For The Record

Brenda Gormley was supposed to be here for her own retirement resolution. She died five days before it. The Court read her record into the permanent record anyway, handed her husband a flag that flew over the courthouse that morning, and let the room grieve. That was done with real dignity and it belongs first.

Then the county's business. 19 separate votes passed with no discussion at all. Not one Commissioner asked one question about any purchase, any plat, the bill report, or either board appointment.

The Court said one dollar figure out loud all morning: $9,500 to replace a vaccine refrigerator. It never said $712,696 for contract labor, or $158,100 for a moving contract. And it approved a five year architectural services agreement with no dollar ceiling written into it anywhere.

The Court also approved a new federal immigration enforcement agreement. Then the Chair reopened the item after the vote to ask what it was.

He said the Denton Record-Chronicle reported that a longtime sheriff's administrator was arrested for embezzlement, with a photo of a uniformed sheriff's office employee attached. All of it wrong, he said. The employee in the photo had nothing to do with it. His own office ran the investigation that made the arrest. He has asked for a retraction.

If that is right, he is right to say so. A wrong story about your people is worth standing up for. I'd do the same.

He also said the story "had to be brought to my attention because I don't read it," and that he is "not going to read it to find out" whether one runs.

How the Court handled it is what I would change. The Chair affirmed the facts from the bench in real time, cutting in with "Yeah" and "Correct" while the Sheriff was still talking, then told him his office was "part of the solution and not the problem." Nobody from the paper was in the room. One side told its version and the Court agreed on the spot.

Same as January 6, the Court voted first and the Chair read out what was in it second. That is twice in two meetings.

There was not much to read either way. Item 2A is an "Order Making Appointments," and its three pages of packet name nobody being appointed, no position, no board, and no term. Item 2B is "Approval of payroll," and its three pages contain no amount. A resident who pulled the packet to see what the Court approved would find learn nothing.

Read the items, then vote. And put a number next to the payroll.

The Purchasing memo tells the Court that "the estimated value of this contract is $158,100.00 based on estimated usage provided by the Elections Administration."

One page later the bid tab prices that same usage. 639 round trips at $150 each is $95,850. Five emergency moves at $300 each is $1,500. Suddath's total bid is $97,350.

That is a $60,750 gap between the number the Court was handed and the number the bidder quoted, against the same quantities, one page apart. Nothing in the record explains it.

There may well be a good answer. Renewal years, a contingency, a different assumption. Nobody asked, and nobody wrote it down.

The same page undercuts the memo again. It calls Suddath "the overall lowest and best bid," but the tab's own lowest column has Duryea cheaper on emergency moves, $225 against $300. County bid rules allow awarding by line. Nobody ran that math either.

When the estimate and the bid are 62% apart, somebody should ask which one is the contract before voting.

$712,696 for temporary staffing. This is the fourth and final renewal of a contract first awarded in 2022, at agency markups running 22 to 32%. The entire written recommendation from Human Resources is one sentence in an email: "Yes, we would like to renew with the current vendors." No performance record, no fill rates, no accounting of what the first four years actually cost.

And a master agreement for architectural services with BKV Group, five years long, with no dollar ceiling anywhere in it. On the Auditor's certificate, the line where the amount of available funds belongs was left blank.

The staffing number sits in the packet. The architectural agreement has no number to sit anywhere. Neither reached the room. I would have staff state the cost before the vote, and I would not sign a five year agreement with no ceiling in it.

Two items, both appointments to Emergency Services District boards. Second meeting in a row where the only business behind that door was who sits on a board.

It came out with five reappointments of sitting members, two to Emergency Services District 1 and three to Emergency Services District 2. Commissioner Mitchell moved both, the Chair seconded both, nobody discussed either, and both carried unanimously inside a minute.

The packet for those items runs three pages each, and the only names printed on them are the five members of this Court on a blank court order. Not one appointee, not a term, not a seat coming open. Residents heard the names when the motion was read, after the deciding was done.

The posted purpose included "discipline or dismissal." Whatever filled those 73 minutes, the outcome was five people keeping their seats.

I said on January 6 what a closed door is for. The narrow case where talking in public would cost the county something. Reappointing a volunteer to a fire district board is not it. I would have the appointing member make the case in the open, name the seats coming up, and post who applied.

The Court rewrote it as a resolution of remembrance and read the whole thing. 12 years a CERT volunteer before Denton County ever put her on payroll in 2018, then eight years running the program. Under her, Denton County CERT was invited to the White House twice, in 2009 and 2011, as one of the best in the country.

The Chair read tributes from a dozen people and agencies into the permanent record. The County Administrator spoke, so did the Director of Emergency Management, and so did every Commissioner. Congressman Brandon Gill entered her into the Congressional Record the day before. Her husband Robert was handed a flag that flew over the courthouse that morning, framed with her patches and her challenge coins.

Then the Chair asked everybody in the room to come up for the photo, because Brenda would have wanted everybody in the picture.

That is a county taking care of its own.

January 6 ran 993 words, delivered from the dais by a sitting Commissioner. This one was 43 words, delivered by a Denton County CERT volunteer and chaplain, not by anyone on this Court. Not from the government's own bench, which is a difference worth noting.

It still is not the fix, and my answer does not change because the week was hard. A moment of silence. That room was full of people of every belief who drove in to mourn the same woman, and a moment of silence is the only thing the Court has that holds all of them at once.

The Chair had it in his hand. He announced the item as "a moment of silence and an invocation." The moment of silence never happened. He named it and skipped it.

He also thanked the wrong person for the invocation, crediting the county's Director of Emergency Management, who led the pledges.