The Texas Department of Public Safety is scrapping its proposal for a $1.2 billion state-of-theart active-shooter training facility, aiming instead at a much lower target of $381.5 million to update its current campus with housing and renovated buildings, DPS Director Steve McCraw said this week.
First appearing in the department’s budget request as a $476 million “down payment” on a sixyear commitment to the multiphase project, the proposal was jettisoned by the DPS and reduced to “a key need” for better facilities at the current training campus outside Waco, McCraw told The Texas Tribune.
“We’re just looking in terms of across the board — what are we focused on?” McCraw said Thursday after testifying to the Senate Finance Committee about aging facilities and lack of adequate housing and food services at the campus. “The problem with the phased approach that focuses on a reality-based training facility [is] … we still don’t have any place to put people. You’ve got to have a place to sleep. You’ve got to have a place to eat.”
