Bowie County to vote Monday on $657,000 juvenile detention lease and five years of overdue fire district audits
Commissioners meet at 9 a.m. Monday on a Harrison County bed lease paid whether used or not, five late audits from the DeKalb fire district, a $339,870 grader and a pawn-shop database for the sheriff.
NEW BOSTON, Texas — Bowie County commissioners will vote Monday on a $657,000 contract that guarantees nine juvenile detention beds in Harrison County whether Bowie County uses them or not, and on accepting five years of overdue audits from the fire district that serves the DeKalb area.
The Commissioners Court meets at 9 a.m. Monday, Oct. 26, at the Bowie County Courthouse in New Boston. The agenda also includes a $339,870 road grader for Precinct 3, a pawn-shop database subscription for the Sheriff’s Office, a mileage deal with Cass County’s veterans office and the 2027 county holiday calendar.
Nine beds, paid for empty or full
The revised agreement with Harrison County covers detention before and after a juvenile court hearing at the Willoughby Juvenile Center in Marshall, about 70 miles south of Texarkana. It is item 5 on the agenda.
Bowie County would pay $200 a day for each of nine beds, or $1,800 a day, billed in quarterly installments of $164,250. The beds “shall be paid for by BOWIE County whether the designated beds for BOWIE County are occupied by youth, or not,” the contract in the meeting packet says.
The term runs from Sept. 1, 2026, through Aug. 31, 2027, so the contract would apply to a period that has already started. The packet copy is not signed. The agenda calls it a “revised” agreement, and the contract says it replaces all earlier contracts between the two counties for the same purpose.
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The $200 rate does not cover everything. Schooling is provided by a charter school at the facility, and Bowie County must seek reimbursement for it from education agencies. Counseling for youths who score high on a mental health screening is also extra, as is medical care.
Harrison County keeps first claim on space at the facility, and Bowie County youths get priority for the nine leased beds. Parents and approved visitors can see youths held before a hearing for 30 minutes on Thursdays. Visits for youths in post-hearing placement are on Sundays. All visits must be scheduled by phone.
The county can end the contract without penalty if the money is not appropriated.
Harrison County’s website describes Willoughby as a 24-bed secure facility for youths ages 10 to 16 who are already on probation, with a recommended stay of six months. The Bowie County contract also uses it for pre-hearing detention.
The county has rented beds since 2007
Bowie County has not run a juvenile lockup of its own in nearly 19 years. From 1997 to 2007 the county operated a detention center in a former National Guard armory on Plaza West Drive in Texarkana, and in 2006 it was also taking in youths from other counties under contract. That year the center was holding about 50 youths, less than a third of its capacity, and the chief juvenile probation officer asked commissioners to cut its budget by 21%, to $1.36 million, the Texarkana Gazette reported at the time. He blamed other counties building their own centers and a 47% drop in juvenile arrests since 2003.
The center shut down on March 22, 2007, over what the Gazette described as a certification error, and never reopened for detention. In December 2007 the county’s juvenile board voted to close it for good and contract with Gregg, Hood, Grayson and Denton counties for beds. The county moved juvenile probation into the Plaza Building at 601 Main St., where it remains, and converted the armory into a residential drug and alcohol treatment center for women on probation.
Since then the county has shopped for beds across Texas. By 2016 it was sending youths to Victoria County’s regional center on the Gulf Coast, which raised its rate for Bowie County to $110 a day that year. Commissioners first contracted with Harrison County in July 2021 and have renewed each year since. Monday’s contract converts that pay-per-day arrangement into a guaranteed lease.
Backup beds in Amarillo and Rockdale
Item 6 would let Howell sign contracts with two other facilities. Unlike the Harrison County deal, both charge only for days a youth is actually held.
- Randall County’s Youth Center of the High Plains in Amarillo, more than 400 miles from Texarkana. Detention would cost up to $200 a day. Post-hearing residential treatment would cost up to $225 a day, used “as space is available.” The packet also includes a separate agreement for the center’s post-adjudication correctional unit.
- Rockdale Youth Academy in Rockdale, northeast of Austin. It is run by a private company, Youth Opportunity Investments LLC. The rates are $316.21 a day for secure detention and $385.21 a day for longer-term residential placement, plus $250 for each polygraph exam.
Five years of fire district audits at once
Item 4 asks commissioners to accept financial audits from two of the county’s six emergency services districts, the small taxing units that fund volunteer fire departments outside the cities.
Emergency Services District No. 6, which serves the DeKalb area, submitted five annual audits covering every year from October 2019 through September 2024. Texas law requires each district to file its audit with the Commissioners Court by June 1 of the following year. The court can grant a 30-day extension or order the county auditor to do the audit.
None of the five was finished on time, according to the dates on the auditor’s reports. The audit for the year ending September 2020 is dated Nov. 18, 2021. The next three are dated Jan. 22, 2024; April 9, 2024; and Oct. 11, 2024. The most recent, for the year ending September 2024, is dated June 30, 2025. The district’s audit for the year ending September 2025, due June 1 of this year, is not in the packet.
The same law says that when a district in a single county misses the deadline, has not been granted a county-auditor order, and still has not filed by Sept. 1, the president and treasurer of its board are removed and the Commissioners Court fills the seats. The packet does not say when the district delivered the reports to the county or whether any extension was requested.
The audits themselves are clean. Wilf & Henderson, the Texarkana accounting firm that prepared all of them, gave the district unqualified opinions each year. In each year’s letter to the board, the firm noted that the district’s budget “hasn’t been updated throughout the year” and recommended amending it as actual numbers come in.
The five reports cover the district’s first five years. A January 2020 notice posted on the county’s website said the district was “still in its first year’s budget,” with $182,260 in planned spending. The reports show a district that borrowed almost immediately. In 2020 it bought a building and land for about $442,000 with two 3% loans, one for $192,000 from State Bank of DeKalb with a balloon payment due in August 2025, and one for $250,000 from the Ark-Tex Council of Governments’ loan fund, payable through 2040. It still owed $358,107 at the end of September 2024.
The district’s property tax rate has come down from 7 cents per $100 of value in its first year to 5.65 cents in the 2024 fiscal year, as the taxable value inside its boundaries grew from $210 million to $369 million. It collected $209,687 in taxes in the 2024 fiscal year and spent $181,406, including $42,945 in stipends and $32,380 for legal and auditing costs, nearly three times what it budgeted. It ended the year with $151,690 in its general fund.
The district’s board, as listed in the 2024 report, is Jason McDaniel, president; Mike Ford, vice president; Micah Fannin, secretary; and Carol Thompson, treasurer.
Liberty-Eylau district bought a $528,000 truck
The other audit is the 2025 report for Emergency Services District No. 2, which covers the Liberty-Eylau area and holds its meetings at the LE Fire Department on Eylau Loop Road. That audit was also finished after the June 1 deadline. The auditor’s report is dated July 17, 2026.
The district spent $528,089 on fire vehicles during the year, financed in part with a $275,200 loan that will cost $35,595 a year through 2035. Its general fund balance fell from $208,811 to $38,751. The district collected $169,562 in taxes at a rate of 3 cents per $100 on $558 million of taxable value. Total spending of $614,822 ran $38,060 over budget, and the auditors made the same recommendation about amending the budget during the year.
Its board is Jay Hernandez, president; Danny Crump, vice president; Laura Harvey, secretary; and Ray Howell, treasurer.
A $339,870 grader with an expired quote
Item 9 would buy a John Deere 672 P-Tier six-wheel-drive motor grader for Precinct 3, Commissioner James Strain’s precinct, for $339,870 through the Sourcewell cooperative purchasing contract. The quote is from Stribling Equipment in Texarkana, Arkansas.
The dealer’s quote was written Oct. 16 and lists an expiration date of Oct. 23, three days before the vote. The packet also includes a John Deere Financial option sheet for five annual payments of $79,162 at 5.3% interest, which would add $55,940 in interest over the life of the loan, along with a blank credit application. The agenda item describes the transaction as a purchase.
Pawn shop database for the Sheriff’s Office
Item 7 is a three-year subscription to LeadsOnline, a Texas company whose database lets investigators search pawn shop, secondhand store and scrap metal transactions nationwide and automatically matches them against stolen property reports. The service runs from Nov. 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2029.
The first 11 months are free: the price schedule shows a $6,643.75 charge for the first term with a matching credit. The county would then pay $11,483 for the year beginning Oct. 1, 2027, and $12,860 for the year beginning Oct. 1, 2028, a total of $24,343 over the three years.
Veterans mileage, holidays and the Red Barn minutes
Item 3 is an agreement under which Bowie County would reimburse Cass County for mileage when Cass County’s veterans service officer drives into Bowie County to help veterans. Cass County would bill only the federal mileage rate it pays its own employee, with no fee, salary or travel time added, and either county could cancel on 30 days’ notice. Bowie County has its own veterans service officer, Mechelle Price, at the courthouse in New Boston.
The copy in the packet is already signed by Howell and Cass County Judge Travis Ransom and dated Oct. 1, more than three weeks before Monday’s vote. The agreement states that each county’s Commissioners Court “has approved this Agreement.”
Item 8, the 2027 holiday schedule, gives county employees 14 paid days off. Juneteenth would be observed on Friday, June 18, and Independence Day on Monday, July 5, because both holidays fall on a weekend next year. Christmas would be observed Dec. 24 and 27, and Thanksgiving Nov. 25 and 26.
Commissioners will also approve the minutes of their Oct. 13 meeting. Those minutes record the votes on Red Barn Solar that TXKtoday reported last week: 3-1 to create the reinvestment zone and 3-1 to approve the road use agreement, with Commissioner Mike Carter voting no both times, then a unanimous vote for the 10-year tax abatement. The public hearing ran from 9 a.m. to 10:57 a.m. The minutes also show the court took no action on a service agreement with a company called Americus Holdings, the last item on that agenda.
Monday’s agenda ends with a closed session to discuss pending or contemplated litigation, the purchase or value of real property, personnel matters and economic development negotiations. No vote is listed after the closed session.
Residents can speak for up to three minutes on agenda items or other county business if they turn in a public participation form at least 15 minutes before the meeting starts. Total comment time is capped at 30 minutes. The county posts agendas and packets on its website. For the names of the five court members and other county officials, see TXKtoday’s guide to Bowie County government.