Bell County Engineer's Office
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The County Engineer's Office is the center for design and management of the County Road and Bridge Department. You will never have a hard time parking on the lot while you cache or visit the Engineer.
Today’s county judges and commissioners in Texas are routinely faced with difficult decisions
involving contracts, bond issues, personnel disputes, lawsuits, land development, regulations, and
many other complex matters. To deal with these issues, a commissioners court typically relies on
professional advisors to provide guidance, such as engineers.
More specifically, it seems like the majority of today’s urgent priorities deal with land development
pressures, traffic congestion, water shortages, water rights, flooding, landfills, air pollution,
wastewater, road improvements, mapping, building construction, surveying, land acquisition, and
on and on. These are all areas where an engineer can help and, of all your trusty professionals, you
may find yourself assigning and referring matters to the engineer more than the others.
Engineers are trained for this type of work. They can design, estimate, construct, organize and
communicate in today’s world of complex regulations and technical policies. Engineers usually also
have good communication and administration skills.
County engineers, as appointed officials, have been around for a long time. Traditionally, there have
been two functions for an engineer in the administration of county government. The first function
is the operation and administration of a county’s road department system. The second, a more recent
trend, is to head the administration of a county’s development regulations, such as, on-site sewage
facility permitting, subdivision regulations, flood plain regulations and addressing. Some counties
even place greater responsibilities on their county engineer.
In most counties, however, the primary function of a county engineer is to administer the county
road department system. The county road department system is a method of county road
maintenance that has been available to Texas counties for many years. This system differs from the
customary precinct road commissioner system where each commissioner is responsible for the
maintenance of the roads within their own precinct.
Taken from an article by Thomas Hornseth, Comal County Engineer, Februrary 2004
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