And so I'd like to begin.

Madam Secretary, would you please call the roll?

Yes, Madam Chair.

I'll begin the roll call now.

Chairwoman Cohen.

Here.

Vice Chair Baird.

Director Vasquez.

Here.

Director Durfee?

Here.

Director Silberman.

Director Corrales.

Here.

Director Yu?

Director Mazah.

Director Huff?

Here.

Director Goose?

Here.

And that concludes the roll call.

We do have a quorum, so we can proceed.

Thank you very much.

With that, let's proceed to uh agenda item three.

First, I'd like to give an update regarding our board composition.

As some of you know, Director Philip Hill um Hilder has not been able to join us for quite some time due to extenuating health circumstances.

As a result, he recently made the decision to step down from the board.

Director Hilder was a faithful member of this board for several years.

He is a respected defense attorney in federal court, and he brought a wealth of knowledge to our discussions.

We will miss him, and we are wishing him the very best.

And I believe we sent him something on behalf of the board.

To fulfill the remainder of Director Hilliard's term, last week Mayor Whitmeyer and City Council appointed a new HFSC board member.

Yes.

Thank you.

Mr.

Durfee is an experienced attorney who has dedicated his career to public service.

He retired from the Harris County District Attorney's Office in 2021 after more than 30 years.

Probation was over, was it?

I I never came off of probation.

He served as their general counsel for many years and across several administrations.

He's often been called on to provide training on ethics and government law issues, including leading the annual trainings for the State Bar Government Law Section and Test Texas District and County Attorneys Association.

In his retirement, Mr.

Durfee has continued to practice law at his own firm, and we are so pleased that he has agreed to join our board.

Thank you for those really kind words.

And the one thing that I came away from from those experiences was an appreciation for the independence of forensic analysis and the forensic labs that we have that uh that the criminal justice system is well served by uh uh a well-funded and competent and independent uh forensic lab.

And uh it's really my honor uh to be here today to continue that effort to um uh work towards uh an even more independent, even more well-funded and uh even more competent um uh Houston Forensic uh Science Umter.

And so uh whatever I can do to help, I'm here to help.

Thank you.

Well, thank you.

We're honored to have you join us, and we look forward to a very good year.

Next, I'd like to thank Director Yu for taking the time to tour HFSC and the VEB in February with his guests from the Taiwan Criminal Investigation Bureau.

I trust and hope that everything went well, and I'm glad that you were able to do that.

For our other board members, please keep in mind that we're looking at the possibility of touring HFSC's newly constructed basement for evidence storage.

Mrs.

VC will be in touch to coordinate a date and time for us to see the wonderful progress HFSC is making.

Before I go on to my next point, uh Director U, do you have any comments uh about your tour?

Uh I think the vehicle processing is a very critical uh point uh to to discover and collect evidence, and I'm very happy that Houston informed Science Intel has a wonderful space uh to support that effort.

Great.

Thank you.

Lastly, I am updating the board on a contract amendment that was executed after our January meeting as an emergency item.

If you recall, a few years ago, the board agreed to allow the chair to approve amendments of this nature in between board meetings.

When time-sensitive matters arise.

Recently, HFSC needed to amend our current outsourcing contract with signature science to allocate additional funding and ensure cases were not delayed in the forensic biology section.

This board approved the original contract at the November 2024 board meeting in the amount of 2,500,000 uh 50,000 and an additional 550,000 was added to the contract from our budget for a total contract value of 2.6 million.

No action is needed from the board at this time, as the amendment was executed on February 26, 2026, with my approval.

Of note, this agreement is not the same agreement that will be considered in agenda item number eight, although it is related.

I think first cousins or so twice removed.

Dr.

Stout and Dr.

Castillo will explain it further when we get to that item.

And with that, I conclude my report.

Now we'll proceed to agenda item four.

At this time, we will open the floor for public comment and invite any member of the public that wishes to speak to come to the podium, address the board, and we will ask all speakers to sign in at the front of the room.

So we are aware of your presence and that all comments be limited to three minutes.

You may speak on any matter concerning the board and HFSC.

At this time, do we have anyone in the audience who has signed up for public comment?

It does not appear so.

Seeing no members of the public in our audience today, we've signed up who signed up for comment.

I will close the public comment period.

Now we'll consider meeting minutes from the January 9th, 2026 board meeting.

Does anyone have any corrections or additions to the minutes as presented?

Hearing none.

We propose the minutes be adopted.

So move.

Second.

Second.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Minutes are adopted.

Thank you.

Now I'm going to proceed to agenda item six.

Report from Dr.

Peter Stout.

And including an overview of operations and technical updates.

Dr.

Stout.

Good morning, y'all.

All right.

Um couple of things to cover.

One, uh, we shipped off to Philip a couple of things.

Philip was fond of telling me he was enamored with the boxes, so I made sure that Philip got a box.

Um as has become kind of the tradition.

I'm happy to make these for you all.

I'm happy to make them for staff.

It keeps me entertained.

Um, keeps me out of my wife's hair.

Uh that's probably the most important part of it is I stay out of her way.

Um, we ship this stuff to Philip.

I really appreciate Philip's service on the board over the years.

He was a fantastic board member, and I was, you know, kind of kind of sorry that it ended the way it did, but I wish him all the best and a speedy recovery.

Um I was thinking about how to go at um the discussion today because today is our FY27 budget.

That's pretty much what we got today.

And really, it's a pretty simple story uh for what we're at in the budget.

And I was just going to talk about the the high-level part of it.

David's got some of the details within that budget when he talks about the budget.

But really, at root, the budget is just to keep stuff on the path that we're on, because we're on a pretty good path.

After 10 years of doing this, we're on a pretty good path.

And I it was it was occurring to me that the last about three years, having been at this for a while, have just felt easier.

I'm still got to look back at the first few years of HFSC, and I'm frankly amazed I survived it.

Um, but the last few years have just felt easier.

And it made me go, well, what what why is that?

Clearly, we have made enormous progress on all of the things that we have done and redesigned and replaced and improved, and all of that is part of it.

But I think some of it goes directly to the budget.

Um, but just so we're we're clear where we're at.

The the big backlogs, biology's pretty much gone.

And within this next budget cycle, there is a very real possibility of biology being sustainably managed.

Keep in mind, when I started at HFSC, and within the time that Amy's been with us, and Amy was key in getting from the more than 10,000 backlog sexual assault kits to we've got four that are over 90 days right now.

That is an astonishing miracle.

And it has taken a decade to get there.

And I think what we're talking about with the next budget, we could be there sustainably managed.

But it has taken a Herculean effort to get there.

Seize drugs, you can see the good trend down.

We expect that trend to continue.

We've got people getting signed off.

They're making good progress on stuff.

Firearms is still going the wrong way.

And I will say, in this next budget, firearms is still going to be a problem.

Firearms is going to be a problem for several years yet.

But within this next budget, I think we could see that trend line peak and maybe even be started down with what we've got planned.

But we've been talking about firearms now for at least five years of the difficulty of this, and it is still yet years from getting solved.

So with the 2027 budget, this is the simple budget, the simple end of it.

And it was occurring to me one example I recently had here was really exemplified to me part of what we are struggling with.

Back in 2021, I stuck a pressure regulator on the house because you know, municipal systems like to overpressure the system because it keeps them from people complaining about their uh pressure in the shower, but it damages your hot water heater.

I bought it for 172.43 cents in 2021.

That same item when I checked it just a few days ago is now nearly 500.

Price increases are very real on just fundamental things, commodity items that go into everything that we're doing.

And we are seeing those price increases in everything from labor costs to reagent costs to instruments, everything is going up.

And I didn't get the uh spelling um thing there, but maybe it's more of a Freudian slip than a spelling error in that cost per quest, yeah.

Um I I wanted to go back.

I talked about it this way uh a little bit more than a year ago when we were talking about last this this year's budget.

That what I try to give everybody of an understanding of what national figures point at of a potential sustainable cost per request.

So big average, one number to look at.

Obviously, various different disciplines cost different things.

Not everything is as expensive, some things are less expensive.

And I'll also keep in mind this isn't about 2020-ish dollars because that really is the current national numbers.

And I have uh pointed at this report lots of times.

Y'all are probably familiar with this one.

This is the Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of publicly funded crime laboratories.

They do this every five years.

Uh they solicited the data for it in 2025.

We probably will not see those data published until my bet is next year.

They usually run about two years behind getting the data published.

So the 2020 numbers are the current numbers.

This is the report that I cite regularly about the 423 publicly funded crime labs that there are in the U.S., and that there are about 15,000 people in total that work between those labs.

Those are the kinds of data that come out of this.

It is a really useful report, I find, because it is about the only cross-sectional view of crime laboratories in this country that gives you things like the total work that's requested of all of those laboratories and the total budgets in all of those publicly funded crime laboratories, and also an absolute number of the total backlogs within those laboratories.

There really isn't anything else out there that gives you a cross-sectional view of forensic laboratories in the country.

And so I use Table 4 lots because in it they have the number of backlogged requests across the last three cycles of the survey.

And you can see in it for 2020, pretty much all of the backlogs in the country have gone up.

As a system, the forensic laboratories in the country are losing ground.

It is, in effect, a failing system.

I point often in that to the firearms request backlog that has nearly doubled in that last cycle to 100,000 firearms requests.

We've talked lots about how many labor hours go into a firearms request.

My estimate out of that 100,000 request backlog, that is about 10 million labor hours that's behind that.

These aren't small numbers.

This is a national problem.

Then I go on to Table 9 in there, which gives all the budgets and gives you a big average per request on a national basis that laboratories in this country as of 2020 had a grand total of about 620 bucks per request to do everything.

Receive it, accession it, test it, testify about it, answer questions, retest it, retest it, and retest it again.

That $2 billion spread between all of those laboratories comes out to about that.

No, it's nowhere close to enough.

But what maybe is this set of data called Project Foresight, Paul Speaker has been the economist, he's basically the only economist in the country that works on forensic stuff.

He's at, well, I think he's basically just retired.

They've been kind of transitioning this project, but I've known Paul for a lot of years.

We've talked a lot about this.

He does runs this every year.

There are 200 labs plus with about 24 international laboratories that contribute data to this.

And it's imperfect like everything else.

It is a synthesis of a lot of different data.

And one of the things I've talked with Paul a lot over the years is these are data.

This isn't what it costs to do something.

This is a snapshot of what the system is as funded, because we are giving the numbers of where we're at in terms of requests and the dollars and all of that thing.

So this is as funded.

So this is what it basically costs for the system to fail, is the data that are coming out of Project Foresight.

And we all, all the laboratories, we all kind of roll our eyes at the various imperfect fits for the data, HFSC in particular, because we have costs associated with physical plant that a lot of laboratories don't have within their budgets.

We also have HR and finance costs because we are basically a complete organization, whereas most public laboratories sit where those HR and finance functions would be out and something that's not reflected in their budget.

So just keep in mind there are some differences there.

There are also differences in the definitions of requests and things like that from the census of publicly funded crime labs.

So I'm using these two pieces of data against each other to get a kind of bigger picture of things, but keep in mind there are imperfections in how things fit together.

But it is really useful because it gives you a distribution of funding per request.

And it gives that as 25th percentile, 75th percentiles, um, and a 50th percentile.

And it breaks those out by discipline and particular service types, which is really helpful trying to get this idea of what a cost per request is.

Um it is an attempt at a fully loaded cost, but like I say, for a lot of laboratories, they're not actually reflecting all of their costs in that.

And it's got a huge pile of data.

It this runs 120 pages plus of a bunch of tables.

So there's there's lots, it's a very rich data source.

So the way I've taken to looking at this is okay, if I use the 75th percentile of estimates of what are the funding associated with requests, that is probably still light of what's really needed to do this work, but it's you know, it's a reasonable guess at it.

It's no laboratory has 75th percentile funding for everything.

We don't.

So if I just look down that 75th percentile column and use that, that's maybe a better guess of something closer to what it should cost per request.

And if I take that and I use the data from the publicly funded crime laboratories of the backlog numbers, you can get basically an estimate of the cost of the current backlog in 2020, which would be more than a billion dollars worth of backlog, which is more than 50% of the entire national budget for crime laboratories is backlogged.

It is a gigantic cost.

And if you divide through in that to get a weighted average cost per request, it's about $1,400 per request.

So if you think about it, labs that have $620 are basically never going to be able to get ahead of a billion dollar backlog.

Okay.

So now if we look at what the national cost of the requested work is in 2020, again, use that 75th percentile estimate, use the numbers of what was requested from the census of publicly funded crime labs, do a little arithmetic, that comes out to nearly a $5 billion demand that's being requested of those 400 labs.

That's more than twice what the actual funding was that was available to the laboratories.

And again, it comes out to about $1,400 per request.

So I mean it all kind of lines up there that labs in this country are at least half of what is necessary to do this work.

At least half.

Start to see why everything's backlogged.

It it's pretty straightforward, really.

So what about HFSC specifically?

Because if you look at the Census of Publicly Funded Crime Laboratories, and back in that table four, one of the items that's in there is what's called databasing DNA.

Now I mentioned that specifically because the databasing, that is the when you run the oral buckle swabs for DNA, so legally owed DNA from an arrestee offender.

They're very clean samples, they're high concentration DNA, and the testing of those is typically done by one laboratory in the state, a Texas DPS laboratory that's in Austin, does all of the databasing for the entire state of Texas.

It's highly, highly automated, and it is probably the least cost work of anything in the list because it's so automated.

It's been a huge amount of uh federal dollars that have gone into establishing all that automation, it's great.

But it's not really what a casework laboratory does.

So HFSC, I would say, is more of an example of a casework laboratory.

So the mixture of cases is gonna lean towards more expensive work.

Firearms, very expensive work.

DNA case work, post-conviction kind of work, very expensive work.

Crime scene, very expensive work, multimedia, very expensive work.

So our mixture is probably more representative of a casework lab.

So if we do this same exercise of take HFSC's requests, multiply by that 75 percentile number out of the census of publicly funded crime labs, our weighted average, I would say that would be a sustainable guess is about $2,200 per request.

So really, laboratories in this country, casework laboratories are probably have at best a quarter what they actually need to do the work.

A quarter of the money.

A quarter of the money.

Any questions on that?

Is that all logic makes sense to you?

So ours, our work, you know, we maybe even be a little bit on the higher side compared to some labs.

We have less drug cases, drug seized drugs, the um analysis of the solid dosage materials, it's relatively inexpensive work.

Uh we lean towards firearms and biology in our our caseload, which are expensive disciplines.

So in 2026, this fiscal year, we will complete somewhere in the neighborhood of 22,000 requests, and we will spend this year roughly 37 million dollars.

And David will talk about that.

Our budget for this year was 35 million.

We had cash from last year and about $2 million, and we are spending at a rate that we will spend about $37 million a year this year.

So we are going to spend roughly $1,600 per request, which is actually on the national basis, we're doing darn good.

We are still shy of that $2200 mark that I would argue is sustainable.

But when I stop and think about why is this a little bit easier, that right there is why it's a little easier.

It's taken us a decade to get to this point of a relative funding per request that's starting to be about reasonable.

We're still not there.

It's still why it's stupid hard.

But it's why it feels easier, because we're at about $1,600 request.

And in that spending has been going from 10,000 backlog DNA requests to four that are over 90 days.

In that spending has been the entirety of our blind quality control program.

In that spending has been the entirety of all of the data transparency stuff that we do.

All of the quality measures, all of the improvements have been within that 1,600.

So you start getting to about this point, you can do some pretty remarkable things.

We still have more to do.

And we still clearly have backlogs that we're wrestling with.

We make it work at 1600 because of people like Amy and Jackie and David and the 200 other people who are remarkably dedicated to this and put up with insanely difficult to make it happen.

So really from the big top end of things, it's a pretty simple explanation of the FY27 budget.

The FY27 budget keeps us at roughly sixteen hundred dollars a request and assumes we will do about 22,000 requests.

That's all the budget is.

We know the city is facing big budget shortfalls, all of these things.

Yes, there are all kinds of things that if we could find more money, we should probably be doing.

But if we can at least stay at about 1,600, we can stay on the course that we're on.

Now there's some caveats even within that.

We are seeing HPD is coming under immense pressure to deal, look at and think about how they're handling cold cases.

We've seen a pretty sharp increase in requests associated with cold case stuff because in order to do the genetic genealogy testing, that kind of stuff, there's a bunch of testing that we need to do along the way.

It's terrific.

I applaud them.

They should do this.

Fantastic, don't stop.

But it means more testing for us.

So we are anticipating that we're gonna see an increase in biology requests for probably the most expensive end of DNA, which is cold case kind of testing.

It's complicated, it involves multiple different types of testing.

Jackie's, I think, is going to talk about that we're doing scope expansions in part to address this of putting YSTRs back into our testing mix, those kinds of things.

Within the FY27 budget, we have plans on how we would manage this.

I'm not saying that we're expanding capacity, I'm not saying that it's gonna be easy.

I'm saying we don't know yet just how big this demand is going to be.

So I can't reasonably say, oh, yeah, we need to buy and do and invest in this, this, this, and this.

We need to see and watch how this evolves.

But with we have the budget that we're talking for 2027, we can manage it with HPD.

Um FY27 budget also contemplates within it the continuation of the plan that we've got about the transition of property, hiring the people, shifting the stuff, all of that's in there.

Um so basically the budget lets us stay on the path that we're at, but it is kind of a de minimis budget.

Any questions about where we're at?

Yes, ma'am.

I have a just a personal question because I was so involved in it.

And of course, Sonia is uh with the women's center.

I am correct, and you've said it twice now, but maybe I just can't believe it.

Um how many backlog rape kits do we have?

If because there will always be complicated cases.

Yes, I understand that.

But even accepting that anything over 90 days is a backlog, we have four.

And there were thousands.

Many thousands.

How many?

Many thousands.

Many thousands there was.

I can't remember.

Sonia may remember.

I think four thousand or more.

Oh, it was many thousands.

I mean, it's so hard for me to conceptualize that there are four.

And we know that unfortunately rapes continue, and I'm just I'm just so pleased with the.

I think out of that question, though, Amy.

Because Amy's been an enormous key in that, both for HFSC and statewide.

So Amy, you at least get to take a bow for it and maybe help explain what's happening.

Thank you, Amy.

Thank you.

Um, Amy Castillo, the chief operations officer.

When in 2014 is when we did our big project to just clear all of the untested sexual assault kits unrequested, untested, and then what was in the lab, it was 10,000.

Um since then, we cleared those, but we have still struggled.

Um, in the sense that once that project was over, I think you know, it's easy to make rash decisions on oh, we're not gonna outsource or we're not gonna do this.

So I feel like since that time, we have been on a roller coaster.

Um and we have been back up to over a thousand um that were backlogged.

So we are very excited that this is where we're at.

Right now, there's about a hundred something over 30 days, um, but the four over 90 days, which is the state mandated legislation, and we are excited too, because we've started to get feedback from our stakeholders that they're seeing the difference, and that means the world to us because we do know with the sexual assault cases, it makes a difference um whether your results come in in a couple months versus you're waiting a year for them.

So thank y'all.

We're we're also very excited.

Thank you, Amy.

And I want to say thank you to your staff.

Thank you.

Cause uh Courtney, Courtney Head has worked with me since I've been here.

Um she is equally as passionate about this.

She takes on a lot of extra work around sexual assault cases and sexual assault kits, the cold cases.

Um she's just incredibly dedicated and has been through a lot um and worked through a lot to get to this point along with her staff.

So really that section deserves the credit for sticking with this.

Thank y'all.

Any other questions so far?

Sean just a quick one.

So uh what is the difference between request and cases?

Oh, yeah.

This always gets messy.

Um most laboratories in the country view their workload on a request basis.

A case, which is how a lot of the rest of the system looks at it, probably has multiple requests associated with it.

So for instance, a homicide case as the DA's office or the police department would recognize it for us, probably has a couple of DNA requests, a firearms request, maybe a late print request.

It may have a half a dozen or so requests in that.

Um so and and what gets really messy about it is case request sample.

They they get used interchangeably and it gets messy.

And then different places have different definitions about stuff.

Uh so you will hear us as the laboratory largely refer to things as a request, but keep in mind that the rest of the system doesn't necessarily think of things as requests.

They think of things as case.

Um another thing that gets really messy inside of that is we talk about items sometimes.

A request will often have multiple items.

So even within the laboratory, a K a request may actually involve a lot of different testing, multiple samples, multiple items within a request.

And it's part of we have struggled with this for years, how to try and explain this in an understandable fashion, because not every request is the same.

Um you can see, even like in firearms, a request that has one casing to examine is nothing close to.

I think the biggest case we had.

I love the name they gave it.

They called it trash can monkey man, had a thousand cases that were casings that were submitted.

A thousand casings if we were to actually do all the comparisons in that.

That's years of examiner time.

So but it's it's one request.

So it's very difficult to make these things equate.

It's a good question.

This this may be something that will get resolved during the orientation process for me.

I'm brand new to the to the uh to the board, but I am interested in how and at which stages of the of the budget process and really the management process, you uh exercise your triage discretion.

How do you decide what is going to be the thing you work on either as a year on a year or or on a day-to-day basis?

Um Amy and I are looking at each other because this has been an ongoing.

Amy, why why don't you start just even from the front of what we do basically on a weekly basis?

So each one of our sections, especially that deal more with violent crime, have a case acceptance policy.

And that is our frontline, I would say, defense against giant requests coming in.

And we're not saying in some situations, a giant request, it may need to all be worked.

But what we have found is it's much more efficient.

If we say DNA is an example on a homicide, we we take 10 samples to begin with.

And so what we do is we have a case management staff member who works with the HPD investigator to say which 10 do you think are the best.

And we'll um address CODIS eligibility, those kinds of things, so that we're we are helping them as far as from a science perspective, pick possi the 10 best options.

If we don't get anything, we'll write it, we'll do 10 more, right?

But what we find is writing two requests with 10 each is more efficient than writing one with 20.

Because those cases, I mean we have case files this big.

Um it makes a difference, right?

When you're reviewing a case, writing a case that you can get through half of that and be done and move on to something else while we're waiting for that next request to come in.

So every one of our sections has um a policy around that.

And then you have situations like the firearms one with the dumpster casings.

That's also just a I mean, daily back and forth of what's most important, what's most urgent, what can we work, and then come back if we need to.

So we definitely have the mentality of we might hopefully not have to work all thousand, but let's do it in chunks so that we can maintain our efficiency.

And if you find what you need, and then we don't have to work all of them, that's best better for the whole system efficiency wise.

So I would say weekly to daily, um, we're having those conversations with the stakeholders about the requests.

And I'd add kind of the more strategic version of that.

What the question you ask, and I chuckle about it because that is one of those questions that is a huge front of mind question for laboratories all over the country.

What gets tested and in what order do we do it?

Um how how in the world do you decide which awful, horrible violent crime goes first and which one waits?

Um the best we have gotten to, and it has taken years to get there, is the active participation and working with the investigators up front and the prosecutors on the other side.

We can't see which case might be important for what you're trying to accomplish.

You have to help us with that.

You also have to be able to come to the table with a willingness to negotiate because we can't give over all of our capacity to court priorities because there may be a public emergency public safety emergency that we need to be able to address.

And it is a delicate, delicate balance that we've got to have everybody at the table to talk about.

The to follow up on that though, the the the other interesting that is that answers that part for sure.

The other interesting thing for me is that is that your staff are not fungible.

They don't move from firearms to DNA or from DNA to toxicology or whatever.

And so at a certain point, you just when do you decide this is the year we're going to focus on rape kits and we're gonna staff up for that and get it done.

Is that is that this time of year?

Yep, pretty much, yeah.

Yes, and we've we've been fortunate to be able to add positions where we need.

So for example, last year in our budget, um, the city gave us budget to hire five firearms examiners, because that's where we're hurting at the moment.

Um the challenge for us is it takes two years to train those people.

So we got the positions last year.

We're still years away from having them on the bench.

When we don't get the budget we need, what we tend to do is more with vacancies and not staff.

So we've had a couple examples, um, one in Layton Prince and one in digital multimedia where they had cleared their backlogs and they had a couple vacancies that they just weren't 100% sure they needed.

Um we give it a minute to make sure they really don't need them, and then we will move them.

So some of the positions we have in firearms um beyond the five that we had filled actually came from other divisions, but we hold on to it as when we have the vacancy opportunity because it really isn't practical.

Like you said, there's very few people that even if we did decide we're gonna take you out of this division that could within any reasonable amount of time become a productive analyst in another division.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Those are really good questions.

And it it goes to a reality that can be very difficult for people that think about things in terms of quarters that what where we're at right now is the result of decisions made two years ago.

And what we're deciding right now will determine where we're at about two years from now.

And it is very, very difficult for us to alter the course right now.

And the people take a long time to get in place.

And if we don't spend the time getting the people in place appropriately, bad things happen.

You look like you'd get a question.

I don't have a question.

It's more of a more of a comment and just wanted to expand a little bit and about Amy Castillo.

When we worked on that backlog uh rape kit task force, um one of the things that happened as a result of that was that Amy um ensured that as a team, because it was a it was a coordinated effort and there was a whole lot of entities involved in that, that Amy kept that team together.

And she kept that team together up until uh Senate Bill 476 and the 87th legislature that created or actually mandated that Harrison County had a sexual assault response team.

And so since 2021, we have been together still addressing all of this issue, but as a coordinated uh community and really centering the uh centering survivors in all of that.

So I just want to lift that up because I think that that's important, and that this particular issue around sexual violence in rape kits and all of that is a broader issue that takes a coordinated effort.

And so this sexual assault response team has been um you know, we've been operating since 2021, and it's been uh I think it's been going great.

We are about to finish our second uh biannual report.

And so you can see how uh this lab has significantly reduced, you know, that that that backlog.

So thank you for that, and thank you, Amy.

Thank you.

Okay.

So just to be extra clear here, and I have forward along this information to the mayor's office as well.

I fully appreciate the city has difficult choices that they have to make about budget.

I can't I don't envy any of them trying to make these choices.

The best we can do is just make it clear what choices are gonna mean what.

So if we are in the position, and I don't have anything in all the conversations I've had with the city, I it's not them, I'm not looking at this that this is where we're headed.

I just want to make sure that we're clear.

If we can't get to the budget that we're proposing here for 2027, it gets kind of grim.

And it gets kind of grim because of these very long timelines to deal with things.

And I can't stress enough that yes, we need incremental increases in budget.

And we've talked lots of times about my joking that you could back a truckload of money over me and I can only use so much of it because we can only add so many staff at a time.

It becomes imperative the consistency in the funding.

And I know this is a difficult thing with governments, the careen from one to the other.

That stuff just kills us because of these very long arcs on staff and these very long arcs in hiring and how far out we have to look.

So if we're coming in below what we're posing, backlogs are going to go up.

Just plain and simple.

And that's across the board.

It's gonna almost immediately affect sexual assault kits.

It's gonna almost immediately affect DNA.

Firearms is probably going to accelerate.

We I kind of I put toxicology on there.

We have a backlog in toxicology that has not really been an issue.

Nobody's really worried about it at the moment, but sooner or later, it's gonna bite as well.

So that one sits back there.

Um we we just flatly are not going to be able to support the initiatives that HPD's got because that's going straight into biology where we just won't have the capacity.

Um we have talked plenty of times about this.

David, we'll talk again about it.

Labor is our single largest component of the budget.

There really isn't any other one single material thing that we can twist and adjust to adapt to a significant shift in budget.

It's people.

We either don't hire them or we just don't have them.

That's it.

And if we don't have the labor, everything stops.

And if we don't have the labor, even worse, the pipeline of getting people there to address what we can see as future needs stops.

And because that stops, it just means whenever we get back to about this 1,600 or above mark, add five years on to it before we start making progress.

So, I mean, outsourcing costs are kind of the other big thing.

We stop outsourcing, that affects SAKs, that affects toxicology that affects firearms.

Those are the those are the knobs that we have to turn.

And they are pretty devastating knobs to have to turn.

So I I like I say, I don't envy the city.

I can't be angry with them about choices that they have to make.

I get it.

I just want to make sure that it is clear.

Under the budget that we're proposing, backlogs will increase.

And to get those backlogs back to where we're at right now is probably a decades, decade delay.

Questions?

Yeah, I have a general question.

So I don't know how city council works or the budgetary process works.

Do you go in front of City Council and present to ask?

It's it's been different various years.

This administration, it has largely been conversations with the mayor's office and staff and city finance.

And it's not I I we have City Council is uniformly supportive of us.

That's not really been an issue there.

It has been more just the sheer very reasonable conversations about what fits and how we manage things in the city's.

I really don't, I really don't envy the city's finance people.

It's it's really been more discussions there.

So you present things like this to them.

Right.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

I was just thinking one thing that might be effective is to I mean on the sexual assault kits.

I think it went from 2024 to now or something.

Why not 2014?

We could do that.

I think we'd be impactful.

Well, part of what we you know, this this graph that you're talking about here.

We we we use that because the on particularly the biology one, the the the highest point there was the point at which two years ago we had the conversation with city finance in the city, and they said, All right, here's the additional two million dollars in the budget to start this basically five-year plan of how we deal with biology.

And really striking difference in biology.

I mean, that drop is because of a reasonable amount of funding available for biology.

So you point that out.

Yeah.

Regularly and often and loudly.

Um, Peter, I think it would be useful uh for the board to have a little one-pager that we all when we bump into people and we get asked questions, especially on the sex sexual assault kits.

Yeah.

That's such a great message.

The firearms is also a great message.

Um, but it would be useful certainly to me, I don't know the others.

Would that be helpful that we will get something together for y'all?

In simple terms.

I need simple.

I uh I yeah.

Any other yes?

Any other questions I can answer for y'all?

Good questions.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peter.

Are there any additional questions now?

Okay, then we will proceed to agenda item seven.

Members, you received a summary sheet and contractual information regarding the contract with the National Medical Services.

Dr.

Stout and Dr.

Castillo, do you have any additional information to add to that?

This one's all pretty straightforward.

NMS is the laboratory in the country that everybody outsources to.

Like there's a whole lot of options.

Um we've worked with them for years.

They've been a really good partner, and this is just about try how we try and manage the backlog and toxicology.

Okay.

Any additional questions from the board or comments?

Oh, okay.

I saw you leaning forward.

Oh, I'm just getting ready for the question.

Uh if there are no additional questions, we will now have a voice vote to approve the contract between NFS Labs and the Corporation for Forensic Outsourcing Services in the taxicology section and related services.

Total budget not to exceed 400,000 and to authorize Dr.

Stout to execute the agreement on the board's behalf.

Members, please unmute your mics at this time to have a motion to approve as presented.

Hello?

Do I have a motion to move?

Somebody made the motion?

So any move.

So moving.

Um second.

Second.

Very well.

At this time I'll have a voice vote.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, say nay.

The motion carries.

Dr.

Sout, please execute the contract on behalf of the organization.

Roger that.

Roger that.

Proceed now to agenda item eight.

Members, you received a summary sheet and contractual information regarding the agreement with signature science.

Dr.

Stout and Dr.

Castillo, do you have any additional information to add on this item?

I think so.

Just for context, um, the two million dollar project that Peter was talking about is a balance of staffing and outsourcing.

So while we train people in biology, we're outsourcing cases to help us maintain our turnaround times.

We've fully obligated the city portion of that budget.

And so what this contract is is us moving on to using the federal funds that we have available to continue the outsourcing through the fiscal year and until we get the new city budget.

Thank you.

Do you have any other questions or comments on the board?

Okay.

If there are no additional questions, we'll now have a voice vote to approve the contract between signature science, LLC, and the corporation for DNA outsourcing services to be funded by the to be funded by the year.

Sorry, to be funded by the year 24.

That's that's the grant year that is talking about there.

All right, and what about the BJA?

That's the name.

That's the name of the grant.

So Bureau of Justice Assistance is BJA.

It's a grant under Bureau of Justice Assistance.

Okay.

Called the capacity enhancement backlog reduction grant.

And it is year 24 of that funding.

Okay, I got it.

All right.

Um total budget not to exceed 760,367 to authorize Dr.

Stout to execute the agreement on the board's behalf.

Okay.

Members, please unmute your mics at this time.

Do you have a motion to approve as presented?

So moved.

Okay.

Is there a second?

Second.

Who seconded?

Thank you.

All right.

At this time we'll have a vice vote.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed say nay.

The motion carries.

Dr.

Stout, please execute the contract on behalf of the organization.

So we'll give you the Navy version this time.

Aye, ma'am.

Okay.

Members, if you recall, during the November 2024 board meeting, Mr.

Leach presented the annual financial audit for the year 2024.

At that time, he informed us that the audit pursuant to the single audit act was outstanding as we were still waiting for the updated federal guidance.

Today, Mr.

Leach brings us, brings to us that information for our review.

Please note we do not need a vote on this item.

Mr.

Leach, please proceed with your presentation.

It's just as simple as this.

They didn't have the information necessary from the federal government to complete the audit on the grants that we received.

They got the information since then.

The audit was completed and we passed 100%, so everything's fine, just letting you guys know.

So for both audits, uh they're both clean audits, which in my world is as good as you can get.

So crazy exciting world I live in.

That's it.

That's it.

Okay.

Do we have any other questions of Mr.

Leach?

Let's proceed to agenda item 10.

Mr.

Leach.

Okay, so Dr.

Stout just gave you um the what and the why, right?

I'm gonna give you the how.

So uh a lot of this, hopefully, you had time to look at the presentation already that I'm gonna go over so you're familiar with it.

It makes it easier and quicker, and we're able to listen to it.

Uh so hopefully you're able to do that.

A lot of this will be repetitive, but I need to get it on the record, right?

Officially, so that uh especially when the city looks at it, they they see where the numbers are coming from.

So I'll I will be going over the budget, and uh I will do this.

I'll give you a little bit of background, the history of the company, uh especially for you, those that have only been through this once or are new to it.

Uh we'll talk about where we are right now.

Uh when we when I talk about the current fiscal year, it has actual data for seven months, and then I'm forecasting the rest of the year on where we will finish, and then the budget obviously is talking about the future.

Now, I will show you you'll say why why do I keep seeing the same numbers over and over again?

I am a firm believer having five kids that they don't all learn the same way.

So some of them get it through oral, some of them get it through charts, some of them, you're right.

There's just different ways to see the same message, just trying to cover the bases and make sure that the information is presented clearly in a way that everybody understands it.

Okay.

So the the first slide, this just shows you the history of our revenue in total.

Most of our revenue, oh, over 90 percent of our revenue comes from the city, but we do get pretty good chunks from grants.

And then over the last couple years, back in 24 and 25, we got a pretty good piece from COVID or ARPA money.

So you can see the increases there in 24 and 25.

Those were both because of increases in grant and increases in ARPA money.

It's gone back to historical levels, but the city has picked up the gap for us to keep us uh where Dr.

Stout was talking about uh where we are now.

So that's what that is.

We are designed to run out of money every year, so as revenue goes up, expenses go up.

Okay, we we're not in the business of padding a bank account or trying to save money or invest.

We're we're geared towards let's get the work out the door.

If we have money, we're working on the work.

Okay.

So that that will also uh be important in some of the things that you look at in the future.

Personnel costs go up as we have more money.

Uh services go up also, a lot of that is outsourcing.

That's most of what services is.

Uh you'll notice in the capital in 25 that went up.

That has to do with us taking on additional space for the property room.

So that's what those bars represent.

If at any point you want to ask a question, just interrupt me, or you can save it to the end.

Um, however, you guys want to roll.

This gives you uh these two pie charts give you an example of where we spend our money.

Over 60 percent of our money is spent on people cost.

So to Dr.

Stout's uh comments, if things change significantly, the only place, the only trigger I have to pull financially is people, and nobody wants to do that.

That that just that's like a torbed to the ship.

That's just really hard to recover from.

Uh so over 60 percent of our cost historically and currently, I'll I'll show you uh how 27 looks.

And then services is the next biggest piece of it.

The biggest parts of that are outsourcing IT cost, uh cost to maintain the building called CAM, common area maintenance, and then it cost us a fair amount of money to service all the equipment.

That that's what most of the money where we goes.

Where it goes.

A good thing about that is this is our business, it's not going to change what has been will be.

Um that that's just the way we we run.

Okay.

Let me so the other picture I showed you was total revenue.

This chart shows you just the money that comes from the city.

So the this goes all the way back to 15.

The blue bar is how much money have we received from the city.

The orange or the smaller is the difference year over year.

And then that gray line that goes up and down, that's the percentage increase.

You'll notice some years we've been held flat, other years it goes up.

This year's budget, the number that you you'll want to remember, the biggest high level.

We're talking about uh a $3.9 million increase request, that's 11%.

So if I'm the city, I'm saying how much more do they want?

The answer to that is 3.9, that's an 11 percent ask.

Okay.

We'll dig into the details, but that that's the high end of it.

Okay.

To me, um, the most important slide and the most important account that I check every day is cash.

We are designed to spend every penny that we receive to work the work, right?

So it does I I don't want to end the year with five million in cash, right?

I cannot end the year with zero, because I'm not legally allowed to borrow money.

So we try to get as close to zero every year as is possible.

That's tricky, but that's what we try to do.

Okay.

I'll add on that.

Go ahead.

David's stomach lining suffers every year on this, as does mine.

Because it's a roller coaster at the end of the year.

Yeah, I mean, granted, the last two years were easier because we ended with two million, but then I kind of feel guilty was what more work could we have done if if we had pulled levers better.

But again, if most of that is people cost, you can't just go to the street corner and grab five people and say, hey, come work for me.

It's just not the way it works.

It takes a long time to find people and then even longer to train them.

But so this in addition to that, just the timing of the mechanics of it, I have to hold on to about $750,000, because by the time we get the money for the budget, it takes at least two weeks for the city to put it in my account.

So I really have to hold on to around a million dollars if I want to sleep at night to make sure I can fund the payroll until the cash hits the bank.

So anything less than a million, we're we're kind of in on break-even land.

Okay?

So that's the way it works.

You'll notice that this year I am forecasting being around 600,000.

Now I have some levers to pull because there's no way I'm doing that.

I can't let that happen.

Um because I don't know that I can make the first payroll in July.

But what we are we are dancing around in the area where we want to be, right?

Using the resources given.

Go ahead, Dr.

Stout.

And I will add on that.

I mean, this is we we we joke about the rural aids consumption, but there is a very real thing here, and I've talked with the mayor's office about this, that as we are going this year, we are going to be at fumes on the end of the year, and it is critical to us when we get funds in July, because two payrolls in July.

And if we spend as we are spending, and this is this is part of you ask about how we walk through this determination of what we're doing.

This is one of the parts of the calculus.

We have had, I think the latest we have gotten funds released to us has been down into August.

Um it's a real consideration to us of what's going to happen in July this year.

And I'm looking over here at Jessica to talk with the city when funds get released, because we have never had funds released early enough in July to be able to have those funds present for the first payroll.

And we're going to need it.

In fairness to the city, that year was because we finished with a lot of cash, and I was telling them, don't worry about it, I'm not in a hurry, I'm fine.

Um there have been other times when I was nervous and they made it happen.

And they had to sidestep some processes, right?

Because it takes time just to release a bunch of money, understandable.

But that's the world we live in, and that's okay.

Um, just getting getting close this year to the best that I can estimate right now.

Okay.

So that's our cash balance, what we're looking at there.

Okay, so let's start getting into some of the details a little bit.

The the way you read this is if you'll look at where it says the first, well, actually the second column, the first column are descriptions, and this is just looking at revenue.

Uh in the first column what says FY that stands for fiscal year 26, that's the year we're in, FCST is the forecast.

So fiscal year 26 forecast.

We will receive, and this includes the 960 additional that was just approved by the city, we'll receive 34,880 from the city.

That is made up of the next three numbers.

Okay.

So the the number that's important is the number that's in blue.

But just to read the chart, the next three numbers equal the top number.

So the number we get from the city.

So let's let's talk about what we're looking at this year.

What I call the base plus the minimum that we need.

So in other words, Dr.

Stout said we want to be able to do the same thing next year that we're doing this year.

Okay.

To do that, we need an extra $2.7 million.

And I'll go into why that is, but that's that $37,580.

Okay.

So that's that's the minimum.

If you if you want us to do what we did this year, that's my best estimate.

And I don't play games with the numbers.

I don't have padding in that number.

That is my best estimate of what we need to be able to keep running the way we're running.

Okay, not to put on weight wage freeze or hiring freeze or stop outsourcing all those bad things that we pay for years to come.

Okay, not to do all that bad stuff.

Okay.

With addition to that, that there are certain things that we're wanting to do with the property room.

I'll go into details on that.

That's that next column.

That gets us to 38815 to do those things.

The next two columns just shows you the difference.

You know, I need a 2.7 to stay even.

I need 3935 to do even and the property room, right?

That's an 11 percent increase.

Okay?

So higher level.

We'll we'll dig into, okay, I'm not just going to give you guys money, right?

I'm not just going to approve money.

You got to tell me what what makes that up.

So if we do that, you'll notice that the chart, we stay basically the same.

We're still 63 percent people costs, we're 22 percent services.

The the business model hasn't changed.

Okay, so now these are what I call waterfall charts.

Um, and these are the best way that I've found to say how did I get from A to B.

Okay.

So for the budget, you'll see that right now we are at 34,880 just from the city.

I'm not talking about grants and and other things, just from the city money, okay?

We're at 3480 that they're gonna give us this year that they've approved.

How do I get to the last bar of the 38815?

You get there by the 2.7 million is over there to the right.

That's a request.

And this money that we're asking for property room is really broken up into two different projects.

One is to bring on six people that we have as part-time that are doing the transfer and all the work to convert over to bring them on full-time, that's 472,000, and then to bring on warehousing employees, which are currently sitting in the police department in HPD's budget, move them over to us.

That's nine people.

That's cost neutral to the city.

It's just moving the money from their budget to our budget, but to get it into our budget, okay?

Make sense.

All right.

Okay.

This is another look at the same information.

So for that shortfall, the first one is where will you spend that money?

A million three seventy-three will be spent on salaries, 259.

That's specifically to train those five people in firearms that we're going to do.

And then capital.

Um, you say, well, that's a big increase.

Well, we've taken on a lot of additional space for the property room, and in our base lease, there there are jumps, right?

You have a 30-year lease that they don't give you the same price every year.

There's increases.

Uh so that's what makes up the 2.7.

For the nine property room people, that's $763,000.

And then the six employees, that gets you that's what makes up the increase in the budget.

Okay.

Uh let's look at employee cost.

Historically, again, this is around 60 percent of our spend.

That's your employee cost, just gives you a trend line of our employee cost.

This year is going to go up by 2.2 million or 9 percent.

That's what we're requesting in this budget.

Again, we're bringing on 15 people from the property room.

Okay.

Did we get was it called PBJ money?

Am I saying that properly?

It was a property room money that it's supposed to be.

Yes.

Um, so they have paid for that.

So everything that we've well, not everything, 90 plus percent of what we've done with the property room has been funded.

We are being very careful about not saying we're going to do something without money to be able to do it.

So, yeah, these these people, uh, we've got the six people that are what we call the transition team.

So they're they're the group that are working on moving evidence between facilities, um, laying the ground work for stuff.

We were able to bring them on as basically part-time contract employees.

And in this budget is the funding to make them permanent full-time employees, so that that function remains there.

And then we have had the conversation between the mayor's office and HPD on the nine employees, and this gets complicated around what was the city's buy-out plan uh with the retirements and basically replacing those positions and then hiring those positions over in HFSC instead of HPD.

And that group becomes an audit function and warehousing function as part of this transition.

But the city gave us the money that we we have been funded along the way of the stages that we're making.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you.

This is the funding in next year's budget to continue on what we've got, what we've accomplished.

So just an example of what we're trying to do.

So uh we brought them on part-time this year because we had the cash to be able to do it.

We did not receive funding to do that, but we had more open positions than we anticipated, so we took that money and applied it to a need.

Again, we're not trying to save money, right?

We're we're trying to spend the money wisely, effectively, and efficiently to get the job done.

But next year, for us to do it next year and bring them on as full-time full-time employees, we need budgeted money to do that.

Okay.

Okay, the next chart just shows you a trend line of head count.

Obviously, head count drives cost.

I showed you the dollars.

These are the people.

The reason there are four lines there, the top line is most important, that's total employees.

The next line are HFFC employees.

The red line, which is now zero, are former HPD or city employees.

We don't have any left.

So no more need to talk about Fund 2213.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, you don't want to know.

It's a good question.

It may be back.

It will probably be back.

I'll explain it again then.

And then the gray line is the level of open positions.

Just one point to get on the record in case I missed this.

I can say that I I said I am anticip in this budget for this to work, that is at a 7.5% open position.

Historically, that's where we've run.

We want to be at zero percent, right?

But if we ever get to zero percent, um we're gonna have to find money somewhere to get to zero percent.

So again, I'm trying to walk the balance of what do I really need.

I'm not trying to save money, but you can't just hire somebody and then next year say, well, I just had extra money last year, you're fired this year because I didn't get the position.

So it it's a balance.

Yes, sir.

Uh can I just ask a uh history question?

What happened in fiscal year 23 when there was a it looks like there was a personnel cut.

Was that a uh from the top from the from the city cutting budget, or was that just a uh attrition thing or what?

That would be so in 23 from 25 to 19.

That was just attrition.

That would yeah, yeah, we haven't had any, we haven't had any cuts.

That would just be attrition.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We we had a period, like everybody did COVID and then a little after COVID, our turnover went up.

Um we're we're back more where we would expect our voluntary turnover rate to be, which is kind of six to between six and ten percent, um, which in the grand scheme of things is great.

For us, that's still pretty painful because of this immense investment that we have to make in training.

Okay.

So employee cost, a waterfall chart for that.

Uh you know, there's pay increases.

We average about three and a half percent uh in in the current year on pay increases, those property room employees, that's the number, the million one ninety-two is for that.

Uh we took it on the chin for health insurance coming up next year.

Uh we've been skating that bullet for a while, but it finally caught us.

It's over 20 percent increase this year.

And we do a lot of work trying to mitigate that, but it it caught up to us this year.

So that's employee cost.

Let me just explain this one time, I won't do it again.

But um with grants, the way grants work is we receive about 1.6 million a year in grants.

Some years more, some years well, we haven't been less, thankfully, in a while.

About 1.6 million.

So I don't know what exactly where that money is going to be spent.

So when I budget it, I say you're gonna get a good guy for a million six.

Down at the bottom of the income statement, which you'll see on the last page, it has a bad guy for a million six, right?

It's a wash.

Okay.

But during the year when we actually spend the money, we spend it on people, we spend it on outsourcing, we spend it on some other things.

I actually put those numbers into where they happen.

So if I'm going to do a comparison from this year to last year, the money that's in where it was actually spent this year, since it's in a different place next year, I have to take it back out.

That that so every time you see grant, you'll see a negative number on these waterfall charts.

Because I'm trying to say, how did I get from this year to next year?

It's just I won't bore you with that again, but you wouldn't understand it if I didn't explain it, I wouldn't think.

So that is for our biggest piece, services, which is a little over 20 percent.

Uh, you've got the forecast for this year.

Uh you've got a negative for grants, actual grant spending, property room, there's a little bit in there.

The firearms training that will happen next year that didn't happen this year.

Um, that 42,000 negative is just because it was fund 2213, but we don't have any city employees this year.

That gets you to the new number for fiscal year 27.

And all these numbers ticking tight of the bigger picture.

This is just the details.

Really, supplies, it's a wash.

I'm now so we're figuring out a way through efficiencies to eat the inflation.

And the inflation is hitting us.

That example, thankfully, it's not that big of a number.

But in this budget, I'm saying we'll spend the same, right?

We're just going to figure out how to make it work.

Again, I I don't just come in and say, hey, inflation is 5 percent, give us an extra 5 percent.

I don't ask that.

Okay.

So these numbers assume that we're gonna find a way through efficiency to eat the cost increases.

Okay.

Capital.

We do not have any new capital planned for this year.

What these this capital spending is are these are lease contracts for equipment and buildings that we are and IT systems that we are currently contractually obligated to.

Those are the payments that will be made.

Yeah, yes.

In in terms of capital stuff, because I can already hear that question of really you don't have any capital equipment that you need to probably do.

This is always an issue of when we replace instruments, but this is again one of those spots.

Understanding what the city's budget challenges are.

We're taking the position that we can we can wait.

There's a there's a risk, but we can we can wait on some of this stuff for a year.

But yes, there are capital needs that we have.

And just as an example, we had to, well, we've probably spent a hundred thousand, a couple items broke, couldn't be fixed, and had to be replaced.

And the fact that we have higher open positions than we expected, we take that money and and spend it there, right?

We just find a way to make it work.

We have not been in a situation where one of the machines breaks down and I need 500,000, right?

I mean, we would ask for a special thing if we shut down the bio lab because a machine broke.

But thankfully we haven't been in that position.

And then non-capital really are capital items, but if it's under $5,000, we don't capitalize it, we just expense it, another counting thing.

The $253 is how much we spent this year.

I'm assuming we'll need and spend the same amount next year with 200 plus employees.

Okay.

Now, uh you're gonna say, please don't go over all these numbers.

And I say thank you.

I don't want to go over all these numbers.

Okay.

So this is just the detail to get the budget on the record.

The next four pages are line item detail of what we're asking you to approve, and I need it on the record.

This first page is a higher level look at our income statement.

The third, so you see fiscal year uh 26 forecast.

You see the base need, the next one over, which is the 2.7 plus the property room.

That's what you are voting on.

That's what we're asking you to approve.

When I went all the way back to the beginning, I said 3.9 million, 11 percent.

That's what we're asking you to approve.

And then the pages, so that's a summary of our income statement, what you are looking at there, with the delta, the changes and the percentage increase.

The following pages is the actual PL income statement profit loss.

Okay, and it just has that middle column, the FY27 budget, which is what I'm asking you to approve on behalf of um all the employees in the work that we do.

And I that's there to be on the record.

But the next pages are the income statement of HFFC with the budgeted line items of which I've already explained all the changes.

Right.

You this this is the detail.

Any questions on the budget?

Okay, then I would ask for a vote.

Very good.

Thank you very much for your presentation.

Thank you very much for your presentation.

No more questions.

I mean, sometimes with all of this, it takes a while to absorb it, you know.

And then think about a question.

Well, we're gonna vote, but at the next meeting, if you even have a question that you want to ask, that's okay too.

So um, since there are no additional questions, we will now have a voice vote to approve the fiscal year 2027 budget.

Board members, please unmute your mics at this time.

Do I have an emotion to approve the FY 2027 budget?

As presented.

So move.

Okay, thank you very much.

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

All right.

Um all in favor, please say yes aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any oppose?

Nay.

Thank you.

Board members, we pass the voice vote for the budget.

Thank you.

David, you are a rock star with all of this.

You you take something so complex and bring it down to a level even I can understand, which isn't very high, so I recognize it's not high bar, but thank you very much for your work and how you try and move the money around creatively and be able to get the work done.

So thank you so much.

Oh, okay.

My husband, my late husband was a CPA, and I never understood it as well as I understand it when you reported.

So thank you.

Um agenda item 11.

A report from Jacqueline Morrell.

Quality director, including an overview of the updates on quality and testimony metrics.

It's all yours.

Hello, good morning.

So as mentioned today, I'm going to be talking about some quality updates.

Um during the month of January, the quality division completed our management review report.

Now, the best analogy that I can use to kind of um describe what is a management review would be do the doing the comparison of let's compare this as your yearly preventive um checkup, doctor checkup.

And um, so just as um so what what we do for the quality division, we kind of take a step back from our day-to-day basis and we look at internal and external factors to kind of run a diagnostic of our laboratory, right?

So whenever you go to the doctor, not only do they do blood work, but they also include other biometrics like height and weight.

They also have a very extensive list of questions, right, to see what is different in your lifestyle, maybe diet or whatnot, in order to assess your overall healthness, the healthness of your system, right?

So for the laboratory purposes, um we have these questions where we want to see are our processes still performing the way we intend them to do, right?

Are they still um satisfactory to our stakeholders?

We also look to our processes and procedures and methodologies to see are these still fit for purpose, and we also look to try we also look and make sure that gaps that have been identified or better say like symptoms, are they are we treating these proactively um before they become systemic and they become more serious?

Now, this report is pretty extensive.

It is 48 pages long.

So rather than me being here two hours presenting, I did acquire I did um pick several items to kind of talk about with the board.

But I will work with Natalie after the meeting to try um to send you the management review report in case um you want to review it with a cup of coffee.

Now, so for 2025, we completed a total of 10 audits.

Now, all of these audits incorporated all of our technical sections, our safety and our evidence unit as well as our safety and um safety and security of our laboratory.

Now the intent of these audits is to ensure that not only are we complying to our internal procedures, but that we're also meeting the external accreditation requirements, and uh that's why we and it's also an accreditation requirement for us to complete this on a yearly basis.

In addition, we completed we submitted 362 blind cases.

Just as a quick reminder, the quality division for the blind quality control program, we create and insert samples that look like real evidence, and because this samples are indistinguishable from real evidence, the analysts don't um treat these like real case work, right?

So we're able to use this program as a real-time performance monitor radar, basically.

We're able to see and make sure that our processes are still working as well as the performance and competence of our staff or or forensic practitioners.

We also in for 2025 we implemented seven OSEC standards.

Now, OSEC standards are nationally recognized scientific requirements across a variety of different forensic disciplines.

Now, while we are accredited, accreditation provides a great structure or framework for us to not only for our quality system, quality management system, but also provides a great structure for the technical sections.

However, the accreditation requirements are not technically specific, and that's where these OSEC standards are very helpful and resourceful, right?

Because the implementation of these standards basically ensures and promotes a standardization of the forensic disciplines national and a national level.

In addition, we completed nine risk assessments and completed 16 preventive and process improvements um initiatives.

Now these are very important because we rather work on risks and any discrepancies or concerns that we might see in our processes, and we want to make sure that we make those changes before these um become a problem, right?

So we we have a pretty big um promotion of these type of um tools.

And lastly, I wanted to talk about that we had 194 nonconformances reported to the quality division.

And while these number may appear high, this actually a really good positive healthy quality culture indicator, right?

Because this means that our staff members are able to proactively recognize deviations and nonconformances and report these out no matter um how low the risk are, right?

And reporting these are valuable because we're able to investigate this with section management, so we're able to address them early on and make corrections and implement corrective action measures and to ensure that this doesn't happen.

Now, as I mentioned, I will work with Natalie.

Again, these were some some high-level points that I wanted to bring the board uh to kind of maybe hopefully make you uh read this and kind of see all what happened in 2025, which was a very busy year.

Now moving on to my last topic, uh I wanted to talk about our internal audits.

We are about to start this season, um, in two weeks, in fact.

And the purpose, as I mentioned, uh internal audits are a great compliance tool that we use on a yearly basis.

And uh we audit all technical sections.

So as you see, there are some sections that transcend or overlapped um within months, like firearms or there might be others.

And the whole basis of this is that rather than making this a very rapid um internal audit, we try to space these out so allow time for us to complete this and make sure that we have a very thorough sampling of all of the processes and all of the analysts and the work product um that they're doing in order to make sure that we are prepared and that we are compliant with what we say we do.

Um that is my last topic.

Uh is there any questions?

Yeah.

When you're talking about a 16 preventative accents, uh an idea of what we solve in my work.

Okay, let me put me on the spot and 48 pages.

Um let's see.

One of the most memorable at ones, and I can't recall right now if it was conducted in 2024 and 2025.

This is one of the examples uh for the forensic toxicology section.

One of the things that they did, and maybe Dr.

Stott can talk a little bit.

Uh, we had a BD tube uh provider manufacturer of blood tubes uh that are toxicology section used, and they issued a recall at a national level.

And while it is my understanding that it didn't affect our blood tubes, the forensic toxicology did still did an internal um verification study to show that it did like this recall did not affect the blood tombs that they did.

So it's one of those, it's just it's a preventive way to show that something didn't have an effect, or if they did, you kind of want to know the facts.

That's one of the most memorable ones that I can think of.

Um that one's a pretty good example of the kind of things.

Because you remember the BD.

So we we still are enjoying BD's performance there.

Um nationally, there have been shortages of the gray top tubes uh manufactured by Becton Dickinson.

Um we have all been working at what else other opportunities uh tubes are there.

There's one other manufacturer, toxicology has evaluated if that tube could work for us.

But they the the biggest thing was they took it upon themselves to go look at okay, how well do other kinds of tubes other than great tops work?

Um we got a publication out of that.

I mean, that's it's all part of a preventive action like that.

And then also stuff that has to fit inside of the money that we have.

Right.

And there also might be others where you might think that they're a little bit minor, but from the risk assessments, that's why we like risk assessments, we're able to identify areas of like, okay, maybe there is a little bit of discrepancies, or maybe there's a little clarification that we need to do in the training program.

So we make revisions and we do a preventative um, we employ we do process improvements or preventive actions to try to make the training program more robust or more understandable.

But overall, in the end, the work product is great because then it'll make sure that everybody is on the same page and understand while they're being trained.

So it kind of overlaps from all areas big national ones or smaller ones.

Okay.

Just a quick question about the OSAC saying there is out of seven uh implemented within 2025?

Correct.

Okay.

So a lot of disciplines in those seven.

So that would be a combination of forensic biology.

I believe there was toxicology for this one for this year, forensic biological and layden prints, if I'm not remembering, misremembering.

But these OSAC standards, Stategate, uh they get published around every month, right?

So what one of one of the things that we do is every single month, um, my the quality manager for the quality division, she meets what the quality specialist, the rest of my team, and the appropriate management to kind of go over the standards so they are aware of what is up in the pipeline.

And from that point forward, we work with the sections to create like a checklist or a gap assessment where we kind of do a comparison of like what does the requirement in that OSEC standard state, and are we compliant to it, or do we think we are, or what revisions if we're not we need to do to that procedure, or do we need to do additional validations in order to be in compliance, right?

And from there after that gap assessment is completed, we work with the sections and um carrying that to the final.

So it also it's very dependent on the number of standards that are being published, but also what the work capacity of the sections, as you saw.

Some sections have a little bit of, you know, they're working through other priorities as well.

So it's it's striking me maybe just a little reminder of some of you may not either remember or it's gotten away.

OSAC is the organization of scientific area committees.

Um go back to the 2009 National Academy of Sciences uh report that was very critical of forensic sciences.

One of the things that it pointed out was okay, there are accreditations, and all of the laboratories in the country are accredited to either ISO 17025 as a standard, or there's some that have 17020 as a standard.

Both of those standards are not forensic standards.

17025 is actually a measurement and calibration standard, and 020 is an inspection standard, but they're not forensic standards.

And the the joke in the ISO world is ISO is a fantastic way of saying you do what you say and you say what you do, but nowhere in there does it say you do it right.

Um it's just the nature of how that accreditation program works.

So there has been a long-standing weakness in the entire system of those standards that are tailored to forensic practices and best practices.

Years ago, there used to be what were called the SWIGS, TWIGs, and IWIGs, scientific working groups, the technical working groups, and the interdisciplinary working groups that were all under the National Institute of Justice.

They had absolutely no binding ability to say anything other than, yeah, this is kind of a good idea, and you if you feel like it, you should do it.

And in about let's see, this was about eight years ago, um it became evident that we really needed to do something else.

So National Institute of Justice, in combination with the National Institute for Standards and Technologies, stood up what was called the organization of scientific area committees as a framework to create consensus-based standards and then publish those standards under a standard setting body that become a standard that a laboratory can adopt.

Now the challenge that we've had in the last few years is there still is no mechanism to actually require a laboratory to adopt these standards.

Yes, I said that.

Did a resolution that we will self-adopt these standards as they come uh available.

So we have gone in, and we're one of um there's actually a fair number of labs around this country now that self-adopt.

But if you look at NIST's website about adoption of OSAC standards, Texas is way ahead of the rest of the country uh because of the work that we've done here to adopt these standards as I mean, we s hund OSAC is a group of about six or seven hundred professionals in all the forensic disciplines.

Thousands and thousands of thousands of hours have gone into creating these standards.

We should probably adopt them.

Yeah.

Yeah, and to kind of further the your question, um, while we may have only been focusing on the ones that um the standards that got published during this year, we have implemented these standards since five years ago in all and all technical disciplines for here at HFSC.

Uh yeah, I I again I'm I'm new to the board.

Um can you give me a some clarity on what a nonconformance is?

Yes.

Um so our we have um our nonconformance system is basically any situation where it's not um it's a deviation or unapproved deviation of one of our procedures or processes.

So let's say your SOP states that you need to um pipette 16 microliters in order um for this procedure or for for this assay to to occur, right?

Um so an example of this would be maybe you pipette 20 or whatnot.

Those type of situations we we would we ask the analyst to report these type of situations so we have documentation to show not only the risk that this had from a technical perspective, but also as a means for us to correct it or see that maybe we're seeing from the lab wide for that section, we're seeing some discrepancies, or this is the third time it's happened, let's say in six months, right?

So we're able to see like okay, this is something to step systemic and very process based, so we need to make sure our are the analyst really clear on what that procedure is or that process.

So it's um it's a good tool for us to kind of be able to correct and remediate things that happen, and there's just a plethora of different things.

So when there when um as I mentioned, we look at the risk as well.

There are certain instances that may be a little bit higher risk to our processes, and when it does, I do just have to disclose those to our our crediting bodies, but I also bring this up to the board so you're aware of these, because these do lie rise to a little higher, more serious um level.

But it's just the unapproved deviation of our processes or procedures.

Um there are instances for nonconformances, there are have been situations that have had an impact to our outputs or to our processes, but it's outside of our control, but we still document through those um as nonconformances as a means for us to show what actions we took to correct and remediate to prevent this from happening and from that system um issue that's outside of our control, what we're doing in order to protect our outputs, right, and our services.

Um the most recent one was actually through our blind program.

We were able to confirm and identify that one of the reagents of the forensic biology section that they used that um there was some manufacturing defects, and we were able to confirm and prove that.

So for that instance, while it was not our reagent, it was a reagent that we used for our services.

So we disclosed this not only to our crediting bodies, but also to our you know, stakeholders like HPD, Harris County, and Fort Benn, district attorney's office, and we started working and implementing internal measures uh to show how we're preventing this defect if it happens or not, how are we protecting our our processes in place?

So that's just some sort of examples.

No, I I I'm very much appreciate that.

What I'm seeing from this is that I guess something that might be not fully appreciated is that this is also the product, I guess, of a of a culture of professionalism in your in your lab uh that that these are people that are being transparent about these things as they happen.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Comments?

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

As always, an excellent report.

Do uh moving on to agenda item 12.

Which is a call for a motion to adjourn.

Do I have motion?

So moved.

Thank you.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Thank you.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

I all opposed say nay.

We are adjourned, and our next meeting is May 8th.