Sherman driveway permits and concrete approaches, explained

Three authorities, one question

"Do I need a permit for my driveway?" is really "who owns the road you are connecting to?" Around Sherman the answer comes in three flavors, and knowing which one applies saves weeks.

Inside the city: the Self Service Portal

Inside Sherman's city limits, driveway, approach, and sidewalk work runs through the city's Development Services department and its online Self Service Portal, the same system that handles building permits, contractor registration, and inspections. The city cares about the things cities reasonably care about: where the curb cut lands, how the approach meets the street section, sight lines at corners, and drainage that does not send your runoff into the neighbor's garage. Contractors doing the work register with the city, which is a useful screen all by itself: an outfit that cannot produce its Sherman registration is telling you something.

Denison, Howe, Van Alstyne, and the other incorporated towns run their own versions of the same process. None of it is difficult; all of it belongs in the written scope with a name attached to who pulls it.

On the highways: TxDOT owns the connection

Where a drive connects to a state-maintained route (US 75 frontage roads, US 82, US 69, US 377, SH 289, SH 56, and the FM roads), the approach itself is TxDOT's jurisdiction regardless of whether the parcel is in a city. The access permit comes from the district office, and the Access Management Manual sets what the approach must be: meeting the road at 75 to 90 degrees, no more than 24 feet wide for a residential drive, minimum 15-foot radii, an all-weather surface, and drainage handled so it never dumps onto the highway.

Build the approach right and the permit is paperwork. Build it wrong (too wide, wrong angle, no culvert) and the correction order arrives after the concrete has cured, which is the expensive sequence.

Outside the limits: fewer permits, same physics

On unincorporated Grayson County land there is no residential building permit, so the driveway itself needs nothing from the county courthouse. The county road department still governs the connection to county roads, chiefly the culvert: size, grade, and placement in the bar ditch. Floodplain rules apply where mapped. And none of the absence of permits changes what the drive needs structurally, because the clay does not read jurisdiction maps.

What the approach itself should be

Wherever it sits, a concrete approach is the hardest-working slab on the property: every vehicle crosses it, turning, at the transition between road grade and drive grade. The working spec here: 5 to 6 inches thick even when the rest of the drive is 4, reinforced, jointed where the approach meets both the road section and the drive, and poured over compacted base with the culvert already set. The driveway scope prices the approach as its own line, names the permitting authority, and says who carries the paperwork, which is how a two-week project avoids becoming a two-month one.