Kerr County Rejected Flood Upgrades Despite Federal Aid

Kerr County had the money. More than $10 million in federal aid through the American Rescue Plan Act. A rare chance to fix the broken, prepare for the inevitable, and maybe stop the next disaster from becoming a headline. Flood warning systems could have been upgraded. That’s what some residents wanted. But federal money comes from Washington, and Kerr County didn’t trust Washington.

During a 2021 Commissioners Court meeting, a resident—Mr. Wade—stood up and called the Biden administration a criminal, treasonous, communist regime. He wasn’t a voting member of the court, just a local giving public comment. But his rant wasn’t fringe. The commissioners and the county judge echoed the same suspicion and hostility. FEMA was described as a rogue agency. A threat to freedom. A tool for authoritarian control. And the crowd clapped along.

MR. WADE: “I’m here to ask this Court today to send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House. And Kerr County should not be accepting anything from these people. They’re currently facilitating an invasion of our border, and we’re going to support these people?”

JUDGE KELLY: “Any other public input?”

(Applause)

JUDGE KELLY: “Please, no applause. We’re here to listen.”

MR. WADE: “There is no such thing as free money. It’s never government-funded; it’s taxpayer funded… They’re going to get their foot in the door in this county. We don’t want their money. I feel like the people have spoken and I stand with the people.”

This wasn’t even the first time they treated a federal grant like a political grenade. Years earlier, in a 2017 recorded public meeting, Commissioner Tom Moser discussed the cost of a flood warning system upgrade—nearly $976,000—and said the reason for the urgency was because a FEMA grant was available if they applied by January 20. Judge Pollard responded, “Which is when President Obama goes out of office.” Laughter followed. The grant was never accepted.

Still, the money from ARPA wasn’t returned. Not out of necessity, but spite. The county judge said they’d keep the funds just to make sure places like New York, California, and New Jersey didn’t get them. That was the strategy: sabotage by acceptance.

JUDGE KELLY: “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 it’s going to California… I don’t know if I’d rather be the custodian of the money until we decide what we have to do with it rather than giving it back to the government to spend it on values that we in Kerr County don’t agree with.”

COMMISSIONER BELEW: “And any spending of it would have to be done in Commissioners' Court so you’ll be able to see it and know it.”

UNNAMED SPEAKER: “FEMA… has the power to suspend laws, move, quarantine populations, and arrest and detain citizens without a warrant and hold them indefinitely without trial… You have placed every citizen and resident of Kerr County under potential FEMA control.”

ANOTHER SPEAKER: “We went through Hurricane Harvey. We were there all by ourselves like an island in the middle of water. Since we left, they have had so many floods and catastrophes… and who’s at the helm? It’s a socialist Marxist regime… They’re running elections in collusion with the White House, taking people from the border into the areas where they know they need the buffer. They need more votes.”

Kerr County Commissioners Court transcripts are public record. So are their decisions. And so are the consequences.

These transcript discoveries were surfaced and compiled by Reddit user u/no1ukn0w, who combed through 25 years of Kerr County Commissioners Court records. TikTok creator Brenna Perez (@its-a-me-Mollio) further broke down the materials and posted the sourced content, matching excerpts to public meeting footage.

COMMISSIONER MOSER: “Other people want us to have all these kind of fancy engineering models where we’re measuring rain gauge and where, you know, we’re putting in the topography and the flow rate and the la, la, la, la, la, all that stuff, and we said we’re not going to do that.”

COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: “If it rains four or five inches in one hour, get the hell out of the way. It’s that simple.”

But its not the simple. And it took a tragedy to prove that point.

The flood warning system is still outdated. The money to update it, nearly $9 million, went to law enforcement instead.

The Sheriff's and Fire Departments received a new communication system. Original cost estimate: $3 to $5 million. Winning bid: just over $5 million. Final amount spent: more than $7 million. Motorola, the only qualified bidder, got the contract.

The rest of the spending followed a clear pattern. $1 million in across-the-board pay raises for Sheriff’s Department staff. $650,000 for additional staffing—again, mostly in law enforcement. Another $100,000 created a temporary position just to oversee the Motorola project.

Kerr County has rivers and streams, campsites and riverfront properties that are prone to unpredictable conditions. A flood warning system could’ve saved lives. But radios and raises won.

This wasn’t the first time Kerr County made a choice that looked good in pictures but did little for public safety. A few years prior, they upgraded the downtown plaza and restored the city clock tower. The square looked great. The courthouse lawn was immaculate. But warning systems stayed broken.

Kerr County knows floods. They’ve been hit before, and they’ll be hit again. Residents have described entire neighborhoods submerged without warning. During Hurricane Harvey, some said they felt like islands in the middle of rising water. But when it came time to spend money to prevent that from happening again, county officials reached for aesthetics and ego instead.

They defended the spending. Motorola’s system was top-notch. Deputies deserved raises. Emergency response needed support. But flood systems—that could wait.

The transcripts don’t leave much room for interpretation. These weren’t decisions rooted in community care. They were political statements dressed up as budgeting. Federal aid was treated like a weapon. The goal wasn’t to help Kerr County—it was to make sure blue states didn’t benefit.

The hypocrisy didn’t seem to bother anyone. They dismissed FEMA but still spent federal funds. They denounced blue states but used national tax dollars collected from them.

When floodwaters surged nearly 26 feet in a single hour on July 4, 2025, there was no mass alert. No sirens. No coordinated evacuation. The city of Kerrville admitted as much. In a press interview, City Manager Dalton Rice said officials didn’t call for evacuations because they didn’t want to inconvenience people. He explained, “It’s very tough to make those calls… what we also don’t want to do is cry wolf.”

His reasoning: if you order an evacuation too early, people panic. “At some point,” he added, “the buses or the cars that are evacuating may actually end up being in harm’s way if we call it too late.” They were preoccupied with causing a traffic jam.

So they waited.

Warnings were issued in the middle of the night, but without urgency. Residents were asleep. Campgrounds were still full. And by the time the river was roaring, it was too late to run.

Meanwhile, FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue response was delayed by days. A new DHS policy under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem required her personal sign-off on all contracts over $100,000—including emergency deployment teams. That delay slowed the arrival of federal help while locals were still waiting to be rescued.

No one expects perfection. But this wasn’t even an attempt at preparation. A county with a known flood problem chose to pour money into a sheriff’s department while leaving residents with the same broken warning system.

@Santitos

@salinasmariasantos

Copyright © 2025 Maria Santos Salinas for FRONTeras.