ScottBowen said:

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YellAg2004 said:

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AlaskanAg99 said:

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Ellis again muscling in again on how county funds were split. In the past it was 25% per precinct, each octbsupposed to have an equal number of residents. But the geography split between city/unincorporated is not evenly split.

To further explain what Ellis is talking about and demanding. Commissioner Precints do cover the whole county including incorporated cities. But it's not an equitable division. Here's the % breakdown for unincorporated HC (UHC):
Pct 1: 14.2%
Pct 2: 14.6%
Pct 3: 44.6%
Pct 4: 26.5%

By demanding a larger portion of overall funds, the goal is to channel mote of it into COH and other smaller cities. Which really short changes residents if UHC. Essentially they're funding the corrupt cities who cannot manage their resources. And this also hinders the R commissioners of Pcts 3&4.

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I thought in the past it was split based on unincorporated geographic area. When CC flipped, that was one of the first items the Ds changed, claiming it should be "equitable", ignoring the fact that the County has significantly more infrastructure they're responsible for in 3 & 4 vs. 1 & 2.


Also, thanks for giving the highlights/synopsis. Very much appreciated.

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I'm as conservative as can be and definitely voting against Garcia and Hidalgo in Pct 2, but the argument that we should only spend money in unincorporated areas has never made sense to me. Houston/small city taxpayers pay county taxes, so they should get services from the county in at least somewhat equal measure.

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It depends on what taxes are being paid to which part of local government. I'm in UHC, HCAD states I pay to 9 funds.

ISD
HC
HC Flood Control
Port
HC Hospital
HC Education Dept (?, no idea what they do)
Lone Star
MUD
HC Emergency Services

ISD is by Far the largest portion.

Now to find a rando city home.

ISD
HC
HC FLOOD CONTROL
PORT
HC HOSPITAL
HC EDUCATION
CITY OF HOUSTON
SPRING BRANCE MGT DIST

So that's interesting. I know when it comes to roads HC can only work on roads/bridges that are on the HC Road Log, and that generally excludes city roads.

Flood Control has their own revenue stream and works on the channel system.

Everything else is social programs.

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I'm as conservative as can be and definitely voting against Garcia and Hidalgo in Pct 2, but the argument that we should only spend money in unincorporated areas has never made sense to me. Houston/small city taxpayers pay county taxes, so they should get services from the county in at least somewhat equal measure.

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There was a pissing contest between COH and Harris County a few years ago about the $10 the County gets from every vehicle registration because none that revenue was being spent within COH.

I'm not sure how the precincts handle their budgets and what funds have to be earned marked for X projects if from Y source.

ScottBowen said:

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YellAg2004 said:

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AlaskanAg99 said:

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Ellis again muscling in again on how county funds were split. In the past it was 25% per precinct, each octbsupposed to have an equal number of residents. But the geography split between city/unincorporated is not evenly split.

To further explain what Ellis is talking about and demanding. Commissioner Precints do cover the whole county including incorporated cities. But it's not an equitable division. Here's the % breakdown for unincorporated HC (UHC):
Pct 1: 14.2%
Pct 2: 14.6%
Pct 3: 44.6%
Pct 4: 26.5%

By demanding a larger portion of overall funds, the goal is to channel mote of it into COH and other smaller cities. Which really short changes residents if UHC. Essentially they're funding the corrupt cities who cannot manage their resources. And this also hinders the R commissioners of Pcts 3&4.

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I thought in the past it was split based on unincorporated geographic area. When CC flipped, that was one of the first items the Ds changed, claiming it should be "equitable", ignoring the fact that the County has significantly more infrastructure they're responsible for in 3 & 4 vs. 1 & 2.


Also, thanks for giving the highlights/synopsis. Very much appreciated.

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I'm as conservative as can be and definitely voting against Garcia and Hidalgo in Pct 2, but the argument that we should only spend money in unincorporated areas has never made sense to me. Houston/small city taxpayers pay county taxes, so they should get services from the county in at least somewhat equal measure.

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The argument is that HC tax money shouldn't be spent on things that the COH is responsible for, and vice versa. Both government entities have their own revenue streams. They should properly manage their finances so that they can properly take care of the infrastructure/services they are responsible for. The reality is that Pct. 3 & 4 have a MUCH larger amount of infrastructure they are responsible for due to the amount of unincorporated area they cover. I'm not saying that no money should be spent in Pct. 1 & 2. They should get the proportional amount of money relative to the amount of infrastructure/services they have to build/maintain.

Jack Klompus said:

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I was at a luncheon with a bunch of engineers on Friday with Adrian Garcia, David Berry (County Administrator), county engineer, and county budget director. Adrian introduced the bond issue saying that we need this bond to keep the momentum of progress. He kept saying that if this bond isn't passed, projects will stop (almost threatening his audience of engineers). I think the notion is that the D's need to get this done before they lose the majority on the Court (Mealer beating out Hidalgo).

Generally, when a bond election is held, the organization that was hosting the luncheon will have a fundraiser for the bond campaign; however, since the vote to have the bond was not unanimous, there will not be a fundraiser. The tone of the room was very awkward, and I thought the people describing the bond were ill-prepared.

David Berry said that Harris County has historically had a bond election every 6-8 years. About 10% of the bond will be used for road rehabilitation, which is one of the concerns Comm. Cagle has brought up. He argues that bond money shouldn't be used for operations and maintenance, and that it should be paid for out of the general fund. Mr. Berry also said that each precinct will have a minimum level of funding from the bond and then projects will be funded on a "worst-first" criteria--meaning Precinct 1 and 2 since they have been "neglected".

The budget director stated that if this bond isn't passed, the money will be found elsewhere to maintain roads. Umm...excuse me? So why not reduce the bond by $100 million?

Mayor Turner, Comm. Ellis, and Comm. Garcia will be having a combined campaign for the City and County bond election "Vote for the Bonds". They say that the bonds will support public safety, infrastructure and flood control, which I think is disingenuous since I think public safety falls under police and crime prevention. Only a small portion of the County bond will go toward crime prevention in replacing the fleet. I am unaware how much of the City bond will go toward public safety.

I will be voting no.

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Interesting to hear that the engineers will remain neutral. I'm sure there are some in the group that are pretty pissed about that decision.

If only 10% is going to road rehab, what the hell is the other 90% going to??

Also, you're right on point in that you can bet the farm that the majority of the money will go to 1 & 2. If the scoring doesn't reflect that result, the equation will be modified and re-run until it does. That's why replacing all the experienced county employees with D lap dogs was necessary. All of that work will be done behind the scenes, then the response from the Ds will be that they're just following what the County Administrator, County Engineer, etc. determined, completely glossing over the fact those positions have been all filled by D operatives.

The $1.2 Billion bond will be divided up as follows:

• $100 million - Public Safety (over and above current multi-$100 million investments in fleet, equipment, radios and detention renovations)
• $300 million - General Road Bonds
• $200 million - Neighborhood Drainage
• $200 million - Road & Drainage Bond for Partnership Projects (with other Cities, MUDS, etc)
• $100 million - Road Rehabilitation
• $50 million - Vision Zero
• $50 million - Multimodal Transportation (sidewalks, bike lanes)
• $200 million - Parks

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Almost no matter where you live in the area, the City of Houston implements a 2% sales tax on items sold.

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That's why I usually go out of town for major purchases like my travel trailer and new car. I also itemize my sales tax on my annual tax return.

Vehicles are 6.25 no matter where in Texas. It is technically motor vehicle tax not sales and use tax.

https://www.harriscountytx.gov/Government/Court-Agenda/Court-Videos

Court has started. This might be a pretty fiesty one today as they are discussing the tax rates. They've just finished the 1st part of the agenda which was the resolutions.

I'll keep tabs on what's happening.

10 items under COVID using mostly ARPA funds that have very little to do with anything directly COVID related.

Tax rates being set for;
Flood Control
Toll Road Authority
Hospital District
A lot on Bonds and other items I'm not familiar with.
I expect a lot of talk of 'lowering taxes' like it's a victory, but with home assessments going up it's very easy to increase what people are paying and lowering the overall rate at the same time.
Item #244 Request for approval to designate Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector to calculate No-New-Revenue Tax Rate and the Voter-Approval Tax Rate.

Elections
Setting the polling locations. This was contentious last week during the 2022 Bond special hearing.
Also $1.1M for Election Management System project. NO idea what this is.
Item#443 PCT 3 discussion on polling location concerns
Item#450 PCT4 discussion on possible action on holding budget hearings for the 22-23 fiscal budget year
Item#451 PCT4 discussion and possible action regarding polling locations and allocation of machines based on population.

Court has resumed with speakers.
-First speaker given more than 1 minute and going off at Ramsey's approval to rip into the commissioner's over DA. Specifically why are ARPA funds are not being used. She's latino and ripping into Lina for ignoring the hispanic community.

Speakers on hold, now Ellis is honoring Garcia via a resolution.

Dissent on Resolutions.

All 5-0 EXCEPT Item#7, which is a Garcia resolution in support of Federal Law Enforcement, which was a really long TDS speech. Only notable because the investigation into Trump/Mar a Lago isn't complete, but Garcia went all-in to condemn Trump. Not really a surprise, pushing the all republicans bad narrative.

Lot on Monkeypox to release the vaccines to those men who have sex with men.

One of the Sherriff's is arguing with Garcia over a pay raise for the Sherriff's. Getting testy and calling back to a prior raise that was convoluted. I can't figure out which item they're discussing. Regarding raises for officers for parity with HPD.

Another Sherriff now speaking about the $1.2B bond, asking how the funds are going to be spent in detail, how past bonds were spent, asking for an audit.

1:46pm and they just wrapped up speakers. Good lord this is a long, slow meeting.

Items 427&428 $500k for Bond out reach, passed 3-2.

Tax Rate, Sept 6
Public Hearing Sept 13th and vote to adopt.

Discussing the budget, which of course will be tied to the tax rate. County is finishing their short fiscal year as they change the months within their fiscal year. Some talk if continuing the budget adopted 7 months ago is still valid. Something is going on because most departments that aren't led by an elected official are now under the County Administrator. That new uber department also has the Budget Director. In discussing Cagle/Ramsey wanted 2 days for department heads to come in as a public session (I think) if they wanted to make the case their budget needed to change. Which is odd, because all of those talks now happen behind closed doors with David Berry.

Ellis states that any dept head can sign up to speak during open court, but they'd be directly throwing their boss (David Berry) under the bus. So that's not going to happen. This is how this D court is keeping things 'transparent'.

Now onto Election items, all bundled together.

Polling Locations:
Ramsey: I have most number of registered voters, but least number of voting locations, 18% of total locations.
Asking them to be redistributed.
Ellis: voters can vote at any location.

Early voting locations (populations are about equal by pct)
PCT 1: 199
PCT 2: 179
PCT 3: 165
PCT 4: 140

Cagle, PCT 4 has the fewest early voting machines.

They're spending $33.2M on NRG to upgrade utilities. Passes 5-0

They broke for a 10min break before discussing items 24/25 which are the tax rates for FC and Hospital Dist. I'm done for the day and will catch up on this tomorrow.

All right, picking this back up and it's budget talk time.





Touting a lot on safety and yet crime is exploding. This has been a flash point at nearly every meeting as of late, elected leaders shouting they've increased funding and yet crime continues to get worse.





And here's the meat and 'taters for what people care about. By law, the tax rate was going to have to be reduced. There are two options, the Proposed and the last line of the no-new revenue. As mentioned inflation is hitting the county as well so they're not going with the no-new revenue rate as it would result in a larger shortfall without budget cuts. So it's somewhere in between, there will be a cut, but due to rising property values the people will be paying more.

If you live in unincorporated HC (or any county) I'd expect your MUD/PUD/Water District to adjust for more revenue.

For the flood control tax, they're going to max it out.



Paying debt down.








Including EV's

I watched until ~6:30 last night. The Ds are going to be yelling from the rooftops about how they've cut taxes. Ellis had about a 5-10 min. line of questioning about how historically any cut to the rate was considered a tax cut, even if you had to pay more because of increased valuations.

Ramsey made the point that through the whole exercise, the base case that the budget director was working from was that all in-place programs must be continued/funded. If they truly didn't want people to pay more taxes, regardless of what the rate is, they could consider going through and "surgically" making cuts to certain programs.

In the end, this is just shaping up to be the same fight that has happened each of the past 2 years. The Ds need 4 members to make a quorum to vote on tax rates. Presumably Cagle and Ramsey would not attend (and bust quorum) unless a deal is worked out to get them to show up and vote. If they don't show up, I believe it reverts to the No New Revenue rate, which would then require some hefty cuts.

I believe the proposed rates have to be posted in advance of the meeting, so if a deal is reached, it can't be reneged, but I'm not sure about that. There was a lot of discussion about different drop dead dates that things had to be posted by and then voted on by. Maybe someone else that has a better understanding can clarify.

Flood Control is seeing at 7% increase due to inflation for maintenance.






So, this could be interesting. You need a quorum of 4 for budget issues. If the two R's decline to show, then the tax rate is set to the default no-new revenue rate, and prior year's budgets.

Presentation for budget ended, now they may discuss. Sorry, I'm doing this as it happens, although it happened yesterday.

Next up is the Harris Health Budget presentation.





"Revenue has drastically decreased"

Federal funding ended in March for COVID patients.







Speaking of a bond for next year.



Asking to set it at the VAR max.

I think someone mentioned the county wants to build a new hospital, which given the explosion in population isn't surprising.

Health Director pauses for discussion and Ellis takes a hard left to discuss Constables.

County Comptroller stated they couldn't accept the budget as proposed.

If it's not adopted, then they have to track back to the no-new revenue rate. So the R's could use the nuclear option and force a cut to the budget and departments, but the Sherriff would suffer probably the most, as well as the DA, Fire Marshall etc...

Questions about is ARPA funds being used to backfill existing general fund budgets.

ARPA funds are not being used to fill existing budget gaps or fund recurring programs. In 2024 the county will have to determine if any current ARPA programs want to be kept, how are they funded when the ARPA funds run out.

City of Houston IS using ARPA funds to fill existing budget gaps as well as fund recurring costs. Houston is going to be absolutely screwed when the ARPA funds run out, the fiscal cliff for the city is coming. I will give credit to the commissioner's for not being stupid with short term revenue streams for revolving county programs/projects. However, it will be interesting to see what happens when the ARPA programs run out of funding and what will happen to those programs.

The state comptroller is who sent the letter about the budget not being acceptable, correct?

I'd be interested to see the letter that was apparently sent Monday afternoon/evening (assuming it was in anticipation of yesterdays court meeting).

YellAg2004 said:

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The state comptroller is who sent the letter about the budget not being acceptable, correct?

I'd be interested to see the letter that was apparently sent Monday afternoon/evening (assuming it was in anticipation of yesterdays court meeting).

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I'm not real clear on this issue, the problem has something to do with the Constables.

As it stands, the Court can adopt a tax rate for FC and Hospital Dist, but not for the County. Why I'm not 100% clear, and it's not just the tax rate but also the budget. They're running into a calendar problem because items have to be posted to the public X days before a hearing/meeting etc.., and then finally voted on by date Y.

Ramsey now speaking around 5:50 mark on cutting departments with a scalpel to find savings. There seems to be some sort of $100M shortfall between what the county can bring in.

I believe the threat of the No New Revenue rate was that there would be like a $75MM cut to HCSO, Constables, and Fire Marshell. Ramsey was saying that if that's the case, he could go through the budget and "surgically" make cuts that would easily add up to $100MM, thus no negative impacts to LEO.

This is where hiding things behind the veil of the County Administrator is doing exactly what the Ds intended when they created that bureaucracy out of thin air. If tax increases are needed, they say they're just following the recommendation from the CA. If the NNR rate is forced, they'll turn to the CA and let him decide where the cuts will be made, knowing full well that he is their puppet and will make sure that the appropriate parties feel the pain for going against the Ds on CC. In this case, Ramsey is saying you could cut from other places to ensure that LEO gets their full budgets, but there is no way the Ds on CC will allow such a budget to pass.

https://thetexan.news/texas-comptroller-rules-harris-county-defunded-law-enforcement-triggering-state-sanction/?fbclid=IwAR3SILzUHR6v0MKLdfSm0DyPX_zsMoWyd8usFdyO1kEBRHcxeP3w7i_D3dM_aem_AV7rxLeD8Qy5ALFfX4ffpWuXVXPm0BkPM_JWcxWZL5Bu_aJIUl6OHD8ObFSl4iD7B-bHUZoffNZINeNtkVNLwHN3ARvKHS6w9lvadQVWRvR_h7Og1bHJAGrsOPepis5waDY

Hidalgo and Garcia's efforts, as well as those from the CA's office, to set the narrative about how much they're increasing LEO spending now makes more sense. I'd have to dig more, but it would appear that they're using creative accounting to arrive at their "increased" LEO budget, when in reality they have made net cuts when you consider the fact that they recaptured rollover funds that the Constables were previously allowed to keep from year to year.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/houston/article/Harris-County-may-sue-state-comptroller-after-17406031.php

"Harris County Commissioners Court this week is expected to hire an outside law firm to take legal action against the state and Comptroller Glenn Hegar, who accused the county of defunding law enforcement in violation of state law.

The accusation by Hegar, delivered in a letter to county Judge Lina Hidalgo last week, blocks Harris County from approving its proposed $2.2 billion budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1."

Ah, so this is the issue. The county can't adopt its budget. And if this is the case it will be forced to roll back to the last budget which will cause all sorts of functional issues. I think the tax rates can be approved separately, but I don't know the legalities of adopting a budget, deadlines and if something can be approved after the issue with the state comptroller is ironed out.

Last year the county ended roll over for budgets from all depts, and raided the Toll Road Authority coffers. Where all these excess funds are going is unclear.

Regardless, it's a very tight timeline.

Special meeting today, Cagle/Hidalgo/Ellis in person, not sure where Ramsey/Garcia are.

Few items on the agenda.
(1) a request for approval of audited claims as shown on the posted agenda;
(2) a request for approval of a grant agreement with the Texas General Land Office for flood control infrastructure and mitigation;
(3) an agreement for the housing of Harris County Jail inmates;
(4) a request to pursue legal action against state officials related to the County's proposed budget; and
(5) a request for outside counsel on the matter.

Some of the speakers are on fire.

Lot of heat, not much support.

Have other commitments after the 1st or so hour.

I'll have to follow this up later.

AlaskanAg99 said:

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Last year the county ended roll over for budgets from all depts, and raided the Toll Road Authority coffers. Where all these excess funds are going is unclear.

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I think this is the crux of the issue. As I understood it, the Constables would often bankroll their rollovers for multiple years in order to save for an expected large expense rather than try to budget in those large expenses that may only occur once over a span of several years.

I believe the argument is that either the rollovers have to be taken into account when calculating the year-over-year budget changes, or the rollovers need to be returned. As it is, the CA removed the rollovers and is using that same budget amount (without rollover) as the baseline to calculate the year-over-year budget change. When you do it that way, they're not cutting the LEO budgets. If you compare the proposed budget to the previous budget WITH the rollover included, the result is a net cut.

If I'm off, someone please correct me, but that's what I've been able to piece together through reading all the political posturing notices put out by both sides.

Items 4&5 to sue the state, approved 3-1 (Ramsey not present)
Item 2, approved 4-0
Item 3, Jails, approved 4-0

End of court. But I missed all the debate so I'll have to watch it when the video is posted.

Was there any debate held in open court, or was it all in executive session?