Priorities & Ethos

Transparency & Access

1. 1.1

   Weekend Commissioners Court sessions with public comment, at times working people can attend. Business brunch before court, community lunch after.

2. 1.2

   Livestream and archive every Commissioners Court meeting. Publish agendas and supporting documents in advance. Post the county budget and every county contract where the public can read them. Regular town halls and office hours.

County Money

1. 2.1

   Denton County has a housing finance corporation. It's been issuing bonds in this county's name since 1980, and in 28 years of Commissioners Court records there isn't one public discussion of a single deal. Not one. That corporation follows the same rules as every other county board. Posted agendas, posted minutes, posted financials, meetings you can walk into. Texas law has required it since May of last year.

2. 2.2

   Denton County will spend more than $42m on the jail this year and won't tell you what it costs to hold one person for one day. That number isn't published anywhere. We publish it. Then we publish what we're doing to bring it down.

3. 2.3

   Denton County closed its books on September 30, 2025. Eleven months later the audit still hasn't come back. It ran late the year before that too. We get the audit done on the six month schedule the county's own accounting award already holds it to, and if it's going to be late, the public hears why before the deadline, not after.

4. 2.4

   The county took $172m in federal recovery money and stopped reporting it to the public in 2024 with two years left to spend it. Every federal dollar this county takes gets reported the same way to you as it gets reported to Washington. Amount, purpose, and what actually got spent. On a schedule, in public, until the money's gone.

Roads & Growth

1. 3.1

   Infrastructure projects finish on time and on budget, with the numbers public.

2. 3.2

   Denton County has no published rule for how much it pays toward a road inside a city. The county's own bond page says there isn't one. In practice the county share has run anywhere from 5% to all of it. We publish the formula, we apply it the same way in all four precincts, and every city knows what it qualifies for before it asks.

3. 3.3

   This county runs a bond funded road program through an outside program manager whose contract and pay appear nowhere in the public record. Hiring a program manager is normal. Not being able to find what one costs is not. Every professional services contract this county signs gets posted, with the amount, before the work starts.

Food Security

1. 4.1

   Three free meals a day for every kid. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, using federal grant dollars we already paid for.

2. 4.2

   Businesses donate surplus food instead of trashing it, with the county supporting and funding the logistics so the load doesn't fall on cities and ISDs.

Housing & Homelessness

1. 5.1

   Around the clock shelter capacity, run with nonprofit partners.

2. 5.2

   Denton County let more than $17m in federal rent assistance go back to Washington. 7,000 families applied. 800 got help. That money was for people in this county who were about to lose their homes. We take every federal housing dollar we're eligible for, we spend it on time, and we show you the ledger.

3. 5.3

   The Commissioners Court voted twice to go after federal community development money, by the county's own estimate about $1.5m a year, then rejected its own planning contract and hasn't mentioned it since 2022. We finish what they started. Denton County qualifies, applies, and brings that money home every year.

4. 5.4

   Almost every emergency shelter bed in Denton County sits in the City of Denton. The fastest growing part of this county is 30 minutes south of it with nowhere to send anybody. We build shelter capacity where the people are, with the nonprofits already doing the work.

5. 5.5

   The county spent $36m of federal recovery money buying land and reported zero dollars for housing. Texas law lets a county convey land below market value to get homes built that working people can afford. We'll use county land for housing instead of holding it.

Health & Mental Health

1. 6.1

   A public county hospital with mental health and addiction treatment centers attached. Built with local, state, and federal money. Any new taxes start with businesses, and nobody making under $100k pays more. If funding falls short, audit existing county contracts before raising taxes on working families.

2. 6.2

   Denton County started accepting opioid settlement money in December of 2021 and did not create the council to decide how to spend it until June of 2025. Three and a half years. The first dollar that shows up anywhere in the record is $65,000 for drug court testing this March. We stand that council up as a working body, we publish what this county has actually taken in, and we put it where the settlements already say it can go, including treatment and recovery housing.

3. 6.3

   This county pays for mental health screening at the jail and has never told you what it finds. Not how many people get screened, not how many get flagged, not what happens to them after. We publish it every year. Then we staff the response to match what the numbers actually say.

Policing & the Jail

1. 7.1

   Texas law requires the sheriff of any county that runs a jail to enter a 287(g) agreement. Government Code 753.051 says shall. A county judge does not get to repeal state law, and anyone who promises to end this county's 287(g) participation outright is promising something no county judge can deliver. So here is the real line. Denton County has two agreements. The jail one is required. The task force one, the agreement that puts officers on immigration enforcement out in the community, is not. This Court approved that second one on January 13, 2026, when the jail agreement had already been in place since February of 2025. Seven days before that vote the Sheriff signed a document putting the salaries, the benefits, and the overtime on Denton County. He then told this Court it was at no cost to the county. He said it twice. We defund the part that is a choice, and we publish what the part that isn't a choice actually costs.

2. 7.2

   Expand evidence based jail programs and improve reentry coordination.

3. 7.3

   Texas law lets the Commissioners Court create a personal bond office, and lets that office pay for itself out of its own fees. In six years this Court has never once put it on an agenda. We create it. People who aren't a danger to anybody stop sitting in our jail because they're broke.

4. 7.4

   The word reentry does not appear in six years of Denton County Commissioners Court records. Not one agenda item, not one dollar. So people walk out of that jail with nothing and a lot of them walk right back in. We build a real reentry program and we measure whether it works.

5. 7.5

   The Commissioners Court budgets about $93,000 a year for jail overtime and then approves around $5m. It's carried detention officer positions on the books at zero dollars while paying other counties to hold our inmates. We fund the officers in the budget the first time.

6. 7.6

   This Court put a private surveillance company on county light poles and never said so out loud. On September 10, 2024 it approved a master agreement with Flock Group for cameras on county property, 5 to 0. Seven weeks later it added four more, 5 to 0. The caption on the first one read "Approval of the Master Services Agreement between Flock Group, Inc. and the Denton County Sheriff's Office." That is the whole thing a resident got. Not the cameras. Not the plate readers. Not the $15,750. Not the $12,000 a year that renews itself with nobody voting again. That same Court bought 15 more plate readers from two other vendors in seven months and put the vendor and the exact price right in the caption both times, so it knows how. We publish what this county surveils, what it costs, who can search it, and how long it keeps what it collects. Then we vote on whether to keep it, in public, with the terms read into the record.

Gun Safety

1. 8.1

   Gun safety. "I support policies that would ensure children, felons, and those diagnosed as mentally ill or unstable do not have unrestricted access to guns." "If our warfighters have safe storage laws and red flag laws, why wouldn't anyone else?"

2. 8.2

   In one vote the Commissioners Court approved $162k for ammunition. It has never approved a dollar for gun locks, and gun locks are free. The firearms industry's own foundation ships them to any law enforcement agency that asks, and a town inside this county already gets them. We ask, and we put them in the hands of any family in this county that wants one. No registry, no paperwork, no cost to the taxpayer.

Elections & Voting

Denton County needs to strengthen election access by aligning precincts with real population patterns, expanding rural sites, and updating polling locations in fast growing areas. We must protect nonpartisan election staff, publish clear testing and audit information, and standardize procedures so every polling place follows the same rules. Voters will benefit from year round education, clear identification guidance, expanded language resources, and strong accessibility standards for disabled residents. All precinct, polling, and administrative decisions will follow Texas Election Code requirements and be explained publicly to maintain transparency and trust.

1. 9.1

   Denton County lets you vote at any location in the county for two full weeks of early voting. Then on Election Day it makes you find your assigned precinct or your ballot does not count. That is the county's own election website, in the county's own words. 100 Texas counties run countywide voting on Election Day. Collin has since 2013. Grayson since 2014. Dallas and Tarrant since 2019. In six years this Court has never put it on an agenda. Not the words vote center, not the statute, not the public hearing the county's own checklist says comes first. We hold the hearing, we apply, and you vote wherever you are that day.

2. 9.2

   Every time voter registration has come before this Court in six years, it was a software purchase. Six items across five meetings, every one of them a contract. This county adds tens of thousands of people a year and waits for each of them to come find the tax office on their own. We go to them instead. Registration drives at the high schools, the community college, naturalization ceremonies, and every county service counter, run by volunteer deputy registrars this county recruits and trains.

3. 9.3

   The only voter education Denton County has bought in six years is a website subscription. $160k over three years, sole sourced without bidding, bundled in with election night reporting and poll worker training. That is the whole of it in this Court's record. A website is not outreach. We publish plain language guides to every county office on the ballot and what it actually controls, in every language this county votes in, and we put them in the libraries, the schools, and every county counter, year round.

4. 9.4

   Countywide voting cannot happen until this Court and both party chairs settle how polling place workers get appointed. That is one of eight steps on the county's own published checklist, and Denton County still is not on the state's list. Election workers are neighbors, not partisans, and both parties recruiting them is how a polling place stays trusted. We convene both chairs, we settle it in public, and the county funds the recruiting and the training.

Veterans

1. 10.1

   Veterans get the respect and care we earned. Care, housing, and jobs.

2. 10.2

   Texas runs a grant program built specifically for county veterans service offices. Williamson County has brought that money home four years running. Denton County has never applied for it, not once, in any published cycle. We apply. Every year. For every category we qualify for.

3. 10.3

   State law tells the Commissioners Court to adopt a policy giving veterans preference in hiring the officers who serve veterans. That's never come before this Court on the record. We adopt it, we publish it, and we follow it.

4. 10.4

   Two lines in state law let jurors donate their pay to the veterans service office and the veterans treatment court, and that money is protected so the county can't use it to cut the budget instead. In six years this Court has never taken the vote. We take it.

5. 10.5

   Burying an indigent resident is a county duty, and the Commissioners Court gets to write the rules for how it's done. In six years the word burial has not come up once. When Denton County buries someone, we check whether they served first. A veteran gets a veteran's burial, in a veterans cemetery, with the honors they earned.

6. 10.6

   Denton County added more than 175 positions over the last six years. The Veterans Service Office got none of them. It's been frozen at eight people since 2021 while this county grew by more than 120,000 residents. We staff that office to match the county it actually serves.