KERR COUNTY, Texas – During the first Kerr County Commissioners Court meeting since the tragic Hill Country floods on Monday, Commissioner Rich Paces said he has received death threats.
County Judge Rob Kelly and Commissioner Jeff Holt raised their hands in agreement.
Paces said that some members of the public have played a blame game, ridiculing the county leaders for “decisions that we never had the chance to make.”
“Joe Biden didn’t give us $10 million for a flood warning system,” Paces said. “That’s just false information.”
Paces appeared to be referring to questions raised about whether the county should have installed outdoor warning sirens along the Guadalupe River with federal COVID grant money or other funds.
Several social media users have posted comments critical of the county’s emergency response and infrastructure. Some of those included claims that local leaders had ample opportunity to install warning sirens or other emergency warning systems.
“Every day, I’m stomping out false rumors,” Harris said at the meeting.
TheTXLoop Investigates reviewed years of previous Kerr County Commissioners meetings in an attempt to get the facts about past decisions on sirens.
TheTXLoop found that the Kerr County Commissioners Court discussed installing early warning sirens as early as 2015, after a deadly flood on Memorial Day.
Those discussions of emergency preparedness have often been intertwined with fiscal responsibility.
Kerr County has not installed sirens, a fact mentioned by County Judge Kelly at a press conference hours after the deadly floods.
In neighboring Kendall County, the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department installed two sirens along the river for $70,000 with help from a nonprofit. In an interview with TheTXLoop last week, they credited them with saving lives during the July 4 floods.
When did Kerr County leaders consider implementing flood warning sirens?
The commissioners identified a need to upgrade the emergency management systems as early as March 2016. At the time, Kerrville’s Emergency Management Coordinator, Tony Leonard, told the court that it was extremely outdated.
“We had a state-of-the-art system 25 years ago,” Leonard said in a March 2016 meeting, “and it just sat there and became antiquated.”
Not everyone was on board with the idea of sirens, though.
Then-commissioner Buster Baldwin, who has since died, said that the sirens would disrupt the natural landscape of the Texas Hill Country.
“The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of the night,” Baldwin said in a June 2016 meeting, “I’m going to have to start drinking again to put up with y’all.”
Baldwin continued to argue that the sirens would be more beneficial to tourists and outsiders than locals who live in the region.
“Who are we trying to get the message to?” Baldwin asked in the 2016 meeting. “Are they these crazy people from Houston that build homes right down on the water?”
At the time, questions had already started to arise about how to fund the sirens. The commissioners looked into federal and recently approved state funds available to assist counties in flood preparedness.
The county applied for grant funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for a $950,000 grant to improve the flood warning system, including sirens. If approved, the county would have received 75% of the necessary funding from the federal government.
The application was denied by the Texas Emergency Management Agency, the Associated Press reported, citing that the county did not have a hazard mitigation plan.
Though the county reapplied in 2017, an agency spokesperson told the AP that after Hurricane Harvey, “funding was distributed to counties that fell under the disaster declaration, which Kerr County was not included on.”
Not all Kerr County residents, commissioners wanted to accept $10 million in ARPA funding in 2021
In their opening remarks at Monday’s meeting, multiple commissioners said they have not had the funds to buy the sirens.
In 2021, Kerr County received $10.2 million from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
ARPA, a $1.9 trillion stimulus package, was approved by Congress to provide disaster relief in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Many local and state governments used the funds to upgrade infrastructure — some including warning sirens — since the law was written broadly.
“We did get ARPA funds, OK?” Paces said Monday. “We used it for a radio system to help with emergency response.”
Kerr County commissioners ultimately voted to spend $6.9 million for the upgrade of radio communication systems for first responders. It also approved “a little over a million dollars” for emergency stipends to first responders.
But that wasn’t without controversy.
Soon after the $10.2 million in federal funding was announced, residents began asking Kerr County officials to send the money back to the feds, according to recordings of the meetings reviewed by TheTXLoop.
Many said they felt the federal government was spending too much money and feared that accepting the funds could leave the county vulnerable to federal mandates such as vaccine requirements.
In a community survey conducted by Kerr County, more than 40% of respondents said that they wanted to send the funds back.
During an April 2022 meeting, County Judge Kelly said that while some residents had been vocal about denying the funds, most realize that spending the money would only benefit the county.
He also said that if Kerr County sent the funds back, the federal government could still choose to spend the money elsewhere.
“My old law partner John Cornyn tells me that if we send it back, it’s going to New Jersey or it’s going to New York or California,” Kelly said.
In a narrow 3-2 vote, the commissioners court voted to allow the county to spend the federal funds. Commissioner Don Harris and former Commissioner Harley David Belew voted against accepting the funds at the time.
In a June 2024 update, the commission reported that it had budgeted $9.8 million of the $10.2 million received from ARPA.
Outdoor warning sirens could cost anywhere between $30,000 and $50,000 each, according to a Missouri emergency management agency, and multiple would have been needed.
In 2016, estimates said the project for Kerr County would have cost nearly $1 million. That’s not accounting for inflation.
Could Kerr County have used ARPA funding to install warning sirens?
The question remains, however, whether the sirens could have been installed using ARPA funds.
In September 2023, an Indiana city council used ARPA funds to purchase two new outdoor warning sirens. The city spent $69,000 for the sirens.
In November 2024, a Nebraska city council voted to replace an outdoor warning siren utilizing ARPA funds. The siren was purchased for $37,894.
According to the Department of the Treasury, the funds could be used in several different cases, ranging from recovering funds lost during COVID to investing in improving water infrastructure.
TheTXLoop reached out to Paces, but he declined to comment.
TheTXLoop also reached out to Harris and Kelly, who were on the commissioner’s court when ARPA funding was discussed, to learn whether they considered using funds to purchase an outdoor warning siren. They have not responded to the requests for comment.
Read more reporting on the TheTXLoop Investigates page.
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