How to show up in El Paso County
Surveillance is approved by people who hold public meetings any resident can attend. This page lists the bodies that do that in El Paso County, what we have confirmed about attending each one, and where each publishes its agendas.
We do not publish meeting dates. A schedule we cannot check often enough would eventually send someone to the wrong place on the wrong night. Each body below links to wherever it publishes its own agendas and schedule, and that is the copy to trust.
Countywide
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El Paso County Commissioners Court
Watch this oneEvery county surveillance decision on this county's pages was made here, and almost all of them were made inside the consent agenda, the batch of items the Court enacts in a single motion. The plate readers, the two plate reader trailers, the phone extraction tool, both agreements joining the West Texas Anti-Gang Center and a jail call monitoring grant all passed that way. The exception is the one that cost the most: a $5.95m jail camera project in September 2022 was taken on the regular agenda and voted on its own. Every agenda prints the rule that any member of the Court, or any person in the audience, may ask for an item to be moved out of the consent block for discussion before the vote.
- When
- Regular meetings most Mondays at 9:30 a.m., plus one special meeting a month on the third Thursday at 9:00 a.m. Holiday Mondays are skipped. The county publishes a posting schedule for the year naming each meeting date and the date its agenda is due.
- Where
- Enrique Moreno County Courthouse, Judge Alicia R. Chacón County Commissioners Courtroom, 500 East San Antonio, Room 303, El Paso, TX 79901. Some special meetings and budget sessions sit in the County Judge Conference Room, Suite 301, in the same building. Which room a given meeting uses is printed at the top of its agenda.
- Remote
- Meetings are webcast live through the agenda portal and archived on the Court's YouTube channel, and are rebroadcast on local cable channel 15 on Wednesday evenings at 7:00 p.m. Members of the Court and county employees may appear by videoconference under Texas Government Code section 551.127, with a quorum physically present in the courtroom.
- Public comment
- Anyone may address the Court during the Public Comment section or during any particular agenda item. The limit is five minutes during Public Comment and five minutes per person on an agenda item, and time cannot be given from one speaker to another. A subject not on the agenda may be raised under Texas Government Code section 551.042. The county asks that participants use its public comment form.
- Written comment
- The county publishes a public comment form in an online version and a printable PDF, both linked from its Public Comment page.
- Who to ask
- Courts, 500 E San Antonio, Suite 502, El Paso, TX 79901, 915-273-3528. The County Judge's Office is at 915-273-3591. (checked )
Agendas are posted 72 hours before the meeting start time. The portal holds every agenda, set of minutes and full agenda packet the county has published since 21 October 2013, and the minutes are the document to read: each records who was present, then every item in order with its full text, then the motion with its mover, its seconder and each member's vote by name. Since 2024 the published minutes are scans, which are readable by eye but not by machine, and 17 sets from 2025 and 2026 carry no machine readable text at all. The full agenda packets run to hundreds of pages and carry the contracts, quotes and grant budgets behind the items, which is where the equipment is named.
Confirmed ·
What this list does not cover yet
These are the bodies we have confirmed, not every body in the county. El Paso County has other commissions and committees, and other school and special districts, that we have not documented yet. Several of the county's own committees publish on the same county portal linked above.
Before you go, and after
Civic action
Read what is already on the record for El Paso County first. A resident who has read the contract changes the room.
What is documented in El Paso County →Personal protection
Knowing which systems operate near you also tells you where your own choices still matter.
EFF Surveillance Self-Defense ↗