Ferris operates use-based infrastructure that doesn’t burden the taxpayer
Ferris, Texas — May 5, 2025 – As measles cases rise across the state and cities work to coordinate their responses and public messaging, Ferris residents are getting answers in under a minute without leaving their homes, disrupting their workday, or waiting in emergency rooms. They aren’t panicking. They’re prepared. Because the system they need was already there.
That system is Tap Telehealth (formerly MD Health Pathways: Access for All), a voluntary, always-on infrastructure built not as a program, but as part of Ferris’s long-term operating model. Designed at the height of the post-COVID recovery effort using ARPA funds and now sustained through public-private partnership, Tap Telehealth connects households to licensed clinicians from 8 AM to 10 PM daily. It offers unlimited use for up to ten people per home, with no insurance, no co-pays, and no activation delays.
Residents are automatically enrolled but can opt out at any time. And while the platform is built to support a $9 per month utility-style billing model, Ferris has never had to charge residents. Instead, it has kept the system running on a public-private partnership, at no direct cost to users, and without ever drawing on the city’s general fund.
“This isn’t pooled coverage. It’s not insurance. It’s not government healthcare,” said City Manager Brooks Williams. “It’s infrastructure. It’s voluntary. And it’s working exactly the way it was built to.”
That intentionality isn’t accidental. Ferris’s approach to operations is guided by a performance excellence strategy known as “Distinct by Design,” grounded in the nationally recognized Baldrige Excellence Framework. Every process, partnership, and platform is filtered through the city’s mission: to set the standard for a high-performing responsive government.
It’s the same kind of discipline the State of Texas is now seeking to replicate through the Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office, or TREO, an initiative designed to streamline rules, eliminate waste, increase transparency, and remove structural inefficiencies that inhibit growth. While others are working to define that future, Ferris has already embedded it into its present.
Tap Telehealth is just one proof point. Since its implementation, emergency calls for non-critical issues have declined. School attendance has improved. And residents are making better decisions with less institutional strain.
What Ferris is demonstrating isn’t a technology. It’s a philosophy. Build systems that don’t need attention to function. Design services that don’t need to scale reactively. Create infrastructure that turns crises into moments of continuity, not chaos.
And do it without growing government.
Ferris today operates with its lowest tax rate since 2016, has more than doubled its population, and has done it all while reducing the number of full-time positions required to serve. It’s not about expanding payrolls. It’s about expanding capacity. The city is proving that you can serve better, faster, and leaner not by adding layers, but by stripping away inefficiency.
More service. Less government. That’s not a contradiction. It’s the mission.
“We are entering a chapter in government where rising costs, workforce shortages, public demand, and unsustainable tax expectations are forcing hard decisions,” said City Manager Brooks Williams. “The future isn’t everyone paying more for services few people use. It’s about designing systems where usage drives value, where people opt in to what they need, and where government focuses on doing fewer things, better.”
That same principle extends beyond infrastructure and into development. Ferris is using common-sense policies to streamline the building process, removing unnecessary red tape, respecting timelines, and ensuring outcomes that benefit both developers and residents. It’s not about bureaucracy for the sake of control. It’s about protecting what matters without obstructing what’s possible.
This is what government was designed to be. Not what government has grown to be.
Ferris isn’t growing its size of government. It’s growing its standard of government.
The current measles response makes this contrast plain. While regional systems contend with delays, disruptions, and ER bottlenecks, Ferris households are simply texting their doctors. No lines. No confusion. No overextension of core services. Because readiness wasn’t an afterthought. It was the infrastructure itself.
Ferris isn’t positioning itself as a model. It’s simply operating like one. And in a state where efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency are now the benchmarks for economic resilience, Ferris isn’t waiting for direction. It’s offering an example.
