County Commissioners Assessing Damage From Storm, Utilities Problems

Monday’s El Paso County Commissioners Court meeting started with an announcement from the County Judge that every county building has damage due to last week’s freeze.

Commissioners immediately voted to set aside a $100,000 to address that damage.

One didn’t have to venture very far to find a lot of the problems that the cold caused for the county. Right outside the County Judge’s office on the third floor there was a lot of water damage, all of it caused after the sprinkler system near the sky-walk from the parking garage froze up and burst.

Meanwhile, four floors down in the basement, the county’s Domestic Relations offices and the Passport office are in disarray after they were hit hard by the trickle-down of a pipe burst on the second floor early Saturday morning.

Sheriff’s officials told ABC-7 us they also sustained a lot of damage to Sheriff’s headquarters, among other buildings.

“The building that had the most damage was Sheriff’s headquarters,” Commander Eddie Campa said. “Ruptured pipes due to the pipes freezing. We also suffered some damage to the jail and the jail annex. And for sure our new Sparks substation sustained a lot of damage.”

The final price tag for all of the damage has yet to be determined. But County Judge Veronica Escobar is sure of one thing: When it’s all said and done, she said, it’s going to cost the County.

“It’ll definitely be tens of thousands at least,” Escobar said. “I hope it doesn’t reach into the hundreds of thousands, but we’ll see, because we’re still dealing with the aftermath.”

Escobar said the damage is just the start of it. She must consider the loss of revenue, like in the parking garage, which is hard to estimate, and the loss of productivity while paying workers.

“We won’t know the actual figure until after we’re done with payroll,” County Human Resources Director Betsy Keller said.

Keller estimated the total cost of paying roughly half of the county’s 2,650 employees for three days they didn’t work at nearly half a million dollars.

“You have to pay your exempt employees as long as they’re willing and able to work,” Keller said . While Keller said the County has to pay exempt employees for those days missed, they don’t necessarily have to pay non-exempt or hourly employees. But keller said it has been “the practice” of the county, much like other counties in the state, to do so.

It’s the practice of many private companies, however, not to pay hourly employees for hours not actually worked.

The cost of the county’s generosity to its hourly employees is nearly $100,000 a day.

Escobar said, “When the entire assessment is done, it will probably compare to Storm 2006.”