Important Note: The agenda, minutes, and transcript provided for this meeting are dated Monday, August 5, 2024. The user instruction, however, specifies that the meeting took place on August 12, 2024. This summary is written using the required date but reflects the content from the August 5 source materials. The discrepancy is noted here for accuracy.
The Baldwin County Commission held a special meeting on August 12, 2024 (as instructed) at 8:30 a.m. in the Fairhope Satellite Courthouse to conduct Fiscal Year 2024-2025 budget deliberations. The meeting included presentations from Cobbs Allen (health insurance), the Sheriff’s Office, and the Highway Department, followed by general budget discussion. No public comments were made. The Commission took no final votes on budget items, deferring decisions to a subsequent meeting.
All right, we'll get started. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Baldwin County Commission 2024-2025 budget deliberations. Monday, August 5th, 2024. It's 8 30. So I've I asked Skip to do the pledge, and I'm gonna do the invocation. Flags over here to the corner, you'll see. Let us make the right decisions for our county employees, our citizens of Baldwin County. Jesus' name maybe. Please join me for the United States of America. One nation on individual justice for all. Thank you. I'm gonna say this. I asked to do this to have it here in this room. I wanted to try something different. And if it's not working out, we'll look at something else. But right now we've already got it planned for the next meetings to have it here. Um I just wanted y'all to be aware of that. Um we have them in Robertsdale. Uh it seemed like all the employees are at the very back, and you got you can't see. And I think this is more comfortable for everybody, and we'll go from there. But well, you know, we can have it there. I thought we were gonna be in the big room. We have monitors right in front of each of the commissioners, the lighting is good, and if you want to remove all the chairs out of the back of the room, you can bring people closer. But that's just I'm it's not about Robert's Dale or Peter, it's about a you know, nice meeting rings. Everybody was doing budget hearings in these boardrooms uh until we got a point where that you had reporters of people sitting behind you and different things like that. So I just think that these rooms are not really uh suitable for uh budget meetings, and so I would probably kindly ask you to move the next budget hearings. That's good. We'll look at it. Um second thing that I like to say is that um thank you, everybody that's here. Anthony Chief, thank y'all for being here. Saturday, I went to the uh my wife and I went to Lulu's and we went there for lunch. Let's notice that all the boats that were coming down through the uh intercoastal, and uh that was because of the Trump uh vote parade. I noticed that when they were coming through, I saw a Leah. I saw Mobile County Sheriff's Department vote, Green Patrol, and I saw Mobile City police, and I saw Gus Shore. I didn't see a Baldwin County deputy, that's because we don't have a Marine in this here at the sheriff's office. So that is something that I would like to you know talk about later in our budget. So I just wanted to bring that up. That the way this county is growing, and public safety should be number one on our uh priority. So but anyway. Do I have a motion for number one and start the special meeting? No, uh special meetings, whatever. Got a motion and a second, all in favor, say aye. All vote. All right, number two. I guess we'll go ahead and conduct the Baldwin County for the best. So we have Cobbs Allen here today. We got Sheriff's Department here, and that way Mission Man's Sheriff's Department gets to hear uh what they're proposing, and uh I'm gonna turn that over to them. Great, thank you. Okay, Sarah, can you drive from there?