The Hockley County Commissioners Court moved forward with the approval of the South Plains Region Mutual Aid Agreement and Resolution during Tuesday’s regular meeting.
Levelland-Hockley County Emergency Management Coordinator Cole Kirkland gave a brief update of the agreement to the court while mentioning the adjustments and fixes to the previous agreement.
Kirkland explained that the mutual aid agreement is something is essentially the region owning its partnerships across the different surrounding counties.
An example could be Hockley County assisting Cochran County and helping Bailey County.
The agreement sets up guidelines on how the county is going to operate and that effects the disaster and recovery side with who’s paying for what and when does someone have to pay for what.
“It was a kind of a hot button issue 10 years ago with the powers that be at that time,” explained Kirkland. “They couldn’t come in agreement on one and that was after FEMA denied reimbursement on rangeland fire stuff for some FMAG grant funding.”
During that time, the South Plains was eaten up with grassland fires and the county had an opportunity to get money back and they couldn’t get it because the at the time the mutual aid agreement was not in line with state law.
Kirkland added that is was not that it was out to not be in line with state law it, but the agreement had not been updated to reflect the new state law.
“FEMA is going to find a way to not have to pay something and they found a way not to have to pay something,” said Kirkland.
With no mutual agreement in place, the idea of getting a new in place was put on the back burner until now.
It wasn’t until the Emergency Response Advisory Committee got together in 2022 and took initiative resolve the agreement debacle.
Deciding to develope a subcommittee which included Kirkland, the Post-Garza County Emergency Management Coordinator Michael Isbell, Lubbock Director of Emergency Management Joe Moudy and Lubbock County Emergency Management Coordinator Clint Thetford.
“Us four got together and wrote it and really condensed the agreement because it was roughly 16 pages as the original document,” said Kirkland “We reduced it down to eight pages and we took out all the extra stuff.”
He also added that the way the subcommittee rectified the previous issue, which was not only writing a more straightforward agreement, but completely tossing out any portion of the agreement that could be left to interpretation and cause divide.
“We just took the play of words out and referenced the law directly and the statute directly,” said Kirkland. “There’s not any interpretation issues or anything. Reimbursement will be done in accordance with the law.”
While having the agreement and plan in place is nice, Kirkland hopes that any entities that are subjected to filing for reimbursement aren’t doing it because they were dealing with rangeland fires similar to Hockley County in 2010-2011.
“God willing it never happens, but we know that we would be in line to recoup some of our funding if something severe,” added Kirkland.
With the agreement being open to the region, Kirkland feels that this opportunity brings a neighbor helping neighbors’ mentality.
“Between the South Plains, Panhandle and even the West Central Region area, they’re really good with helping neighbors,” explained Kirkland. “It’s not that the process before was really political, but more tedious than anything.”
“There’s no reason for the process to be so involved,” added Kirkland. “Why can’t it just be neighbors helping neighbors, meeting these guidelines and staying in line with state law? That’s all it has to be it.”
Before moving forward, the agreement goes before the SPAG Executive Board which is an accumulation or a combination of county judges and mayors from the entire South Plains Region.
After that is accomplished, the agreement will go to each and every city and county in the SPAG Region to be adopted by that council or that commissioners court or whoever the governing body is.
There is an additional process that includes the Emergency Response Advisory Committee where they do oversight on some office of the governor grant funding.
The group changed and voted on a few bylaws to not just support regional teams but changed who could apply for the grant funding.
“It actually broadened the range of who can apply,” said Kirkland. “Rather than being just regional teams, we changed the purpose of the grant funding to be for the purpose of increasing regional resiliency.”
That change opens funding to police, fire, ems and everybody for them to come up with projects that would help their jurisdiction and become more self-reliant.
“We know we’re not first in line for state assets. We know that there’s the Metroplex, Houston and Austin areas that are probably going to be first in line for state assets just because the number of population or the population levels in those areas,” explained Kirkland. “That was kind of what started off the regional agreement was getting that rewritten. Our bylaws opened back up so we can start supporting rural jurisdictions and making sure that the SPAG Region is doing everything we can to not need help from the outside and not to damper the relationships we have with our neighbors outside of the space region.”
Having a sense of solid footing is what the group has been wanting to achieve so and seeing what resources are available because the regional mutual aid agreement has been the cornerstone of regional assets.
“When the agreement went away or when that was just kind of back burned for 10 years, we lost track of a what we had in the region,” said Kirkland. “There was a lot of grant funding that came down after 9/11. We had a lot of things put in place in the region, but that equipment is 20years-old now.”
Kirkland feels that the current situation allows the opportunity for them to look and see what the region needs, what do they have, what they don’t have, what can they get and then what can the group do as a region to help make themselves more self-sufficient.
“In the winter storms, the state’s going do whatever the state wants to do. When we had winter storm Goliath, we had dialysis patients that we couldn’t get to because we didn’t have a high profile high enough profile vehicle to be able to get through four-, five- and six-foot snowdrifts,” said Kirkland. “TxDOT is going to focus on their major highways so that includes the Interstate first then US highways, then state highways and then it’s going to be farm to market roads.”
With two US highways in Hockley County that puts Levelland in a better position, but he also added there are a lot of places that don’t have anything other than farm to market roads which puts them at the back for any opportunity for support.
“So, we have to ask ourselves what we can do at the local level to make sure that we can get to the people that we need to get to for circumstances that are nothing that they cause themselves like a winter storm,” said Kirkland. I think that’s why the taxpayers live and work and do all the things they do is so that they have that sense of security.”
“I think that’s what they pay our salaries for is to make sure that they’re going to be all right, make sure that somebody somewhere is making sure that things are taken care of and ultimately I think that’s who we owe it to is to make sure that our taxpayers know that people in South Plains Region are doing what they what they need to be doing to make sure that the people are taken care,” added Kirkland.
Kirkland feels that the agreement achieves those goals and gets them back in line so that the burden of fires, tornadoes or whatever doesn’t fall completely back on the taxpayers.