For The Record

The consent agenda carried on a motion the record does not contain. The Chair asked for one and called the vote in the same breath, then read out what had already passed.

The county’s Director of Public Health delivered a year of numbers. WIC enrollment up 20% in two years. Childhood vaccinations down about 10%. Health screenings at jail intake up nearly 15% since 2023. Four members answered with compliments and a request for copies. Nobody asked about any of the three.

The vendor that runs the health clinic for county employees described one employee by name, named the department that employee works in, described a heart scan, the calcification it found and the bypass that followed, and then asked whether that employee was in the room.

Item 9.A moved $481,489 of state grant money and the figure was never spoken. Item 9.B, four times smaller, got its full caption and its number.

The Court authorized spending an entire fund on economic development without saying how much is in it.

And it hired outside counsel for a federal lawsuit without saying what the case is about or what the lawyers cost.

No County Auditor’s certificate appears anywhere in 268 pages.

The Chair: “Members, are there any items you’d like to pull, or do we have a motion for approval as presented?”

Then, with nothing in between: “All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously.”

Then, after the vote, he read what had passed. Item 2.A, Order Making Appointments. Item 2.B, payroll.

The record of this meeting names the mover and the seconder on every other item. Item 6.B, Falconer and Mitchell. Item 6.C, Falconer and Mitchell. Item 7.B, Edmondson and Falconer. Item 10.A, Edmondson and the Chair. 20 votes, and the movers are all there. On the consent agenda there is no motion and no second.

A commissioners court acts by motion. The court order for item 2.A carries a line for “Motion by” and a line for “Seconded by.” Whatever eventually gets written on those two lines, the meeting itself did not produce it.

This is also the sixth meeting running that this Court voted the consent agenda before hearing what was in it. March 3, March 10, March 17, March 24, March 31, and this one. The other five at least had somebody move it.

And the packet has not changed. Pages 6 through 8 are the same three sheets item 2.A has carried at every meeting this year: a routing form, the caption printed again, and an unexecuted court order that prints all five members by name and no appointee’s.

One more thing went by without explanation. Item 8.B would have created a temporary Chief Administrator at pay grade 15 for Commissioner Precinct 4’s office. It was posted, and the entire public account of what happened to it is six words from the Chair: “There will be no action on Item 8B.” No reason, no withdrawal, no next step.

Read the item. Take a motion. And when a posted position disappears, say why.

Denton County receives unclaimed capital credits from electric cooperatives, passed through the Texas Comptroller. State law lets a county put that money toward economic development. The resolution the Court adopted authorizes “the use of the unclaimed capital credit funds held by the County for approved economic development projects and related activities,” with payments “to be approved by the County Auditor on a case-by-case basis.”

Here is the financial impact section of the memo, in full: “This action authorizes the use of unclaimed capital credit funds for qualifying economic development projects. The exact financial impact will vary depending on approved projects and expenditures.”

No balance. No ceiling. No definition of what qualifies. No requirement that any of it come back to this Court before it is spent. Motion, second, unanimous, no discussion, no dollar figure.

The county knows the balance. The Comptroller sends it. Publishing it takes one line.

The next item, 13.D, is the other half of the same problem. The Court approved a letter agreement with a financial services firm to form and administer a public improvement district for a developer in Precinct 4. The fee is $60,000 for formation, bond issuance support, and two years of administration. That number is in the memo on page 253. It was not in the caption the Chair read, and nobody said it.

That $60,000 is not county money. The agreement says it comes out of developer escrow and the district’s administrative fees. But a public improvement district is repaid by the people who buy houses in it, through assessments on their property, for decades. They are the ones eventually paying that fee, and they were not told what it is.

Publish the balance. Say the fee. And when this Court hands the Auditor a standing approval to spend, put a reporting date on it.

The Court came back and the Chair moved the order himself. Assign Denton County’s legal representation to Matthews, Shiels, Knott, Eden, Davis & Beanland, L.L.P.; exempt the contract of employment from Texas Local Government Code Section 262.023 “if applicable”; authorize the County Judge to sign it. Commissioner Precinct 3 Mitchell seconded. Unanimous.

No rate. No cap. No total. That is the third time this year this Court has hired outside counsel with that exact three step order and no price attached. It did it twice on March 17.

Section 262.023 is the county’s competitive bidding requirement and it applies above $50,000. The Court exempted the contract from it without saying what the contract costs, so nobody outside that room can tell whether the exemption was needed.

The paperwork is three pages. A routing form, the caption printed a second time, and a blank court order. No memo of any kind. Nothing anywhere in 268 pages says what this case is about, why Denton County is in it, or what defending it will cost.

Residents are entitled to know when their county is paying lawyers, and roughly how much. Read the rate into the record before the Judge signs.

It asked for renewal and strength, and for blessings on the Civil Air Patrol cadets being honored that morning and on the people who work in public health. Then it asked this: "Be with this court and our elected officials. May the proceedings always be with your favor and grace."

That is a county employee at a government podium asking favor for the five people who set his budget, at the top of the meeting where they do it.

11 of the 12 invocations this year have come from a member of this Court, a county department head, the Sheriff, or his chaplain.

A moment of silence takes the same minute and leaves nobody out.

WIC enrollment is up 20% in two years. That is the federal nutrition program for low income pregnant women, new mothers, infants and children under five. His words: “A 20% increase in two years is significant.” And: “That shows you the economy.”

Childhood vaccinations are down. The department gave roughly 10% fewer than in prior years. His words: “That’s a concern. I can’t attribute that exactly.”

Health screenings of people booked into the county jail are up almost 15% since 2023, which he tied directly to “increased census at the jail.”

More families needing food help. Fewer children getting shots. More people in the jail. All three from the county’s own director, in one sitting, in open session.

Then the responses. The Judge thanked the department, then thanked the Court for supporting the department. Commissioner Precinct 2 Falconer said he liked the new graphics. Commissioner Precinct 3 Mitchell asked him to take the presentation to Rotary. Commissioner Precinct 4 Edmondson asked for a copy of the slides.

Not one question about the 20%. Not one about the vaccinations. Not one about the jail.

The rest of the report belongs to that department and they earned it. Almost 19,000 clinic visits. 710 medical examiner investigations that led to autopsy. 64,000 phone calls answered. 1,300 Medical Reserve Corps volunteers, one of the largest such corps in Texas. A second Project Public Health Ready designation, which few departments in this state hold. That work is theirs.

What this Court did with it was clap.

When your health director tells you enrollment in a poverty program is up a fifth in two years, the next voice should be a commissioner asking what it costs to keep up with it.

Partway through, the presenter told the Court about one patient. He gave the employee’s first and last name. He said which county department that employee works in. He described a conversation with a provider, a CT scan of the heart, significant calcification found on it, and the triple bypass that followed. He said the county’s health plan “may have paid a considerable amount” for it. Then he asked the room: “is Pat in the audience, by the way? We’d heard that Pat might be here.”

I am not printing the name. It is already on this county’s permanent video record, because a contractor put it there.

Maybe that employee agreed to all of it. I hope so. Nobody on that dais asked. Four elected officials listened to a vendor holding their employees’ medical records name one of those employees and describe that person’s cardiac diagnosis and surgery in a televised public meeting, and the next thing anybody said was “I think this is a great presentation.”

That is fixable in one sentence of a contract. A vendor presenting to this Court on employee health does not identify patients. Not by name, not by department, not by a question about who is sitting in the room.

The same presentation carried a number this Court also let pass. Employee engagement with the clinic is 25.9%, which the vendor said is below its own benchmark, and the department with the largest gap is the Sheriff’s Office, the same department this county cannot keep staffed. Nobody asked about that either.

9.B was read out in full. Contract number, amount, purpose, fiscal year.

The figure $481,489 does not appear anywhere in the transcript of this meeting. The larger of the two grants, four times the size of the other, was voted without its number.

Both carried unanimously. Neither drew a question.

Say the number. Both times. Three seconds each, and it is the entire reason the vote happens in public.