DeWitt County commissioners began their annual budget planning workshops with various county departments Monday. County officials heard from staffers at the county clerk’s office, the extension service, the tax assessor- collector’s office, the veteran’s service officer, the district clerk’s office and Precinct 2 commissioner’s office.
Apart from the typical cost of living pay increases, a few minor staffing adjustments and various equipment purchase requests—ranging in price from a simple computer printer in one of clerk’s offices on up to the replacement of a roughly half-million dollar piece of road equipment in Precinct 2— no major budgetary surprises came to light as a result of Monday’s hearings.
One item raised with recurring regularity dealt with the county’s handling of longevity pay to employees.
A few years ago, De-Witt County approved a $100 per year pay incentive, payable to all hourly employees, based on the number of years each employee had worked for the county.
Noticeably absent from that longevity pay perk, however, were the salaried employees with the county, chiefly its elected officials and others like county extension agents and the county auditor, all of whom (barring those elected officials) receive the larger parts of their earnings from outside the county payrolls.
The county clerk’s office was the first on Monday to broach the possibility of including elected officials for the longevity pay benefit as well, and by the end of the day’s budget talks, requests slowly funneled in from all other departments as well.
No decisions were made on any of Monday’s budget hearing requests. Those will come later when the county approves its annual budget and tax rate in a couple of months.
These hearings are more discussion items for budget planners as they make decisions on the coming year’s expense line items.
In other business:
• Commissioners approved a one-time retention incentive bonus payable to two officers working in the Juvenile Probation Department, to make use of the remaining funds left over from a juvenile probation grant awarded to the county last year.
• The county received its annual report from the Texas County and District Retirement System, complete with plan assessments for the 2027 calendar year.
• Commissioners approved a division order with Devon Energy Production Co. for the Hansen A 9H Unit.
• The county approved several temporary rights of way along roadsides, including requests made by NMT Permitting, NexGen Water Solutions and Select Water Solutions, all in commissioner Precinct 3.
• Commissioners accepted an insurance claim settlement payment on a totaled 2025 Chevy Tahoe, lost in service of the county sheriff’s office.
