Officials from the Brown County Sheriff’s Office gave Brown County Commissioners a report on the county jail’s capacity and expressed concerns about the jail numbers being high.
Bobby Duvall, Chief Deputy of the Brown County Sheriff’s Office gave the jail report of population being 179. There are 13 prisoners ready to be transferred to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice; however, TDCJ is at capacity. Due to this problem and housing prisoners for San Saba County, the jail population is expected to continue to rise, according to Sheriff’s Office officials.
Commissioners agreed to authorize getting an estimate to build a new wing, possibly two wings, onto the Law Enforcement Center (LEC) jail. This estimate will be requested from Waldrop Construction, the current contractor for the LEC.
In other county business: commissioners all came to an agreement that a burn ban was not necessary at this time. Rain totals given for precincts across the county were: Commissioners Steve Adams reported 0.8 inch, Larry Traweek reported 1 inch, and Joel Kelton reported 0.5 inch.
The Sheriff’s Office asked for approval of changing the name of the position of “CID Secretary” to “CID Administrative Assistant”. With this change, they also asked for an increase of pay for the current employee in this position to somewhat equalize her pay to what the previous employee had less yearly raises of that previous employee due to the amount of sensitive information and responsibility this employee has in the position. The title change and the pay increase were approved.
County Attorney Shane Britton discussed Brown County and the Bangs Economic Development Corporation exchanging land at Loop 586 and CR 169, which will be used in order for TXDOT to improve and redesign a safer intersection at this location. The previous design was confusing and also had limited visibility. Over the years there have been 4 or 5 deaths and numerous accidents at this intersection. TXDOT is already working on the intersection.
Terry Bennie, of the Bangs Economic Development Corp. said, “This project has been a long time coming. The week after Christmas was when we first discussed it.”
This item was passed unanimously with the condition that the deed not be filed until consideration from Bangs Economic Development Corp. was received.
District Clerk Jan Brown and County Clerk Sharon Ferguson requested some employee replacements which were unanimously approved.
