Meet the Candidates & more..
Limestone County Sheriff Candidates Chris Henson and Murray Agnew; Pct. 3 Commissioner John McCarver (incumbent) and Bill David Sadler; and Pct. 1 Constable Scott Smith (incumbent) and Allan Stewart all participated in the Meet the Candidates Event at the Kosse Community Center on February 3. Though opening statements by all were published in a recent edition of the Journal, we’ve included a few responses to questions submitted by community members and leaders that didn’t make the article last week.
SHERIFF CANDIDATES
What do you consider to be the county’s most pressing needs as they relate to the Sheriff’s Office?
Chris Henson - Presence in outlying communities. I don’t think the Sheriff’s Office currently has a very strong presence in our outlying communities; you guys at Farrar, East and West Lake Limestone, Billington, Munger, down here at Kosse, you’re lacking in the Sheriff's Office presence. And when I refer to that, I want you to think back over the number of years, not the last couple months, not the theatrics that are going to go on during election time, think about your time in the last couple of years, what have you seen, have you been properly served? My answer to that is no.
Murray Agnew - I agree with the outlying community, we need to have officers out there. Part of our problem now is, we have two officers, sometimes three, covering 933 square miles. When they have calls for service in different parts of the county, it’s hard to be everywhere at once. Right now, we are predominantly just responding to calls instead of patrolling; I would like to change that some and try and get some more officers out there to help patrol and to alleviate part of the call back up volume.
Several Deputies have made statements about poor staffing and inability to enforce laws because the management says it’s not good for politics. What is your belief on allowing deputies to make their own decisions while out on patrol?
Chris Henson - They of course have to be able to make their own decisions and enforce the law, I’m not worried about politics. The politics will take care of itself because we are going to be a working department. In that, when I talk about structure, the main way to take care of that problem is with structure. In my agency, you know where the lines are; you know what’s expected of you, you know what you can and cannot get away with, there’s no question about it. And there’s nothing wrong with having a department that is run with structure. Now is it a military operation? It is not, however, the deputies need to know where the lines are, what’s expected of ‘em. And they’re going to know day in and day out. The benefit they’re going to have is that when I take office, January 1, 2021, you’re going to have a working Sheriff. What I mean by that is I will answer calls, I will patrol, I will investigate, I will tow inmates, I will do every bit of it. This is not Harris Williamson County, this county is not big enough to have an Executive Sheriff. This county deserves, you deserve, a working sheriff. And when you have that, that’s where you lead by example; they will know what’s expected of them because if I’m doing it, you’re doing it too. Simple as that. So how do I address that? I hit the ground running and I go to work, and they know, they’re to enforce the laws. If there’s an issue with politics or with a decision they made, if it was a right decision, that’s the decision we’re going to go with. We’re not going to second-guess right decisions; if they violated policy, that’s something I deal with, if they violated the law, obviously that’s something else to deal with. But we’re not going to bend and change the rules because someone was mad the law got applied to them; we’re not doing that. So I’m behind my guys 24/7, again that's a benefit they have by having a working agency head, I’m right there with you. If I’m not in the car with you, I’m on the scene with you. If I’m sweating, you’re sweating; simple.
Murray Agnew - I’m glad he said all that because that’s what I do every day. We answer calls, we do investigations, we transport people to the courthouse, sit in the courtroom with ‘em, that’s exactly what we’re doing now. I do not, and have never told any of the deputies not to enforce a law or anything with politics. Sheriff Wilson’s policy has always been ‘you do your job, and I will deal with everything else’ and that’s what had been passed on to him. Whoever did write this question, I would love to speak with you afterwards just one on one, to try to address anything there, but that has not ever been told that I’m aware of from anybody in our agency.
How would department policy regarding traffic stops and issuing citations change if you were to be elected?
Murray Agnew - Right now, if they see a violation and they make a traffic stop, it’s their discretion whether they write the citation or they write a warning. As required by law, they write a warning to show the contact, but the citation is up to them and that will remain that way.
Chris Henson - Same question? (Koch confirms) Same answer.
If elected Sheriff, what will be your first priority and what action do you plan?
Murray Agnew - First priority is the citizens of Limestone County, for one. There’s things that we can change, there’s things that we can try and do better, as long as we keep trying to move the Sheriff’s Office in a positive direction. Once you get your staff in order, then that determines how far forward you can go and how quick. If you have a staff that is younger and doesn’t have much experience, you might not be able to get as far ahead as you’d like to immediately, so sometimes you may have to slow down on that.
Chris Henson - My first priority is going to be the restructuring of the department. I believe the department should be structured differently; I prefer more boots on the ground, less boots on the desk. So the first thing will be a restructuring of the department, and that change in and of itself will take care of it. So that’s the action, the second part of your question; it’s all in one answer.
The high rate of turnover at the Sheriff’s Office leads to a constant presence of inexperienced law enforcement officers. What would you do to improve the working conditions and retention to retain some qualified officers?
Chris Henson - Okay, that goes back to me functioning as a working Sheriff, and the reason for that is I will absorb some of the duties held by the more administrative positions. In doing that, in streamlining the administration, I can take that money, funnel it down to the mid- and entry level staff, which will get us more applicants which will help get us completely staffed if at all possible. Law enforcement’s hard, everybody knows no one wants to do this job anymore, it’s miserable. We’re at two openings, I think you’re at four; it is a hard hard hard profession, and that’s why you as an agency head has to hit the ground running and work every single day. But with the way that I will staff and structure the administration, that will free up- I’m telling you Commissioner, I’m not asking you for any more money. You give me the budget he has now, and watch what I can do with it. It’s simple, and it can be done, and I will do it. These aren’t things that I want to do, these are things that I can do and I will do. So that will help solve the problem. These guys are broke. You guys, the county pays deputies $17.50 an hour, give or take, so for $17 bucks we want these guys to go out, get beat up, spit on, chased, hit, cussed, yelled at, you name it, for $17 dollars, and that’s asinine. But the money is in there, and I can fix it when I take office January 1, 2021.
Murray Agnew - A lot of what’s there is funnelled from the budget. Unlike Chief Henson, we don’t get to set our own budget; he’s the City Manager, he sets his. [Henson comments- “I don’t set mine, Council does.”] Council does with your suggestion. [Henson “Well, yeah.”] Okay. With us, we go to the Commissioners Court, we ask for what we get. They then, as Commissioner said a minute ago, they decide whether to cut it or maintain it. We hire, traditionally, the Sheriff’s Office has hired people that are straight out of the Academy because the pay rate, that’s what we get. We train those officers, and we train them very well. Some of them stay, some of them don’t. Unlike the city, I know whenever Chief Henson went in, I think his budget has increased almost $250 something thousand dollars and most of that was in salaries since he’s taken office; we haven’t had that luxury so we are competing for the same officers. His patrol officers make what the investigators make at our office. So until we can get on the same page and get comparable in pay, it’s going to be hard to keep as many officers as municipalities.
COMMISSIONER CANDIDATES
Why does the County and City government have such a disconnect and why do many of the county services stop at the city limits, but the taxes do not?
Bill David Sadler - Well, I think that one of the biggest concerns in our community right now is I think that we all need to support our Sheriff’s Department, and all of our city police entities and so forth. I do, the second part, I think going back to the first, I think that everybody needs, we all just need to be on the same page. We need to have open communication with one another, all of the entities need to get along and work together because we’re just one community is what we are, instead of us being… I know we are taxed in different ways for the county and the city and soforth but I think we have to work together to be able to have a successful Sheriff’s Department and our city police entities.
John McCarver - A lot of times people don’t realize how many services the county gives to the cities. We all have to have a county clerk’s office to keep all the records and the deeds to this land; we have to have a Sheriff’s Department to enforce those deeds and take care of that property. We have to have a jail, we have to have a county judge’s office, we have to have an office out there for highway patrol, we have to have emergency management, we have 20 or 30 other positions that we have to fund for the county to provide services to every community in this county. Not only that, but if we started fixing roads in Mexia, we wouldn’t have enough money to ever get to Kosse. That’s a big town, and Groesbeck, look at the six streets there, I mean we’d have to skyrocket on our taxes and we couldn’t do that. I mean, we try to help where we can, but it’s a never ending battle. We don’t have enough money to take care of our county roads right now, and we have trouble just like the Sheriff’s Department would like more money, the Road and Bridge Department would like more money, everybody would like more money, but there’s only so much money to go around, and we have to be responsible with that money. We have a certain amount of money to work with, and if we can’t take care of our business, then we’ll be changing offices every four years, everybody. That’s one of those things, there’s only so much money to go around; we’d like to help everybody, but there’s some things you just can’t do. Talk to me if you have a problem, let’s see what we can come up with.
As Commissioner, what is your position on working to increase the salary of county employees?
John McCarver - Well, we’ve done the best we could. A three percent raise last year, I mean there’s a certain amount of money you can raise. We have to look at the budget, there’s certain departments that probably need raises, there’s no question that the Deputy Sheriff’s should make more money than $17.50, I sure wouldn’t get out there for $17.50 and risk my life. But you know, Road and Bridge, we’re trying to bring some of these people up. The new Sheriff, I believe, will work with us to get something done about that. There’s different ways to find money in a budget that might be spend a little bit different than it should be, and if the right eyes get on it they might straighten that up. The main thing is, we just do the best we possibly can with the amount of money we have to work with.
Bill David Sadler - My position would be to dig as deep into the budget as we possibly could, see where we’re lacking as far as if there are certain areas or departments within that don’t have an adequate raise or so forth. Like Mr. McCarver said, I think everybody would love to give everybody raises all the time, but the money has got to be there within the budget. All that I can state is that I think that we would have to work as closely and try to monitor the budget and try to cut costs where we can and go from there.
Explain your understanding of how county finance and expenditures work.
Bill David Sadler - Okay, my understanding how county finance and expenditures work is that the commissioners all work together to come up with a budget and so forth, and adopt a budget and so forth, and we have to as the commissioners court, approve expenditure items. All of that must be approved and so forth, so I think that just working together and trying to establish the high priorities and so forth would be the route that we would need to go.
John McCarver - One thing good about county government and the budget, we have to balance our budget. We can’t just go out there and spend a lot of money that we don’t have, which is different from Washington. We collect a lot of taxes, a lot of fees, all kinds of fees, the private prison brings in a little bit of money sometimes. I think this year’s budget was about, a little over 25 and a half million, and of course on taxes we collect about 15 million. So that other 12 million or 10.5 million was made up of different other things that we collected for different items. But the main thing is Commissioners Court works together and tries to spread this out; you only have so much money. We wish we could fix everybody’s problems but you can’t. That’s the way we’re going to look at it and do the best we can.
CONSTABLE CANDIDATES
Explain the duties of the Constable.
Allan Stewart - The duties of the Constables Office, number one, one of the main duties is to serve your civil papers. Also, they are the Bailiff and the security for the JP courts. With that being said, you also have the ability and the right to run traffic, to perform traffic stops; if you have to, you can make arrests. You are a peace officer in the state of Texas.
Scott Smith - He’s correct. You do serve the papers that come from the various courts in the county, even from out of county, regardless it’s a writ or any kind of citation. You are responsible for the courtroom security in the JP one office when he holds court or even if he holds any hearings. You do have the power to run traffic, you do have that authority. You can make arrests, you can serve warrants, you can do all that stuff. He was correct in his answer.
What do you consider to be the number one priority of the Constable’s Office?
Scott Smith - That’s kind of a broad general question, I mean you could say it would be the paper-serving, you could say it would be the security of the court; I guess I would say in my personal opinion, would be the safety and welfare of the entire county and Precinct 1 especially.
Allan Stewart - And I have to say that I agree with a lot of what he says. As a public servant, as a peace officer, your main priority is public safety. Whether that is out by the lake, whether that is assisting in Kosse, assisting in Thornton, assisting the Sheriff’s Office. You never want to step on any toes, but if you can be there to assist and help provide public safety, I believe that’s the main objective of the office.
Early Voting
Early voting will be held at the Limestone County Courthouse in room G-1, located at 200 W. State St. in Groesbeck. Voters can submit ballots there between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, Feb. 18-21.
Friday, February 21, will be the last day to apply for a ballot by mail (received, not postmarked).
Additional time will be offered from 10 a.m. to 4 pm. Saturday, Feb. 22.
The following week, the polls will be open Monday through Wednesday, Feb. 24-26, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. That Thursday and Friday, Feb. 27-28, voters will be able to cast ballots from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The Mexia Civic Center, located at 101 S. McKinney Street in Mexia, will offer the same schedule as the courthouse during the aforementioned dates and times.
A final chance to meet the candidates will be hosted on Monday, February 17, 2020 at 6 p.m. at the Groesbeck Convention Center. Doors open at 5 p.m.
