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Woodlands pre-budget review shows major public-safety cost increases as county reshapes contract
Summary
Township staff outlined preliminary 2026 public-safety costs, including a proposed swap of detectives for sergeants by the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, new body/in-car camera expenses and equipment requests that together could add millions to the township budget; board deferred final decisions to August.
Monique Sharp, President and CEO of The Woodlands Township, told the board on July 23 that public-safety contract changes and new equipment will materially raise the township’s 2026 costs.
Sharp said the township currently records an undesignated fund balance of $3,900,000 and a hotel tax reserve of $8,800,000 and warned the board that final budget choices must await August revenue figures from the tax assessor. "Our township enabling legislation ... allows us to supplement but not supplant law enforcement services," she said, framing why the township funds supplemental county positions rather than operating its own police force.
Staff summarized the 2025 contracted supplement as 100 township-funded positions — 87 patrol deputies, five deputy specialists and eight detectives — and described a Montgomery County proposal to change the mix to roughly 105 township-funded positions by swapping detectives for additional sergeants and creating a larger deputy‑specialist team. A county captain explained the operational rationale: detectives now specialize and sometimes must investigate outside the township, while sergeants are "first-line supervisors" who would be dedicated to township patrols.
Sharp provided preliminary cost figures tied to that proposal: the detectives‑to‑sergeants swap has a preliminary net cost of about $931,510 before a roughly $130,000 reduction tied to the removal of a safe‑harbor detective. She also listed other law‑enforcement initiative costs, including an initial camera‑system impact (body and in‑car cameras) estimated at approximately $820,000 in 2026 with an ongoing software/operations cost of roughly $600,000; a requested increase in targeted overtime from $1.3 million to $1.4 million; 30 license‑plate‑reader (Flock) units priced near $109,500 with about $90,000 recurring annual software costs; and equipment requests such as a replacement Polaris Ranger estimated at about $60,000.
Sharp said contracted law enforcement spending in 2025 totaled about $18.5 million, of which approximately $2.0 million goes to Harris County Constable Precinct 4 and roughly $16.5 million goes to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office. The constable’s office separately asked to add two deputies (increasing from 15 to 17), a change staff estimated would cost about $251,000 annually.
Board members pressed staff for operational comparisons and for the county to clarify how many crimes and calls actually occur inside township boundaries. A director read monthly arrest summaries provided by the county and asked staff to supply a percentage breakdown of county crime occurring in The Woodlands; the county captain agreed to provide that figure.
No budget motions or votes on these initiatives were taken. Staff advised that the two‑step process will resume at the August budget workshops when final assessor data and any refined county proposals are available.
