I live in the Texas Hill Country. Before my family settled in Bandera County, we seriously considered buying property in Bastrop. We ultimately chose Bandera, but Bastrop has always felt like part of my broader community. We go to Fredericksburg often. These aren’t abstract places on a map to me. This is my part of Texas.
So when people in my community started texting and posting about the Bastrop City Council holding an official meeting in Fredericksburg, more than 100 miles away from Bastrop, I was disappointed.
Maybe I was paying closer attention because I had just spent time with Terri Hall, a longtime Texas advocate for property rights and freedom of mobility. After listening to her talk about toll roads, surveillance, and the infrastructure being built around us, I came home more vigilant about decisions being made today that could affect our freedom to move tomorrow.
Then I saw what was on the Bastrop agenda.
City budget and tax rate. Capital projects. Transportation. Water and wastewater planning. Street projects. Future police and fire services. Data center policy. Legislative priorities.
And Flock cameras.
These weren’t hypothetical discussions about municipal government. These were concrete Bastrop issues being discussed by Bastrop officials more than 100 miles from the people of Bastrop.
A word about the terminology is important here because “retreat” and “workshop” can make this sound like something it wasn’t. A City Council retreat is not a yoga retreat or a weekend getaway. It can be a long government meeting designed to give officials more time to discuss priorities and planning. When a quorum gathers to deliberate public business, Texas open meetings requirements apply.
Bastrop officially called the Fredericksburg gathering an “Offsite City Council Workshop.” There was a publicly posted agenda and an opportunity for citizen comment. The agenda stated that items were eligible for discussion and action unless specifically stated otherwise.
In other words, this was the people’s business.
To be clear, I have absolutely no objection to the Bastrop City Council taking a field trip to Fredericksburg. Go. Learn. Ask questions. See what another fast growing Hill Country community has done well and what it has done poorly. Hopefully, on the way, they’ll stop by Sovereignty Ranch, see what they can learn from us, and buy a loaf of sourdough bread for the drive home.
I love Fredericksburg. That’s not the problem.
The problem is combining the field trip with the public meeting.
There is an enormous difference between saying, “We, the mayor and City Council, want to go learn from Fredericksburg,” and saying, “We are taking Bastrop’s public meeting to Fredericksburg. If the public wants to participate in person, they can come too.”
One is a field trip. The other asks citizens to make roughly a four hour round trip to participate in their own local government.
The city did allow people to submit written comments electronically before the meeting. But according to the agenda, those comments would be given to the council and entered into the record, not read aloud. If you wanted to stand before your elected representatives and speak during public comment, you had to get yourself to Fredericksburg.
This isn’t the first time Bastrop has taken an official council gathering far from home. Last summer, the City Council held an offsite retreat in Rockport. But I think there is an important distinction between the two.
The Rockport agenda looked much more like what most of us imagine when we hear “council retreat.” An outside facilitator led a workshop, and much of the agenda centered on broad strategic planning, council priorities, and long term goals. There was still official city business and an opportunity for citizen comment, so I think there is a legitimate question about why it needed to happen hundreds of miles from Bastrop. But I can at least understand the argument for getting away from City Hall for that kind of planning exercise.
Fredericksburg is different.
Budget. Tax rate. Transportation. Water and wastewater. Police and fire services. Data center policy. Flock cameras.
These are issues affecting people who live in Bastrop right now. They are exactly the kinds of issues citizens might want to stand up and comment on in front of their elected representatives.
And, apparently, holding the meeting that far away may be legal.
Texas law requires municipal meetings to be properly noticed and open to the public, but it does not appear to contain a blanket requirement that a City Council meet within its own city. Bastrop’s charter allows the council to designate another meeting location with proper public notification.
But legality is only the beginning of the question.
Public access isn’t meaningful simply because technically nobody locked the door. Posting an agenda online for a meeting more than 100 miles away doesn’t suddenly make it reasonably accessible.
The controversy has already prompted Texas State Rep. Stan Gerdes to say he intends to introduce legislation requiring city councils to hold meetings within the cities they represent.
It is somewhat remarkable that Texas might need a law saying that.
The purpose of open meeting laws isn’t simply to make sure somebody uploads an agenda. It is to make government accessible to the governed.
Bastrop’s elected officials are welcome to visit Fredericksburg. Go learn. Go explore. Go have lunch. But when it is time to conduct Bastrop’s business, come home.
If you publish an agenda, designate a time for public comment, and call something a public meeting, the public should have a reasonable opportunity to actually be there.
Citizens shouldn’t need a tank of gas and four free hours just to address their own City Council.
