[Editor's Note: The Grant County Commission meeting on Oct. 10, 2023, lasted just shy of 3 hours, so readers can expect several articles. The first one begins with public input and then goes into county reports.]

By Mary Alice Murphy

After the Grant County Commission at the work session on Oct. 10, 2023, amended the agenda to add the Grant County Community Health Council as a presentation, the commissioners heard public input from Melanie Zipin, co-owner of Zócalo with her family in Arenas Valley. "We've been working on the property for several years. When Covid hit, it delayed our opening until after the lockdown. We've lived in the community for more than 30 years. We saw a need for a place for locals and visitors to gather and listen to music, have events and bring their families. We've seen a very positive impact in the community, especially from the Mining District and the rural areas. We are looking at putting in a fire sprinkler or suppression system, which would protect our patrons, our historic building and the surrounding area."

She said the fire protection system would also "give us the ability to expand to a larger occupancy, so we can offer more jobs, more trainings, give us the opportunity to bring in bigger music events and draw more tourism to the area. We hope we can work with the Arenas Valley water association to make this happen, and we appreciate your consideration of this proposal. Thank you."

For county reports, Financial Officer Linda Vasquez under current projects, reported that the county released an RFP (request for proposal) for banking services, for which the deadline was the day of the meeting. Another RFP was due the next day for airport fuel services. She said the Finance Department would attend the annual budget virtual conference Nov. 13-17.

The next report came from Detention Center Administrator Joseph Andazola. He said the facility currently has three new officers in training, with two officer openings. "We do have a new officer starting next Monday and an applicant that we will interview this week that should cover the two openings. Presumptive Eligibility Determiner Salas attended presumptive eligibility training with the state the week of Oct. 1. She has another conference next week and it will take at least a couple of more weeks to get her credentialed and certified to give her access to the state website, so she can start doing the presumptive eligibility for the detainees for intake into the facility. "

The jail population at the end of September was 61 detainees, with the average daily population for the month at 68. For the RISE program in September, six participants were in the facility and six in the community.

He said he had met with the Border Patrol, which can do the training in Hidalgo County "for our special response team. We have begun resealing and painting of shower areas in all pods and areas of the facility. We are working on updating our 5-year plan. We are also starting the accreditation process, which we will give to you and the manager first and and when it is completed we will apply for accreditation."

Andazola noted that after the Commission special meeting on Oct. 24, the commissioners will do their annual visit to the Detention Center. "I appreciate all your support."

District 1 Commissioner and Chair Chris Ponce said: "You're doing an excellent job addressing behavioral health issues in the facility. Not everyone needs to be in jail. For some, they belong there and should remain there, but for others, it's just something going on within themselves."

The following report came from IT (internet technology) Director Adam Baca. He began by introducing the department's new IT specialist, Brandon Cook. "He is still in training, but he hit the ground running. Last week, we completed the GovPros payment system in the Treasurer's Office and installed new credit card terminals. We have a new interface on the website for people to pay their property tax bills. It has a cleaner look, a larger font making it easier to read, so that's a nice refreshing aspect to the website. The website redesign is on track. We've had a meeting gathering information, and on concepts, with another meeting coming up later in the month on the overall flow of the website and its color scheme and things along those lines."

He said the Tyler Content Manager and Cloud Migration was underway. "The migration will likely take place in early November when we will have an instance of a down day, where will we upload our local data to our cloud environment. The manager's office will be affected the most, so I will continue to update them. But, so far, so good."

"We are looking a introducing fairly soon our network vulnerability management tool to determine holes in the environment," Baca continued. "After it is in place, we will run it monthly or quarterly to keep our network and everything secure. We got an internet connection at Bataan Memorial Park and will be putting in security cameras to keep our eyes on the park. We have a of infrastructure installs scheduled at the newly purchased building at the airport, bringing in an internet connection, setting up the network and wireless connections. We already have the ball rolling on that."

For future projects, he said the department plans to upgrade the phone system at the Detention Center to "connect to us here. Part of the project is replacing all the very old desktop phones that we can no longer repair. With the installation of a phone switch, it will be more modern. I anticipate getting it on the calendar very soon as it is desperately needed."

He said he has been and continues to attend a lot of meetings. He pointed out the Secretary of State Roundtable meeting on elections and the Tyler Cloud migration kickoff meeting.

The next article will begin with the Emergency Manager report.