Harris County commissioners are set to take up more than 400 agenda items April 16, including discussion about federally funded flood mitigation and recovery projects, affordable housing developments and the first annual status report of the county’s Climate Justice Plan.

At a glance: Commissioners are scheduled to hear a presentation on the implementation of the Harris County Climate Justice Plan, a multiyear climate resilience framework the court adopted April 10, 2025, per agenda documents. Staff from the Office of County Administration’s Sustainability Division will deliver the first report to Commissioners Court reflecting on a year of progress.

Also of note: The Harris County Flood Control District is expected to provide project-level updates to commissioners regarding local flood mitigation and recovery efforts that received funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. Staff from HCFCD will share a schedule detailing construction start dates, estimated completion dates, cost escalations and other updates for each project.

Stay tuned: Harris County Commissioners Court meetings are held at 9 a.m. at 1001 Preston St., Houston. 

Despite efforts to decrease a projected budget shortfall in Cy-Fair ISD, officials said factors like inflation and declining enrollment could worsen the shortfall in future school years.

What’s new? CFISD saw a 2.7% decrease in enrollment as of October 2025 from the 2024-2025 school year. Chief Financial Officer Karen Smith attributed this decline to a combination of homeowners with adult children continuing to live within the district boundaries.

Similarly, Smith said a statewide 24% inflation increase from September 2019 through August 2025 has not been properly factored into the funding formulas.

What else? Smith told district officials to also expect several expenditure increases in the 2026-2027 school year, including:

• $4.6 million for Virtual Pathways implementation
• $3.7 million for miscellaneous expenditures 
• $2 million for textbooks not covered by the Instruction Materials Technology Allotment
• $2 million for preventative chiller maintenance
• $1.1 million due to fuel inflation

Houston, in partnership with the Houston Health Department and Texas Medical Center partners, released the first four months of data from a new firearm-injury tracking dashboard, the first of its kind in the U.S.

During the city of Houston’s April public safety committee meeting, HHD officials presented the findings of the SafeWatch dashboard.

What is it: Using Level 1 trauma center clinical data and citywide emergency response systems, the SafeWatch dashboard breaks down firearm injuries by age, race, sex, intent, outcome, location and risk factors.

The dashboard, which launched in December 2025, also breaks down whether the incidents were fatal or not, and if they resulted in an emergency department visit or a Level 1 trauma center visit. It is updated quarterly, city officials said.

Next steps: Officials said they are next hoping to integrate Level 2 and 3 trauma center data, add enhancements for a deeper dive into the data, and have regular task force meetings with partners at the Texas Medical Center to discuss trends found in the data.

Texas retailers can resume selling smokable hemp products after a Travis County judge temporarily blocked some of the state’s sweeping new regulations on the hemp industry.

The background: On March 31, the state health department enacted rules changing how THC content is measured in consumable hemp, which industry experts said effectively outlawed most smokable hemp products.

The Texas Hemp Business Council, a federal hemp industry group, and several local hemp companies sued the state April 8, arguing that the state health department does not have the authority to reclassify legal THC levels. State officials have defended the rules, saying they are in line with a September executive order by Gov. Greg Abbott, who at the time called for stricter oversight of the multibillion-dollar hemp industry.

The latest: Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble sided with the hemp industry in an April 10 ruling, directing the state not to enforce the new THC testing requirement and a restriction on the transportation of hemp products between states. An additional hearing is scheduled for April 23.