For The Record

The county agreed to pay $41,894.01 to scan Sheriff's Office files. On the scope sheet, beside “Optical Character Recognition,” it says “Not Included (will be completed on clients Laserfiche system).” The county owns the software that does it. 30 of the 232 pages cannot be searched.

The Court awarded two construction contracts on an engineer's letter calling the winners “the lowest qualified bidders.” The tabulation attached to that letter, printed sideways, shows two lower bids that lost. $252,264.74 between them.

The jail asked for $235,890 more in overtime using the same sentence it used in January, word for word, one number changed. Staffing went from 74% to 72%.

$7,000,000 went to the City of Justin to draw plans for a road inside that city, with the county covering all of it and no published rule for why.

And behind closed doors the Court hired outside counsel for litigation against the North Central Texas Council of Governments, with no rate or cap. 20 days later the county sued its executive board. It has not mentioned the suit in open session since.

That is more than the last three closed sessions produced.

Neither firm came with a rate, cap, or total. The packet backing it is a routing form, the caption twice, a blank court order, and a memo that is only a heading. No body.

That matter was contemplated litigation against the North Central Texas Council of Governments. 20 days later the county filed a 376 page suit against its executive board. On April 30 the Regional Transportation Council voted to join and set aside $5,000,000.

Closed session is where you plan a lawsuit. But seven days later this Court signed a new agreement with NCTCOG, in June it approved paying it $202,248.61, and in 20 meetings since the suit has never reached an open agenda.

Say what the lawyers cost.

It closed “In Christ's name, amen.”

Ninth meeting, ninth Christian invocation.

The man who gave it gave the February 3 one too, and I said then it was pastoral rather than political. That still holds.

Six of the nine came from a sitting member of this Court, a county department head, the Sheriff, or the Sheriff's Office chaplain. The government keeps handing its own microphone to its own people.

The decency of this prayer is the point, not the defense. Even the best version of the practice ends by naming one faith and asking a room of taxpayers to sit through it.

This Court held a moment of silence in February and handled it with real dignity. It knows how. It just won't do it at the top of the meeting.

Then he read what was in it.

Third meeting running. March 3, March 10, and now this one, all voted before anybody was told what was in them.

Here is what got approved before it got described. $1,150 out of a constable's ammunition and taser line to replace a scanner. $45,000 out of the District Attorney's forfeiture fund for body armor. Both read out clearly, with reasons, after the vote had carried.

And item 2.A, “Order Making Appointments,” arrived empty. Three pages: a routing form, the caption printed twice, a blank court order. No name, no position, no term, no board. The packet says the appointments were posted and advertised. It never says who, or to what.

This Court already knows the fix. On February 24, with Commissioner Precinct 3 Mitchell presiding, the consent agenda was read out in full, item by item, and then voted. Same room, three weeks ago.

Read it first, then vote.

The reason is on a page that extracts as machine gibberish. Read as an image: “Our staff are still working 12-hour days due to the staff shortage. We are at 72% staffing while our daily inmate population continues to increase.”

On January 29 this Court approved $291,557 in jail overtime, outside that same policy, with that same sentence word for word. It said 74%.

Seven weeks. One number moved, and it moved the wrong way.

The same page shows January's two pay periods at $173,060 and February's grand total at $342,445, with February's own subtotal printed as $169,38 because the county truncated its own digit, with $106,555 pushed back into last fiscal year by the Auditor's Office.

The Court funded 40 new detention officer positions last year, and the Sheriff's Office is getting more new positions this year than any department.

The jail has told this Court twice, in writing, that it cannot staff itself. Twice the money moved without a question. The third time, somebody asks what the plan is.

Not to build the road. To draw it.

The agreement says the project sits “entirely within the municipal limits of the City.” It says the City “agrees to provide all engineering of the Project.” It puts the estimated cost at $7,000,000 and has the county contributing up to $7,000,000. The county is covering all of it.

Texas Transportation Code 251.012 lets a county spend money on a street inside a city when the city approves it, and Justin's signature is that approval. The question is why the share is 100%, and this county has never published a rule that answers it.

The memo recommending approval came from Innovative Transportation Solutions, a private firm. Invoices come back to the County Auditor care of the same firm.

Motion by Commissioner Precinct 4 Edmondson, seconded by the Judge. No discussion.

Publish the cost share rule before the next one.

Three of them ride on the disaster debris renewals, the contracts the county activates after a tornado or an ice storm. Those use a form that reads: “I hereby certify that funds are available in the amount of $______________.” Jeff May's name is printed underneath. The amount is blank on all three.

Give that its due. The county's own memo says no money moves on those until a disaster is declared and this Court authorizes funding. A blank amount on a contract that obligates nothing yet is defensible.

The fourth one is not.

It sits on the $7,000,000 agreement with the City of Justin, drawn on the Permanent Improvement Fund and capped as a not to exceed amount, with any actual funding still requiring formal action by this Court. And it is a different form. It reads: “I hereby certify funds are available to accomplish and pay the obligation of Denton County, Texas, under this Agreement.”

There is no line for an amount on it. The signature line is empty.

So the county owns a form that asks how much, and uses it on the contracts that obligate nothing. On the one item that commits $7,000,000, it uses the form that never asks.

County general funds aren't at risk and the packet says so. The work gets repaid through assessments, which means it lands on whoever buys those 121 houses.

The award rests on one sentence from the developer's engineer: “The two recommended bidders are the lowest qualified bidders.”

The bid tabulation is attached to that letter. It is printed sideways, rotated 90 degrees. Turned upright, it breaks the work into four separately bid scopes.

On grading and paving, the low bidders won.

On erosion control, the winning bid was $224,682.50 and a lower one sat at $218,240.26. On storm drainage, the winning bid was $723,141.00 and a lower one sat at $477,318.50. The same contractor took both. That is $252,264.74 above the low bids.

“Qualified” may be carrying real weight there. Maybe those two couldn't do the work. Nothing in 232 pages says so, and nobody on the dais asked.

When the low bid doesn't win, the reason goes on the record before the vote.

Now read the scope sheet. There is a row on it labeled “Optical Character Recognition.” The entry beside it: “Not Included (will be completed on clients Laserfiche system).”

That line answers a question I have been asking since January.

Text recognition is not a mystery to this county. It is a named line on its own purchase order. The county owns the software and runs it on the records it keeps for itself.

39 of this packet's 232 pages cannot be searched. That is better than the last two, and nobody fixed anything to make it so. This packet simply had fewer scanned contracts in it.

Six of those pages are not blank. The text is there and it comes out as machine gibberish, which is how one of them hid the jail's own explanation for moving $235,890.

The county already owns the tool. Point it at the documents it hands the public.