Category: Medina County Commissioner’s Court News

By Anton Riecher
On two important fronts – flood control and drinking water – the Uvalde-based Nueces River Authority is gaining greater significance to residents of Medina County.
On June 2, the Medina County Commissioners Court voted 3-0 allow County Judge Keith Lutz to negotiate terms for a future interlocal agreement with NRA governing the county’s participation in a Nueces River basin study to update floodplain maps, to be conducted by the Texas Water Development Board.
According to Travis Pruski, NRA chief operating officer, one of the biggest issues with state floodplain planning is the lack of maps and outdated data.
“We applied for a grant through the TWDB flood infrastructure funds to help update county maps throughout (Nueces Flood Planning Region 13),” Pruski told commissioners. The grant would also cover studying early warning systems, high hazard dam assessment and low water crossings.
NRA did receive…LOGIN TO CONTINUE READING at www.devinenewsmembers.com. You will get instant access to our full E-edition, and begin getting the newspaper delivered to your home next week for $36 a year in Medina County. Support important local city, county, and school news like this!

Gov. Greg Abbott Saturday signed Senate Bill 616 that local officials expect to help make the proposed Medina County aquifer storage and recovery project a future reality.
The proposed project calls for creating a 50,000 acre-foot freshwater ASR project in the brackish Trinity Aquifer beneath the Edwards Aquifer. SB 616 amends the state water code to address aquifer storage and recovery projects that intersect the Edwards Aquifer, specifically in Williamson County east of Interstate 35.
“The bill clarifies that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) may authorize injection wells that transect the Edwards Aquifer under certain conditions,” Fast Democracy reports. “These conditions include the injection of groundwater withdrawn from the Edwards Aquifer, stormwater, floodwater, or groundwater through improved sinkholes or caves, and specifically, the inclusion of ASR injection wells that inject water into a geologic formation underlying the Edwards Aquifer.”
The bill was sponsored by state senators Charles Schwertner and Sarah Eckhardt and state representative Caroline Harris Davila.
Medina County Judge Keith Lutz, addressing a meeting of the Medina County Regional Water Alliance earlier this month, reported that an amendment in support of the local ASR project had been successfully attached to SB 616.
That amendment will put the Medina County project “on the fast track” in Austin, Lutz said.
The bill was passed by the 89th Texas Legislature on May 12.

By Anton Riecher
Regarding the forensic audit authorized by the board, Summers said the district’s auditing firm is still working to complete basic audits for fiscal years 2022-2023, 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 before work can commence on the forensic audit. That basic work will determine the definitive cost of the forensic investigation.
“Doing the actual audits is going to lead them down the path to how much more work is going to have to be done to do a forensic audit,” Summers said.
ESD2 Bookkeeper Nancy Pepper estimated that work on FY 2022-2023 will be completed by the end of May, allowing auditors to proceed to FY 2023-2024.
Delivering her report on the ESD2 finances, Pepper said the district has collected $270,266 in sales tax for the fiscal year to date with $50,736 in tax revenue collected in May. Total income for the district as of April 30 is $723,621. Total expenditure for the year to date is $260,000, leaving a budgeted balance of $462,597.
A recent letter from the Medina Central Appraisal District indicates that the preliminary appraised value for ESD2 is being estimated at $857.3 million, up slightly from the final appraisal of $856.9 million last year, Pepper said. Exemptions for homestead and over 65 exemptions are expected to total about $55 million, she said.
In Texas, a mechanism known as “compression” is applied to appraisal value to help mitigate the increase in property value on taxpayers. Pepper said…LOGIN TO CONTINUE READING at www.devinenewsmembers.com. You will get instant access to our full E-edition, and begin getting the newspaper delivered to your home next week for $36 a year in Medina County. Support important local city, county, and school news like this!

By Anton Riecher
A proposed change in legislation that restricts appraisal districts from financing the purchase of property required a closed executive session by the Medina County Appraisal District Board of Directors May 14 to confer by telephone with its attorney.
In question was whether a “conduit organization” would be required as an intermediary or fiscal agent in MCAD’s purchase of a 4,900 square-foot building in Hondo to serve as replacement for the present MCAD office space leased from Medina County.
Devine ISD school board cast the deciding vote on a new home for MCAD April 29 when it sanctioned a resolution approving the purchase. The board became the thirteenth of 15 eligible taxing entities to vote in favor of the purchase, the required supermajority needed to authorize acquisition.
According to MCAD Chief Appraiser Johnette Dixon, the Texas tax code states that the board of directors “may purchase or lease property and may construct improvements as necessary to establish and operate the appraisal office or a branch appraisal office.”
An amendment under consideration by the 89th Texas Legislature would add the word “finance” to the phrase “may purchase or lease property,” giving appraisal districts the direct authority to negotiate financing for property acquisition, Dixon said.
Without that amendment, MCAD will be required to go through a conduit organization such as Government Capital Corp., specialists in public finance, to negotiate financing to purchase the Hondo office complex known as “The Ridge” to be the district’s future home. Located at 728 18th Street, the property was the former home of the Hill Country Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Center.
The board conducted the telephone conference with attorney Matthew Tepper with McCreary Veselka Bragg & Allen.
In other business related to the purchase, the board approved hiring an engineering firm to conduct an asbestos inspection of the property prior to closing on the purchase, expected to happen before the end of the month.
“The city of Hondo is going to require us to have this ready to go,” said appraisal board chair Cynthia Malone.
Dixon said even though the inspection is required, asbestos is not expected to be a problem since the building underwent a complete renovation in 2009. Cost of the new inspection will be $4,128.
“If there was anything they would have found it at that point,” she said.
The board also reaffirmed its hiring of Hondo-based Paddle Creek Design as architect on the remodeling of a 4,620 square foot portion of the property to accommodate appraisal district operations, including 13 offices and a hearing room for property value protests that will go into immediate use in June.
Leases on the remaining portion of the property purchases will not expire until July 2026.
Malone said that other than the purchase of furniture, remodeling of the hearing room will likely be postponed until after the expected summer wave of protest hearing subsides.
The approved price tag for architect Thomas Oppelt’s work on the project is $35,000. Although the board approved the hiring of Oppelt and the quoted bid, board member Harold Galm said he would have preferred to see bids from two or more competing firms.
Several firms discussed the project with MCAD, but Paddle Creek Design was the only one to submit a bid for the project.
With regard to appraisal district business, Dixon reported that MCAD has posted 28,000 appraisal notices this month for real property, with another 1,000 covering personal property to be posted soon. Of those notices, 180 protests have already been filed by property owners, thanks largely to a new on-line internet portal provided by MCAD.
Property tax protest hearings are expected to start June 23, Dixon said.
To date, MCAD has collected 56.9 percent of its expected income from the taxing entities it represents, she said. Of that amount, MCAD’s total expenses to date make up 39.1 percent of its budgeted income.
Among those budgeted expenses is the purchase of five new computers to replace aging equipment that cannot be updated from the present Windows 10 system, Dixon said.

By Anton Riecher
Citing recent legal controversies involving Devine Volunteer Fire & Rescue, Medina County Emergency Services District No. 2 board president Todd Summers announced at the board’s March 18 meeting its intention to renegotiate the contract with DVF&R to strengthen financial accounting and equipment maintenance requirements.
The board plans to confer with its attorney to determine “if there is a means through the contract to make sure some of these things don’t happen again,” Summers said.
DVF&R office administrator and suspect Heather Schultz was arrested in December on a charge of tampering with evidence related to more than $76,000 in missing department funds. In late February, a misdemeanor count of official oppression by sexual harassment was filed against Devine Fire Chief Greg Atkinson.
Atkinson resigned on March 4, one day before the ESD2 board voted to authorize a forensic audit of the DVF&R finances for the past three years. The action was recommended by Medina County Sheriff Randy Brown and other county officials.
Summers’ announcement came after a 40-minute executive session behind closed doors with their attorney. Uppermost on the board’s list of concerns is closer monitoring of maintenance records on ESD2-owned equipment in use by DVF&R, most important of which is the fire trucks.
“I can remember when Greg got here he complained all the time that the previous chief never did any maintenance on the vehicles,” Summers said. “I can remember him here telling us that. And he was telling us how great a job he was doing.”
However, at the ESD board’s March 5 special meeting it was reported that no maintenance has been done on the trucks since Atkinson has been here, Summer said.
“We would love to see the maintenance records on the equipment for the last three years if you have that,” he said, directing his request to DVF&R officials on hand. “That will help us see what’s out there.”
The bottom line of any future contract negotiation is that the equipment belongs to ESD2, Summers said.
“You guys are using it so, going forward, we are certainly going to be pushing harder…”LOGIN TO CONTINUE READING at www.devinewsmembers.com. You will get INSTANT online access to our full E-edition, and begin getting the newspaper delivered to your home next week for $36 a year in Medina County. Support important local city, county, and school news like this!