For The Record

In under 45 minutes the Court committed $1,700,000 to build a road entirely inside one town, and agreed to cover the whole estimated cost.

There's one County Auditor's certificate in this 202 page packet. It's on that road money, unsigned, on a form with no line for the amount. Nothing else on this agenda has one.

A private company wrote the memo telling the county to sign that agreement. Under the agreement the Town's invoices route to the County Auditor care of that same company, and the county reimburses the Town from there. Third packet in a row, and none of the three says what the company is paid.

Three items were marked "presented for recording purposes only." One came with its report. The bill report came with nothing, eighth packet running.

Item 12.B passed on a memo describing a different agreement than the one attached to it.

And a Justice of the Peace court told this county in writing it's months behind, short more than 3,100 hours of work. That page won't respond to a search. The Court approved the money and asked nothing.

The county is paying all of it.

The road is, in the agreement's own words, "located entirely within the municipal limits of the Town and Denton County Commissioner Precinct #4."

Motion, second, unanimous. The only thing anybody said was that it had been a long time coming.

Flower Mound does the work, and that's real. The agreement has the town providing all engineering, right of way acquisition, utility relocations, inspections, construction and maintenance, and state law requires the town to approve county money going into a town street before it can be spent.

But the packet puts no dollar value on any of that. Section V calls it an "exchange of in-kind services" and declares it "adequate consideration." Last week the county covered more than half a road in Highland Village on that same clause. This week it covered the whole road.

The certificate is blank. Denton County hasn't signed the agreement. Flower Mound has.

15.A is a real property negotiation. That's what the exception exists for and I've said so before. 15.B and 15.C are personnel matters, one on the Director of Community Relations and one on the Director of Purchasing. Personnel belongs back there too. What was said in the room is privileged.

The paperwork is not. 15.A's memo is the statute reprinted. 15.B and 15.C carry no memo of any kind, just a caption and a blank court order. Three items behind a closed door and not one page of substance in a 202 page packet.

Two facts belong next to each other here, with nothing else attached to them. On March 3 this Court proclaimed the purchasing department's 30 consecutive years of a national procurement award. On March 10 the Director of Purchasing was a personnel item in closed session.

The Court came back and adjourned. One sentence covers all three items and it doesn't say what was decided.

Two meetings ago this Court did that in the right order and I credited it. It has now gone back the other way twice running.

And the item itself. 2.A, "Order Making Appointments." Three pages: a routing form, the caption printed again, and a blank court order. No name. No position. No term. No board. The caption points to "the appointment orders" and to interviews conducted under county policy, and neither the orders nor any record of an interview appears anywhere in 202 pages.

Eighth meeting in a row that item has arrived empty. Nobody read a name aloud this time either. So the entire public record of who Denton County appointed on March 10 is three words on an agenda.

Nobody needs a policy change for this. Somebody needs to hit attach.

Then read Section VI of the agreement. Flower Mound's invoices go to the County Auditor "c/o Mr. John Polster, Innovative Transportation Solutions, Inc."

The same firm recommended the Highland Village agreement a week earlier and sits in that payment chain too. The same firm recommended the Loop 288 supplement on February 24, the one whose caption said $549,752 when only $549,742 reconciles to the $10,621,795.60 total. Its name has been turning up in these packets since January.

None of that is improper. A county running a voter approved road program hires people who do this for a living.

I'm saying I read all 202 pages and I cannot tell you what that firm is paid, how it was selected, or what its contract requires. Neither can you.

Put the contract in a packet.

Here's what the packet says, on a page that won't respond to a search or a screen reader.

That court ran 2,429 labor hours short last year, "the equivalent of being 1.31 clerks short." Clerk absences added over 704 hours on top of it. As of this request it was sitting on 469 pending motions for default judgment, 201 receivership applications, 799 civil citations waiting to be issued, and 364 civil cases waiting to be set for trial. In its own words, "several weeks if not months behind," with criminal lagging too.

It asked for 277 hours while short more than 3,100.

The county's budget manager sent this request back twice, once demanding "a full explanation on why your department is needing overtime funds for the Court to review." She got one. The controls did their job.

Then it reached the dais and drew a motion, a second, and silence. 277 hours doesn't clear 3,100. Somebody should have asked about the rest.

Then the prayer. Eighth meeting, eighth Christian invocation. He asked protection for troops overseas and blessings on this Court. Then this: "I know we're not going to be America again until we turn to you, Father, and I just pray that our leaders and our citizens will turn to you, God."

That is the county's chief law enforcement officer, at the government's own microphone, telling a room of residents their country is not America until it turns to his God.

The quarrel is with a public meeting that decides, eight times out of eight, whose faith gets the microphone.

A silent minute at the top of every meeting costs nothing and leaves nobody out.

This packet has one. It's on the $1,700,000 Flower Mound agreement. The signature line is blank, there's no date, and that version of the form doesn't even have a line for the amount being certified.

Everything else that moves money on this agenda carries nothing. A $32,443 transfer for landscape services. An $11,560 overtime transfer. Five subcontracts with the University of North Texas. The bill report. Not one certificate among them.

I checked it properly. 55 pages of this 202 page packet are image scans with no text at all, and three more carry text no search can read. I had every one of them read by machine before writing that sentence. There is no second certificate hiding in a scan, though the one certificate this packet does carry is itself a scan.

Seventh meeting running. January 13, January 29, February 3, February 10, February 24, March 3, and now.

County Auditor Jeff May was in the room that morning. He isn't the problem. The problem is a Court that takes the vote and collects the signature afterward, when it collects it at all.

Item 5.A is the bill report, presented for recording purposes only. Three pages: a routing form, the caption printed again, a blank court order. No bills, no vendors, no amounts, no total. Eighth packet in a row.

Item 8.A is the Human Resources report on hiring actions by elected officials, presented for recording purposes only. Three pages, no report. The county's HR director stood up and read the numbers into the record himself, one new hire in adult probation, two in juvenile probation, two promotions and three new hires in the Sheriff's Office, one in the tax office. That's the only reason anybody has them, and it's to his credit.

Same three words on all three items. One arrives with its document. The county has already proven it knows the difference.

Now read the agreement. Northwest ISD grants Denton County the use of a parking lot so the Sheriff's Office can run emergency vehicle operations training. The county brings its own cones, air compressor, first aid supplies, instructors and insurance. The words "intern" and "jail" do not appear in the document once.

Those aren't two descriptions of one deal. The memo even has the direction backwards. It says the county hosts the school's students. The agreement says the school hosts the county.

Motion, second, unanimous. Nobody asked.

I don't think anything was hidden here. Somebody reused an old memo and nobody read it against the document underneath it. That's usually how it happens, and it's exactly why somebody has to read it.