Despite Funding Shortfalls, HCFCD Still Claims No Projects Will Be Cancelled
4/2/2025 – Despite massive funding shortfalls associated with the 2018 Flood Bond that have become the talk of Commissioner’s Court, Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) still claims no projects will be cancelled – even after it cancelled several. See the screen capture below taken this afternoon.
That page has been up since at least 2022. An oversight? The County has known for years that it didn’t have enough money to complete bond projects. But instead of fessing up, they prioritized projects in Rodney Ellis’ precinct and delayed the day of reckoning…until they ran out of money for, you guessed it, Ellis’ projects.
HCFCD also cleverly called cancelled projects “completed”…because it decided not to pursue them anymore. Welcome to a world of linguistic legerdemain.
Is it intentional? You be the judge. Clearly, the pretense has persisted for years.
A History of Warnings and Missteps
2021
On 3/9/2021, David Berry, then the County’s Budget Management Director, asserted in a Commissioners’ Court meeting that the County had a shortfall of approximately $900 million to $1.35 billion needed to complete projects in the Flood Bond.
In December that year, Berry, by then the County Administrator, proposed eliminating partner funding as a factor in prioritizing bond projects. Said another way, partners who made projects possible would not see projects accelerated.
Only one problem: we expected partners to fund 43% of all flood bond projects. Basically, Berry eliminated the main incentive for MUDs and municipalities to bring money to the table.
But it pushed so-called “equity” projects to the front of the line.
2022
HCFCD updated its Equity Prioritization Framework, a controversial policy for ranking potential flood mitigation projects. It excluded flood damage from the ranking of projects. Instead, the policy gave preference to socially vulnerable areas – as defined by the CDC –regardless of flood damage.
Only a portion of potential funding partners have similar priorities. This further limited partner-funding potential.
2023
In June 2023, while speaking to a public meeting of the Harris County Community Flood Resilience Task Force, Scott Elmer, the Flood Control District’s Chief Partnership and Programs Officer, predicted that some projects in the 2018 flood bond likely would not get done because of a funding gap.
In July 2023, Harris County put 37 of 93 subdivision drainage projects associated with the 2018 Flood Bond “on hold” because it lacked funding, often from shortfalls in expected partner contributions.
In December 2023, Jesal Shah PE, the Chief Project Delivery Officer for HCFCD, discussed the impact of inflation on the bond program with the Harris County Community Resilience Flood Task Force. He said he was re-evaluating all bond projects in an attempt to “minimize” changes.
2024
HCFCD stopped listing active construction projects on its website. The frequency of flood bond updates fell from monthly to annually. Even county commissioners were flying blind.
The July 2024 flood-bond update alluded to 33 projects that had “uncertainty about whether current funding levels are sufficient to take the associated projects through construction.”
2025
On 2/6/25, fireworks erupted in Harris County Commissioners Court today over the 2018 Flood Bond and Subdivision Drainage shortfalls. It was a rare display of bi-partisan outrage. All four commissioners and the county judge made it clear that the County didn’t have enough money to deliver flood-mitigation projects promised in the bond. Commissioners used words like, “abysmal failure,” “major crisis,” and “utter dismay.”
At the 2/27/25 Commissioners Court meeting, Precinct One Commissioner Rodney Ellis admitted, “I know there’s not enough money to do all the projects we talked about and everybody else knows it. I’m just crazy enough to say it in public.”
And in their 3/27/25 meeting, Harris County Commissioners wrestled for more than an hour with a massive, $100-million budget shortfall for subdivision drainage improvements.
Why Claim No Projects Will Be Cancelled?
Despite all that, HCFCD still – to this day – makes the “no-cancellation” claim on its website. I believe they’re trying to postpone a day of reckoning with verbal trickery.
HCFCD’s July 2024 flood-bond update said that it marked several projects “complete” – because they saw no benefit in completing them!
That sounds a lot like cancellation to me. The choice of words indicates a desperate desire to conceal a truth. It’s Orwellian “doublespeak” at its finest!
Many more projects await that same fate. Unless you remain alert!
Posted by Bob Rehak on 4/2/25
2773 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
