Van Zandt County Commissioners Court reviews road and bridge budgets as precinct requests top $3.25 million

At a Van Zandt County Commissioners Court workshop, commissioners reviewed Road & Bridge budget proposals from all four precincts and discussed personnel, equipment, materials and pending procurement requirements.

Commissioner Mitch Curtis (Precinct 1) presented his precinct’s budget request as $3,250,756, down from about $3,292,000 last year, and walked commissioners through personnel and benefit calculations. "My total is 3,250,756 requested," Curtis said, noting he reduced the request by about $40,000 and that group health insurance is projected at about $12,046 per employee for the coming year.

The court heard that personnel and equipment needs are driving many requests. Precinct 1 described shifting from rentals to equipment payments for heavy machinery (Curtis said he planned to move $40,000 from rental to equipment payments and to increase capital outlay) and added a $200,000 contingency to cover major rebuilds and to support plans to build about 15 miles of road next year. Commissioners stressed that in-house chip-seal capability hinges on having brooms, dump trucks and reclaimers available to protect newly stabilized surfaces until contractors arrive.

A second presenter (Precinct 2) said that precinct’s budget remained largely unchanged, with a temporary $30,000 increase in repair and maintenance to fix a fence knocked down in a storm and a noted change in the appraisal-district special road tax allocation. The presenter asked whether some seal-coating expenses should be moved from materials to contract services to improve consistency across precinct budgets.

The Precinct 3 presenter asked for two full-time employees to address summer workloads and requested roughly $2.0 million for road-and-bridge materials, citing flood repairs and frequent replacement of traffic covers. That presenter outlined trade-offs between hiring additional staff, using trustee/inmate crews, and the cost-effectiveness of keeping heavy machinery well maintained.

Precinct 4 raised a separate capital item: a bridge project at Alligator Creek estimated at about $193,000–$200,000. The precinct 4 presenter said the project is eligible for TxDOT funding but requires a local 10% match — roughly $65,000 — and confirmed that projects above $100,000 require an RFP/competitive-bid process. "I've got a $200,000 bridge project…I've got to match $65,000," the precinct 4 presenter said, and commissioners discussed bid variance between local contractors and higher outside estimates.

Other operational items included a staff laptop request and discussion about how to account for employees who perform work from home. Commissioners also discussed posting daily crew reports and material usage online for transparency and asked the auditor’s office for clarifications on items such as bonding costs and how equipment purchases versus capital leases should be recorded.

No formal vote or final budget adoption occurred; the court deferred substantive budget decisions until county revenue numbers are available. The chair said the court will cancel Tuesday’s planned workshop, and staff will schedule two or three budget workshops in early August once the county’s revenue estimates are complete.

Next procedural steps: commissioners will get updated appraisal-district special road tax figures from the auditor’s office, precincts will refine line-item numbers (personnel, equipment payments and capital outlay), and the court will reconvene for scheduled workshops in August to finalize allocations.