April 2, 2026

By Mary Beth Gahan

Monday’s Flower Mound town council meeting has been canceled because the agenda could not be posted in time.

The cancellation could be the first casualty of a new state law that changed the amount of time a municipality must give the public to review meeting agendas. A special meeting has been scheduled for later in the week, but items that are controversial have been pushed to later in the month.

Texas now requires a town or city to publish agendas for open meetings at least three business days in advance. Before the law went into effect in September, agendas had to be posted 72 hours in advance.

A committee report detailed how the previous timeframe could be a hindrance to those who want to keep an eye on government affairs.

“While this is meant to provide for government transparency and citizen participation, the bill author has informed the committee that the language of the current law can be used to the advantage of a local government whereby the intended transparency is infringed upon. For example, the author discovered that the City of Smithville used this language to its advantage to post notice late on a Friday afternoon for a Monday meeting to adopt a budget that relied on unsubstantiated tax hikes to meet the inflated budget,” the report said.

The bill, which was co-sponsored by Lake Dallas’s State Rep. Richard Hayes, says that the notification period is in advance of the meeting date, not its time. So even though a meeting may start after business hours, that day cannot count toward the three business days.

Flower Mound normally posts the town council agenda on Tuesday for the following Monday, but because Good Friday is a town holiday, it would have had to be posted this past Monday in order to be in compliance with state law.

A special town council meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday, April 8. There are several consent agenda items, which don’t require much discussion, and two regular items – a $1.4 million fire station renovation and $100,000 for an art installation at Peters Colony Memorial Park.

An extended stay hotel at Lakeside Crossing was originally slated to be under consideration at Monday’s meeting, but it has been pushed to the April 20 meeting. The Planning and Zoning Commission recommended denial for the project.