Commissioners Court brief: June 2, 2026

$15 to $300

Item 4.A was the public hearing to pull the county's development fees out of the Subdivision Rules and Regulations. Item 10.A adopted the new stand alone fee schedule and rescinded the old order.

Start with what went right, because it went right and it was not close.

Development Services Director Stephen Belknap came to the podium and walked the Court through the whole thing. What the fees are now. What they would become. How he got the numbers. Where the money goes. Commissioner Precinct 3 Bobbie Mitchell said she had called him ahead of time and still had a problem with it. Commissioner Precinct 4 Dianne Edmondson said no part of government should be a profit center and asked how many people come in needing nothing but a culvert. Commissioner Precinct 1 Ryan Williams said the county was behind because it waited too long between updates. Commissioner Precinct 2 Kevin Falconer asked him to put a mark on the calendar a year out and come back once there is actual data behind the estimates.

That is a staff member explaining a decision in plain language before the vote and four members engaging with it. It is the fix these briefs have asked for since January 6 and it was the best handled item of the year. Credit, and not the grudging kind.

Now the part nobody landed on.

The culvert permit goes from $15 to $300. 20 times what it was.

Belknap explained that honestly and his math holds. One culvert permit takes four trips to the site. Size it, inspect the culvert, inspect the forms, inspect the pour. About $75 a trip.

Then he showed the other end of the schedule. Two rural subdivisions, one with 21 lots and one with 17. The 21 lot pays more than it does today. The 17 lot saves about $1,700. And the big ones, the municipal utility districts, save real money, because their old fees were a percentage of construction cost. His figures: about $168,000 less on one and about $102,000 less on the other.

So the same document that charges a man $300 to put a pipe under his driveway takes six figures off a developer's bill.

Both halves of that are lawful and both have a reason, and the reason is not this Court. In 2023 the Legislature passed House Bill 3492, effective September 1 of that year. It added Section 232.901 to the Local Government Code, and subsection (b) says a county "may not consider the cost of constructing or improving the public infrastructure" in setting these fees. Denton County had been charging 2% of construction cost for engineering review and 3% for inspection. It cannot anymore. Belknap said exactly that from the podium and he was right.

Here is what did not happen.

Commissioner Mitchell said the jump still bothered her and that she thought it should have been graduated. Belknap answered her directly: the Court sets the fees, and if the Court is more comfortable with a graduated approach, "we can certainly do you know use a graduate approach." Commissioner Edmondson said the same jump concerned her, then said she was in favor of it.

Two members of this Court said out loud that going from $15 to $300 in one step lands wrong. The director offered to fix it in the room. Nobody made the motion. The motion on the floor was the flat schedule, it got a second, and it carried unanimously.

Then there is the paperwork, and this is the part that matters past one meeting.

The same statute that forced this change says what the county owes the public afterward. Section 232.901(c) gives a county three ways to calculate these fees. Denton County chose the second one, the hourly rate for the estimated actual direct time of county employees. Subsection (e) attaches a condition to that choice. A county using it "shall annually publish the fee and the hourly rate and estimated direct time incurred by county employees."

The hourly rate is not in this packet. The direct time estimate is not in this packet. Neither is the $75 per trip, the four trips, the 21 lot and 17 lot comparison, or the $168,000 and $102,000.

Item 10.A is seven pages. A routing form, the caption printed again, a blank court order, a two page memo, the new fee table, and a photograph of the order being rescinded. That order is Court Order 02-0494, adopted August 13, 2002, raising the building permit to $30 outside the floodplain and $50 inside it. Motion by Jacobs, second by White, carried five to zero. Commissioner Mitchell is on that 2002 order and she is still on this Court. 24 years is a long time to go without a look.

I searched all 416 pages for the figures Belknap presented. They are not in there. The entire public record of how Denton County calculated its new development fees is one man saying it out loud from a podium.

He did a good job saying it. That is not the same as publishing it, and state law asks for the second thing by name.

So: attach the presentation to the packet. Publish the hourly rate and the staff time on the county website, which Section 232.901(e) already requires. And if two members of this Court think a jump from $15 to $300 lands wrong on a homeowner, graduate it. The director said he would.

20 Positions, and the Sheriff Asked for 10

Item 8.B asked the Court to reallocate funding for 20 full time Detention Officer I positions, pay grade 104, "currently budgeted at zero" for fiscal year 2026.

Sheriff Tracy Murphree came to the podium and asked for half.

His words: "for the first time maybe ever we have more applicants than we have openings right now." Then: "understanding where we're at in the budget process and things that are going on I would like to request that we lower that 20 down to 10 right now."

An elected official with a hiring problem was handed 20 positions and took 10 to protect the county's budget. Credit, and it goes to him.

Commissioner Falconer asked a real question. Staffing is at 77%. Fill the 10 and where does that put you. The Sheriff said over 80 and said plainly he did not know the exact number. Commissioner Edmondson asked why the applications turned around. He gave a straight answer: the pay raise this Court funded, work from home jobs drying up, the economy, gas prices, and people with some life experience wanting to serve.

Then he did something I have not watched anybody at that podium do this year.

He said the budget officer had told this Court that jail overtime should be coming down, and that he wanted to explain why it is not falling as fast as straight math predicts. New detention officers spend weeks in a field training program, so two people do one job. Mandatory jail school takes more off the floor. And because the county held back on promotions to keep bodies working, sergeants and corporals have been picking up overtime at a higher rate than detention officers earn.

Then this: "I've stood up here saying we get to 65 and we're good. I didn't consider those variables as well."

That is a county officeholder correcting his own past testimony, in public, with nobody making him do it.

Now the arithmetic, because that is the standard I have held this Court to all year and it has to cut both ways.

He said overtime is down "right at a thousand" hours from May 2025 to May 2026. I cannot check hours against the packet, because hours are not in it. I can check the money, and the money agrees with him on direction. Four jail overtime transfers this year, each smaller than the one before: $291,557 on January 29, $235,890 on March 17, $220,722 on April 21, $199,843 on May 19. $948,012 total, every dollar of it moved expressly outside the county's own budget amendment and personnel policy.

And staffing agrees with him too, for the first time all year. 74% in January. 72 in March. 75 in May. 77 now.

On March 17 I wrote that the jail had told this Court twice in writing that it could not staff itself, and that twice the money moved without a question. On May 19 Commissioner Williams finally asked one. On June 2 the Sheriff walked in and gave the whole picture before anybody asked.

That is the thing working. Say so.

One thing is still owed. Those 20 positions sat funded at zero. 10 of them just got money. The Sheriff said he will probably be back in a few weeks for the other 10. When he is, put the staffing percentage and the overtime number on the agenda next to the ask. He has earned a room that can follow along.

COURT WATCH

I am the Democratic nominee for Denton County Judge. This brief reflects my observations and opinions regarding this Denton County Commissioners Court meeting, with a focus on how authority was exercised, how decisions were explained, and whether transparency and discretion were handled responsibly.

A county government that explains itself is a county government you can check. Say what a thing costs before the vote. Keep a record somebody can read. Where this Court got that right, I say so. Where it didn't, I say that too, and I say what I would do instead.

By Nick Pappas

Bottom Line Up Front

20th meeting of the year. 416 pages, 31 votes, and all five members in the room.

The Court did the job right on one item and it was the biggest one on the agenda. Development Services walked through a complete rebuild of the county's development fees in plain language, two members pushed back on the record, and a third asked staff to come back in a year with real data. That is what I have asked for since January.

Then the culvert permit went from $15 to $300 while two sample subdivisions came out about $168,000 and $102,000 cheaper. Two members said the jump bothered them. The director offered to graduate it on the spot. Nobody moved to.

Sheriff Tracy Murphree was offered 20 detention officer positions and asked for 10, to protect the budget. He also stood there and corrected his own past testimony about overtime, unprompted.

$7,700,000 in abated county taxes passed in one breath. The packet behind it is 27 pages and complete. Not one term was said out loud.

$1,287,579 got added to two road engineering contracts. No questions on either.

Three County Auditor's certificates in the packet. All three blank, all three unsigned, and on all three the company signed and the county didn't.

The Child Protective Services Board was appointed after a closed door session, and the item in the packet names nobody.

Fifth closed session on the same lawsuit since April 28. Still nothing in open session.

$1,287,579 More in Engineering

Two road design contracts got bigger on June 2.

Item 14.C added $961,276 to the county's agreement with Lamb-Star Engineering for West Shady Shores Road, taking it from $2,825,702 to $3,786,978. Item 14.D added $326,303 to the agreement with BGE for Strader Road, taking it from $3,560,256 to $3,886,559.

$1,287,579 in one morning. Neither drew a single question.

The memos behind them explain themselves, and that belongs on the record, because I have complained about missing explanations all year and these are not missing. Lamb-Star's scope grows to add schematic and environmental work on West Shady Shores from the I-35E northbound frontage road to Swisher Road and from Fritz Lane to Lake Shore Road. BGE's grows to finish plans for widening Robson Ranch Road, install one traffic signal at the HEB driveway and modify another at Landmark Drive, and it reduces construction phase work on two other pieces. Both memos carry the funding line, the auditor line item and the project code.

That is a good packet. Nobody read a word of it out loud.

Both memos open the same way, and I have been reading that sentence in these packets since February. "Innovative Transportation Solutions, Inc. ('ITS'), recommends that the Denton County Commissioners Court approve." Behind each one sits a memorandum from John R. Polster of Innovative Transportation Solutions, 1422 W. Main Street in Lewisville, addressed to the county's civil attorney and copied to the commissioner for that precinct, the budget director, the auditor and purchasing.

None of that is improper. A county running a voter approved road program hires people who do this for a living. What I still cannot tell you, after reading 416 pages, is what that firm is paid, how it was selected, or what its contract requires. It is not in this packet either.

Put the contract in a packet.

Invocation

20th meeting, 19th invocation. All 19 have been Christian.

This one came from the county's Public Health Director, welcomed forward from the dais by the County Judge. It read the Beatitudes aloud and closed in the name of Jesus.

I name the role and not the person, because the practice is the problem. And the role is the point. That is the fifth time this year this Court has handed its own microphone to the same county department head to open a public meeting in prayer. January 29, February 24, March 31, May 12, and now June 2.

A resident who prays somewhere else, or nowhere at all, has now sat through 19 of these in one year. Their faith has not come up once.

A moment of silence takes the same minute. Everybody gets to use it.

Consent Agenda

Five items. The Judge asked whether anybody wanted to pull something and asked for a motion in the same sentence. Commissioner Mitchell moved, Commissioner Falconer seconded, it carried unanimously, and then he read what had passed.

Voted, then read. Again.

The three items carrying money were read with the amount and the reason, which is the improvement these briefs asked for and I will take it every time: $2,200 for emergency management hospitality expenses, $1,661 for a justice court's training and interpreters, $1,320 for a pedestal camera that was already in the budget.

Then there is item 2.A, "Order Making Appointments." Three pages. A routing form, the caption printed again, a blank court order. No name, no position, no term, no board. The caption says the appointments were posted and advertised and that interviews were conducted under county policy, and none of that appears anywhere in 416 pages.

Read it first, then vote. Four words. February 24, April 14 and May 19 are the three times all year this Court got that order right, and Commissioner Mitchell was in the chair for every one of them.

$7,700,000, and What the Public Heard

Item 13.B was the First Amendment to the county's tax abatement agreement with Bell Textron Inc.

Here is the complete public account of it. The Judge read the caption. Commissioner Williams said "move to approve." Commissioner Falconer said "second." It carried unanimously.

Now here is what is in the packet, and the packet is good. 27 pages. The amendment, the original agreement, the milestones, the wage floor, all of it.

The abatement is 80% of Denton County real and business personal property taxes for 10 years, capped at $7,700,000, running January 1, 2028 through December 31, 2037. In exchange the company must put at least $110,000,000 of real property improvements on the site by December 31, 2028, another $12,000,000 by December 31, 2030, and hold an average annual wage of at least $85,000. The amendment adds one address, a planned wastewater treatment facility at 15120 North Beach Street next to the existing plant at 15100.

The project is public. It is Bell's V-280 Valor plant, a $630 million facility on the Denton County side of north Fort Worth, at least 520 jobs at an average of $85,000, building the Army's next assault aircraft. Fort Worth put more than $46 million of its own incentives behind it and Northwest ISD capped its taxes through the state's JETI program. It has been in the news for two years.

So the paperwork is complete, the project is real, and the deal may well be a good one for this county.

The finding is narrower. Not one number in the paragraph above was spoken in that room. Not the 80%. Not the 10 years. Not the $7,700,000. And not the $110,000,000 the company owes back, which is the clause that protects Denton County if this project shrinks.

On January 29, in that same room, a Hillwood development got the full public case. The acreage, the home count, a $270 million investment named out loud, the city administrator at the podium. 20 minutes later a different tax deal passed in a single breath.

That is the fourth tax deal this year to pass without anybody saying what it costs. On January 29 it was an incentive worth up to $9.3 million for a rare earth magnet plant in Northlake. On February 10, an amendment to a Chapter 381 agreement with Wells Fargo, with no word on what it changed or what it was worth. On February 24, a $300,000 abatement with Stellar Energy Americas.

And this one kills the excuse. The county cannot say the information was not ready. It was sitting in the packet, 27 printed and paginated pages of it, three days before the meeting.

Read the terms before the vote. It takes 30 seconds and the county already wrote them down.

The Board Nobody Named

Item 15.B took the Denton County Child Protective Services Board behind the closed door under Government Code 551.0745, the exception for personnel matters affecting an advisory body. The Court went in at 10:35 and came out at 11:59.

Then it took up item 13.D in the open. Commissioner Mitchell made the motion and read the appointees into the record. Commissioner Edmondson seconded. It carried.

Credit for reading them. Nothing in the packet required her to.

Item 13.D in the packet is three pages. A routing form, the caption printed again, a blank court order. Not one name. Not one term. Not one precinct.

So the public record of who Denton County just appointed to the board that oversees its child protective services work is a machine transcript of one commissioner speaking.

This is the same defect I wrote about on January 6, when two advisory board appointments were deliberated privately and ratified by quick public vote. And on January 13, when this Court spent 73 minutes behind that door on Emergency Services District appointments and reappointed five people in under two minutes. And on April 21, when a Little Elm tax increment zone seat came back with a name read aloud and a three page item that named nobody.

Deliberating a personnel matter about an advisory body in closed session is exactly what that exception is for. The appointment order is a public document. It is one page. Attach it.

$2,752, Itemized

Item 7.A is the report on miscellaneous equipment and software. It is marked "presented for recording purposes only." Nobody votes on it.

It is attached in full. 11 lines, $2,752 total, each one with a quantity, a unit cost, a spend category and a stated purpose. A $180 executive desk for Veteran Services. A $220 Milwaukee drill and driver set for Sheriff's facilities. A time stamp machine for Constable Precinct 5, broken out into its parts: $45 for the upper plate, $60 for the lower plate, $15 for the ribbon, $25 to ship the parts from the vendor, $25 to ship the custom die plates, $125 in labor to install them, and $25 to ship the finished unit to the customer's site.

$25 of shipping. Printed, categorized, filed and handed to the public.

Item 5.A is the bill report. The Court votes on that one. It is three pages: a routing form, the caption printed again, a blank court order. No vendors, no amounts, no total, not one dollar sign. County Auditor Jeff May stood up and said he had no changes and recommended approval as presented, which is his job and he did it. The document he was describing is not in the packet. It was three pages on May 19 too. And on March 31. And on March 17.

Item 8.A is the report from Human Resources on hiring actions of elected officials. Three pages, no report. Its own internal title on the routing form is "Receive and File the Personnel Agenda," and there is no personnel agenda attached to it. HR Director Gustavo Hernandez read the numbers aloud from the podium, which remains the only reason anybody has them: one lateral transfer in a constable's office, two new hires in the County Clerk, promotions in adult probation, the District Attorney's office and a justice court, three new detention officers, two rehires in the Sheriff's Office, one promotion in the Tax Office.

Then the certificates.

Three County Auditor's certificates in 416 pages. I read all three off the rendered page images, not the text layer.

Page 249 sits under the $27,811 architectural agreement with Quorum Architects. The form asks for a dollar amount. The amount is blank. The signature line above Jeff May's printed name is blank. Quorum's principal signed hers. The execution line reads "EXECUTED in triplicate originals of the day of, 2026."

Page 270 sits under the $357,894 owner representative agreement with AG|CM for the Civil Courts Building. Same form. Amount blank. Signature blank. AG|CM signed it on May 14.

Page 385 sits under the $207,200 architectural addendum with BKV Group. Amount blank. Signature blank. No printed name at all.

Three for three. Across every packet I have read this year, this county has now produced 25 Auditor's certificates. Not one is signed. Not one carries a dollar amount. On all three of these the company signed and Denton County did not.

A certificate exists to tell this Court the money is there before it obligates the county. 25 times, it has told this Court nothing.

Sign it before the vote, or do not take the vote.

Fifth Time, Same Lawsuit

Item 15.A was consultation with the county's attorney about Cause No. 141-377-160-26, styled County of Denton, Texas v. Victoria Johnson et al., pending in the 141st Judicial District Court of Tarrant County.

In at 10:35. Out at 11:59. 84 minutes. No action.

That is the fifth time this case has gone behind that door since April 28. April 28, May 5, May 6, May 12, and now June 2. Five closed sessions, five times no action, and it has never once been discussed in open session.

Closed session is where you plan litigation, and I have said so in print every time this has come up. What was said in that room is privileged.

The rest of it is not. Denton County filed this suit on April 6. It is a 376 page petition against members of the North Central Texas Council of Governments executive board. On April 30 the Regional Transportation Council voted to intervene on this county's side and set aside $5,000,000 for legal costs. All of that has been reported. And somewhere between May 6 and May 12 the case moved from the 431st District Court in Denton County to the 141st in Tarrant County, a change that exists in the public record only as the difference between two agenda captions.

Whatever confidentiality justified the first closed session ended the day the petition was filed. Nearly two months later this Court has still never told the residents paying for it what it is suing over, what it wants, or what the lawyers cost.

Say what the lawyers cost.

For The Record