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Commissioners court of Hardin County
With higher fuel and material prices, Hardin County officials, like other counties, are looking at how to offset the increasing inflation for the upcoming budget — mostly in the four road and bridge departments.
The Hardin County Commissioners Court has held two of the six scheduled Tuesday workshops for the Fiscal Year 2023 budget. At the June 7 workshop, the court discussed budget changes in the four road and bridge departments.
County Judge Wayne McDaniel noted over the past several years, the court has not conducted extensive workshops on the budget. But this year, he’s urging all elected officials and department heads to attend the workshop.
“We want to make sure you get what you need for next year or what you think you need, and to make any cuts where you think you can make cuts,” he said.
McDaniel said the main reason he wants to see cuts in maintenance and operation expenditures is to give relief to the employees.
“You hear it on the news and it’s a topic of discussion every day about the inflation rate,” he said.
The county judge said he’d like to see at least a 3% or more raise increase to employees.
“The only way to do that is to try to make cuts elsewhere so we can provide more relief to the employees,” said McDaniel.
McDaniel stated commissioners, constables and justices of the peace all receive a vehicle allowance but wants to delay discussion not later than the July 12 workshop. The county judge said he was looking at some options including leasing some vehicles or increasing the allowance rate to cover the amount of fuel and oil increases over the past year.
McDaniel said he’ll gather up information on the options and present them to the court later this month.
In the proposed budget, money for equipment expenses will be moved into funds for vehicle and equipment maintenance for all four road and bridge departments.
In his county judge’s budget, McDaniel noted he’d decreased the amounts in several line items from the FY 2022 budget amounts.
Precinct 1 Commissioner L.W. Cooper Jr. requested a $10,000 increase in the FY 2023 budget for fuel and oil, but later withdrew his request because he’s in favor of pay raises for employees. Cooper said he’ll leave his budget the same as last year’s – as far as the amount.
Precinct 2 Commissioner Chris Kirkendall, who has more than half of the county roads in his precinct, requested a $9,500 increase for fuel and oil to $65,000. He said as of May, his department has spent more than $61,000 on fuel and oil.
Kirkendall also requested increasing the fund for materials and supplies to $600,000 and to move $80,000 to equipment purchases for a $100,500 total. Over the next three years, he said the money will be used to upgrade two dump trucks each year and the third year to replace a motor grader.
“That will allow me to do that without asking for an increase,” said Kirkendall. “I will also be looking for additional line items to cut.”
He said with the new equipment, maintenance costs will go down.
Precinct 3 Commissioner Amanda Young requested a $10,000 increase in fuel and oil to $60,000 and an increase for materials and supplies from $480,000 to $530,000 for an overall increase of $60,000.
Young noted with redistricting her department gained 8.5 additional miles.
“But with the budget I already had, I had only enough money to overlay only 30 miles and I have 200 miles of roads,” she said.
Young added her crew works on drainage and noted how expensive culverts have become. She told the court a dump truck was out of commission and ordered another one, which will not arrive until November.
In the past two months, Young said she’s spent over $10,000 to rent a dump truck to use on the ditches and roads.
Precinct 4 Alvin Roberts originally requested to budget $10,000 more for fuel and oil, but later told McDaniel he could get by with a $3,000 increase to $28,000. He also requested to increase materials and supplies from $170,000 to $200,000.
Kirkendall said with redistricting, his materials and supplies costs have not increased, and neither has personnel.
“I’ve added 18 miles and there is no consideration given for it,” he said. “It’s still the same challenges that Precinct 3 and 4 have, there is just no additional money and no additional personnel.”
“We can’t – but we should – base on budget on road miles because my miles may be higher than his and his budget higher than mine,” said Cooper.
Cooper said he feels each commissioner has done a “good job” with their budgets.
“The redistricting and budgeting, and other stuff leads to a topic this court is probably against. That is a unit road system,” he said.
Kirkendall said at the end of the budgeting, the commissioner should look at how much each is spending per mile of roads.
“You will see (Precincts) 2 and 3 have far less money than 1 and 4 – per mile of roads to spend,” he said. “We have the least to spend per mile for maintenance.’
Young said she doesn’t see why it couldn’t be based on road miles if a commissioner has more to maintain.
“It should be based on road miles, but according to what we’re doing right now, it’s not,” replied Cooper. “If we’re going by road miles, the county didn’t take on any additional miles. Your precinct did and that means money should be coming out of my budget to his budget and money out of his budget to yours – if we did it right.”
According to TexasForestCounty
Living.com, in 2020 there were 64 of 264 counties that have adopted the unit road system, along with cities with more than 10,000 people.
Under a unit road system, each commissioner would hire and set a salary and budget for a road manager. A road manager would fix roads regardless of which precinct.
The other four workshops are set for 1:30 p.m. June 21, 10 a.m. June 28 and July 12, and 1:30 p.m. July 19.
McDaniel must file a proposed budget with the County Clerk’s Office by July 30.