About Julie

I’m Julie Minds, an independent analyst and the founder of Public Record RGV.

I built this project because important public questions are often spread across meeting packets, financial reports, public-information requests, ordinances, contracts, emails, agendas, and other records that can be difficult for an ordinary resident to follow as one coherent story.

I wanted a place where those pieces could be organized clearly.

My professional background began in IT project management, including work building database and data-warehouse systems used in complex litigation involving the pharmaceutical industry and government records.

That work required organizing large amounts of information, understanding how different records related to one another, and building systems that allowed people to find and use the evidence they needed.

Later, I worked on other technology projects involving applications, reporting, hardware, training, and project implementation.

I didn’t set out to become a civic researcher. In some ways, I simply returned to the kind of work I started with: organizing complicated information so the underlying record could be understood.

I have also spent years working directly with homes and property: buying, renovating, managing, financing, renting, and selling them.

That experience taught me that the true cost of homeownership is much larger than a mortgage payment or property-tax rate.

Insurance matters.

Maintenance matters.

Infrastructure matters.

Financing matters.

Market conditions matter.

And sometimes a property can be well cared for and substantially improved and still become financially unsustainable because the larger system around it changes.

Those experiences changed the way I look at development, public infrastructure, HOA finances, taxes, reserves, insurance, and long-term community planning.

I am interested not only in what something costs today, but in who carries the obligation five, ten, twenty, or thirty years from now.

That same approach guides my civic work.

When I look at a public question, my instinct is still the same:

What information exists?

Where does it live?

How does it connect?

What is missing?

And what record would actually answer the question?

I do not begin with the assumption that someone has done something wrong.

I begin with the record.

Who had authority?

What was approved?

Where did the money come from?

What was actually spent?

Who is responsible afterward?

What remains unanswered?

Public Record RGV is built around a simple principle:

The record is the subject, not the resident.

That means separating documented facts from allegations, opinions, assumptions, and unanswered questions.

It means showing source documents whenever possible.

It means correcting the record when new information changes what we know.

And sometimes it means being willing to say, “We don’t know yet.”

My goal is not to tell residents what to think.

It is to make the information easier to see, follow, and understand.

Readers should not have to trust my conclusions.

They should be able to look at the record.

Follow the record. Find the answer.