Collin County Commissioners Court Preview — September 28, 2026

Bottom Line (Ironically, at the Top)

The biggest item on the agenda is a $20.5M annual award for road asphalt (we go through a lot of it in our rapid growth and increasing vehicular traffic), including one tied bid the Court will settle by drawing lots. No, I’m not joking, they’re going to draw lots. When I’m Commissioner, we’re going to put a stop to this ridiculous and antiquated practice and settle these matters with rock-paper-scissors, like a civilized county. The Court will also consider Collin County’s first AI Acceptable Use Policy and adopt the FY2027 fee schedule, which raises most constable and Sheriff civil process fees by a third or more. It also sets the FY2027 rate for the hospital-funded Medicaid program. Consent spending totals $1,086,596.76.

Logistics

Review the full agenda here. Meetings start at 1:30 p.m. at the Jack Hatchell Administration Building, 4th Floor, 2300 Bloomdale Road, McKinney, TX 75071. You can sign up to speak at Commissioners Court meetings in person by filling out a blue card shortly before the meeting. You may alternatively share your thoughts by emailing the Commissioners Court through their contact info here. Videos of the meetings can be viewed here.

Commissioners Court Business

1. Road Materials, Asphaltic Concrete (IFB 2026-280): $20,524,000 budgeted for a year of asphalt, split among five vendors, with options to renew for two additional years. Asphalt is kind of necessary for roads, and as fast as we’re growing, we go through a lot of it. 3,159 vendors were notified, five bid (I’m feeling a little snubbed by 3,154 of them), and the lowest price won each line item. Austin Asphalt took the heavy-volume lines at $105 a ton. Now, as I alluded to in the Bottom Line, the backup (secondary) supplier slot is a dead tie at $94.00 a ton, and the law says that when two bidders tie, the Court decides by drawing lots. So the elected Commissioners Court of a county of 1.3 million people will pull a name out of a hat. This is barbaric. We should settle these things with rock-paper-scissors. A more civilized weapon, for a more civilized age.
2. Public hearing and vote on the FY2027 mandatory payment rate for the Local Provider Participation Fund: Under state law, the county can require private hospitals to pay into a local fund that is used to draw down federal Medicaid dollars, which mostly go back to those same hospitals. The proposed rate is 6 percent of each hospital’s net patient revenue; roughly $306 million across 27 facilities.
3. Public hearing on regulatory signs: Stop signs at both ends of CR 867 where it meets CR 437 south of Princeton, plus a 35 mph speed limit on CR 867. The cover sheet shows $155,750, but that’s the balance available in the road maintenance budget line, not the price of two stop signs. (Nobody’s gold-plating stop signs; Plano chicken coops are a different matter.)
4. Asset Loss Report for August: Damaged county stuff. One stands out: on August 30, a Sheriff’s deputy drove his unit through a metal gate to reach a person trapped in a burning home. Hell yeah. Protect and Serve.

Executive Session

Executive session is a closed meeting authorized by Texas law for discussions involving real estate, personnel, pending litigation, or attorney-client matters. Any action taken must return to open session.

The Court reserves the right to convene in closed session on any agenda matter under Texas Government Code Chapter 551 (§§ 551.071–551.076), including consultation with its attorneys. No specific topics were itemized on this agenda.

Notable Consent & FYI Items

Total of $1,086,596.76 of your money in proposed expenses

• AI Acceptable Use Policy: The county’s first rules for how employees and elected officials use AI. It’s adapted from the state’s model policy, with one change. The state’s version makes employees get written approval before touching a public tool like ChatGPT or Claude. Collin County’s version approves those tools once an employee signs off on the policy, while still banning the input of personal or confidential data (PII) and treating prompts and outputs as public records. My favorite line tells employees to treat AI output “as though they were written by an unskilled intern.” Yes: still hire the intern, but check their work. I do this for a living, and we should be training our AI just as we train interns. The next step is to put the tools to work on real county work. I intend to make sure we make effective and responsible use of AI, upon election if not now. Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m still protecting anyone named John Connor with my life.
• FY2027 Fee Schedule: This doesn’t involve tax dollars, but it involves your money. Constable and Sheriff fees for serving civil papers go from $75 to $100, and writs and executions go from $175 to $250. Several Public Health vaccine prices are increasing as well (such as meningitis from $175 to $250). State law lets the county set these fees to cover the cost of the service, which is where cost recovery belongs: with the person who needs the writ, or the meningitis vaccine. A note on process: none of the changes are flagged anywhere in the packet. I had to compare it against last year’s fee schedule. Going forward, I’d like to see a summary of changes be standard practice, especially on a consent item.
• Specialty Court Fund budget amendment: $307,917 for the county’s specialty courts: $255,835 carried over from FY2026 plus $52,081 in FY2026 revenue. Alongside it are the contracts that staff Judge Roach’s Veterans Treatment Court and VALOR program and Judge Bender’s misdemeanor veterans court (watch for my interview with Judge Roach in the near future). They include a lead clinician at $82,939.88 (item), two $10,000 contracts (case manager, mental health coordinator), and two-month extensions for the clinical director and intake coordinator. These are mostly Texas Veterans Commission grant dollars, and the programs are an excellent example of a specialized approach that changes outcomes.
• Mowing renewals with Fando Landscaping and Coast to Coast Contracting: $203,000 from one shared budget line.
• Excess Workers’ Compensation Insurance: $134,174, which is 32% less than last year’s $197,801.
• Fire alarm and sprinkler inspection extensions through December 29th with American Fire Protection Group and Pavion: $119,000 from a shared budget.
• Ford Interceptors for the Sheriff: two for Warrants at $109,901.14 and one for Criminal Investigations at $56,029.71.
• Aztec Trail agreement with the City of Lucas: $208,267.38 for the county’s half of rebuilding about 3,360 feet of road. The county objected to a construction practice used by Lucas’s contractor. Rather than fight over it, the county negotiated a deal: Lucas maintains the road alone for five years, and the two split costs after that. This isn’t counted in the expenses above, since it pays an agreement the Court approved in March. I’m highlighting it because it’s a good illustration of county participation in roads and the interplay between county and cities.
• Texas Juvenile Justice Department grant: $81,000 in state money, deducted from the total as revenue. It pays for one young person to spend 270 days in a Grayson County residential program at $300 a day, instead of being committed to a state facility.
• The Vibe at Melissa: An infrastructure plan for a 507-space manufactured-home rental community on about 70 acres southeast of FM 545 and SH 121. State law doesn’t treat such communities as subdivisions, so the county is responsible for ensuring the infrastructure plan meets standards.
• Agreement with the U.S. Capitol Police: This lets the federal government reimburse the Sheriff’s Office for helping protect members of Congress. The Sheriff’s memo points to the September 8 RNC event at Southfork Ranch as the kind of event this covers.
• Jail medical and mental health expansion change order 42 and change order 43 (FYI): about $60,000 combined. Total change orders on the project now stand at $7.47 million, or 7.09% of the contract.
• Routine items also on consent: disbursements for the period ending September 17, indigent defense disbursements, authorization to advertise for building-systems testing and commissioning and for disaster debris monitoring, personnel appointments and changes, and the August 24 and August 31 meeting minutes.
• Also on the agenda as mandated items: the TJJD grant above and a juvenile detention personnel appointment.

How to Engage

• Watch: Meetings are broadcast and archived through Collin County’s video portal at collincountytx.gov.
• Speak: Fill out a blue card at the County Clerk’s office before the 1:30 PM start.
• Read: The full agenda with linked attachments.
• Contact: Commissioners Court members and the County Judge are listed at the County’s Commissioners Court page.

The asphalt contract is boring, but it’s the kind of thing that’s critical to maintaining quality of life in such a rapidly growing county.

— Shelby