Yoakum County Commissioners hear reports

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Commissioner’s Court met in regular session on Monday, May 9, where they addressed their weekly agenda.

It was that time of the month were the different department heads gave their monthly financial reports. Going first was County Treasurer Barbara Wright who reported a beginning county balance of $47,584,172.24 and an ending balance of $45,908,020.13. In the absence of Tax Assessor/Collector Jan Parrish, Judge Jim Barron reported her office had collected $6,150.14 during the month of April.

In other reports the Sheriff’s office had collected $715; County Clerk’s office totaled $25,485.30; District Clerk totaled $6,150.14; the Landfill reported $7,317; and the Justice of Peace #2 reported $5,586.10.

This was followed by Judge Barron reading a letter of commendation from CMS concerning the provider rating report.

Tracey Woodward of Shinnery Oaks was also in attendance where she presented her financial reports for December, 2015, as well as January and February of 2016. In her report she noted there was a loss for the year of 2015 of $106,000 and after adding in depreciation that totaled increased to $326,000.

However, she went on to say because of the cutbacks in overtime hours those figures would be greatly reduced for 2016. She was expecting to cut back from 400 to 500 overtime hours per week to right at 100 hours.

She also said they had a 57-60 beds in the facility and a waiting list for the different areas.

“To sum it all up we are on the right track,” Woodward said.

Hospital administrator Jerry Osborne was also in attendance where he presented paper work on an agreement between Werfen USA, LLC Instrumentation Laboratory Capital Purchase Proposal and Agreement and Yoakum County Hospital dealing with some equipment in a lab.

Osborne noted Werfen would give the hospital a $5,000 trade in on the old unit knocking the price down to $40,000. However with an annual $7,600 yearly maintenance fee plus some testing equipment for the new machine the total cost over a 5 year period will be $128,000. The Court unanimously approved the agreement.

In the next item the Court unanimously approved the deputation of Jason Fann, correction/communication officer, at the Yoakum County Sheriff Department.

And then the Court unanimously approved the hiring of Gayle Ford as a 2nd Deputy for the Auditor’s office effective May 2, 2016.

There were no request for the disposal of county equipment, no line item transfers, and no Soil Conservation requests.

Commissioner Woody Lindsey had no new updates on the Senior Citizen Building, but Judge Barron recommended the Commissioners approve Level 5 Design architect’s presentation for re-design and value engineering for the community building project. Commissioner Ty Earl Powell voted against the motion saying he still thinks the time is not right to build a new Community Building based on the declining oil values that are affecting the property values.

“I’m not against the construction of the new Community Building at all, I just think the timing is not right with property values going down that may result in the taxes needing to be raised to meet the county needs,” Powell said.

The vote was 4-1 with the other Commissioners and Judge Barron voting for the motion.

In auditing and settling all accounts against the County the court approved to pay all bills from the General Fund which totaled $29,404.33, Precinct 1 totaled $27,113.84, Precinct 2 bills totaled $2,123.89, Precinct 3 bills totaled $5,650.41, Precinct 4 bills totaled $8,970.89, Yoakum County Airport was $208.22, Yoakum County Landfill was $2,087.94 and Permanent Improvement was $15,017.72 for a grand total of $90,577.24.

In medical bills $195,272.20 was paid from the hospital funds, $15,626.03 to West Texas Medical Center, $4,256.56 to the Plains Clinic, and $249.00 to Plains Lifestyle for a grand total of $215,403.79 of Clinic and Hospital bills.

In other medically related bills $1,045.22 was paid to Home Health, $14,537.56 to Dialysis, and $3,176.75 to Dispro for a grand total of $234,163.32 in medically related bills.

Commissioners Woody Lindsey, Ray Marion, Ty Earl Powell, and Tim Addison along with County Judge Jim Barron were in attendance.

The next meeting will be held on Monday, May 16 in the county courthouse at 10 am.

 

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