Some how I knew that you would come around.
Thank you so much for your time and effort in getting this issue resolved. I have confirmed that this fix is working as expected for the hotbar mod that I happen to use.
Just to note that if someone wants to make the changes via the UIBuilder, as the above instructions are for a text editor, the text that you input into the locations specified above would look like this:
MinimumSize='0,0'
Parent.MinimumSize='0,0'
Thanks again.