Thursday, April 25, 2024
The Hood County Commissioners Court has voted unanimously to request that State Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, and State Rep. Shelby Slawson, R-Stephenville, submit an amendment to a state statute that would authorize the court to establish and oversee a countywide Emergency Service District.
The requested amendment is to Subchapter K of Chapter 775 of the Texas Health and Safety Code. Subchapter K was written specifically for El Paso County and currently applies only to that county.
An ESD is a political subdivision that generally supports or provides local emergency services, such as firefighting efforts. It can impose a sales and use tax and a property tax to raise money for emergency services within the district.
The court’s vote pertained only to the requested amendment. No decision has been made to create an ESD.
Precinct 1 Commissioner Kevin Andrews, who submitted the agenda item, indicated that the move was to ensure that any future ESD will provide “better government.” If adopted, the amendment will allow elected members of the Commissioners Court, who must answer to voters, to make taxing and budgeting decisions for the ESD instead of those decisions being made by board members who are appointed by the court.
The action differs from what happened in 2021 when petitions were circulated in DeCordova and Tolar to encourage the Commissioners Court to put a question on the ballot to create ESDs for those communities. The court opted not to move forward with that idea.
Under Andrews’ resolution, if an ESD is created it will be one ESD to serve the entire county.
“This basically makes it in many respects a department of the county,” he said at the court’s regular meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 24.
Andrews said that many fire chiefs, especially those in rural areas, have expressed concern about an ESD board possibly deciding to pull funds from one department that maybe doesn’t get as many calls as another department within the district. A Commissioners Court could prevent that if it has authority over the ESD.
A former fire chief for Lipan, Andrews said that he had spoken with the chiefs of the county’s nine volunteer fire departments.
“There’s a lot of support for this idea,” he said.
Precinct 4 Commissioner Dave Eagle stated, “This is a way of giving us an option of, if we’re going to do an ESD, we shouldn’t have nine of them. We should have one for the county.”
County Judge Ron Massingill expressed support for the concept and indicated that if each volunteer fire department had its own board supervised ESD, that would mean “45 unelected bureaucrats.”
Andrews told the Hood County News that the ESD would still have appointed board members who would advise the court.
