A burn ban was issued by Brown County Commissioners at Monday’s meeting of the court.
According to all three commissioners present, the county needed to implement a burn ban because of the below average amount of rainfall for the year, fire weather warnings being issued and the windy conditions that have been present in the county.
Precinct 1 Commissioner Gary Worley stated, “I’m of the opinion that it is time for us to really consider putting the burn ban back on, as we have been in a fire alert mode for the past several weeks. It’s even coming across my Sirius screen in my pickup saying that we are in a fire hazard area, so I think we should put it back on.”
County Judge Ray West reminded commissioners that the county was not in low enough range on the Keech Byram Drought Index to issue a ban unless commissioners declared emergency conditions within the county. Brown County is currently at the 0-200 index, which indicates limited to no moisture depletion.
Commissioners then passed a resolution to impose an emergency situation due to fire hazards, followed by a vote to implement the burn ban.According to the Texas A&M University website, the drought index is based on a daily water balance, where a drought factor is balanced with precipitation and soil moisture (assumed to have a maximum storage capacity of 8-inches) and is expressed in hundredths of an inch of soil moisture depletion. The drought index ranges from 0 to 800, where a drought index of 0 represents no moisture depletion, and an index of 800 represents absolutely dry conditions. Presently, this index is derived from ground based estimates of temperature and precipitation derived from weather stations and interpolated manually by experts at the Texas Forest Service (TFS) for counties across the state.
In other matters addressed by Brown County Commissioners Court on Monday:
*Brown County Clerk Sharon Ferguson received approval of back file, imaging and indexing of official public records. According to Ferguson, the archival project is “massive” and will be completed by Kofile Technologies at a cost of $215,790.88. This cost will be broken into two annual payments of $107,895.44 once the project is completed.
Ferguson stated that the project will include a period of ten years worth of the county’s real property records. Kofile will scan and improve the quality of each record, making them more legible and available through the county’s website, which is estimated will take approximately one year. The completion of these records will complete this process for official records back to 1972 through present date.
*Brown County Elections Administrator Larry Franks discussed the hiring of Grace Hefner as a temporary employee during the election season. Currently Heffner is working to complete mail ballots for the primary election set for March 1, 2016. Franks explained that the money to pay for Heffner’s employment will come from Chapter 19 state funds.
