Hear firsthand about the trials and triumphs of Smith County Judge Neal Franklin’s first year in office. From the groundbreaking of a state-of-the-art courthouse and a conveniently located parking structure, Franklin has led the county to big achievements. Find out how he overcame the challenge of finalizing property purchases without the use of eminent domain.
Franklin shares his thoughts on the contentious issue of roundabouts for better traffic flow. The judge also delves into the possibility of the public accessing the parking garage after hours and shares details of the collaboration with the Tyler Economic Development Council that’s paving the way for a new industrial park.
JEFF JOHNSON (announcer): 0:02
2023 was a busy year for Smith County government: getting voters’ approval to build a $179 million county courthouse, as well as approval and groundbreaking of a $19 million parking structure adjacent to that site. Those are just some of the high points of the first year of the first term of the county’s chief elected official. To learn more, UT Tyler Radio Connects with Smith County Judge Neal Franklin. Here’s your host, Mike Landess.
MIKE LANDESS (host): 0:28
There are a number of high points in your first year of your first term as county judge. The new courthouse and the parking garage have to be near or right at the top.
JUDGE NEAL FRANKLIN (guest): 0:38
It is, and we’ve got things going on. We actually, one of my biggest challenges when I first got on as judge for the court was to actually finalize the last few purchases for properties. We wanted to do it without the use of the evil eminent domain, and we were able to do so. So, we’re thrilled about that. We still have some folks leasing back from us right now, currently still residing. But fairly soon, probably the end of January, they’ll all be out.
LANDESS: 1:01
Boy, you know, the animated drawings of the new Smith County Courthouse are stunning, and it certainly is going to be a wonderful centerpiece for the revitalization of downtown Tyler. That said, the buildings along the side of the current courthouse, which you’re talking about right now, including the old New York store which has been an eyesore for years in the northeast corner of that block, the old Arcadia Theater, now an office complex. What’s the order of events now for these next years to getting the doors open on a new Smith County Courthouse and the new parking garage?
FRANKLIN: 1:41
Yeah, it’s a big process. We actually have started process of the demo for the parking garage, which is just to the east of the annex building, and so that’s happening. That’s a 10-month process to build that, but during that time, toward the end of the construction of that, which should be completed at the end of August, we actually will start the demo on the east side of the square. So then, that’s a two-year build. Once that’s demoed and we start the construction of the courthouse, that’s a two-year build. And then after that two-year build, we’ll take one year to move into the new courthouse, demo the old courthouse and work on the middle of the square and all that green space.
LANDESS: 2:26
And we’ve got to figure out where to put the roundabouts.
FRANKLIN: 2:29
We do. We do have to figure out the roundabouts. That’s been a topic of discussion. A lot of people ask me about the roundabouts. That’s actually in the city’s control, but we’re working together with the city, and it’s going to be phenomenal. We are so excited about what the downtown is going to look like and what it’s going to feel like–just incredible.
LANDESS: 2:48
Now Don Warren says he thinks it may be a good idea to put a body shop somewhere near there.
FRANKLIN: 2:56
Well, and there’s potential there. But I think actually, once people get used to it, it’s going to move really smoothly. We are ready. We have so many one-way streets down there now, and they’re going to be two-way in the future, so I think it’s actually going to be a little safer in the long run.
LANDESS: 3:14
That would be great. Do I understand correctly that there is an agreement, or an agreement being discussed, to allow the new county parking garage to be accessed by the general public? I mean, that seems like that would be a big help to downtown.
FRANKLIN: 3:26
Yes, that actually is. In fact, working again with the city, we’ve been able to utilize our jury parking lot for our employees, because we had to move our employees because they’ve been parking where our new parking structure will be, so we’ve moved them there. So, the jurors have been actually utilizing the city’s parking garage, and it’s been a big help. I know it’s been a little problematic because it’s an uphill walk, but yes, we have got it planned out to where not only will our employees park in that parking lot, but also the general public.
LANDESS: 4:02
That’ll be a huge help, it would seem. Now you marked one year in office in November 2023. Other than the courthouse and the parking facility, what are you most proud of, of accomplishing in those 12 months?
FRANKLIN: 4:13
You know we have so many things that are that are going on. One of them is we’ve been working in conjunction with the Tyler Economic Development Council for the new industrial park out on 155 and I-20. And there’s a road in that we have built — it’s actually a Smith County road down the middle of it. We haven’t had our groundbreaking yet. They’ve actually cleared the area for the road, but it’ll serve as a driveway, but it’s also serving as a county road. But that helped us attract the anchor tenant and all the other tenants. And that industrial park is going to mean so much for our community: it’s jobs, it’s taxpayers. It’s just incredible what it’s going to be.
LANDESS: Now that’s where YellaWood is going in, right?
FRANKLIN: Yes, YellaWood is the anchor tenant, and we’ve got many others that are interested in going in out there.
LANDESS: 5:08
What other things are in the hopper?
FRANKLIN: 5:10
Well, we have one of our, one of my promises when I went into the office was I guess it was a campaign promise. I didn’t make many, but one of my campaign promises was to work on mental health. Mental health is one of our issues in the community. This challenging, our delivery service has been challenging over the years. The number of mental health patients that oftentimes end up in the jail has, the number has increased. So, we’ve got multiple programs going on in the jail. We’re working with Andrews Center, which is our local mental health authority, but we’re doing a lot of things on our own, and we’re pushing forward to get some things. UT Health is one of our partners that’s going to be providing our actual jail medical and jail psych. In the past, we’ve always had a psychiatrist who’s from Oklahoma, and it’s not a bad thing, but we really like the idea of having a psychiatrist who can come in and be face-to-face with some of these inmates who are having issues. And so we’re excited about that and that program. We should be taking that contract with UT Health, actually I believe, next Tuesday to court, so we’re excited about that.
LANDESS: 6:28
Well, there’s another element, too, that I thought was sort of interesting and that was the development — I was speaking with Sheriff (Larry) Smith not long ago, and he was talking about the fact that they have developed a program, they’ve hired someone who’s actually developed a program to train jailers, which and that a program may actually end up reaching beyond Smith County to help other counties.
FRANKLIN: 6:49
Yes, that’s a wonderful program; we also have along with that, is we do jail-based competency restoration. That’s along with the Andrews Center. We’ll have people who are in the jail that may, that are waiting on a state bed, mental health bed, and they may be there a year, 2 years, and so a lot of decompensation takes place. And we want to, we want to do better for that person, and we want to do better for the taxpayers because it’s expensive. Every day someone’s in our jail is expensive. And these people, we need to make sure that they become competent again, and so we’ve got programs working with them to move these people on out, so that they can whether their life, future in life is going on to serve time in prison or if it’s to get out and get a program and have a life for themselves. That’s what we’re after.
LANDESS: 7:46
Now in this year that you’ve been here, you’ve had the opportunity to — you certainly got to see how things work before you became a county judge, and you did it anyway. Nathaniel Moran couldn’t talk you out of it.
FRANKLIN: 7:57
No, he could not, that’s correct.
LANDESS: 7:59
But you’ve also indicated to me when we talked in July of 2023, you indicated that you didn’t have aspirations beyond this particular post. You weren’t thinking that in 6 years, that you might want to go to Congress.
FRANKLIN: 8:11
Absolutely not. I love working for Smith County. We have so many things in the pipeline. And I will finish my term, my first term, as judge prior to the completion of all these projects, like the courthouse, everything being finally completed. And so my plans right now are to run again. And if the community is still happy with the work I’m doing, hopefully they’ll put me right back in and I can see all these to fruition.
LANDESS: 8:40
This challenge of being a county judge in these times, there are so many things that attack. We have cyber-attacks where the city of Dallas was attacked by that, city and county in Dallas were attacked. What kinds of things do you have in place or are you working on to help protect the city and county, the county of Smith County, from that kind of thing?
FRANKLIN: 9:04
I hate to brag on our directors, but I will. This time we have an IT director, Don Bell, who’s just incredible. His department is amazing, and they have done a lot of prep to avoid those issues. And I know it just recently struck our UT system here. Ardent Health got hit, cyber-attack, and it changes things. I had a doctor’s appointment the other day, and we were filling out forms on paper just to have my doctor’s appointment, so it can really change things. It shut Dallas and a lot of their first responders down for quite some time. So, it’s something that we take very seriously and we work hard at.
LANDESS: 9:44
Talk to me a little bit about the things that you got done on your to-do list. You have spoken about most of them, and things that you didn’t get done perhaps, and you’re looking forward to getting done next year, plus whatever else you’ve got.
FRANKLIN: 9:55
OK. Well, one of the goals, it may sound minor, but it was to hire a budget officer. And it’s not minor because we’ve looked for one for over 3 years. We’ve had budget officers in the past, but our county, the size that it is — we’re over 225,000. We’re actually close to 240,000. I can no longer serve as the official county, I mean, county budget officer. And so our auditor has been serving in that role as well, and you really need that counterbalance between the two. And we found a young lady who’s had 18 years’ experience in another county government, and I was able to borrow her from another county. And I’ve already spoken with the judge, and we’re still on good terms. But she starts Jan. 2, and we couldn’t be more excited about that. She’ll work with all our department heads as well and work on planning the budget, executing the budget. It just will really make a difference. Now I’m still very involved when we develop the budget as well in our court.
LANDESS: 11:05
What now? You say “borrow,” they say “acquired.”
FRANKLIN: 11:08
Yes, yes, I did. I did acquire her, and she’s excited about being here, and we can’t wait to get her in the office.
LANDESS: 11:17
The county works closely with the Economic Development Council, as you mentioned earlier. Are there any other projects, employers, expansions in the hopper that you can talk about, or you can give us a preview of or little hint?
FRANKLIN: 11:28
You know, one thing besides earlier in the mental health with, with working with UT Health on that agreement, we’re working on opening some mental health beds in. I know it’s not quite economic development. Well, it actually is, but it’s not with TEDC, but we’re working on opening some mental health beds, approximately 70 in the community. And so that’s something that’s going to come out fairly soon. What’s included in that is our crisis beds. Our crisis beds are very important because when a peace officer picks someone up for loitering or criminal trespass, oftentimes they end up — either they go to the emergency room and they kind of clog that system — and then they end up at the jail, which they don’t need to be in jail. There’s a minor offense; they’re not violent, they just need help, and so we’ll have 10 crisis beds within that. So, really excited. So, stay tuned on that money. Well, that sounds, that sounds really great.
LANDESS: 12:29
Any final thoughts you’d like to share with our listeners today?
FRANKLIN: 12:32
Yes, one of the problems that we have in Smith County and again some people think this is minor, but it’s really a major problem, is we have a real stray dog population issue. It’s in the city of Tyler as well as the county. We struggle in animal control to keep up. We have a lot of various groups that work hard at finding homes for our animals, but it’s truly a struggle. So, one of the things coming up, I’ve been working with one particular group. We’re looking at utilizing ARPA funding, some of our funding, to build a fund for actually spay and neuter, so that the general public can get a voucher, so that it’s free of charge to them. And then we’ll really have to campaign and advertise it and get the people to actually come in. When, when times get tough, prices get high, and people are challenged, one of the first things they’ll do is let that pet go, and they’ll drop them off somewhere just out in the country. And then we end up picking them up and having to deal with them, treating them, you know, having all the bills and things. So, we would love it if we could get ever, encourage everyone to spay and neuter.
LANDESS: 13:49
Now the ARPA funds are the funds that were, that were put together during, after COVID, I should say.
FRANKLIN: 13:56
Yes, that’s correct. Those ARPA funds, and that’s the road that we’re actually building in the new industrial park, that’s ARPA-funded, and that’s almost five, it’ll be a little over $5 million when that’s complete.
LANDESS: 14:10
So when do you make your announcement for reelection?
FRANKLIN: 14:13
Actually, I think I just did, didn’t I? No, I don’t run again for 3 years, but my plans truly are, and everyone knows my plans are to run again. I’m excited. I love my work. Every day I get to come to work is truly a pleasure.
JOHNSON: 14:29
Thanks for listening to UT Tyler Radio Connects with Neal Franklin, Smith County judge. For a transcript of this episode, visit our website UTTylerRadio.org. To be notified of future episodes, subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. For Mike Landess, I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for listening to UT Tyler Radio Connects from UT Tyler Radio 99.7 FM.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)
