Good morning. Welcome to this special call meeting of the Tarrant Appraisal District. To get us started, I've asked, Mike Alfred to lease an invitation. Dear heavenly father, thank you for the opportunity to meet together in a way that promotes transparency. And please give us wisdom and help us to, be thoughtful and deliberate in any actions we take. Please guide us through that decision making process so that we keep your spirit and
your wishes in our heart. Jesus' name we pray. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America. Roll call. Sorry. We have a quorum. Mike Bryant's absent, out of town. First thing on the agenda is public comment. I have no sheet. Oh, never mind. I'm freaking out. Oh, wow. What? Yeah. Blow that up pretty big. First first first first first speaker, George Dodson. Good morning, board members. The 2024 error of giving a 198 extra votes to the community college, and and
those votes were taken away from other entities is another black eye on TAD. I'm not blaming, Don Bobbitt for the error, but the results are exactly what we saw repeated with the past, chief appraiser. Apparently, someone at TAD was able to make the error. No one checked on it. Although I've been told the community college questioned the number and was told by TAD that that the number was correct. My other major concern is why why do none of the applicants require candidate's signature
date and notary date? Seems very unusual to me. I don't can't think of another situation where I've notarized something, but there was no date on it. We're able we were able to see that because Saeeda's, signature was not blacked out. Alright. My other question is why are the signatures necessarily blacked out on the applications? If you look on the website, you'll see that the others are blacked out. Also, Also, Wendy's application is her signature block is smaller.
I don't know why. Just seems unusual. Anyway, if if you checked on the current TAD website, you will not see any information about the prior year's taxing entities votes. If those were shown, anyone would have been able to catch this error before, it took place. Also, you know, it's limited of what's on the website. Anyway, the website doesn't show taxing entities, election policies, and procedures that the board has used or approved.
Also recommend that a ballot allocation be brought to the board before they're sent out to the taxing entities so that, so the board is, it's an official, action. Also, is there even, are there even written, taxing entity policies and procedures document, and has that been reviewed and approved by the board? I doubt it. Does the procedure document everything, who's responsible for each step, and everything that should be
done to do it appropriately. I thank, Chairman Barnes for taking action on this, when he learned of the major error. I'm sure Joe Don, will be sure to report any future errors directly to the board as soon as they happen. It's very unfortunate. The TAD procedures are so loose. I thank the board this board and the last one for all their efforts to solidify procedures and stop the errors that have happened here in the past. Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you. Next person to speak, Daniel Bennett. Daniel Bennett, White Settlement. This file represents even a lawsuit for all the mishaps on this election dating back from 2015. This isn't the first rodeo for this group. That error should have been cut. It was questioned by doctor Anglin by the general counsel. I just got a text from doctor Anglin. She can't be here. She needs to be in your executive session. Nobody gets passed here. Mister Bobbitt, you don't get a pass. Tax code specific. It is your duty. But I wanna talk not about that.
I'll let you all sort through all that. I sued 11 taxing entities and had to get a lecture from the city of Arlington back in the day. Ultimately, I was right, but I didn't win. You could still be right and still lose. Well, I wanna talk about conflicts of interest. Interest. I wanna talk about the forty fourth annual TAAD. Some people went to that. I didn't think we were even members of it. Some took classes. 02/23/2025, t d TAAD annual conference forty fourth, ethics, board training. No statutory code of ethics specifically for central appraisal district boards.
Mere appearance of impropriety impacts effectiveness of local public officials. We have a chance in the state of Texas to set a code of ethics and standards today, which we haven't had under mister law. I handed you my documentation out. Says there are no policy and procedures, and mister Bobbitt has had his hands full with all the crap he's had to put up with. And we've not and miss and it's on you, mister Campos. You're mister Rubrick. You're mister H E B. You said when you got on this board, you were gonna fix that.
Well, guess what? Fell through the cracks. We're being punished today again. When's it gonna end? It ends with changing the staff. Now I wanna talk about the conflicts of interest. Your wife is a teacher. Mister Crile's wife works for Birdville ISD. Is that not a conflict of interest? You wanna fully fund these schools? What so your spouses could be fully funded, mister Tepper? Under 6.03, f says common law. These are common law marriages. They have 50% ownership in those contracts. They should be disqualified from the board. Disqualified to run.
My opinion. I'm not a lawyer. You need to rule on that. Miss Burgess, where do I start? Those college votes should be disavowed. You need to recalculate who won and get the right person on the board that was bastardized. You've put Tarrant County through this for twelve years, and it's time to fix it. Thank you. Thank you. Sayed? Good evening, board. I'm Syeda Syed. I'm a Collierville resident. We will not meet today if if I do not speak up and talk with Chairman Barnes.
His office contacted me because I talk at TCC and at the same night I talk at Arlington ISD about this, this issue. Because of the wrong calculation done by tenant appraisal district, commissioner's court lost 22 votes. School districts combined, all 21, lost 118 votes. Forward City Council alone lost 29 votes. City of Arlington lost 11 votes.
Well, my very small city, Collierville, lost two votes in the system. You know, these two votes are very crucial for small entities. But here, people care about big entities, not worried about what going on in the small entities when when, this time, the calculation said five cities have zero votes because of the two election, election for two seats. Let's see what happened. But how can we trust the the system, the numbers given to the entities?
Because they are going to vote tonight. Some of the entities are voting tonight. Let's see what would be the result. But, last year, whatever happened at TCC, miss Pena got 75 votes. Mister Blaylock got 141 votes. So does miss Burgess got 289 votes. This is my suggestion. Please do not consider, all 505 votes from TCC and then announce the result what
happened there. Because, mistake has already been done, but we can fix it whatever we can. Some people knew it before, but they kept quiet. That's the problem. That's the culture at TED. I'm not pointing out any of the employee. Okay. They all are human. They make mistake. But there there should be some check and balances on, on people. Those numbers that they use for calculation, the appraisal district use for calculation should come
from tax assessor collector's office. Not from any of the citizen that they said, oh, this is the, assumption. But what happened at that time, people got benefited out of the mistake done by because of the copy pasting of the values. Let's see what happened at this time. And, I request, chairman Barnes that please make sure at the end of this meeting that those numbers for this year is correct and accurate.
There is no policy and procedure at that, so does the entities. Entities are going to work tonight and onward. Let's see what happen. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Chandler Crouch. Julie is that when that goes off that's the time. Okay. Alright. Why are you gonna ask that now? I was gonna ask. Do I have three minutes? Okay. I'm gonna start my timer right now. Chandler Crouch, Fort Worth. Appreciate, the opportunity to speak with you. I've had, a while to chew on this and to try and put it in context and, understand what's happened.
I think that it's pretty obvious that the actual error itself was, effectively a typo. And, it's just, unfortunate that it was a typo on something so consequential. It's a very important thing. If you look at, kind of an analogy, I was thinking about, I thinking about I I I haven't had a drop to drink of alcohol in over ten years. I don't know how long. It's because I wasn't making good decisions when I drink. And I decided I needed to stop. And, I had a friend that didn't make the same decision. He kept drinking, and he the the friend of mine ended up killing somebody in
a car accident. And, he served time in prison, and he's got a lifelong punishment of having this felony on his record. We made a lot of the same mistakes. It's just that the consequences for one were devastating, and I didn't have any consequences. And so, luck plays a significant factor in how things transpire. I just wanna say this, the reason we have evidence that something wrong has happened is because this man's been honest. I also wanna say the reason this is on the table is because this man,
Rick Barnes, saw the issue, picked up the phone, and went straight towards the issue to try and figure out what's going on. This dynamic, it yes. It's a black guy. Yes. It's nasty. It's it's just another negative headline, but this is way different than the other negative headlines we've seen in the past. In the past, the board did everything they could, and the chairman did everything they could to hide issues, avoid the truth. They did not wanna hear the truth. They didn't wanna face it. They wanna shove it under the rug. And when the chief appraiser was called to account, he would lie about it, hide
the facts, connive, and we have a different scenario today. The evidence that we have that you can hold him accountable is purely because he's been honest about it. Yes. He made a mistake by not telling you guys. That shouldn't that it is what it is. Y'all gonna have to deal with that. I'm just saying, the scenario is different. Thank you for walking forward into this. Thank you for being honest. I just believe that, you know, me and all the people on this side of the microphone, we can say wild things, we can, you know, have have political agendas
and all that. You guys have to make decisions with level heads thinking about the the future the district, making sure everything is, heading in the right direction. My timer will not come up at the same time as my note. How much do I got left? Twenty seconds. Alright. Just wanna go over the track record of him. He walked into the the most toxic appraisal district, went from small town to big town, had a public election, the most active board. We had, the reappraisal plan, which is the most politicized policy issue affecting appraisal districts, on and on.
And and now he's redoing the entire operating system, and there have been some mistakes made. I just wanna look at it as a whole. And, you've got a lot to consider. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. I did not show, no. I'm sorry. Eric Crowell. Good morning. Life's but a walking shadow. A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. You guys should recognize that as Macbeth, Shakespeare.
To put this, to credit Julianne Hanson, the the synopsis of that, life is a tale. It is also fleeting. An individual spend their brief hour of life full of sound and fury. For what? Against whom? In the end, none of the fury that consumes so much of life amounts to anything. And I say this not because this meeting is, an important. I I think it is. But I do think that the final results, that the air concluded wouldn't have changed
anything. I went and I went through the math, and if you take the top eight, vote getters outside of TCC, so the top seven, You'd have had 74 votes left. You can run through the numbers and, figure out how it would have all played out most likely. And so that that's all I would say when you consider if you take any action against mister Bob. But, the other thing I'd like to say is I made some public comments at TCC back on, I think it was June 8, letting TCC know that there was
a a reduction in value. And at the time, I didn't know why. But I do believe that this issue was actually noticed back in September 2024. There were some comments at a TCC workshop session, and, so it may have been lingering out there for a while. And, last thing I'm gonna say is my wife does work for Birdville. The I believe the the correct, the statute that applies says if she appraises property,
then she can then I am disqualified. My wife does not appraise property, so I just like to put that on the record. She is a it's an administrative assistant. So thank you all so much for your time. Thank you. I show no more public comments during the public comment section. The next issue on the agenda is action item, number three a, discussion and possible action of the process for entity appointments to the appraisal district board of directors. This is an interesting meeting because we have one agenda item and we have public speakers that wanna speak on the agenda item also, who also just spoke there in
person to be heard, and is already in public comments. And so I'm gonna call them back out and see if they wanna come back up. George. Okay. Daniel Bennett. Yeah. Daniel. I wanna share with you Daniel Bennett, White Sullivan. Richard Petrie was a vendor who applied and Mackenzie Essen won the contract back in October. Richard Petrie is 76 years old. He runs three appraisal districts. He put his bid in for 35,000. He was kicked to the curb. Some people didn't like him. But this is what he told me when it comes to the the the the
vote the way he does it. Okay? First off, he goes, mister Bennett, I I get a supplemental report, which is snapshot in time, from my software. There we go. When do we have working software? That's been the issue the whole time. And I've been standing up here saying those supplemental reports are in error, and there's people in this room. So when you go to recalculate this crap, ask yourself, where are you getting those numbers? Your numbers were $10,000,000 10,000,000 off of the college, mister Barnes. Why?
10,000,000. That's two votes for this election. None of these numbers can be trusted. Then mister Petrie said, mister Bennett, I take that supplemental report, I walk over to my Excel spreadsheet, and I type it in by hand. Then he has someone come behind him and check his work. They print it off, and then he picks it up. And you know, mister Petrie, he likes you, by the way. He thinks you're honest, and he's flabbergasted. He didn't tell the boy. He's upset. But he still likes you, and Joe and I still like you. Doesn't change things. You still be likable and make an error.
We just gotta own our own our crap. This has been going on for twelve years. He didn't take that report, and he walks over to another system where he enters that data, prints your notification, your vote total, your allocation, and he sends it off to the taxi attendants. That's how he does it. And he does it by hand. He owns it. He does it allocate it to anyone else. He doesn't delegate it. He does it himself. I could call mister Petrie right now, and he would tell us more than that. And that man was unfairly treated down in Johnson County.
Thank you. Thank you. Syed, you want us yes. All I would like to say is, please recalculate the votes for the last year's election and just make sure this year's election, the values are correct. It should come from your office, Mr. Barnes as a tax assessor collector and based on that entities can trust and can vote and all those who benefited from TCC's mistake or appraisal district's mistake, they should
keep an eye on that. Make a statement, something. It's been two weeks. No one said from this vote anything about TCC's vote. Not a single statement. But I do appreciate mister Bobbitt. He is honest. When I ask him a simple question, why all of a sudden TCC had that much force and this year it's dropped again, he gave me the right answer. The problem is it was not bring to the board at the right time.
And when no one stepped up, I stepped up and bring it to the to the board and to the entities. We all are human. We make mistakes. But, some mistakes if our kid and we as a parent say, hey. If you make any mistake, come to us, tell us, and we'll fix it. The same thing applies to you here. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Channel Crouch. I don't even know. I signed up twice. This is such a treat. I I just wanted to say this. I've I've had a lot of conversations and, and then I'll have a conversation with
somebody and then because I am general public, I didn't have to wait until the meeting was posted. Y'all have rules that you have to buy public, I didn't have to wait until the meeting was posted. Y'all have rules that you have to buy by. You couldn't get the same information I could get, because I can just pick up the phone and ask somebody. And, at the end of the day, I I've heard so many rumors and fear based kind of accusations or theories about what happened. And, and I know you would do this anyway, but I just wanna say, that facts and evidence are are what we've what what has to to win the day here. And and that's it. I appreciate you for appreciate the second opportunity to talk with you.
Have a great day. Mister Crowley, are you good or you coming back? Okay. That concludes public comment on the action item. The next step with action item is, mister Bobbitt is gonna present, how the process works in the first place. The way the the current process works, we we essentially take the September levy out of out of omentum. So usually, normally, I would use July with with minerals and late things being added to the roll. The the September levy is usually a little more correct, and that's what gets sent
out on tax bills in October. And so that all the ARB kinda process is kinda settled down that point, so it gives us a better idea of what what is actual levy for the entities. So we take that number, their their taxable value, the net taxable value, we multiply by their tax rate that gets applied or or, approved. And so that number then gets used for our next year's budget and for the voting allocation. And in doing so, like, normally, we we put this in the budget and we we then copy and paste into the allocation spreadsheet.
And when that happened, like, we have Tarrant County Hospital District, which is on our budget right below Tarrant County. And so they had 509,000 total levy. When we grabbed it and copied and pasted all entities into the vote, we copied and pasted ton Tarrant County Hospital District into Tarrant County College. The hospital district doesn't get to vote in the allocation. I'm not sure why it ends up the the laws, but they're not entitled to vote, but they are they do participate in our budget. And so the difference in entities, we copy and paste and we we didn't drop down and and bypass the hospital district.
We stuck their lead into the spreadsheet, for the prior year. When this did get brought to my attention by mister Crawl, I went through, revalidated the current year, I revalidated the prior year and found the issue and why where it happened. The reason the reason it got, to me, the reason that it got that it was found, so we did have the current year allocation on our website. We had the prior year allocation on the website, and they're both still there. And they're actually still there now. If you go on our website, you see the board allocation at the very bottom of the page has the historical stuff. There's a a smaller section for it.
But it is still there, and it's been there since June, or before. So we've we've tried to stay transparent to keep all of this stuff out there. And I I do admit that I should have caught it. I I was involved in other things. I a lot of these processes have kind of already been built, and so I didn't check that as closely as I should have. To me, there were more important things that I I needed to deal with at the time. Granted looking back, this is a a very important issue. As far as using the the the tax office levy, we can't use their living
their levy specifically because they have a different set of entities than we do. They they collect for different entities. We are bound by the the tax appraisal district is bound by the county line. Tarrant County tax office is not. And so we deal with multiple, tax assessors, and so we would have to take all their different numbers, add them up, and still split them on the county line somehow. And so it's not really feasible to use the numbers from the tax office. And so that's why they won't align, particularly ever, except on some days they're fully within the county. But we have, we have corrected the process going forward.
So on the next entity allocation, it'll be based on the levy, but that'll still be on a whole another spreadsheet. We won't have to copy and paste, but the numbers will kinda flow across automatically. The system the new system will have will actually be able to generate a total levy report. And so for this instance, we could generate a report that will never change, and it will calculate the numbers for us. We can just build that in the system where it's just automatically there, and we can move forward without having to copy and paste from from one system to the next. And so that should make the system and the whole process, little cleaner list list
human intervention involved. I do like mister Dodson's, approach on bringing it to the board before we publish it. That way, y'all can see kind of what we have calculated. That way, there's a second set of eyes before we publish it and make it the official numbers. So we'll probably adopt that. I think that's a very good idea. But again, this was my mistake. We should have caught it. I should have brought it to the board. I failed to do so at the time. I didn't see a way in the tax code to correct the issue. There's a process for recall, which didn't seem to apply. But otherwise, to me, the way I read the tax code, I'm in charge of
calculating the the the, allocation, and then we're stuck with it. I didn't see a way to correct it. And so at the time, I when I calculated the difference between what it should have been and what we published, I didn't see an outcome or a change in outcome. And so to me, it didn't look like an issue. I could have changed it if I wanted to, and so I moved on to the next thing. And so I realized now, in hindsight, that that was a mistake and I should have brought to the board. And and so I I really apologize for that, and I realized that it impacts the public trust and entities trust in TAD.
And that was one of the things I was hired to do when I when I was brought in here. It was to fix the camera system and restore public trust. And so I have failed in one of those aspects, and I deeply apologize for that that error. Thank you. Questions from the board? When did you discover the error? June 26. Is that when Eric Kyle Yes, ma'am. Told you about it? Okay. So did Tarrant County the only email I received that looked like it was related
to voting allocation was September 18, I believe, this year. So nobody questioned when they got 200 almost 200 extra votes? Not that I Why are we getting a higher number this year? No, ma'am. I I went back and had IT staff pull all emails that had to do with voting, vote, or allocation, from entity to entity specifically, and then a separate one just from the public in general. And we found there were only three or four emails, and the first one was from mister Crile. So no one question at the Tarrant County College meeting.
Why do we have more votes than we previously? Not that I'm aware of, not that we found through PI search. Okay. So so you met with mister Crile in June, is that what you're saying? He sent an email to the office on June 26. So an issue I have is that you're you're having discussions with others and you're leaving us in the dark, and we're the ones with our necks out there, and and we're trying to make this a transparent process. I'm I'm hearing that you're you're telling certain people different timelines and so that's why why I'm trying to figure out what what's accurate.
What So you didn't know prior to June last No, ma'am. Of this year. Is it this year? Yes, ma'am. Okay. So no one questioned anything prior to this? Not that I'm aware of. Prior to June. Okay. Any other questions about this part of the process? My question is I have a few, but so we have the 2025 election numbers, and we had the the board I wasn't most of us weren't on the board
at the time, had the 2023 election numbers. Yeah. The twenty twenty three election numbers we've determined were incorrect. How do we know that the twenty twenty five elections are true? I've gone back and revalidated them based on the levy. So who validated them in 2023? Yeah. It would have been '20 It was for the '24. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Scratch that. Yeah. Well, it's it was in 2023 when it was done. No. It was done in '24 because I wasn't hired until '24. So they weren't done until you got here? It's not even 2026 yet.
We're talking about twenty twenty six election right now. So I'm looking at the year to date that would have been done in 2023, correct? And brought to this and It would have been the '23 levy used for the twenty four election. Yeah. So who did those numbers then to determine what the votes were for the twenty twenty four election? It was my job to verify them, and I I did not validate them correctly. I understand that. Who did them? I'm not sure exactly which of the staff we have a process. Okay. That's that's that's fair enough. I think the the so man.
My, press release that I put out about this stands stands on itself in that my biggest concern here is that we had yet another situation where the TAD is not forthcoming with the public. We have another situation where we have an integrity issue and a dramatic lack of of transparency. And my question today is are we do we have a transparency problem today? And if not, how do we know that? Because I bet you the board would have been told, no. We don't in 2023 also. I mean, at at this point, all I can tell you is that I've revalidated
the spreadsheet. I looked at I pulled re pulled the the twenty twenty three totals and the 24 totals from September and validated them against the budget and allocation. And that they they are correct. Okay. Was anybody else not not this isn't a general comp question for anybody. Anybody else, including all of us. Anybody else made aware of this prior to June that you know of at all? No. Mister Crile reached out to me. Miss Syed, came to the office and spoke to her. And then on, like, September 18, I believe, I had an email from TCC. Okay.
We'll talk about that further in the executive session because I got questions specific to board members who I know knew stuff. Okay. I just wanna this shows the incorrect numbers that that's in the packet. Still it shows 505 for Tarrant County College. Where's the documentation of what should have been? Because what the thing I have sorry, the issue I have with the with the copy and paste is if there's only 5,000 votes and that's a 100% of the votes, if you give someone 198 extra votes you're taking from another other entities votes.
Yes, ma'am. So where how is the math adding up? Either we have too many votes, we have 5,001 or 5,198, or we change the math on everybody else's votes too? It's a total of 5,000, so the levy is each entity's levy is a percent of the total levy. And so Right. I understand that. But if you give someone more pieces of the pie, you've taken from somewhere else. Yes, ma'am. And so the correct allocation, every the other entities would have a larger slice of pie and TCD would have a smaller.
And so there still would have been 5,000 total votes. So if if the bigger entities vote first and they have more it it just the the copy and paste thing doesn't make sense to me because I'm not even seeing the correct numbers on here. It's still showing the the incorrect numbers. So sorry I didn't mean to interrupt. I just wanted to note that before I forget. Let let me let me say to that. I think the question that relates to that is, to me, this isn't about any one entity. It's not about Tarrant County College and not about who got votes and who didn't, and whether or what affected the election. It's the fact that the numbers were wrong across the board.
If Tarrant County College got too many votes, that means a lot of other organizations not a lot of other entities didn't get enough votes. It's like the the whole process was screwed up up and down. Yes, sir. So whenever I'm told by people on the phone, don't worry about it. The entities are okay with this. The only person that affected was Tad I mean, was Tarrant County College. That's flat out not true. There were multiple entities affected by this. I don't know how many were affected by this. I don't know if it would have affected the election. It's impossible to know. I disagree with that statement, but we need to That's okay. Well, the larger entities vote first, and so a lot of people change how they
vote based on where the larger entities put their votes. For the public to understand, why do the larger entities vote first? It's honored. K one. Alright. Let me No. I got a question. I Because it Why why do the larger Indians vote first? Fix the election. You said that out loud. They can determine the last three candidates of the election if they don't vote first. Your first statement was absolute correct statement. They can fix the election. I will tell you that in my review of this entire process, this is probably the greatest racket in the history of Texas when it comes to elections across the
entire state. I would agree with you in this. Good. I'm glad we're at least there. Alright. Any other questions before you I have a lot to say on this matter, but I really need to invoke conversations with Mr. Tepper. And because we're dealing with personnel matters, need to invoke section zero seven four because it deals with personnel. And, I think that is the right thing to do. As a person of complete transparency, I have no problem reiterating it. But I have a stack of paper here that we probably need to discuss in executive session. I agree with that. We're gonna get to executive session in a minute.
I'm not going I'm not in favor of us hiding behind closed doors Agree. To talk about something that needs to be transparent to the public. This organization is notorious for that, and we're and I don't agree with running behind the closed door whenever it feels uncomfortable to talk in front of the public about the issue. Agreed. So is there any other questions? Not and not personnel questions, but those don't need to happen out here, but any other questions related to the topic and the issue on hand hand. What about say something? No. It's something I'd like to say in closed session as well. But if you would like me to say it out here, I can.
Oh, I don't care. Well, I don't want you to say anything about personnel out here. Well, it's not the staff. It's about this board. Okay. It's still closed session. I think so too. Okay. Miss Burgess. Now the basic rule is most entities have to have their ballots cast, before December 15 of the year. But the largest entities and larger counties, like Tarrant County, have to vote in the first or the second meeting after they, get the ballot delivered to them from the
chief appraiser. And that was a legislative change that was made, I guess, maybe two or four years ago. And the purpose for it was because as happened here in Tarrant County, in the last election, a lot of entities will wait until the thirteenth or the December 14 to cast their votes so that they can see how the other votes were done. And if you've got the largest entities that are doing that, the counties and the big school districts and the colleges and whoever else might have a large levy, those
people could then completely set those entities, could set the board by casting their votes in a specific way and waiting to do so until December 13 or fourteenth when they knew how everybody else had voted. And by doing it the other way, the larger entities have to vote first and then the smaller entities that have not nearly the number of votes, they can kind of wait until the end and it gives them a little bit more voting power as to who can ultimately sit sit on the board. Wendy, you good? Was that your That I got to you is legal very Yeah.
It's very good. That and and I knew some of that. But here here's another thing that I'll I do wanna say this on the record. It amazes me that this is the same process that was in place before the public placed people on this board. Back when this was a five person board and they all came directly from the entities, it's clear, beyond clear, that it allows the entities to decide who are we gonna put in there to decide what how much the appraisal should be, to decide how much money we're gonna get on the back end of this versus let's just
have an election and decide who ought to represent who ought to be on this board. The the non secrecy part of the board is the most amazing part of this because what happens, as we all have seen in these elections, is the big ones are forced to vote first. So So then all the little ones get stuck having to decide where does our vote even matter, much less are we gonna have a vote, and how are we gonna put those votes together to try to come up with something that's good for us also. So at the end of the day, the entity entities that have the most protection by state law because the process of how their budgets are done in the first
place have have dramatic impact upon what your appraisals are versus the entities that have to do everything they can to protect their budgets through a process of getting two or three votes in this. And so that that is that issue needs to be understood by the public. Now that we have public people on this board, it needs to be totally understood how this works. I also think and I'll say this to in favor of of chief appraisers. You also have a process in the code of con of tax code that allows
the chief appraiser to run the process from start to finish. Does the numbers, decides how many votes you get, sends those out to the entities, pulls it all in, announces the results of the vote. There's absolutely no process from a board that determines whether or not any of that was done correctly, whether any of those numbers were done correctly. So at the end of the day, we have a job as a board. Our number one job is to set the budget. Number two job is to hire and fire chief appraiser, and yet the process allows the chief appraiser to pick his bosses in the election.
It's just an amazing, amazing process. And an amazing that the state Texas, this is the best they could come up with thirty five years ago when they were trying determining how to do appraisal districts across the county I mean, across the state. So I think all of those are issues that we're gonna have to look at moving forward. And, we'll certainly be involved in the next session of, of the in in Austin, because they're the ones that came up with this ingenious process and hand it to all of us and told us to follow it. Any other questions, comments? And if not, we are going to go to executive session.
At this time, then we will break to executive session. Executive session, related to the Texas Open Meetings Act governor governing code or government code section, chapter five five one five five one point o seven one, five five one point o seven four. We will go into executive session. We'll be out with the report whenever we get through. Thank you. Alright. Welcome back, or thank you for hanging in there with us. We obviously spent a while, what, two a while, discussing the whole thing, part of it with mister Bobbitt and a lot of it without mister Bobbitt.
I wanna clarify a couple of things that were shared in comments earlier. One is that there's no reason to think at least what we have right now, but there's gonna be a motion related to this, that any of the candidates from last round had anything to do with the with the process, including the fact that there was comment made that the tax office is the one that submits the numbers for the election process, and it's not. We do not have anything to do with it. It's it's important to understand that this is a state agency, the Tarrant Appraisal District, and the county tax tax office is a county agency.
We are forced to work together because of the well, that we're yeah. We're actually forced to work together. We are actually forced to work together. We're forced to work together because of the process of how the appraisal district affects the tax process for the entities. But we do not work together in, processing numbers. There is a formula for which the Ta Taran Appraisal District utilizes to come up with a number of votes per entity. And, frankly, there was a big mistake made in the last election, and we, are
trying to figure out where and how and who, was a part of that mistake. So we do have some motions to come forth, from members of the board related to the decisions that were just made and I'll open the floor for those motions. First, okay. One of the reasons I ran for this position is really to restore public trust and, I just can't sit by and endorse, some of the actions that have happened and and not take any kind of action at all. And I I really don't want to do this, but I my gut tells me I need to, there needs to be some accountability here.
I think a step in the right direction would be, to have a third party investigation on, you know, how this error occurred. But that will be a separate motion. But my motion is this, is is to terminate mister Bobbitt effective immediately. So we move that we terminate the chief appraiser immediately as our second. Hearing none, that motion, dies. Is there any more motion? Any other motions? I have a motion. Okay. I move to authorize the board's attorney to find an independent third party to investigate
any irregularities surrounding the appointment process to this board for the 2004 and the 2005 terms. Is there a second? There is a second. Is there any discussion? Yes, ma'am. Clarified motion. The the motion as corrected is seconded. Is there further discussion? Hearing none, I'm gonna do it verbally, Julie. Okay. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Is there any further discussion or any further action? Mister chair, I'd like to make a motion. Okay. Obviously, there's lots of discussion and clarity that needs to be done for investigation for
the public. I recommend that we table this issue until our next board meeting on November 12 at 9AM. It's been moved that we table the motion till November 12, which is next week at our regularly scheduled meeting. Is there a second? I will second. Then moved and seconded that we table the meet the further discussion, related to the whole entire process till next week. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. All, all opposed? Motion carries unanimous. Is there any further, items for the board? Hearing none, I'd entertain a motion to adjourn.
It's been moved that we adjourn. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. We are adjourned.