Harris County says it cannot confirm the cost of a Katy juvenile vocational center. It approved a $132,859 design contract for it in January 2025.

Harris County Juvenile Probation told reporters this week that it cannot confirm what a new vocational training center in Katy will cost, because the project is still in procurement. The county’s own Commissioners Court file has carried numbers on it since June 2023, including a $132,859 design contract approved in January 2025.

Why it matters

The building is paid for with commercial paper, which is borrowing, in the same budget year the county raised its combined tax rate to 67.147 cents. A four-classroom building in design for more than 20 months is not an emergency. It is a schedule, and the county has not published one.

By the numbers

$132,859, the professional services agreement with RDLR Architects, Inc. for the design of the center, approved by Commissioners Court on January 9, 2025, file 25-0068. The funding source listed in the file is commercial paper under the existing budget.
$1,785,410, the Final Investment Memo for the Juvenile Justice Facility Improvements and Modernization project, approved June 27, 2023, file 23-3443, with $985,000 in initial commercial paper funding. The center sits under that project.
About 10 months from that memo to April 23, 2024, when the court approved negotiating with RDLR, and about eight and a half months more to the design contract.
More than 20 months from the design contract to this week. In early September the department said bids were a couple of weeks away.
9120 Katy Hockley Road, Katy, the address in the county file and the one the state lists for the Harris County Leadership Academy.
Four vocational classrooms plus covered outdoor areas. Welding was the most requested option in a survey of the youth who would use them. Construction is estimated at about one year after a bid is awarded.
$33,063,987.89 in state funds the court accepted for this department on August 6, 2026, file 26-4856, against a $7,574,717 county match. Operating money, not capital, shown here for scale.

What the coverage buried

ABC13 and Community Impact both reported, correctly, that assistant executive director Matt Shelton could not confirm a cost because the project is in procurement. Neither names RDLR Architects, the $132,859 design contract, the January 9, 2025 approval date or the commercial paper financing. All four sit in the Commissioners Court file, and together they answer part of the cost question the stories left open.

Community Impact did report the pre-bid status and the one-year construction estimate, which is more than the headline gives. The gap is not spin. It is that nobody opened the agenda record, and that is where a county keeps its numbers.

The other side

The case for this project is strong. A $132,859 design fee is a rounding error against a $3 billion county budget, and commercial paper is ordinary county practice for capital work, not a borrowing taken out to splurge. Shelton’s argument, that a job is one of the better protective factors for a young person leaving custody, belongs in a capital request. County procurement routinely runs years because design review, code and bidding each take their turn. Nothing above says the county is building the wrong thing.

The answer is narrow. The money is not the issue. The issue is that the county had these figures in its own files for 20 months and let the public hear that the cost could not be confirmed, and that this building has taken longer to reach a bid than it will take to build.

What to watch

The bid award. A construction contract would appear as a Juvenile Probation or County Engineer item under UPIN 24035MF39701. Nothing matching it was on the August 6, 2026 agenda.
The construction number. It decides whether the $1,785,410 covers this building or only the wider modernization project it sits under.
The vocational partner agreement. Courses are not set until it is signed, and Shelton said that should come within the next year. TXRX and WorkTexas are named, neither confirmed.

Bottom line

The program is defensible and the design fee is small. The procurement is the problem. A county that adopted a higher tax rate in September should be able to say in October what a four-classroom building costs, and its own record shows it has been paying architects that question since January 2025.

Sources

Editorial