Denton City Council members and Denton ISD trustees sit down together at noon Tuesday, and the first half of their joint session is a side-by-side look at what each body wants from the Texas Legislature when it convenes in January.
The special called meeting is in Training Rooms 1 through 5 at the Development Service Center, 401 N. Elm St. Four work session items are posted, and no votes are listed.
The city's list
City staff will walk through a proposed legislative program that goes back to the council for adoption on Oct. 27. According to the staff presentation, Denton is now handling its state advocacy with an in-house team of Assistant City Manager Frank Dixon, Chief of Staff Kristi Fogle and Senior Management Analyst Kennedy Moore, after previously relying on an outside consultant.
The slides recap the last session: 8,731 bills filed statewide, 711 tracked by the city and 229 passed that directly affect Denton.
The four items the city says it will actively pursue would expand retirement and property tax benefits for first responders catastrophically injured on duty, extend recent public facility corporation changes to housing authority partnerships, clarify how public records involving deceased suspects and deceased victims are released, and renew the expiring Qualified Hotel Project program.
Among the city's broader positions, it supports treating business personal property tax revenue from data centers separately when the no-new-revenue rate is calculated, opposes new limits on certificates of obligation, and opposes restrictions on library materials decisions. It also backs a countywide mental health and jail diversion center alongside 15 regional groups, including Denton County MHMR and United Way.
The district's list
Denton ISD's presentation lists five priorities, with eliminating unfunded state mandates first, followed by teacher and staff pay, safety and security, special education funding and limits on Texas Education Agency authority. The district says TEA has doubled in size over the last decade and asks lawmakers to require legislative sign-off on agency rules that add costs for districts.
Citing a North Texas Education Coalition analysis, the slides say statewide basic costs grew $2.72 billion from fiscal 2020 to 2025 while new House Bill 2 money for those costs totaled $575.7 million. The district puts its own 2024-25 gaps at $19.5 million for special education and dyslexia services, $7.1 million for transportation, $3.9 million for early education and $2.6 million for security.
Parks, camps and road work
The second half covers shared projects. District slides say the new Borman Elementary is substantially complete, the old building has been demolished and a soccer field on the former school site is expected to be finished Nov. 30. City slides say the field will be open to the public by August 2027 and that the new Borman gym will be available for city recreation programs.
City-run summer camps at five Denton ISD campuses enrolled 3,177 children this year, 94.6% of capacity and 353 more than in 2025, according to the parks department.
