rights as are reasonably necessary. And that's where the
devil's in the details. What is necessary? What does the law say? I'm just here to
say it's quite great. It just is. It's not that developed under these questions.
So you're the elected official, we're asking for permission to use Randall County's right
away.
Sure.
We don't believe it gets very far downstream, but we don't know for sure, but we're asking
for permission to Randall County to grant his loaves.
He's a good citizen, a great business, a very corporate partner in numerous states.
I would at the end of the day just submit, you've got to be cognizant of your constituents
absolutely. But at the end of the day, if there's not any evidence before us, I would
say let the common law govern between private citizens on these issues.
Thank
you.
I think my head's got a spin in here. So, yeah.
How common of a method is
this to use this type of discharge? You're putting on on to a public right
of why, correct?
Is that common? It's very common to do that for small
flows. You know if you're a city you're obviously going to have to find everywhere
that produces wastewater has to treat it. Everybody treats most if you have
discharged it is treated very high quality. For a business this size it's
It's not unusual to have a small stream leaving the site.
So it is very common.
And this is the way wastewater is treated everywhere.
So how many love stores exist?
650-ish.
How many do water discharge like this?
I mean, maybe we have about, I guess, 20, 25,
they have discharge.
Have there been complaints about this from other storage?
Well, nationwide we've had, I mean, there's always instances that we've addressed those
complaints.
Honestly, I can't think of any other than just flow, just having water flow in a ditch
has been a complaint in some places and cleared out some ditches and made them flow better
and things like that.
and I'm standing over it, just as needed and reactive to complain.
But by the time it discharges, it's not like it's, you know, gross.
It's not stinky and, you know, it's just clear water.
It discharges.
Is there any hazard whatsoever to this discharge?
No.
And by the time it goes two feet down the ditch,
it's picked up contaminants from runoff to the per stormwater,
You know, like the horse arms or the...
The membrane technology, we went as a team into their factory because we're trying to
find a standard to use because we're getting more and more of these.
And the big selling point for the membrane, the guys that generate the membranes, when
you get done with the tour of their factory, you can choose to drink homemade beer that
they brew on site from their treated wastewater that they're real proud that they, it's
so clean.
You can drink it.
So what you're saying is this would flow down the what I call a bar
ditch and you're saying it's gonna either stop soak in evaporate before it hits
private property how often first of all how often does it go into the bar
So it depends on the season, because they monitor their flow continuously.
And so in the summertime, they will have times when the water flow gets up to 15, 20,000 gallons
per day.
In those instances, there may be times when the small amount leaves the property, but
about 10,000 will stay on the property with irrigation.
So most of the time, most of the year, they're around 10,000 gallons a day.
The reason they have to ask for the 22.5 is because there are times when, in the summer,
there's, yeah, like, ranch just on the street and it's a big, you know, it's just a big draw.
So I would say maybe 5% of the time it leaves the property.
Like I said, I walked it yesterday, it's bone dry. There's nothing leaving the property.
So who monitors this charge?
Who monitors it?
Does love monitor it?
Our operator, yeah.
Does the state come in and monitor it?
No, we submit our results to the state.
So we post-sample, the operator post-sample sends it to a certified lab,
and those results are submitted to the state every month.
So they do monitor it, and those monitors, their operator monitors the quality every week.
So they're taking weekly samples for beauty, for pneumonia, for the solids.
Just coming, and we're kind of at a disadvantage because we just got some of this, but something
through here says that we're all sewage released.
There was an instance where there was a small release. It was noticed by a citizen. It was
reported to the field office of TZQ. Mr. Khaki came out, he's their field guy, came out.
They addressed it immediately within hours. It was like Christmas Eve.
And they cleaned up the area, got a sanitized, corrected the problem with a pipe that cracked
because of the corns, and had it resolved within the day.
That was not, was that in the ditch?
It was at the off-fall, I think.
That was like on our property, or it wasn't into the ditch.
No, it shouldn't go into the ditch, I don't believe.
Yeah, that wasn't treated, that was pre-treated or admitted.
It might have been, yeah.
I'm aware of a complaint.
I think Mr. Deshaun, this was addressed, Murphy was addressed with Potter County.
At one point there was a pipe bus. It was unusually cold.
It was a break. It was a crack.
And so if you have some materials there, you may be reading some of that,
but things do happen. Loves jumped on all over that one.
All over that one, you got it resolved quickly.
So,
of course, we're very early in the stages here, but if this is denied, where does love go with this?
If we look at the other options.
Well, what are the other options?
The option would be to try to find and buy some additional land to request to irrigate on neighboring land, to haul.
They could haul the water. It's extremely expensive to do any of these things.
But like I said, the amount of time it actually would leave the property is very minimal.
So those are their options. They could haul very, very clean water,
or they could find some more land or ask a – get an agreement with a neighbor to irrigate their property.
Okay.
Thank you for answering these questions. I don't know if there are questions, Judge.
I have one more quick question, and I think it would be important to let you have a break. You've been being grilled for quite a while.
Did you ever explore the option of actually taking this down the I-40 right away? And if so, why did you choose not to move that direction?
You know, it was my understanding that the grade and the elevations out there that the slope would not maintain.
And some hill, and some hill.
Are the hills in?
You know, it looks flat, but...
It's not almost out, almost out.
Yeah.
It would be a poor thing if we didn't have to pump it.
I think at this time it's 10.15.
John, may I ask another question before we leave this?
Yes, we will come back to it.
Oh, we're just going to take a break.
I think it would be fine.
So it's 10.15.
I think the court will take a five-minute recess.
I want to offer each of you, there's water and coffee in there.
You've been talking for a long time, you're welcome to.
Thank you.
We'll be back in five minutes.
Appreciate it.
Right, it is 1024.
The break was a little longer than we thought.
Randall County Commission Court is now back in session.
And we left off with our left representatives here and the
commissioners asking some questions, have better understanding of your project.
Commissioner Carnes has a follower.
So I would like to say we appreciate y'all being here and we would love to find an answer
that's good for everyone, you know, understand what you're doing, representing loves, and
we're trying to do the best to represent our citizens.
So, you know, I think if we can all kind of common ground, it'd be great.
So Commissioner Barry was saying there were a lot of complaints he has received.
And then Commissioner Boatler asked if there was an unusual number of complaints.
And I want to follow up on that.
The complaints we've had the number which I don't know what that number is is that higher than usual?
And if so, why do we think that is?
So
We're what I would encourage your constituents to do if they have complaints reach out the loves as well
The complaints that I was aware of we addressed in the Potter County
meeting the so the Oskies
Sean the Sean
And so we address those, and so I can't answer your question as to the volume of complaints
because those are the ones we've addressed, but what I would say just in general to each
of you, I would encourage your constituents to reach out to us with more specific information
so we can address those complaints as well.
And if I answered your question, how did those complaints compare to the other applications?
I'm just wondering if this is an unusual amount of complaints.
I'm aware of the couple. So I can't answer. Can you, gentlemen? No. I mean, to my knowledge,
you know, we don't hear about everything. We're all over the country. So we have other
guys in other regions that might know more about their specific places. But like I said,
I can think of a couple of complaints we've had just about water flow just because we're
discharging pure water,
they didn't want the water on their property.
And we dealt with that.
I'd say there's usually one or two pure
or two on average.
I can't think of the one that was about health hazard,
imminent health hazard.
Yes, I've got to keep in mind that I believe
the complaints that you've had a bit from,
there might be many, but it's from one or two individuals.
It's our understanding.
So when this water leaves
Loves and starts down the bar ditch. It is treated affluent water and supposedly safe
Normal times, you know, we have some photos that show a sewage in the bar ditch
And it doesn't look like it's not overflowing. So it's not like a rainy season
And I understand that when we have flooding like we had last spring all bets are off because everything's coming into there
so oh
Oh,
yeah, I want to ask how often does is that bar ditch wet all the time or based on what you said it shouldn't be
Okay, but normal times you're keeping a lot of it on your property. So normal times it would be basically dry
Yeah, we just have some photos and they're kind of ugly and it's that must have been
when the sewage discharge was so I don't know.
It could have been that incident when it was really cold.
I don't have those in front of me, but don't deny you have a photo there or something
in the bar, but I believe it was that incident when it was really cold and it was addressed.
Yes.
Okay.
Thank you.
I'm sure I'll answer.
Do you use trickle channels on your property?
Crickle channels?
Do you use that on your property?
Concrete the bottom of the ditch?
Do you use that on your property?
Not on this property.
We do run off from the parking lot.
For erosion control?
Correct.
You know, one of the best sterilizers is fresh air to sunshine, so we keep you in the limit.
I was just wondering if you would recommend our using those in the bottom of our ditch.
Well, we're relying on percolation too. So,
yeah.
One of the things I would address, obviously we're in a very flat area. Whatever is in the bar ditch, I think Amelia touched on this, we're in a flat area.
Most of it's going to be concentrated in the barge with evaporation, absorption, because
we're not in a steep incline area.
So that further lends itself to the modeling that we had done about how far do we think
this gets.
And that's one factor.
I would think if we did put concrete in the barge, I think it would be expensive,
number one.
But yes, that would remove the advantage of having that being diffused and or absorbed
or evaporated in the barge that those are just my couple of thoughts off the
top of my head so even the topography here it's it's flat and that goes into
that modeling we showed you first you were mentioning first year in
sunshine being good disinfected by the time it's it's there it's extremely
it's treated it doesn't need any more treatment so what did you
salt limit or salinity on your plant? There's no permit limit on that. There's no what? There's no
permit limit on the on TDS. We agree salt is sterling. Excuse me? Salt can be used as sterling
on ground. Do you agree with that?
Salt can be. I don't know. I think so. It is. It'll kill
Yeah, go look at the mineral block around any cow places, but salt is sterling.
As far as I know, there's not high levels of salt in this part.
This is chlorinated, too, as the final treatment. It's chlorinated.
Yeah, to follow up on what he was saying, the City of Emerald there, again, they used
seriflant water and they were treating it on some farmland. And it actually,
the heavy selenium in it ended up sterilizing the farmland and causing problems and so that's why I think Commissioner Robinson was asking the questions he was.
Well, where the sprinklers are sprinkling it's green.
What?
Where our property, where the sprinklers are sprinkling it's green.
It stays green.
It's green.
Green.
Any further questions?
No.
Any further questions?
No, I'm good.
Any further questions?
I don't think so, George.
Thank you.
So we want to thank you so much for coming in and doing your presentation for being part
of our community.
I'd like for you to, if you have the time, to have a say, we're going to ask the property
owners to be able to come up and have their concerns heard.
And then also our Road and Bridge and our engineer.
Thank you.
Thank you all.
All right.
And then now if we have any property owners that are here, I'd like for you to come up and be able to have your voice heard as well in this matter. And this obviously we have Mr. Deshaun with us. Welcome.
You'll find in front of you a blue folder that Mr. Deshaun delivered to us with information in it. I think it was yesterday that he delivered it. We tried to scan it and make sure that everyone had it.
And it was a complete record for the official records as well.
Welcome.
Well, I'd like to thank you all for allowing me the time
to come before you this morning.
My name is Murphy Deshaun.
I live at 7614 Catskill Avenue in Amarillo, Texas.
I've attempted to provide all the documentation for the items
I'll bring up today in that blue folder
that you have in front of you.
This permit has been plagued with numerous complaints.
in violations.
On 2-1 of 21, I filed a complaint with the TCEQ that the wastewater in the roadside
ditch was not flowing. Somewhere around the end of March of 2021, I received a response
stating that the TCEQ does not have jurisdiction to address stagnating water issues, and its
only function is to protect the water quality of the state's water. In other words, this
was not the TCEQ's problem, even though they approved the route for the permit. The pictures
labeled complaint one in the folder were taken on 331 of 2021. Those photos represent what
the ditch looked like when I filed the complaint and what the ditch looks like any time there
is water in that area where the water does not fall.
Let me ask you something real quick. I hate to interrupt, but since we may have
some follow-up questions for loves. Do you have an extra one of these that Mr. Mouse
might have? I think it might be helpful for him to be able to see what it is that
your concerns are. These would be the photos I was talking about. Thank you,
Murphy.
On 12-23 of 22, I filed an complaint for this raw sewage from the facility entering
of the drainage addition. Upon investigation by the TCEQ, it was discovered that the underground
pipe running from the lift station to the treatment plant had ruptured within a few
feet from the plant's roadside discharge point where it actually comes out of the plant
and goes into the ditch. The TCEQ rules state that for a spill to be reported to
to anyone other than the TCEQ.
Thank you.
It must be greater than 50,000 gallons and be within a half mile of a well.
If it's not within a half mile of a well, it has to be 100,000 gallons.
To my knowledge, accordingly, no one was notified of this bill.
To my knowledge, no testing was done to see if any contamination had occurred in the discharge route.
The TCQ simply had love for care of the pipe, then a spread line around the break to control
order.
The pictures labeled complaint two were taking on the day of the spill and showed the condition
of the water in the ditch.
Due to the color of the water, I firmly believe there was raw sewage in that ditch.
The TCQ representative stated at that time the color was due to drain water runoff.
There was no reported grain water from the month of December of 2022.
This facility is unmanned except for approximately one hour each day.
If there's some kind of remote monitoring system, it did not report this failure because I had
to report it.
On 815, 2023, I filed a third complaint stating the facility did not have the required property
authorization and is in violation of the permit.
The permit states that the issuance of the permits does not grant the permit a fee to
write to the public or private property for
the conveyance of wastewater along the discharge
route, and it is a responsibility for the permit fee to require such rights.
I found that loads had only gotten authorization from Potter County on 11-2 of 2023, a received
response from the TCU on this claim. Love was issued a notice of violation and
given them till 12 29 of 2023 to get the required authorizations from
property owners and Randall County. Love did not meet this day as evidenced by the
fact we're here today two months past the compliance date. When I contacted the
TCU about love's not responding to this issue before the required date, I
was told that since Loves was attempting to respond, there would be no repercussions.
The response states that Loves must obtain authorizations from all property owners along
the wastewater discharge route in Randall County. It has nothing to say in that response.
It's only limited to the first file. It specifically says all Randall County property
and you have a copy that
loves and not reached out to any Randall County property owners other than Randall County.
I've visited with a rodent rich superintendent, Tim Sorrell, about this matter.
He informed me that he had questioned loves authority to discharge water into the ditch without first contact in Randall County
when the plant first started operating.
He was told by a T.C. for representative that since Loves had a permit and authorization
from Potter County, there was nothing that could be done about the water.
That was definitely incorrect since we're here today discussing that very matter after
Loves was issued a violation, not on their own, if it wasn't a hiccup, it had to be
issued a violation for getting the required permissions from Randall County property
owners.
It is my understanding that the roadside ditch was designed to provide runoff for rainwater,
not continuous water flow, or for an open-air drain field, is what they're proposing.
As such, it cannot be maintained with water standing in it.
During the public comment period for the renewal application, there were two comments piled
on this matter.
The response to the comments from the executive director was the TCEQ's only response for the quality of the water.
The executive director further indicated it is up to nearby property owners to use their own time and money
to seek common law remedies such as trespass and nuisance to correct a problem created by the TCEQ.
On 4.26 to 23, Loves filed for renewal of this permit with a major amendment.
The amendment was to upgrade the facility from a maximum daily average of 15,000 gallons per day to 22,000 gallons per day.
On 6.18 to 23, DCEQ issued a preliminary decision for the renewal of the permit.
Upon review of the new requirements and discrepancies were found, on page 10 of the application,
gloves indicated that no treated wastewater would be discharged to a city, county, or state right away.
The map for the discharge route in the application showed the discharge somehow crossing Carnot Road,
then going to the middle of the Oasis RV park, then proceeding south along an open field
to a culvert that crosses under 34th Street onto Section 109.
The route the discharge actually uses is from the discharge point south
in the west barred edge part on a road to 34th Street.
Then turns east and runs north in the north ditch of 34th to a culvert
that crosses under 34th onto the Playa Lake
located on Section 109, which is owned by the Sapinski family.
The pictures included with the application clearly show the discharge in the boots alongside
R&I crossing R&I.
On 11-10 of 23, the DCEQ had to issue a revised preliminary decision since some landowners
were not notified because of this wrong discharter.
From a public comment on the TCEQ website on 12.5 of 2023, the TCEQ again had to issue
another revised decision to change where the public could view the application since the
North Branch of the Amarillo Public Library was closed for remodeling.
I want to point out here that that application is signed and certified document from LUBS.
On 4-29 of 2021, a record review was conducted on the wastewater treatment facility.
The review indicated that for the month of December of 2020, the facility will not comply
for a single grant roll.
In January of 2021, the facility was compliant with only three parameters.
On 6-7 of 2021, the TCEQ issued a notice of enforcement to gloves.
A glove agreed to pay a fine in the amount of $36,250 for that violation.
Even though the violation, as described in the notice of enforcement, as people or environmental receptors
have been exposed to pollutants which exceed the levels that are protective,
Not a single person or entity along the discharge route was notified of the discharge.
The TCEQ did not require those to do any testing to see if there was any contamination of the discharge that might require remediation.
There's an active violation on the current permit for not having a backup power supply in case of a power failure.
It's my understanding the backup power supply is scheduled to be installed as part of the plan expansion.
On current PERMIT in the section labeled Operation Requirements paragraph 4, the PERMIT
T is responsible for installing prior-to-plant startup and alternate power source.
LUVS has been in violation of this requirement since the very first days to install back-up
power supply was installed prior to startup and still has not been installed.
Here again, the TCEQ stance is that since Luz is supposed to install a backup generator
with an upgrade, it's all right to do without wanting to deal with that.
I also filed a public comment on this matter.
During the comment period of the renewal application, the TCEQ did not even respond
to the comment.
Before I start on this next section, I want to emphasize what was being said this
one.
This was clear, pure water.
Keep that in mind.
As of today, there are 20 violations listed on the DCEQ website for this facility.
Of those violations, 17 are prepared to meet the limit of one or more permit encounters.
The ADA Excedence Report, which is online, shows the details behind these violations.
There are 91 instances where the limits were exceeded.
some of these excesses are as much as 18 times.
These numbers I just focus, don't
match what's in the folder, and the reason why is when I checked the website this
morning, there had been another one added for the month of November 2023.
Love's has a second water quality permit that for this same location that
uses the same discharge route. That permit is for the stormwater and
water used to clean with the fueling base. And in answer to your question, Mr. Ruff's,
that particular trickle path is concreted on their problem.
The second permit has two violations for exceeding the permit parameters. An exceedance
report from the second permit shows four instances of the permit parameters being exceeded
by as much as three times over the limit.
If a violation does not meet the TCEQ
enforcement initiation criteria only a notice of violation is issued. For a
violation to trigger enforcement, the permit parameters must exceed, must be
exceeded by 40% or more for any two or more months during a six-month
consecutive period. That ain't a mouthful. Once a violation is past the six-month
period without a second violation to trigger enforcement, it will show as
resolved on the TCEQ website with no further action to be taken.
A good example of how inadequate this is on TIFF 31-2023, the EPA excedence report shows
that the E. coli parameter was 18 times over the limit.
There will be no enforcement action taken unless there's a second occurrence that goes
over 40% within the six month window.
The EPA website sternly warns that there should not be any contact with water that exceeds the limit-free coli as it has the potential to harm both humans and environment.
Simple tasks such as picking up trash or trying to mow the ditch are not safe since no one knows when the parameters are over the limit.
The second permit also has the same two violations as the first one for not having authorization
for property owners.
For the discharge route and no backup power supply, these two permits were issued four
years apart.
That's not just being overlooked,
as it was reported to you all this morning.
Recently, laws have started to use the irrigation system on their own property disposal
of the waste water. And it answered some of y'all's question, that ditch was continuously
under water until this was started. Now, since it has started, I'll get to that here in a
minute, the water has entered the ditch four times since irrigation started. As I stated
last, it's requested the flow to be upgraded to 22,000 gallons per day. Since there's
water going into the ditch now, it would follow that once the upgrade is up and
running, a lot, if not all, of the increased amount will be going into the
ditch. The new equipment for the upgrade is to be located in what they're
currently using for an irrigation field. That will reduce the size of the field
and the application shows no provision to offset the reduction of the field
side. There's no provision for protecting the irrigation system that
that would allow it to be used during freezing weather.
Should the irrigation system freeze,
then all the wastewater will have no place to go but the ditch.
This proved to be correct,
since water went in the ditch for several days
during the last cold snap.
During that same period,
the Sabinsky family had an environmental report
performed on the water that had entered the ditch.
The report showed that the water exceeded the daily average
for several of the permit parameters in particular,
total suspended solids, and again, ego line. The executive director of the TCEQ has made
the decision that the permit has met the requirements of the applicable law. The final decision will
be considered by the commissioner at a regularly scheduled meeting before any action is taken
on the application. I am filing a request for reconsideration of the executive director
for decision, I feel that the conditions and requirements stated in the permit were not
applied by the executive director concerning the backup power supply for the property rights
along the discharge route.
The one thing I want to stress here is even if the TCEQ grants this, it puts absolutely
no obligation on any property owner or entity to allow wastewater to cross their
property without their authorization.
There are several alternatives to discharge in treating wastewater into the roadside edge.
The alternatives keep the wastewater on less property and make any risk associated with
the wastewater less problems, not everyone else's.
It became apparent to me that the citizens of the state of Texas cannot depend on the
TCEQ to protect the rights and health of the public.
They approved a discharge route that had very little hope of actually flowing and is being
used simply as an open-air grain fuel and it is not their problem.
As long as it meets the water standards, they'll allow an entity to change a sign and
certified application when errors are pointed out.
Their treatment plan should have never been allowed to start up
without a backup power supply. When this violation was found during an
inspection, the solution was to give loves more time.
The same solution was given in the case of not having proper authorization
from landowners. The compliance deadline came and went without any repercussions.
They issue violations that do nothing to prevent the reoccurrence of the same
violation. As a citizen of Randall County, I would hope there would be some
benefit to Randall County citizens. When the county grants the right to use
County property, with all I presented here today, I can see a single solitary
benefit in granting loves the use of Randall County property. As such, I
request the Commission not grant loves the right to have wastewater across
Randall County property. I have a question for you, Mr. Gore. This would
fall into an agenda item with public comments. So can the Commissioners
engage with Mr. Dachon? Commissioner Collins, do you have any questions? So big
picture, you've had ongoing issues that just haven't been resolved on and on and
on. Is that pretty well sum it up?
That one will sum to that history.
Thank you.
You know, the fact of this, we want to be a good neighbor. I want to point out that
at the Potter County Middy that was mentioned, Commissioner Coffee brought up
the fact that he thought it would be beneficial if we could all get
together and work out a compromise. Loves agreed to that and agreed, said
they would call the meeting amongst everybody involved and we're all still
waiting for that meeting. Never
contacted me, never contacted the
Savinsky's, never contacted Potter County.
We're all still waiting for that meeting.
That's your good neighbor. Thank you. Your recommendation is for loves to
handle their foot on their own property. Yes, you need to be fine with it.
As long as it's within the law. That is one thing I do want. I've never seen an actual
plaque of what they're proposing to put in. And I've got a feeling that it's not
in compliance with the law. What I saw this morning was it has to be 150
away from any property line. And I'm pretty sure with that one item that
that they're putting on the West End of what's existing is going to be within, it's not going
to be within, it's going to be too close. But I'd actually like to ask you.
Mr. Maus, have you all got a plat with you by chance?
I just wanted to have it put up on the screen.
Okay.
The one that's on the screen, all right,
well, no, but Brandon, then this is our
I.T. Director Brandon, if you're there in possession of that, could you print a plat
for Mr. Deshaun before you leave?
The very first drawing that you put up, it shows where all the equipment you put in.
After the meeting, can you print symptoms for him so that he can have that, everybody,
I think communication on both sides, everybody having all the information will help us navigate
this better.
Perfect.
Any other questions?
So, can you tell the Commissioner's Court where Love Sets and how far your property
is from it?
Okay.
My Love Sets on the 80 acres that's right there in the corner of Arnott Road and I-40
was
owned by Tripoli and just south of them is my property.
Now, I did sell the section that is right up against their fence back earlier in
a year to the same people that own the rest of the 30 acres that surrounds my place.
But I'm the second actual, I'm with them, what is that, I think it's 200 feet of their
fence line.
Okay.
So it's 200 feet south.
What was that address, 7614, what?
No, that's where I live.
Okay.
The property I own is 2760 Carnot Road.
Okay.
And so to follow up on that, because I know that this has been a concern for you for years that you have a busy life.
And you don't go out and look for problems. How did you come across this that you're finding the water in the ditch you're finding what I was told before smells problems.
How did that come to your attention.
Well, I'm out there every single day, even though I'm retired, that's my retirement.
I go out there and I have a motorhome, my wife trains dogs.
She has a building next to my building, where we store the motorhome.
She has a building where she trains her dogs.
And I try real hard to keep anything that's mine, nice and neat.
I've mowed that bar ditch since the day I bought that property.
I've actually, before love's put this in, I was going to the bar to come up to their
property, up to their store, because I just didn't like that Russian thistle that grew
up down through that bar ditch, which is an invasive weed, of course, with the state
of Texas, and I hate it with fashion.
I've always maintained that bar ditch, so when water started being in the bar ditch,
there was no way for me to maintain it, and then you could see from the pictures
years, then, you know, it got to the point that because it wasn't moving, it was stagnant
water that it became, I knew something had to be wrong.
Thank you.
And that's where I started, that's how I got involved.
Well, again, thanks for showing up this morning and being so well prepared. You heard the
questions that we asked representatives for loves and their counsel. Now, the first
The first question I asked was if they were aware of any of this affluent crossing under
personal property and you heard the answer was to their knowledge they were not aware
as well as any complaints about any of this which they were not aware.
Up until this point, up until today, I know that you filed numerous complaints with TCEQ.
Did you ever reach out to loves and try to get a response from them for anything?
The very first complaint that I filed, the one on 2021, Kevin Nichols from Loves, made
a phone call with me and basically asked me what Loves needed to do to make me go away.
So I would set up the goal and that's the only response I ever got.
And was there any follow-up after that?
Did you give them an answer?
Yeah, I did.
They could keep their water on their own property, which I believe is what should be done.
Individuals spend thousands of dollars to put in their own septic system.
It has a covered grainfield.
Loves and won't use Grandville County Bar Bridge as an open-air grainfield.
That's all it is. No matter how fancy you make it sound, that's what it is.
It's an open-air grainfield because even if it doesn't make it to the Zabitsky's, which,
you know, I don't know what it would take to make it to the Zabitsky's.
I'm not a scientist, no more than they are.
But to have an open-air grainfield, when other people have spent thousands of millions
of dollars, I haven't spent just recently myself.
When I sold that property, I had to move my grainfield, and I spent $4,000 to
had it not covered,
it had to meet the requirements,
all that kind of stuff.
What this is is nothing but an open air drain filter.
So you felt like that.
There's no other way to put it.
You feel like that complaint didn't go any further
than that one contact.
It didn't go up the.
It didn't go up.
Every other contact I've had with them
is through the, through the TCEQ by filing a formal.
Is there a reason you didn't contact loves again
directly outside of TCEQ?
Did you just feel like?
Well, I felt like it was a waste of my time because of what was said when Kevin Nichols
called and talked to me.
And I know he's not here today.
He was with them when they came up to the park.
Okay.
Thank you.
Did you put this together?
Yes, I did.
You wrote a very fine job on that.
Thank you.
Very impressive.
You've done a good job on that.
Do you mind if we could have a copy of that, your letter that you've read today with the
reading issue?
I'd like to have that also, if we could, sometime we could see.
Yeah, I'm on public speaker, I had to write it down.
Yeah, leave it with us, but I'd like to go over that.
But other than that, I have no questions other than that.
Thank you.
Any questions for secondary?
Do you have neighbors, friends having the same issues that have brought this up, I mean that you visit with on a regular basis out there?
I visited with Carson Ward. He's the one that's put in the big fancy grain site that says GW Seeds. It's in the southeast corner of 34th and Arnott.
And he definitely agrees that this should not have happened.
He can't say anything about it because the flow doesn't, you know, when I visited with Mr. Sorrell's,
they told me the water had no chance of being able to go south along Arnott past 34th.
There is a covered there, but they assured me it could.
Now, if that was actually in the plan, then he would have had a right to say something
because he was on that side of the road.
Since he's not on the right, on the south side, since he's on the south side,
instead of the north side, he's not going to be able to say anything
as he'll be able to actually cross to the south side.
But you feel other neighbors have the same concerns you do?
I don't know.
They had several complaints to managers about smelting, which, according to the DCEQ, that's
not supposed to happen.
They're not supposed to be able to smell it.
And answer to one of your questions, Judge Hire, those units are open to that system.
They don't have tops on them.
They're open air.
So if you get seven inches of rain, it's going in that sewage.
They're not closed units.
I'm sorry.
That must be allergic to sewer talk.
Thank you so much, Murphy.
We appreciate it.
I know this has been a passion for you.
It's been a concern for your voice hasn't had the opportunity to be heard as it should have been.
And I'm glad that we were able to do that here.
I'm glad that you've provided us the good documentation to be able to review.
I think it's a great starting spot for conversations.
Thank you.
At this time we have multiple agenda items. I'm going to go ahead and ask for the
Rodenbridge Department and our engineer from High Plains, a civil engineer, to
come forward and give us a brief assessment of your knowledge of the
situation with loves. Then we're gonna move on. I am so sorry. I know that I
have held some people here way past what you had expected. Normally our
Mr. Court is much shorter.
Good morning. Morning.
On the engineering side of things, I have some questions.
So you have an irrigation system for land application. How long can you guys go without
the storage? So
can you even go a day without? So you have to irrigate every day and if you
can. And then in the permit, do you have a
requirement on whether or not you can irrigate
But when the ground is frozen.
Would you mind since you're answering the questions to come up closer to the microphone
to make sure that they this if they're citizens online listen they can hear yeah we have a
zoom room but back there I'm not sure it could pick you up you're soft-spoken I know
whether or not you have to have a seat in order for definitely to have the vapor
transpiration. So the plan for the improvements is to, because right now
are laid out so that the radius touches each other, so we're gonna be overlapping
them. So some of the land that's earlier was taken over by the new
That'll be made up by having some more than I think.
And the plan is to have some vegetation there.
I believe it's because of the grass.
Not sure.
And then, is there a limit on that?
There's a number of...
No.
There's a number published now by CCQ that talks about
how many scales per day per square foot.
Yeah.
There is a limit of how much you can per foot.
Okay.
And so when it discharges,
I'm curious in your account for percolation in the barge, is that taking into account vegetation
there? Because in this area, we have a lot of plain, silty soil, so there's not a whole
lot of percolation unless it's cultivated or actually being seeded and constantly maintained.
Well, there's quite a bit of vegetation there. Yeah. Those are calculations done on how
much is actually seeping into the ground. And so you said you guys have a storage
tank of about 3,000 gallons so you can store a whole lot. You mentioned earlier
that only a small percentage of time it would be discharging.
Emma, you can
speak to this. Houghton, do you see their effluent in the barge? Well, we
you should see it quite a bit when it first started, but I guess if they're
irrigating it then that did slow it down as far as how far you know it made it
down to 34 down there. I don't think there was an irrigate. When did it get irrigated?
It wasn't even at the beginning. Right. We used to see it a lot more all the way
down to 34. And the irrigation, it says that's about 10,000 gallons a day. On peak days
you're going to be discharging about 10-12,000 gallons a day into that
barge and that's if it's not rainy or then you got on the stormwater how
it is a
stormwater ditch but a lot of the moisture that's observed in the ditch
and if you look on Google Earth it is it's in that part where the outlet
discharges so we don't get a whole lot of rain a lot of times what we do get a
lot and we don't be a lot long time without any rain but the barge is
still bright green and holding a lot of the moisture and that's why it's
causing a maintenance issue.
So it may not be often,
but it does cause a long-term problem
and it happens often enough.
I don't know that the regulation is happening
at the rate that you would expect,
but I don't know how I haven't seen
what would be that calculated.
On the permit, when you guys first applied
the discharge route with both of the oasis,
RV park, was there an amendment to that discharge route?
or you guys just discharged alternatively not according to the permit?
So the original permit was done by a different engineering firm, so I'm not sure what they did
when they filed the first permit, but if you look at the EPA water, it shows the path going
across that direction. That's not the way it goes because there's a barge there now.
So it actually discharges down the right way.
So was there a right way?
It was an amendment and it was republished.
Yes, it's all been republished to notify of the correct route.
So that route is now the route?
Yes.
And then we talked a lot about options.
A lot of people have questions about options and kind of want to go over some of them
just so they know what's available.
I do agree that, you know, wastewater discharges is a common method of discharging the treated
effluent.
Here in the Panhandle, we have a whole lot of land applications, so it's not as common
here as it is in other places, but it's a legitimate way of distressing wastewater.
If you guys have the ability to get more land, if you do more storage and land application
and just irrigate and keep it all on one site, then do you have the option to lease
the land to do that, like a long-term lease to irrigate the neighboring property.
I don't know if that's a question I'm sure people can look at, I'm sure.
You've been mentioned by Kevin Nicol, then.
Yes, I don't know if that's being considered, or just having a storage bond that'll allow
to hold and irrigate or continues.
There is not enough area for a storage bond. I mean, we cannot.
I mean, yeah, that's made it a choir, so you'd have to acquire land.
A lot of this continued on acquiring more property.
Because there's those well setbacks.
There's a 500 foot cell by setback for the RV level.
There's a little time that we'd make an alteration to the plan,
or that it would have to go to the DCEQ, and that's typical of it.
So, what about pumping the wastewater to the city
and discharging it to the city of Amarillo's wastewater?
Like we mentioned earlier, it's several miles away as far as, you know, it's 34th and helium
now.
We'll see.
There's an animal out there a couple miles away from the bushel and it's trying to get
You're talking about the sewer main for the bushel and elementary school?
Yeah.
Well, that runs down the north side of 34th from bushel and road and then it gets
the helium and then it turns and goes south and it ties into the city's sewer main on 58th which
would be hillside and either side of your hillside over there. I know this is just a rough in your
mind but what would be the distance between that line and the love's convenience store that
we're
What about acquiring property rights to, say, that Playa Lake, or not property rights, but permission to discharge there directly and pumping it to them so that you don't have any float in the portage?
It's a possibility.
For example, I'm just going to go through the option that's feasible or not, just so that there's options.
That's it for right now. I'm just trying to get an idea of how the plan operates.
We'd love to discharge more on-site. It's just those well-set backs, or, you know,
they've got most of the property.
So, it appears from his questions, is there a possibility Randall County's engineer can get a complete engineering plan for the facility?
That way, if he has any further questions, he can contact you directly, get a synopsis of any concerns that he has,
and be able to brief the court with whatever your opinion is once you've given it a thorough review.
Okay.
So there's a summary transmission that was prepared with plans.
And so I can provide that to you.
One question about the setbacks from the property that came up earlier.
There is a courier contacting that's shown on the plan,
and we're going to have to move that so it's not going to be too late.
So there are some things that are going to shift a little bit.
And the existing plan is within that 158, I don't know if it's grandfathered yet, or?
I think that applies to treatment units only, so it's not an actual treatment unit.
Brain contacting?
Corn contact will be.
But other headworks or screen may not, so.
Right, so if you're looking at that plan, just know that there's some things that are going to have to shift around the corner.
Okay, and so we need to keep this going.
We've got to get to some guests that are here as well.
Well, Tim, would you have any concerns that haven't been stated at this time or let us
do a little more investigation and then we'll have additional insight?
I think Commissioner Benton and myself met with a TCEQ representative back in 2017, mentioned
that how much water was going to be going down and we might not be able to mow it,
might not be able to keep it plated.
it is a paved road now, then it wasn't a paved road, but the barges are paved about maybe,
you know, contrary trickle channels that we just got told that it was a water county was
approved and basically that's all I've really had any contact with them as far as them
contacting the road bridge department in Randall County and asking us if we had any
issues I've never been contacted that way that I'm aware of or we would because if
they go over there 15,000 gallon which now they're gonna I don't guess you're
gonna double it but you are going to increase it a third you know in the
summertime that's when we do most of our mowing and if it's wet we can't get
in we have to leave it we just have to go on most somewhere else so the weeds
might get pretty tall over there from time to time and I guess you said
you've been mowing that over there so there if you know if we come by that's
why I didn't know if like a concrete trickle channel might be able to kind of
keep it going on down where it wouldn't be so wet where we could mow it but you
know the misuse never got addressed to anybody basically. Are you saying that you
didn't get any information about the climbing? We just were told down that
But I mean, you see, you see, you approve the permit and dealt with part of county.
That was in fact, that's what we got told that day.
We contacted the region one office about that.
That's what they told us.
So we got that.
We had a conversation with Mr. Gore.
We submitted him with this.
Kelly from my office.
Yes, yes.
So she submitted some information to you that was going to be submitted to the road bridge.
Two separate issues.
So I think that I think he's addressing 2017 and you're talking about current current situations. Yeah, we never I mean
I've never really dressing thing with anybody from loves or tcq since then on
On that permit. He was just it was permitted that was in though. So I
Think Richard said one that this meeting was going to take place. So I think that's where we're just gonna talk about it here
Yeah, and Amethyst contacted me and the information she sent has been included in the packet that
went to the Commissioner's Court today.
Tim has a copy, I think.
Adolfo, did you get that as well?
All right.
I appreciate everybody.
We will keep doing our new diligence if you'll get that engineering to him.
We'll be able to review it and you'll be able to give us a report.
The questioner's court hopefully.
So what your findings are and your recommendations, same with you, Tim.
I appreciate both of you being here.
Thank you.
All right.
You will see that item number three says a closed session.
We're going to move that.
We have people here that have spent a long time waiting to be able to come up and talk to us.
So item three will be a move to the end of the commissioner's court.
There's no action item you'll see on it after that.
And we will follow up with item number four.
The presentation acceptance of the annual comprehensive financial report for the year
ending, September 30th, 2023, by the independent audit firm of Dosha Pickens in
Francis. I want to welcome our guests and if anybody can make math exciting at
you.
Well thank you for that George. I've actually been told I didn't quite hit
Southwest flight attendant status on my humor so I've been told I didn't work on it.
Maybe if you sing it. You definitely don't know that. Raymondet told me that you
all received your booklets last week so maybe you've done the required reading.
I'll help with everything else you've been reviewing this weekend. Well you
to give me about two more weeks,
and I think I could absorb most of it.
I understand exactly that, it's a busy time.
So, for the record, my name is John Maris.
I'm the Auditor General of the Association of San Francisco
for a lot of years.
Before I begin, I do want to thank this board
for allowing us to once again come down
and serve Randall County in that capacity.
I believe our 20th year should be next year,
so am I going to get a certificate as well?
You are, it may be even a gold star.
But no, in all seriousness, I really do appreciate the fact that we'll continue to
trust us with that responsibility and coming to work with your auditor's office
and with all your officials and truaries of letters.
You have a commitment to really not stress that enough.
So without further ado, you've had a long morning.
I'm going to try very hard not to make it any longer.
So let's go ahead and dive into this.
Page number one is our initiative auditor support.
This has not changed significantly from the previous year.
So, I'm just going to hit kind of the highlights for you at the top of the page, it gives you
our opinions, what you've engaged us for.
That second paragraph is actually the statements and our opinion, the financial statements
are both particularly in all material respects.
With respect to financial position of the governmental activities, the business type
activities, the discreetly presented components unit, these major fund and the accurate
remaining fund information of Randall County, Texas as of and for the year until September 30th, 2023.
As to claims to being we can give, as I've already stated, your auditor's office is doing
a fantastic job at making sure all the information presented to you on a monthly basis is accurate
and as complete as possible for you to be able to make informed decisions.
We have a fantastic working relationship with them and truly stepped up and is doing
wonderful work for you.
The basis for opinions just tells you the standards that we use to conduct our
audit.
But the responsibility of management, this is Ray Burnett's favorite section because
it finally puts her on the list, but it does talk about that the management of the accounting
is responsible for the preparation of fair presentation of financial statements in accordance
with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America, including
the design and implementation of control control to ensure
that what that translates to in
English is that these first three pages are mine, ideally the rest of this book
is supposed to be hers.
With the GAO, the Government Accountability Office, the lovely folks in DC who won't
leave me alone. Our pushing for is that they want every governmental entity to
have somebody, ideally somebody on staff, with these skills, knowledge and
experience to be able to prepare this booklet cover to cover. Alternatively, you
have two firms. One to come in and do the financial student
preparation. One to come in and do the audit. That's not really economically
Now your auditor has the required experience you can do for an auditor.
A lot of years now. So she could actually probably get you most of the way, if not all the way there.
So you are in a position, you're in a better position than most of the counties in the panhandle.
But that is kind of the direction where they're heading is they want us to back off from preparing your financial statements on your behalf.
They've been talking about this for about 15 years.
So my prayer every night is that they'll keep talking for the next 18,000 hours.
Well, I was supposed to be a joke and I got over the action.
Well, no, I was laughing.
That is the darkest news of the morning, but that is what's out there and what's on the horizon.
It's that shift someday will come where your independent auditors will not be able to assist you in preparing your financial statements.
As I stated, I really pray every night that it's not going to be four years down the road.
So we have time to figure out what plan B is, but that is on the horizon.
The author's responsibility just points out exactly what we are taking responsibility for versus what we are not.
And then the rest of the paragraphs we're actually going to cover as we go through the book.
Starting on page four is the management's discussion and analysis report.
I'm not going to go over this in any detail, but this is the report written by Ravenette.
And what it is is actually a good snapshot.
It's about a 13 page letter, that is a snapshot of everything that's going on in here.
So if you read nothing else, if you just read these 13 pages, you'll have a solid working
understanding of the next 150.
So if you want a, like I said, a quick little snapshot, that's a great place to go and pick
that up from.
Alternatively, you can read the entire book and use it as a sleep aid if you needed
to.
So, DSS out of the way, let's talk numbers.
Flipping all the way over to page 18.
This is the county prison of deposition, Urimalachi.
All of the funds that we're counting
are being aggregated together into a singular unit.
We'll have the governmental activities there
on the left-hand column.
The component unit is the assistance district
on the right-hand column.
As far as your financial condition,
up at the top of page 18,
you finished your cash and cash equivalence
of a little over $28 million.
dollars and investments of $39.5 million. Those investments are certificates of deposits
and other investment accounts that you have in hand. Combine your cash and investment
position in 2.2 million dollars. You took some of your liquid cash and moved it down
to those investments, so there is a bit of a fluctuation there, but in total your
cash position is 2.2 million dollars. Receive your assets today for the most
part pretty consistent year over year. Moving over to page 19, the liabilities right in the
middle of the page. You should see your net pension liability. We've talked for a number of years
about the TCDRS plan and how it fluctuates from year to year. So that $11,556,000 pension liability,
that is up $20 million over last year. You can tell it's been that kind of a morning.
PCDRS had not the best year in the market in their 2022 valuation year, so that's why
all these plans across the panhandle have flipped over from being a NASA to a
back to a liability. They are still reporting you at 88.0%
funded though, which is exactly where you were in 2022, which is a strong
funding percentage. From what we're hearing out of Austin, anything
above 85 and they're generally happy with, that's kind of their
per render. You drop below that 85% and will either start tweaking your
contribution rate or they might come and ask for a lump sum payment to get you
back up to there. But Randall County has historically been in that 88 to 90%
range so your plan is fairly stable as far as what you're contributing in
what you're doing to take care of your employees. At the bottom of the page you
will see the unrestricted net position of 36,775,000. If the guy were to take
take all of your assets, convert them to cash, pay up all your obligations, it's what
you'd be left over with.
It's your equity, your fund balance, and that is up to $12.5 million a year.
So your financial position is improving tremendously.
You reduce your liabilities somewhat, you've increased your assets, everything is working
the way you would expect it to.
Arrange your current ratio, the county's ability to pay off the obligations that
are due to payable this year, which is only the cash or receipts that you have
on hand.
You can pay those off six times over.
That is up from last year where it was a 5 to 1 ratio.
So, as I said, your financial position is continuing to stay strong,
and in some cases, people are free.
Page 20 is the Statement of Activities to refresh your memories on how this reads,
because you probably haven't seen it in a year.
Good job.
You're all very stoic this morning.
It's been a long morning.
The top left-hand corner, the expensive accounting broke down by what we call functional area.
Moving across the top of the page, you have any direct charges for services in the operating
or capital grants that we receive, coming into what it truly costs to provide those functions
to your citizens, and then down that right-hand column you have your property taxes, sales
tax, interest earnings, things of that nature that are not program-specific, coming down
to your changing net position or in business terms net income for the new.
As far as your expenses are concerned, even if you're at $77 million of expense,
That is up about $12 million or a little under 19% from last year.
Most of those changes, $1.7 million for sitting in the administrative land item, and that's
ARPA expenditures.
You spent $1.5 million of your ARPA grant this year, that's where those are all being
reported.
So that's that.
The judicial land item, $10 million there is up $1.6 million.
That's the funding of the appointed JP Board position.
Those charges were totaled $243,000.
Court appointed attorney for felony expenses
were up about $315,000.
And then we talked about the change in your retirement plan,
that $20 million change that flushed through
not all $20 million of it,
but a fair chunk flushed through into your income statement.
So that the change in the retirement obligations
in the judicial line item accounted for $697,000.
So that's a noncash increase in your expenses.
The other big change is in public safety, at $41 million, that's up $7 million a year
over here.
That's salaries in multiple departments, increasing by $729,000.
Again, the change in that retirement obligation is increased by $2.6 million, and then depreciation
in public safety is up by $1.5 million, and we'll talk more about depreciation expense
and why that's up so much in just a moment.
But those last two items are in non-cash changes.
So a significant portion of your increased expenses are not cash related.
Your revenue stays pretty consistent.
Your grants are down about $17 billion combined.
The biggest chunk of that is ARCA.
You received your second ARCA payment last year and a little over $14 million.
You, of course, didn't receive that again this year.
Not sure that decreases that growth.
Property taxes in total are up $4.5 million or 8.8%.
What caused that is you received the valuation increase from the CAD of 15.84%.
You offset that by reducing your tax rate by 2.71% and that generated the exact 8.8%
increase in revenue that you saw.
So you were able to take advantage of the increased valuations by dropping your rate
and still generating some additional rate for yourself.
Page 21 starts the unknown presentation.
This is more into what you used to see coming out of the auditor's office on a monthly
basis.
No real new information here, but I will point out that you will see each one of your major funds
by themselves. So it's a particular one that you are interested in.
And then the other governmental funds, all the non-major funds, the lovely one and two dollar
funds and fees that the clerks and the JPs are going to collect that they love ever so very much
is ignoring me. But that's where all that information
is. And then the even numbered page is 22 and 24 of the recommendations between
what we've already gone over from this one.
Page 25 through
27 is the health insurance fund, the proprietary fund that the county has.
Again, nothing really new or different going on here.
Everything is working out the way you would expect it to.
Page 30, first, the notes to the financials.
I've already made my joke about this being a sleep page,
but this really will do it for you.
So the ones that are going to be of the most interest to you
start on all the way back on page 45, note number seven.
This
is the graph for representation of your change and fixed assets for the year.
I'm going to point out a couple of line items and then discuss them a little further.
We will see the second line down construction of process, even if you're at $13.2 million
of CIP.
Just keep that number in mind for just one second, but come down a handful of lines
below that and you'll see a new item subscription asset.
There was a new governmental accounting standards board, a standard that went
into it right this year.
Last year, we talked about the fact that there's no such thing as an operating lease anymore.
Anytime you have a long-term commitment for equipment, property, whatever it may be,
you have a capital asset and corresponding debt.
This year, they decided to do the same thing with long-term commitments related to
subscription-based information technology agreements.
Anytime any one of your officials licenses the use of a software system now,
that's what the subscription asset is.
So that has to be valued. You have a corresponding asset and corresponding debt that goes on to the books.
This item right here is why the appreciation expense in the Sheriff's Department went up so much,
because he has multiple softwares that we require to use.
So we have to put those on the books and then, correspondingly, depreciate them out over the life of the debt.
Sorry, I'm sorry, over the life of the asset.
Going back to the CIP, we'll just flip the page to 46.
The second to last paragraph on that page is a description of all the construction projects
that you have going.
I think here how much you have spent on each one of them just so you can see exactly what's
going on.
We have a lot of projects going on, $13 million worth, but that's where all that information
is.
We've talked about the lease income in the past.
We were just talking about the lease standards.
This is on the receiving end.
You have leased out your property, specifically the communication towers, the right to
those communication towers so you can see over the next 28 years over on page 47
there what the county is expected to receive back on those lease
arrangements the principal and interest payments that you are entitled to note
number nine there talks about that subscription-based information
technology arrangement that we just talked about note number 10 starts the
discussion on your general obligation which flips us all the way to page 50
This presentation feels a little out of order, but it's mandated by the Fed again.
So we're actually going to start on 51, note number 11.
That's the graphical representation of where your long-term obligations changed during the year.
You can see where you began the year, the new bonds you took out along with full subscription liabilities,
and then any payments that were made coming into the ending balance,
And then flipping back, just moving your eyes to the left to page 50, that's what the county
has obligated itself for over the next 20 years, principle and interest, as far as getting
all of those bonds and that subscription liability, those subscription liabilities, pardon me,
paid off again over the next 20 years.
That's really the notes to the financials.
The retirement plan comes shortly after that.
It's good information, I do recommend you do through it, but I don't want to take up any more of your time as I said, this morning you've already had a very long morning, so we're going to skip over some of the stuff.
Page 72, the last one I'm going to talk about through the camera.
This is the 10-year trend on your TCBRS plan, and as I've done in the past, I really just
want to point out right in the middle of the page, the investment income that investment
expenses can let you see exactly how your plan is fluctuating year to year based on market
values or market fluctuations that are outside of your control.
They had a $9.5 million loss that they attributed to your plan this year, that's
what you're looking at from having that asset come into that line.
They guarantee you a certain rate of return, but they measure it over a long-term period.
Unfortunately, on year-by-year basis, we're going to have these peaks and valleys that
are causing this fluctuation.
That is one of the many reasons why I think this particular standard is not very well
written.
I have much more colorful language when I'm not being broadcast.
asked.
It's the awful standard but it's a knee-jerk reaction to municipalities
and I've told you this before but it's a knee-jerk reaction to municipalities
declaring bankruptcy because they can't fund the retirement plan any longer. That's
why the GFOA decided that they needed to have something on the books to let
everyone know what your funding status is. It's not well written but it is
what it is. As I've told you in the past though your plan is stable, you're
care of your employees, but you are the decision making body. If you ever want to discuss your
plan or have to make any inquiries into modifying it in any way, the best advice we can give you
is to get TCDRS to physically sit in this room and talk to you. That way they can tell you
what your funding status is at that moment. All of these numbers are based off of December 31st,
2022. They were stale dated before we even started the audit, so they are not a good
decision-making tool. It might be enough to start a conversation but it is not
something that you want to face any decisions off of. Okay stop rambling about
that. Starting on page 76 is the budgetary comparison schedule. The revenues
for the general fund are on 76 and 77 and then 78 start the budgetary
comparison for the expenses broken down by each one of your various
departments. So you can see how every official and every department head
handled the budget that they were provided. There is nothing to discuss here. Each one
of your officials handled their budgets expertly, either that or the auditor handled the budget
amendments expertly. I'll let them file over which one that is.
Then we just kind of move through all the major funds here so you can see how all the
budgets work. Starting on page 86 is the combining section on all the non-major
funds. This is not just large information. This is something that our firm put this
This way you can put your eyes on every single, actually I'm about to tell you a lie,
topologies on most of our counties.
This is not requiring information for Randall County getting the certificate of financial
reporting achievement.
It is actually required information, but this way you can still put your eyes on every single
fund of the county and see how each one of these funds are operating and how they're behaving.
They must create comparisons for each one of those funds. This is presented as well as
running on stage 94, angling through a significant portion of the interview.
That brings us to
page 122
and really 122 and 123 combined. What this is, it's a combined state fund,
your fiduciary funds, the funds that your officials are holding on behalf of others,
whether that be registry funds in the clerk's office or inmate trust funds in the sheriff's
office, things of that nature. One of the procedures that we perform is working very closely with
the office and the work that she does, I think she, her staff, you get all the credit
and probably all the blame as well. One of the procedures that they do is that they
They go into each one of your officials' offices on a regular basis and make sure they're in
college with their badge as they should be.
We also follow behind them and confirm the same information to make sure that your officials
know who all their funds are owed to at the end of the year and that they're keeping an
accurate account of those funds.
And to a T, your officials are doing a fantastic job.
Every time that there is – because we're all humans and we make errors – when
there is an error or a discrepancy noted, if they work from the auditor's office,
they work together very well to get that resolved and handle appropriately. We noted no material
issues this fiscal year and everything worked exactly as it was designed to. Page 123 shows
you exactly how much money flows through your official offices during the year so you can see
how busy they were and how many dollars they handled again but they all flowed out to where
and ladies and gentlemen that basically brings us to the end. I do want to point
out because I'm slightly odd but I think it's fascinating information. Pages 126
through 144 is called the statistical section and it's a tenure trend over how
the county had changed in various metrics whether it be the principal
taxpayers today compared to the number of employees or a piece of
equipment today compared to 10 years ago. It is interesting information to see how things
have progressed over the last 10 years. That is compiled all by the auditor's office, but
it is, I think it's fascinating reading and I do encourage you to go through and read that.
That brings us last but not least to page 144 and 145. This is our report on internal control
compliance with laws and regulations. You did not engage us to assess your internal
control structure. However, we are required as a matter of standard that if we note any
significant deficiencies in internal control or material non-compliance laws and regulations
that would bring us to your attention and I'm pleased to say that we've noted most
of the issues.
As I've told you in the past, though, there is no such thing as a perfect control of
control structure.
You could throw your entire operating budget at it and not achieve it in the face of
human nature.
However, what we are saying is that with the policies, the personnel, the support
from the auditor's office that you have in place, we feel that should anything
material happen, we feel like it's going to be quite a fairly, fairly, kind of quickly
happen.
I was like, I forgot how to speak there for a moment.
I apologize for that.
With that, like I said, I rushed through it.
I just tried to hit the highlights for you.
I didn't want to take up any more of your time.
Are there any questions or concerns that I can address for you?
We'll start with Commissioner Collins.
Thank you for all of this information.
And thanks for hitting the highlights and giving us some things to look at.
So appreciate it very much.
And thank you for confirming that we have an excellent auditors department and a great leader.
And my question for Ravenette is how in the world do you do this?
She files a tremendous amount of that information.
It's amazing.
And I do have to, I've done this before.
Karen used to do it and Ravenette has continued the trend.
But none of my other clients actually read the financial statements that we prepared for them cover to cover.
Her and Jamie and before Karen and Ribanette would read this book cover to
cover and tell me where I've missed periods or where I've got dollar-bounding
issues. They are extremely thorough and I relied tremendously upon their
review efforts to make sure that this is as complete and accurate as possible
not only for you but also for the GFOs who get the fewest review comments on
Randall County from the vets in any of the other counties that submit a comprehensive report to him.
So the work that she puts in is tremendous and very valuable.
Excellent. Thank you.
The financial condition that Brandon can use is strong.
We do want to appreciate that. I would like to extend our appreciation to you personally and then
to the company in general, 20 years, 19 years. It's been a great relationship. You guys come
It is a lot of work and you do it as quietly and as least intrusive as possible to be able
to get these documents to each of us and then to the citizens that we represent as well
that we are taking care of the money and that we are doing what we're supposed to be doing
and we understand that this is the citizens tax dollars.
So thank you and your team for confirming that.
Well, I'm in the minority because I do enjoy reading these reports, and so I love the comprehensive
aspect of it.
None of it really comes as a surprise because of the ongoing reports that we get throughout
the year.
The one question I did have was concerning the subscription assets, but you pointed out
and answered.
I saw that, didn't know what that one meant, and that's also refreshing because it's
new, correct?
That's right. And I'll just also point out that this is the 19th consecutive year that
Randall County has been awarded the Government Finance Officers Association Certificate of
Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting. So I'm glad that we have an ongoing mission
of just doing the very best that we can. And I just want to again congratulate you
and your team and again, thank you for your support and help thrive on that time
as well.
Thank you sir.
Thank you.
You'll be hearing from me. So be prepared. Thank you.
May I comment on that, sir? I love the fact that, that's not the first time you've made that comment.
I love the fact that as a body, you actually do take these home and go through them when you have the moment
and you have the time and you get back to your auditor's office with any questions.
I've got a lot of commissioners. I've actually booked commissioners to sleep before.
They see this as a new sense.
I do have to come in to Randall County for actually,
and you're not the only ones, I mean, I don't want to make it sound like you're the only ones,
but for the most part, the people that I deal with,
Lester Hartz, they're wonderful people.
They do a fantastic job for their community.
They don't like looking at the numbers.
So the fact that you all actually do take this home and dig through this beast of a report,
I want to say I appreciate that personally.
It's great to all year long.
That's what I think. That's why I do what I do.
Well, thanks again.
Thank you.
That should have been an action item.
I can't leave the table until you approve it.
All right.
So, this is item number five, Discuss and Take Action and Approving.
Excuse me.
It's Presentation and Acceptance of the Annual Comprehensive Report for the year ending September 30, 2023 by the
independent audit firm Docher Pickens and Francis. So this would be the acceptance portion
of it. We've had the presentation. Is there anyone want to make a move?
A move that we accept it. We have a motion and second all those in favor please raise your
hand and say aye. Aye. And it is 5-0. Thank you again. Thank you ma'am. Again before I make my
escape thank you all again so much for your time. As I tell you every year our firm is not
just want to come in at the end of the year and drive these folks crazy. Although that's
kind of fun. We're here for you year round and I tell this to Ravenette all the time
this really is for you as well. We're here for you year-round. If there's ever anything
that we can do to assist you, please do not hesitate to give us a call. I usually make
an attorney joke, but I won't do that this morning because he's sitting right there.
But in all seriousness, we don't turn our clocks ticking until we even have to go somewhere,
prepare something. So phone calls are always free. Take advantage of that as often as you
need to. Thank you. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Item number five,
discussing
in excess of $2,500. Good morning, Christina.
We have
two reasons for the fourth approval this morning.
The first one is $4,800.17.
It's made payable to co-courge. And the second one
is in the amount of $5,198.68
and it's made payable to play golf.
Let's turn to questions on this.
I have a question.
This shows on the second one for the property at 8251 West Emerald Boulevard,
which is in
Potter County.
That could be where they're building the premises.
But we don't know the location of the property.
It's...
I
can know the Com Park number 40, a lot one block 00002 less 420, so do you have any idea
where Canoed Park is. Canoed Park Park. Well it just shows the address of
8251 in West Emerald Boulevard. I was a little confused about that because it's in
Potter County.
So for $4,803.17 cents you
want to have some research done on that
will approve one.
So what you're looking at Christine.
Well I'm sure you've
researched it I mean it's just confusing to me that it shows the
property location in Park County unless they pay Randall County and it's in...
We
can table this and give her a little more time to research it, move
through a couple of agenda items and circle back.
That's what the
Motion to table.
Move the table.
Second.
I have a motion on second.
All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye.
Aye.
Motion carries 5-0.
We'll table it.
We'll circle back and we'll get back to it as soon as we complete some other items
where you get the answer.
Raise your hand.
Thank you.
All right.
Item number six, discuss and take action approving specifications for RFP 2024, 62310
inmate and video visitation.
Good morning.
So we have an RFP for the inmate phone and video visitation set to be released on February 29th if it's approved.
Submittals will be due April 11th, so it will be evaluated and the recommendation will be a visit to the commissioners for an award
and then it will
be for the inmate phone system and a video visitation now at the jail facility for the county.
The RFP will be sent out to a list of vendors.
We have, I believe, I think I have 13 on the list right now in addition to the other suppliers
that are registered with the county on our bid platforms.
Those will be available on two bid platforms, Beacon Bid and the public purchase that we
utilize historically.
The legal advertisements will be placed out.
I do want to mention that the copies that you have in front of you, there have been
some changes that have been made.
Adjusted to accommodate for some technical requirements, different worries, and industry standards regarding the technology and system software since the previous one.
Blame what the sheriff's office has looked over those and he recommended some changes. I do have a list of those here with me, but I do have a final updated copy to be filed with the court documents if you want to work with those.
And then I can give you a copy of this here to show what those specific changes were,
but those have all been adjusted to accommodate for his recommended changes.
We just need the commissioners approval to move forward with the ERP bidding process
for the documents to be released for the legal advertisement to be placed.
And then we'll move on.
All right, Chiefs, I have a question.
And I know with the Center that they have really had great success with the online visitation
and their ability that sometimes people do not have a car or vehicle to be able to come
out to the actual facility.
And it has been successful and actually helped with morale by them to be able to log on
and set something that will be accomplished through this RFP.
That's what we're hoping for, Judge.
There's one of the things with, you know, we all know how rapidly technology's advancing
and we've actually been visiting with some other jails that do video visitation that
are using the tablet systems.
And so we're wanting to really, as we look at these, as these proposals come in for
some of the tablets because it does increase a lot of morale and it gives them an opportunity
to have more visitation and to be able to be in contact with friends and family.
Excellent. That was my only question. I want to make sure that we are setting a platform where technology evolves to that.
We could migrate that way. We'll start with the commissioner's questions on the RFP.
I have a couple of questions on this, Frank. Under fraud management, item number E, a warning
that three-way calls are not allowed. Why do we not allow? I'm thinking if somebody had
an attorney in Lubbock and Amarillo, you can't have all three on a call.
Well, the attorney calls are a little different. This is more in line with so that we can
monitor exactly who is being talked to. Okay. Because everything's recorded that we
can know exactly who's on the phone and we prohibit that from happening. Okay.
Item number H, hook switch dialing. What is that?
Too many blame here. I believe that
portion on the hook switch dialing that's I guess there's certain
methodologies that whenever the inmate calls out to you know the person
and they're trying to contact.
Whenever a call is made,
their fees are associated with those calls.
And if they figure out a way to work around
to not have those fees charged,
that allows whatever funds are paid for by either
on, I guess, their commissary portion
of the inmate's funds or the person
that has a prepaid card with the online system
or the phone calling system to accept those fees,
it's a way to work around those charges
is to where they're basically getting free phone calls.
So that's going to be it.
Make sure that measures are in place
to prevent that from happening.
One other question.
Inmate messaging, looking into the possibility of text-only
messages from friends and family.
If that were to come to pass, would those be monitored also?
Yes, everything's monitored.
But it does give them that ability
through the use of those tablets
that they can do that messaging.
It just makes the, yes, everything is monitored.
Okay.
Thanks.
That's all I have.
Commissioner Robinson.
So, there's nothing like this in place currently, right, for those of you?
We have a system in place.
We don't have the tablets.
We've been with, we've been with for over 10 years.
Right.
We went to a year-to-year.
Now we're on a month-to-month basis, knowing that we needed to go out for our AP because
of technology.
This will allow them to also contact people remotely, right?
Correct.
Okay.
Okay. The people who are on the other side, is this through an app or through a browser?
I mean, how?
If that would be part of the proposal with different companies doing different ways,
but a lot of it is done through an app or some kind of video conferencing.
Just out of curiosity, I didn't see anything in here. Do you know roughly what the cost
of usage is for the inmate? I mean, is it charged by the minute, by the data?
It's all, every one's different, but a lot of them are done by the minute.
Okay.
And that's where you know the...
Yeah, so the text messages are done by characters a lot.
Okay.
There are a lot, it's so much text per cost, and then the phone calls are done by minute.
Also, the video visitation is 715 net blocks, and it costs a text amount to do that online.
Of course, they still get the two for a week, but then it's out of this station, if they
still choose.
And the monitoring that is done, that's all programming, right?
It picks up.
No, we will have a lot of visitation folks that will watch and monitor that.
Oh, okay.
Interesting.
But it's recorded at all times, and then they know to go back and review if they've
had an anomaly or identify an issue.
And is this, Chief, do you know, is this budgeted in the current year?
Yes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Commissioner Butler?
Yeah, my question for similar about to explain the tablet.
Does everybody get a tablet or?
We actually, several of us went down to the Lubbock County Jail and visited them because
they're using a tablet system down there.
We were interested in how it worked.
And the tablets were provided by the vendor.
And when we talked to them and said, you know, they started out with X number, but they've
increased and gradually increased and increased, and now they will have one tablet per inmate.
And when we spoke to them about it, I asked, they said, you know, company will give you
however many you want.
I would try to do a one-to-one.
They have a charging station that sets up there in the pod where they can go and
they put it in there and it keeps it charged.
and then they can, they can watch movies or anything next to this law library, there's
a lot of different things they can do on these tablets.
The specifications do call out that the preferred, the preference for the county is one to one,
but if they, the vendor cannot provide that to spell out specifically what the ratio is
for the tabletube inmates in their proposal, in addition to any repair and maintenance
scheduling, if we're allotted, you know, 10 extras at the start of the contract
to have is just replacements and events that happen or what those parameters look like for the replacement maintenance and support of those tablets.
Okay. Is it based on the use of the, I mean, they're choice on the basis of the uses of the tablet?
For the visitation and calls.
Well, you mentioned movies.
The vendors that we have, what Lubbock is doing and what they were telling us most of the vendors are doing is they have free movies.
What we pay to stream.
That's what it's going to ask about the internet.
Yeah.
So they would have access to the internet also.
Very limited.
There's no open browsing that's going to be available on any portion that's considered for award.
Okay, and then I think I had the same question about messaging that Commissioner
Collins had. So they can send and receive messages anytime they want, I'm
guessing. Well when they have the tablets during like when they have dayroom time.
They don't have the tablets 24-7. No, because I'll have to go back into the
chargers and lights out. Okay. All right. All right. I'm sure we'll go over this
whenever we'll get the bits back. So, sorry. Thank you. No further questions?
Move approved. Second. I have a motion to second. All those in favor please raise your
hand and say aye. The motion carries 5-0.
Item number seven discussed and
take action. I accept an agreement with Motorola Solutions for the purchase of
seven new body-worn cameras this is a purchase for additional cameras for the
courthouse security and seven body cams to be worn by the deputies it does span
the course of a five-year schedule what you see here is a requisition from the
sheriff's office for just a year one of the body cameras for about $1,300 just a
over. Overall the grand total comes out to $24
,720 and this cost is divided up
over the remaining four years of the five-year schedule. Whenever the
requisition was processed, the purchase order was sent to Motorola and they
in turn sent back the agreement to be signed and accepted by the county. We
were advised by legal counsel to just treat this as a change of order before
moving forward with the final purchase and continuance of the fly cameras. Richard Gore
has reviewed it. It doesn't seem to see any issue with this. We just need the court's
acceptance to proceed. Is there any questions on this? With no questions, is there a motion?
I'll make a motion. We approve. A second. I have a motion, a second. All those in favor,
please raise your hand and say aye. Motion carries 5-0.
Thank you both. All right, I got a wave from my friend in the back and so we are going to
circle back to the tabled motion item number five, discuss and take action on approving
overpayment, erroneous tax payment refunds in the excess of 2,500.
Right, Christina, what did you find out for us?
So the property is in Water County, 82 people on West Annalua Boulevard,
are up home, but they are within Bushland School District.
So since we contract with Bushland School District
to collect their taxes, that is why we're using them here.
Thank you.
All right, with no further questions,
that satisfy everything?
All right, is there a motion?
We have a motion?
That's the second.
We have a motion and a second to approve
the aronist tax refunds or overpayments.
All in favor, please raise your hand and say aye.
Motion carries 5-0.
Thank you so much for doing the research.
Thank you.
All right, now once again, we have some more friends that we kept here waiting way too long item number eight
Discuss and take action and approve in the donation of a 2017 fire engine Tamrella College
we want to welcome each one of you up here and thank you for what you're doing and
We're excited about potentially being able to be part of training facility
If you don't mind if you'd identify it yourself for the record
Eric Wallace, director of public service programs at Amarillo College, and I'm Steve Malley,
the fire academy coordinator for Amarillo College.
Welcome to both, Debbie.
This item here has previously been approved to be designated a surplus, so it's a surplus
item in the county's inventory.
This is a 2017 international fire engine previously in the fire department's inventory.
This has had continuous issues as far as function reliability of the unit to be in service.
What I have provided is a copy of a memo from the fire chief explaining the scenario and
a little bit more insight on public safety and the reasoning for donating to considering
to donate to Emeril College and our fire safety program.
And then the next page is just a graph showing strictly based
on our financial system.
It's an evaluation of vehicle.
This does not take into consideration
any current operating condition, any damage
that might, you know, held a manager,
any other type of items like that
to consider for the vehicle value.
But this is just an item for consideration
to donate to Amarillo College. This was originally purchased in 2016 for a cost of $383,565. And
it's given a 12-year lifecycle, and according to our financial system parameters, this depreciates
at a little over $31,000 every year. Right now, to this date, you know, if we're looking at the
financial side of it, it would have a value of $141,707,
but again that doesn't consider
the operating condition of the vehicle. I believe after some research there's a value
of about $49,000 that we've come across to be fairly consistent with similar items,
pieces of equipment for sale, depending on it might be a year or two older, it
it
seems to be a fairly condition
of the vehicle list. We would just ask for the
commissioners to consider donating to Emeril College. We do have a couple
of their representatives and the fire chief here that might be able to
elaborate more on the benefits.
So Chief, you know, you came before us once
before. I truly appreciate your consideration on this. What we have,
understand correctly is a engine whose motor was grossly inadequate and it was a great
concern for our firemen and their safety to be able to send them out to any group where
they could get harmed or trapped.
But once again, Randall County figured out a way to repurpose and possibly help future
firefighters by it being at the facility that would never be anyone in harm's way
but they would get the adequate training on a engine with this particular engine at
your facility. Is that correct? Right. I'm going to start and just let the chief give
a presentation and the two of you if you don't mind and then if we have any questions
from the commissioner's court. So this 2017 fire engine, you know, one body did serve
as well and then started having issues with continual issues and raising training
one day and that truck shut can win you now to where if we would have been in a
life-saving situation to help either a citizen or one of my firefighters inside
it would have been very detrimental to the department. At that point in time we
spent a little over $50,000 on trying to get this truck back up and
operational to life safety standards and I am not comfortable putting a citizen
or one of my firefighters at risk in this truck. So we're sitting around
we're going to do with this and how we're going to, you know, overcome this problem we
have and one of the firefighters along we consider looking at Merlin College for a donation.
We're only going to get many on the dollar for to be able anyway in the operational state
of town.
They run a controlled environment, you know, where it can be a training tool in a controlled
environment.
The truck breaks down at that point in time, they just train on something different.
You know, that's the largest difference and I know that was a concern about the liability
maybe having a truck that is not operationally efficient for emergency response when we don't
do emergency response.
All of our training is done and as much as you control a lot of fire training evolution,
the good thing is we have a button on the wall on a new facility that, you know, you
basically hit the button and it kills the fire which is not a luxury that the normal
fire department does.
So the truck will be beneficial in ways that would just not consider even possible with
the department.
So it would be considered a huge asset for us with the liability that chief faces not
carrying over to what we would be doing with it.
I'm sorry to do anybody else or you just ditto in what he said.
I agree with that.
I would say we appreciate the strong relationship we're in.
So Joe, you keep spending money on it. It's not undependable and it's not safe. So would you call this for your purposes a lemon? Yes.
Yeah, actually, if I remember right, chief, you told me that that particular engine, they
discontinued because we were not the only one that had.
So for Emerald College, you'd like to have it, you'll take care of it, love it and can
use it.
Yes, sir.
All right.
And as a matter of fact, our auto diesel guys are chomping to get it in their shop
to see if they can.
They like a challenge.
Emerald College will own the 5% of the donation is complete.
Yes, sir.
We'll remove it from our liability, our insurance, and we'll remove it from the county's inventory.
Thank you.
Chief, you mentioned that if you were to sell it, that you would get pennies on the dollar due to its status.
Do you know roughly what something like that would go for on an open market or in an auction setting?
So, a 2017 fire engine is hard to find as far as a commercial tab like that one had.
But what I have found is 2005 to 2007 models are running between $75,000 to $98,000.
So all we want to take is that 2017 is going to be upwards 100 percent.
You want to sell it on the open market or not?
Running correctly like I'm trying right now.
You're going to find very few people who want to take interest in it and be open first.
And, and as the head of the round of county fire department, you feel like this is a better
use of the engine to donate it to the school?
I feel this is a great use for this engine because not only does it benefit us, since
we didn't get people out of their academies come up for us, but also benefits the region
which we go help.
You know, ours are just sent for us right now and for it, you know, we're, we
go help the entire region and these guys provide personnel to these departments
and I believe that Ricky, didn't you say that you had identified a surplus value of 41,000
roughly?
As far as the operating status of this engine with the depreciation and current conditions
estimated about 49,000 or so.
Just according to the numbers provided by our financial system, considering the operating
condition it's about $141,000 in our financial system but that's just the
member side of it. Right but the surplus side you would thought it was
approximately 49.
You would not in good faith sell this to another fire
department right? Absolutely. Input I mean allows are on the line and I think this
is a good use for this and I think you guys had a good idea. So were you
You want to make a comment, sit up over here?
We'd love to have you.
I'm John Mark White, general counsel at Emerald College.
And I have prepared a letter for the commissioners
to where we accept this truck as is with no warranty
and release the county for many liability associated
with our use of this truck.
And also, I will need to get a gift receipt signed by you.
And I've indicated here that the estimated market value
you this truck this time is 49th that's knowledge. Excellent. And that was my other question was
we would not have any liability issues given this truck to Emerald College.
Any other questions?
We have a motion to second. All those in favor please raise your hand and say aye.
And the motion carries a very unanimously 5-0. Thank you all. Each of you for training our
our firefighters and the chiefs for your guys and what they do today is going to be a difficult
day in the fire world and we put our prayers all over all of you and then we would love
to sign the yes and I just kind of in a selfish note I would love to see the chief and you
guys have a photo together for the donation do
you want me to do that now so that you
can get on the road because we okay perfect we'll do that thank each one of you for
for coming. Thank you. All
right.
Number nine, discuss take action on approving the rental
county employees request to attend meetings and conferences. Out of this we have a short
list. We have two from the fire department to Burnett, Texas. Is there any questions
on travel? All right. Is there a motion? We approve. So we have a motion and a second.
All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. And the motion carries 5-0.
Number 10, the approval of vouchers. Raven, if you would be kind enough.
We have net salaries payroll for the February 16 payroll, $1,038,074.55. General fund, $1,511,577.09.
cents, jury fund $2,754, county assistance district 1 fund $4,955.40, COVID ARPA grant
fund $17,252.36, district clerk preservation fund $76.89, unclaimed property fund $1,435.38,
cents, law library fund $2,333.26, court cost fund $15, health care fund $1,762.22, courthouse
security fund $12,439.13, records management fund $1,324.85, county clerk's records management
Fund, $3,157.86, JP1 Tech Fund, $154.43, JP4 Tech Fund, $104.93, Elections Fund, $26,174.67,
County Clerks Archive Fund, $1,343.45, Capital Project Fund Radio Communication System, $922,
and pre-trial diversion fund $105.13, total all funds $2,625,962.60.
Thank you so much.
We'll begin with Mr. Carnes.
Any questions on the dollars?
No questions.
Judge?
No.
Hearing no questions, is there a motion to accept?
I move we approve.
The process is presented.
Do we have a motion?
Do we have a second?
Second.
All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye.
Aye.
Motion carries and Raven, you can pay bills.
Item number 11, the acceptance of the official reports, 1, the Randall County Auditors Comparison
Monthly Report, January 2024, 2, Randall County District Court Civil and Criminal Monthly
Report, January 2024, 3, Randall County Constable Precinct 1, Annual Racial Propiling Report
and Comprehensive Analysis of Traffic Stots for 2023, Randall County Facilities Activity
monthly report, January 2024. The Randall County Fire Department's monthly report, January 2024.
The Randall County Justice of the Peace Precinct 4 appointed monthly report, January 2024.
The Randall County Road and Bridge monthly report, January 2024. The Randall County
Sheriff's monthly report, January 2024. The Randall County Treasurer's monthly report,
January 2024. The Canyon Fire Department's monthly report, January 2024. The Happy Volunteer
Fire Department's Monthly Report, January 2024. Lake Tangwood Volunteer Fire Department's
Monthly Report, January 2024. The Palisades Volunteer Fire Department's Monthly Report,
January 2024. The Timber Creek Volunteer Fire Department's Monthly Report, January 2024.
The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service Activity and Travel Monthly Report of January 2024.
Is there a motion to accept the official report just presented?
I move we accept.
I'll second.
We have a motion to second all those in favor.
Please raise your hand and say aye.
Aye.
And the motion carries 5-0.
We'll go to item number 12.
This is a public comment period.
If there's anyone present in the room that would like to make a public comment,
or if we haven't worn you out and you've left,
please come forward now.
We would love to hear your input.
Not seeing a rush to the front.
Now, we'll also provide the same opportunity to any of our friends that are joining online.
If you'll use the raise hand icon, our IT director will identify you, and we would love
to hear your comments.
Not seeing any public comments online as well, this will end and close the public comment
period.
We are going to circle back to agenda item, which was a closed session.
You'll notice that there is no action item after that.
You're welcome to stay, but I understand if you cannot.
The next Randall County Commissioner's Court will be March the 12th.
At this time, we're going to enter into a closed session pursuant to government code section 551.071 to consult with counsel regarding pending or contemplated litigation on a matter made confidential under the Texas disciplinary rules of professional conduct.
Have a blessed day.
All
right, the Randall County Commissioner's Court is back in session. This ends the Randall County Commissioner's Court for February 27, 2024.
The next commissioner's court will be March the 12th, 2024.
I want to thank everybody for attending and keep our firemen and our first responders
in your prayers as we navigate the fire day today and through the spring.
Susan, I have a copy of Murphy's letter as well.
If you'd like that for the official records.
Okay, so that might help.
So I'll have Sandy scan that and email it to you.
Thank you very much.