Meta description: Livingston County’s water table is dropping. One meeting: a dying well, a disputed campaign video, a contract no one read.

Livingston County’s water table is dropping under at least one Howell Township home, and the county’s own board meeting couldn’t manage to explain why. At the January 26 meeting of the Livingston County Board of Commissioners, a resident showed up with a printout from a state environmental website and the most concrete, checkable story of the night. Everything else on the agenda got more attention: a legislative video that played like a campaign ad, serious allegations against a sitting judge, a multi-year contract nobody in the room had actually read. None of it got resolved. Here’s what happened, thread by thread, and why the quietest story in the room might be the one worth watching.

45 Feet to 65 Feet: What One Well Is Measuring

Charles “Chuck” Smith, who lives in Howell Township, told the board that the water table under his home has been dropping since he bought the house in 2004. He didn’t have hard numbers until 2022, when his water turned “nasty, gray, silty” and started clogging his filters. He called Brown Drilling to replace his pump, and the technician who pulled the pipe showed him the readings directly: the well sat at 45 feet below the surface in 2004 and approximately 65 feet below the surface in 2022.

That technician also told him what fixing it would cost. If the water table keeps dropping, Smith will eventually need a new well drilled to roughly 165 feet, at a cost of about $12,000, or as deep as 200 feet, at a cost of about $24,000, if the decline continues. It’s a five-figure bill for water that was already his.

Smith tied the decline to the county’s draft master plan, a 220-page document he said he’d read in full, and to an unnamed development he believes the plan anticipates. He was careful not to name it:

“If you put anything out there, I’m not even talking data center… it’s going to take the water away from the 200 people that live in that area.”

That hedge is worth preserving exactly as he said it. Smith and his neighbors are speculating about what kind of large water user might be coming, not reporting a confirmed plan. No commissioner or staff member confirmed, denied, or even addressed what project he was referring to. The board moved on without answering him.

Smith also submitted printouts he said came from EGLE (Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy) showing groundwater contamination in wells throughout the surrounding area, with one exception: his own. He returned during the meeting’s second public-comment period with additional maps showing drains in the area and the same underlying question: something is pulling water down faster than roughly 200 residents and one large farm operation can account for, and whatever comes next needs to answer for it. “I want to know who is going to reimburse me for you taking my water,” he said.

None of this is proof of causation. Smith is describing what one contractor told him and what one set of public data shows. It’s not a hydrological study. But the numbers are specific, they’re attributed to a named contractor and a named state agency, and they’re still unanswered on the public record. A 220-page master plan with no groundwater-impact discussion entered into the meeting record, regardless of what eventually gets built there, is a gap the county created for itself. No commissioner confirmed or denied what’s coming. The vote on the evening’s business moved on anyway.

A Legislative Report With a Soundtrack

State Representative Jason Wolford couldn’t attend the meeting in person, so the board played a pre-recorded video in his place, billed as his legislative report. It ran through his first-year accomplishments in Lansing: unemployment-fraud oversight findings, tax cuts, school funding increases, gun-law changes, a meeting with Robert Kennedy at the White House. Then it closed with “God bless you and God bless America” over background music. Those figures, including the claim that Michigan taxpayers will save “nearly $500 million,” come directly from Wolford’s self-produced video. They haven’t been independently verified here and shouldn’t be read as confirmed by anyone but his own office.

Two residents who called in on Zoom during the second public-comment period objected to the format itself. Cindy McNevich, of Hamburg Township, put it flatly:

“I don’t know what I just saw with Jason Wolford… Pretty much it was a campaign ad.”

She asked whether Wolford’s opponent, Jennifer Conlon, would be given the same platform. Dan McNevich, of the City of Howell, made a similar point about the video’s campaign-style production before raising a separate, more serious claim: that Wolford’s nonprofit, Mission Cry, received roughly $40,000 in forgiven PPP loans during COVID, and that Wolford later charged a $400 dinner with his mother to the nonprofit’s credit card. That is a single, uncorroborated allegation from one Zoom commenter, with no receipts, records, or documentation entered into the meeting record. No board member responded to it. It should be read as an allegation, not a fact, and nothing more should be inferred from it here.

An attorney identified in the meeting audio as “Commissioner Drake” answered the campaign-ad complaint on the board’s behalf. That name doesn’t appear anywhere on the board’s roll call. He’s most likely county corporation counsel rather than an elected commissioner, though that identity isn’t confirmed on the record. Drake said agenda item 14 reflects a standing board policy, framed as an obligation under Michigan’s Campaign Finance Act, to let any candidate for office address the board, and called it “a 100% defense” against any complaint to the Secretary of State.

What didn’t happen on the record: nobody read the actual policy language into the meeting, confirmed when it was adopted, or said whether Jennifer Conlon has in fact been offered the same video slot Wolford received. That’s a testable, follow-up-able claim, not a settled one. The county asserted an equal-access policy exists without demonstrating it was applied evenly. Until someone checks, “a 100% defense” is just something a lawyer said out loud.

The Contract Nobody Had Read

Buried in the night’s block of routine resolutions was the meeting’s only real moment of board-level scrutiny. The board took up a contract for a BRIC-funded (Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities) EMS station alerting system. Commissioner Gross noted that when the item was first discussed, there were questions about legal terms, and asked what had actually changed in the renegotiated contract to protect the county, since the version presented that night wasn’t redlined and gave no indication of what had been revised.

The exchange that followed is the sharpest two lines in the whole meeting:

“I don’t have a red-line copy.”
“Nor do I.”

“Commissioner Drake” then described the change from memory: a move from a 3-year contract with annual CPI increases to a 5-year agreement with two 1-year options, paired with a freeze on fees and maintenance pricing for up to seven years. Those terms are plausible, and they were offered in good faith. But they came from a verbal summary of a negotiation, not a document anyone in the room had actually reviewed.

The board agreed to request a comparison document after the meeting. Then it voted to approve the contract anyway, unanimously, before that document existed. It’s the least dramatic story of the night, and the most damning, because the board’s own words made the case against itself. Nobody accused anyone of hiding anything. Two officials just admitted, back to back, that they’d voted on a multi-year financial commitment they hadn’t actually read in its final form.

Allegations the Board Has No Power to Address

Two speakers used their time at the podium to describe an ongoing family-court custody dispute involving a judge identified as Judge Longsworth. Hannah Sudds, of Hamburg Township, said she filed for divorce in 2024 after what she described as an abusive marriage, was initially granted a protective order and custody, and alleges the judge repeatedly disbelieved her, jailed her without a release date, and declined to act even after being shown photos of her child’s injuries. According to her account, the state ultimately intervened, a different judge reviewed the case, her sentence was rescinded, and her children were returned to her. She said criminal charges have since been filed against the children’s father. Not against the judge.

Steve Williams, of Marion Township, speaking about a separate custody matter, echoed the pattern Sudds described and raised his own account of unaddressed safety concerns and a lawyer-guardian ad litem he says failed to act on reports of unsafe living conditions. He returned in the second public-comment period to argue that the county’s next judicial election is the most consequential race on the ballot, and to suggest the judge may be politically motivated against him.

These are serious claims, made by name, about a sitting judge, in an open public meeting. They are also one-sided. This is testimony from parties to contested, ongoing family-court cases, offered without the judge present or any opportunity to respond, and without independent documentation entered into the record. None of it should be read as an established finding of misconduct. It’s an account, not a verdict.

What’s notable is the board’s response, which was silence. Livingston County commissioners have no jurisdiction over a circuit court judge’s conduct in an individual case, and no commissioner offered comment, referral, or acknowledgment of either speaker’s allegations. That’s likely the legally correct posture. But for two residents who used their three minutes to make some of the most serious allegations a public commenter can make against a sitting official, an on-record silence is also part of the story.

The Rest of the Agenda

The remainder of the meeting was standard county governance. Appointments to the Materials Management Planning Committee, the Airport Zoning Board of Appeals, and the Community Mental Health Authority Board all passed without discussion. The board approved a special-assessment district for repairs to the Long Lake Dam, a 2026 memorandum of agreement with MSU Extension, and routine claims and payables. A FOIA appeal from a resident identified as Mrs. Reed was denied 9-0 after neither she nor anyone representing her appeared to argue it.

Follow Your Own Local Government

One meeting. A well going dry with no explanation on record, a legislator’s video that blurred into a campaign ad, allegations against a judge the board can’t touch, and a contract two officials admitted they hadn’t read before voting yes. Most residents will never watch the 46 minutes it took to produce all four. That’s the case for showing up, or at least reading closely.

Citizen Portal tracks meetings like this one so residents don’t have to choose between ignoring local government and sitting through it live. Follow your county board, city council, or school district on Citizen Portal to see what’s on the agenda before the vote happens, not after.

Meta description: Dallas County Commissioners voted 4-1 to spend $600,000 on an interim CFO for MetroCare Services. One commissioner says the county already has the answer it needs, for free.

On a special call session with a single item on the agenda, the Dallas County Commissioners Court voted 4 to 1 to hire an interim chief financial officer for MetroCare Services, the region’s largest mental health provider. The cost: $600,000, capped, paid from the county’s general fund, for roughly 13 weeks of work.

The commissioner will be Ronald Winters of Gibbons Advisors. His job is to help MetroCare through what the court described as a “leadership transition.”

The vote took nine minutes. Before the public discussion started, the court spent about 20 minutes behind closed doors receiving legal advice on the matter — a closed session with no public record. What came out into the open session was a debate that captures, in miniature, a tension almost every county government eventually runs into: what do you do when the agency serving your most vulnerable residents says it’s in trouble, and the paperwork proving it is murkier than anyone would like?

What the Court Actually Voted On

The order, read into the record by Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins, was specific: the county would engage Ronald Winters of Gibbons Advisors to serve as interim CFO for MetroCare Services during its leadership transition, at a cost capped at $600,000, funded out of the general fund.

MetroCare is not a small operation. It’s described in the session as the largest provider of mental health services in the North Texas region. That scale is part of why this vote mattered enough to call a special session for it — and part of why the disagreement on the dais got sharp.

The motion passed twice. It was read, voted on, and passed 4-1. Then, after a name was corrected that had been omitted from the first reading, the court took the vote again. It passed 4-1 a second time.

The Dissent: “This Is Nonsensical”

One commissioner opposed the motion, and did so on the record, in detail.

His argument rested on a specific, checkable source: the Federal Audit Clearinghouse, the federal database where organizations receiving federal funds — including Medicaid dollars, which make up the majority of MetroCare’s funding — are required to file their audits.

According to the dissenting commissioner, MetroCare’s audits filed with the Clearinghouse for the past three to four years show a consistent pattern: the organization has repeatedly overstated its financial position, to the tune of what he described as “12 of millions of dollars.” He referenced the 23rd, 24th, and now 25th-year audits as continuing “down that same row” — the same pattern, unaddressed.

His conclusion was blunt: the county doesn’t need to hire anyone to figure out what’s wrong with MetroCare’s finances. The information is already public.

“All that this court or any, or MetroCare has to do is to open their books. Why we’re talking about a CFO when all that this court or any, or MetroCare has to do is to open their books… It is a waste of taxpayers’ money and I will not support it.“

His framing of the $600,000 engagement was pointed: a “13-week cruise through those same books” — an expensive way to reconfirm something the Clearinghouse data, in his view, already shows.

Later in the debate, he sharpened the point further, arguing that without structural change at MetroCare — reorganization, or splitting off services to other providers — the county isn’t solving anything. It’s deferring it.

“Unless there is a reorganization and a parceling of services from MetroCare… all we’re doing is punting so that somebody else can pick up the tab.”

The Case for Approval: A Provider Residents Depend On

The commissioners who voted yes didn’t dispute the dissenting commissioner’s numbers directly. Their argument was about what’s at stake if MetroCare’s problems go unaddressed.

One supporting commissioner framed her vote around the absence of a true audit — pointing out that what the county has is an analysis, not a forensic look at MetroCare’s internal books, and around MetroCare’s role as the region’s largest mental health provider:

“I think what we’re trying to do here is to save MetroCare, to be sure that the organization continues to provide mental services, being the biggest organization provider of mental services in the North Texas region.”

Judge Jenkins made the clearest statement of the humanitarian case. His concern, he said, wasn’t for the organization itself but for the people MetroCare’s clinicians serve directly — people he described as being on “a razor’s edge of dangerous decompensation,” including adults with a history of suicide attempts and adults with severe developmental disabilities who rely on MetroCare’s services as, in his words, “a lifeline.”

That statement — and what happened right after it — is the moment that defines this story.

“You Said That Seven Years Ago”

As Judge Jenkins was making the case for the vulnerable patients who depend on MetroCare, the dissenting commissioner interrupted with a single line:

“You said that seven years ago.”

The transcript doesn’t give us the tone, and Citizen Portal isn’t going to tell you how to read it. But the substance of the interruption is not in dispute: the dissenting commissioner is saying this isn’t the first time the county has faced this exact choice, framed in this exact way, for this same organization. If the same warning was made seven years ago and MetroCare is back in front of the court with another financial crisis today, that’s a pattern worth naming out loud — whether you read it as an indictment of MetroCare’s management, a reason the county needs to act now rather than defer again, or something else entirely.

Judge Jenkins didn’t engage with the seven-years point in the transcript. He continued directly into his vote: “With that in mind, I am gonna support it also.”

The court moved to a vote immediately after.

The Auditor’s Clarification That Almost Got Lost

Before the vote, there was a sharp exchange that’s easy to miss but matters for understanding what the county actually knows about MetroCare’s finances.

Mr. Hick, the county auditor and a CPA, was asked directly about the recommendation underlying the whole discussion — a “survival plan” suggesting MetroCare needs $10 to $15 million to continue operating.

A commissioner pressed him on the nature of his work, and Mr. Hick was precise about the distinction:

“I didn’t do an audit. I just did an analysis of the financial statements, of the audited financial statements.”

Pushed again — didn’t he look at MetroCare’s audit records directly? — Mr. Hick repeated the distinction:

“I’ve looked at the audited financial statements. I did not look at any financial data specifically of MetroCare, just the audited financials.”

This distinction matters. An audit of MetroCare’s internal books would mean someone independently verified MetroCare’s actual financial records — the underlying transactions, accounts, and data. What Mr. Hick did instead was review the already-audited financial statements MetroCare had previously filed, and build a recommendation from that review. He was explicit that he did not do “a deep dive of their books.”

The commissioner questioning him seemed to register the gap live, on the record: “Well, damn, I just said that and I thought you just — yeah, I thought I just said that and you said no, you didn’t say that.” Mr. Hick’s response: “No, no, I did say that. I said I did not do an audit… Let’s just be clear for the record.”

So the $10-15 million survival estimate, and the broader case for bringing in an interim CFO, rests on a review of statements MetroCare itself had already produced and had audited — not on an independent examination of MetroCare’s books. That’s not necessarily wrong as a basis for action. But it is a materially different thing than an audit, and the record shows the county’s own auditor wanted that distinction on the record before the vote happened.

What the 4-1 Vote Actually Settled

The court heard two defensible positions and voted on them. Neither was proved wrong on the record.

The dissenting commissioner’s position: publicly available federal audit data shows a multi-year pattern of financial overstatement at MetroCare, the county is not required to spend $600,000 to know that, and without structural change, the county is paying to delay a decision rather than make one.

The majority’s position: the analysis the county does have — thin as it may be next to a full audit — points to a serious shortfall, and the population MetroCare serves cannot simply wait while the county debates the fine points of financial reporting.

The court didn’t resolve that tension on the record. It voted on it, 4-1, twice.

What Residents Can Do With This

This vote will show up in Dallas County’s budget as a $600,000 line item, and MetroCare’s finances will very likely be back in front of the commissioners court again — the dissenting commissioner made a direct case that this has already happened before. Whether the interim CFO’s 13 weeks produce a different outcome than the last seven years is something residents can actually track, if they know where to look.

Votes like this one don’t get covered. They happen between a closed session and a routine agenda item, and they’re gone before most people know they occurred. That’s what Citizen Portal tracks. Citizen Portal exists to make it possible to follow votes like this one — who said what, who voted which way, and what the money actually pays for, without sitting through a full commissioners court session yourself.

If you want to see how your local government spends and decides, that’s what we’re built for.