For The Record

Both roads are in Flower Mound. Denton County is paying 100% of the first, a new $3,500,000 commitment. On the second, Lakeside Parkway, the county's share rose from $4,270,000 to as much as $9,488,000. That takes Denton County from paying half the project to paying 98.9% of it. Flower Mound's share of a road inside Flower Mound is now $106,000.

The road also got shorter. The limits moved back from SH 121 to just west of Enterprise Drive. A shorter road, and the county pays $5,218,000 more for it. The packet gives one reason for all of it: the limits changed.

Both items carry the only two County Auditor's certificates in 283 pages of packet. Both are blank.

Executive session was used for exactly the two matters posted, both came back no action, and the Chair announced the time going in. That is the floor the Open Meetings Act sets, and after three meetings of appointments behind that door it is worth logging that the floor got met.

The meeting also opened with a Christian prayer for the fourth time in four meetings.

The first is new. Denton County agreed to contribute $3,500,000 to the FM 2499 and FM 3040 project. The total estimated project cost is $3,500,000. The county is paying all of it, for a road the agreement itself places “entirely within the municipal limits of the Town.”

The second raises the county's contribution to Lakeside Parkway from $4,270,000 to as much as $9,488,000. The total project cost went up $1,054,000. The county's share went up $5,218,000. Denton County went from paying half that road to paying 98.9% of it, and Flower Mound's share of a road inside Flower Mound is now $106,000.

The road also got shorter. The limits moved back from SH 121 to just west of Enterprise Drive.

A road inside a city is worth county money when county residents drive it every day. That is a real argument and I would make it. Nobody on that dais made it.

This one came from Sheriff's Office Chaplain David Clements, invited up by the Chair. It ran 251 words and closed “in Christ's name.”

It prayed for people who lost someone in the winter storm, for the first responders who worked it, and for deployed soldiers from Denton County. It also asked blessing on the Court, which nearly all of them do.

It was still a Christian prayer, opening a government meeting, in a room that belongs to everybody.

January 6, a sitting Commissioner. January 13, a volunteer chaplain from the community, from outside the government. January 29, the county Health Director. Now a Sheriff's Office chaplain. Four meetings, four prayers, every one Christian, and three of the four from the county's own bench or the county's own payroll.

A resident who believes something else has sat through four of these. Their faith was not even an afterthought.

Third meeting running, the item called “Order Making Appointments” arrived with no appointment orders attached. Three pages, no names, no boards, no positions, no terms. The public still cannot tell who this Court appointed to what.

Two markets use the Denton County Historical Park. The Farmers Market got its rental fee waived. The Denton Community Market pays $60 a month and put down a $250 deposit. The packet gives no reason for the difference.

The Court also approved the Farmers Market for every Saturday from March 1 through November 28. Now read the insurance certificate in the packet. Policy effective 03/01/2025, policy expires 03/01/2026. It runs out the day the approved season starts. That is all 272 days of a public market on county land with nothing on file showing anybody but the county is covered if somebody gets hurt. The release behind it is signed and notarized. The coverage is the hole.

Nobody pulled it. Nobody asked. The vote was already over.

Here is that item in the packet, in full. A routing sheet. The caption again. A blank court order.

Three pages, and not one of them is the bill report. No vendors. No amounts. No total. The public is told the payments come from CSCD, Community Corrections, TAIP, Sheriff's Training, Sheriff's Forfeiture, VIT Interest and DA Forfeiture funds. That's the whole disclosure.

County Auditor Jeff May said what he says: “I have no changes today. I recommend approval as presented.” He has the report in front of him and he is doing his job.

Nobody outside that room does. All four packets this year, same three pages, same missing report.

Give the county its due. It runs a public vendor payments database going back to 2019, searchable and exportable. The payments aren't hidden.

But it carries no fund, no department, and nothing tying a payment to a court date. It can't tell you what this Court approved on February 3.

The county already publishes the payments. Attach the report the Court votes on.

Judge Eads thanked them by name and by department, at length, and he was right to.

Item 13i on that agenda was the Office of Emergency Management's update on the storm. Its entry in a 283 page packet is one line with nothing attached. No damage assessment, no cost, no call volume, no timeline.

Then the Court skipped it. “We'll skip 13i for now.” And at the end of the meeting, “13i we're not going to do that today.”

I checked every meeting transcript since. 22 of them. The update never came back.

So Denton County went through a winter emergency, put a report about it on the agenda, and never gave it. The thanks were sincere. The accounting never happened.

The judges who run those courts came to the meeting and sat through it. The Chair thanked them for “being here and willing to answer any questions.” Then: “We didn't have any.”

Not one question on $1.6 million and five programs that decide whether a person goes to prison or gets treatment. The judges were in the room. They had come to answer.

The Court also approved moving the Mental Health Treatment Court from one county court to another. The packet says that transfer took effect May 1, 2025, and that the first docket under the new arrangement was held that same day. This Court authorized it on February 3, 2026, nine months after it started running.

The county's own website says. Before the November 2022 bond election, Denton County published its project list. Number 63, Precinct 3, Flower Mound: Kirkpatrick Lane, from FM 1171 to east of South Garden Ridge. Total project cost, $8,718,000.

$8,718,000 is the exact amount moved off that line on February 3.

Not part of it. All of it. The county emptied project 63 into two other roads.

Voters approved that $650 million package with about 74% in favor, 229,013 to 80,043, with more than 119 projects named on the list. Then on February 5, 2024, the Flower Mound Town Council pulled Kirkpatrick Lane Phase 3 out of its master plan after residents came out against it.

So the project is dead and the money should move. I would move it too.

But the people who voted for a list with Kirkpatrick Lane on it learned none of this from their county. Not the cancellation, not the reallocation, not the amount. I found it on the county's own website, in a document nobody at that meeting mentioned.

It is the only place in the paperwork where somebody independent confirms the money is actually there.

In 283 pages, exactly two documents carry that certificate. They are the two road agreements, the two largest commitments on the agenda, $12,988,000 between them.

Both are blank. No signature, no date, no amount.

This is the third meeting in a row. On January 13 the five year architectural services agreement went through with the available funds line left empty. On January 29 the Bonnie Brae amendment carried a blank, unsigned certificate on a $4,000,000 transfer. Now two more.

I am not saying the money isn't there. It probably is. I am saying that on the largest commitments this Court has made in four meetings, the one signature that confirms it was never obtained, and not one member asked for it before voting.

Two items went behind the door. A settlement offer in a lawsuit, Denton County versus O'Haver Company Ltd, cause number 24-2705-481 in the 481st District Court, named out loud with the statute cited. And a real property matter under the section that covers it.

County Judge Andy Eads announced the time going in, 9:40. The Court came back and reported no action on either one.

That is what a closed door is for. A live lawsuit discussed with the county's own lawyer is the exact example I have used since January 6 of a legitimate closed session. This was that.

And nothing about appointments went behind it. January 6 took board seats back there. January 13 took five fire district seats and spent 73 minutes. January 29 took the appraisal district nominee. February 3 took a lawsuit and a piece of property, decided nothing, and said so.

Judge Eads read the whole proclamation into the county's permanent record working one handed, and every member present had something to say to him. Commissioner Precinct 4 Edmondson was absent that day, and every vote on the record is 4 to 0.

Then somebody asked what his favorite part of Scouting had been. He said he could not pick one thing, that it was the people, and then this: “I believe that we are a museum of everyone that we've met.”

Judge Eads: “I already stole it.”