Harris County residents deserve agencies that stretch every public dollar. Serving the twenty-five districts throughout the county, the department provides early learning centers, adult classes, specialized campuses, after-school options along with a group purchasing arrangement to reduce everyone’s expenses. Trustees receive six dollars per session. My own record is rightly open to review, yet the department’s results should stand beside it. Published figures indicate the tax rate was $0.0052 per $100 in TY2016, then dropped yearly to reach $0.004799 during TY2024 and $0.004798 during TY2025. The department’s own report lists more than $215 million in value returned to districts, or roughly $7.26 for each local tax dollar, with about seventy percent of revenue drawn from grants and fees. A February 2017 motion to notify the federal government that HCDE would stop operating its 15 Head Start centers failed 0-7. Those centers then served about 1,300 children in north and northeast Houston on mostly federal funds. The board approved Harris County’s first public recovery high school in an already-owned building with $950,000 in start-up support. As the Chronicle’s editorial board noted in 2024, former trustee Mike Wolfe supported efforts to abolish HCDE or place it under sunset review. Sartaj Bal has represented me as an attorney. Voters may consider that fact, yet it need not alone bar a candidate who knows the department’s work. Persuasive endorsements rest on documented performance rather than other factors.
Eric Dick
HCDE Board of Trustees, Position 4, Precinct 3
Houston
