Travis County Commissioners Court
December 13, 2005
Item 1
1. Receive comments regarding request to temporarily close wolf lane just south of sh 71 beginning December 19, 2005 through approximately January 31, 2006 for the purpose of replacing a damaged culvert under the road in precinct four. I understand that work is supposed to take about five weeks. >> move that the public hearing be opened.
>> second.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> I think that you have pretty much said it all. I mean, it's -- we are taking out a culvert. We are asking for the road to be closed for up to five weeks. We hope it won't take that long. We understand that there's a certain inconvenience that -- for the motorists, not a very -- not very many roads out in this area of the county. So by closing wolf lane there -- there is quite a bit of travel to get around the detour. But -- but basically the culvert goes across the entire roadway. For safety purposes we would recommend that the road be closed during the construction.
>> we posted our usual signs.
>> we have, I understand there are some folks that may want to speak today about the closure.
>> okay.
>> joe, with that also before we have folks to speak, are we -- have we notified the esd's that serve that because I致e -- you know, we've had a situation whereby we had a road closure in precinct 1, the esd's allege that they were not notified which was a problem. So I just want to make sure that any of the future road closures that we have be proper esd's, notified, I don't know how it appears that they are not, but it appears. Is that the case here that they have been notified?
>> Commissioner, if I could speak to that. Yes, they have been notified. The school districts have been notified. So we've followed the protocol. The reference you are -- the issue that you are referring to would be addressing sending all esd's in the districts or in the county notices when we have a closure, not just the ones that are in that area, but we will in the future be notifying all chiefs of esd's of all road closures.
>> that would be good.
>> what size culvert is this?
>> they are replacing three concrete round pipes with three design seven. They are pretty large concrete pipes, I don't know the exact diameter, but I知 assuming that it's probably about 40-inch. That's typical. So it's fairly large pipes. What's happened with the concrete is separating so the potential there for -- for you know collapse of the roadway is possible. So it's prudent for our department to go in and replace these as soon as possible. Yes, it is an inconvenience, but the liability there for the county is -- is tremendous.
>> was this work intentionally planned for the holiday season.
>> no, sir. We were out on the road doing repairs, we found the problem. Typical of what happens, we find it or something happens to the roadway, we see a depression or actually as in cameron road we have a failure in the roadway. We have so many culverts around the county that are concrete that are in -- getting up there in years, that you know we don't check on all of them all of the time. Luckily we do find them. Before we do have some sort of a -- of a detrimental damage to the roadway or, you know, extreme liability situation where somebody might drive into it.
>> okay. That was going to be my question, if we don't -- if we are fixing this because it is a public -- it's a public safety issue as well, that we don't want to wait until someone gets hurt and then we react to it. So this is -- this is being proactive.
>> yes, ma'am. That's -- you are exactly correct. We don't want to sit and wait until the road falls in and we do have somebody that drives off into it, you know, increases the county liability. This is one of these cases where we are fortunate enough to find this in advance and to make preparations. It is unfortunate it does fall around the christmas holidays, but that had no decision or input into our decision to replace it.
>> okay.
>> the item says a damaged culvert. You are saying three damaged culverts?
>> yes. In this category there's three culverts side by side and they have separated. Basically it's pipes side by side and we have a separation, I believe in two maybe three. If you go in there and replace these things, eventually the third one is probably going to do the same thing, so our -- our stance has been you go in and replace it with -- with quality pipe while you are in there and doesn't take any longer to do three than it does one or two.
>> okay.
>> would anyone like to give testimony during this public hearing? If so, please come forward. If you would have a seat there and give us your full name, we would be happy to get your comments.
>> is it appropriate that I greet my commission here at this time.
>> it certainly is.
>> how are you doing?
>> you are doing a great job.
>> thank you.
>> that's Commissioner Daugherty.
>> I知 Gerald Daugherty, bill.
>> how are you doing.
>> Sam Biscoe. Pleased to meet you.
>> Karen Sonleitner.
>> Commissioner Ron Davis.
>> Ron Davis, thank you.
>> good seeing you. Have a seat.
>> the reason that I知 here, I travel this road every day several times. The people that work for me do the same. This is an area very heavily traveled in recent months. As you know, Margaret. Having been in the construction business for a long time, I know something about this type of thing. I知 trying to figure out why we need five weeks.
>> I can answer that, sir. Typically what we try to do, because of this time of year, we put a little buffer in there. More than likely, and you know don't hold me to this, but we can typically be in and south in two to three weeks, with the weather, circumstances like that, this time of year, we don't want to cut ourselves short and come back and say, well, we need to extend this closure, so what we do is put a little buffer in there that case in point on littig road, we had a three-week closure we were out in five days.
>> that's what I was figuring. You have got already tempered concrete pipe put in there. You don't have to be are you planning on building a box culvert.
>> no, sir, we are planning on replacing it with corrugated pipe.
>> why not concrete if.
>> our typical procedure is that we replace with corrugated metal pipe.
>> what you -- what you always do and what you are going to have to come back and do again. So anyway you are thinking a good four or five days but you want five weeks.
>> no, sir, that's not what I said. I said we had a case recently where we had a three week closure and we did it in five days. I would estimate, you know, two to three weeks to do this, but again I would say to you that this is, deading on whether circumstances, we work as quickly and as earnestly as we can to put these structures back in. But we do like to put a buffer in there for that.
>> last year considerable work was done on wolf lane. The question arose as to why that was not discovered during this period of time when there was a lot of construction disruption for several weeks. In fact probably a couple of months. Are you howard?
>> no, sir. I知 don ward.
>> okay. Howard is the man that I spoke with. What's howard's category, Margaret?
>> howard is a section manager. He works directly under me.
>> I talked with him several days about that. Situation last year. Of course that -- that area is pretty discouraging for road building.
>> actually, on wolf lane we did have some replacement culverts during that project, why this one didn't get caught at the time I can't answer that question. But we did do some other drainage work along the roadway at that time.
>> build the box culvert and that took a long time. I知 planning to do that this time. Or is it already fabricated?
>> no, sir, in this case, due to the area that we have got there, we feel confident with the design seven corrugated metal pipe, that's pretty much our standard procedure.
>> we would close the road when we are ready to start the work. We get the work done as soon as possible. Then we will open the road. If it takes less than five weeks with, we close, do the work, we open it. Five weeks is outside. The day after christmas is a holiday, the day after new year's is a holiday, also. Are we doing this work or contracting it out?
>> we are performing this working ourselves.
>> we lose two days right there. Both of those fall on Sunday, that Monday is a -- our efficiently county holidays -- official county holidays after christmas and new year's. But otherwise I guess our goal would be to expedite this work as much as possible. Get it done, get on out.
>> my prediction would be that if you hire an independent contractor do this work, you would have do it in half the time for less money. [indiscernible] isn't it, Margaret?
>> sometimes.
>> thank you very much. Anybody else here on this item? The encouragement from mr. Sweeney is for us to get this work done as soon as possible and close the road in as short of a time as possible. We will do that.
>> mr. Sweeney are you in this kind of business?
>> yes, sir.
>> you do this kind of work?
>> I do this kind of work as well as above ground construction.
>> I would love to see what you think that you can do this for. I mean, everything that we are fining out today on everything that we are doing, god the prices are just unreasonable or -- unreasonable, but unbelievable. I would love to see you say, hey, let me do this job and let me tell you what I知 going to do it for, let me tell you how fast I知 going to do it.
>> if I could have the privilege of the plans, I would be glad to tell you what it would cost you, how long it would take you to do it?
>> don, is that something that we can do?
>> typically on one of these prongs we don't develop a construction set of plans due to the nature of the issue out there. It's time, safety. We do have competent personnel that have done this type of work for years, years, years. And I知 not saying mr. Sweeney can't do this work --
>> without a plan? How are you going to start without a plan. You have got to have a plan.
>> that's not what I知 saying sir. I知 saying we don't have construction drawings prepared. We do have field information we take, we gather survey information. I have a drainage engineer that goes out and oversees this project. That's what will be done.
>> well, I mean he raises a good question. I know one that I知 not trying to put you in a spot don wyoming here we are -- I mean, here we are government the last thing that rereally want something out on the street saying this is ridiculous, something that should take three or four days, we ought to do for less money. I知 all for doing that if we can so he that we can do that.
>> on our major drainage projects, we do survey, prepare sets of plans and put it out to bid. For projects that are less intensive, we usually do not go to that level of effort. We do it with just basically field engineering in our own crews. In this situation we have time sensitive repairs understanding the amount of time that it would take us to design, bid, get this out for project sector competition. We go through that level of effort when there is a major project to do. I mean, you need to consider all things, not just the construction that -- the level of effort that it takes both on the part of t.n.r. To survey and design the project, prepare the documents for bid, and get it out to bid. All those costs have to be weighed in. At some point it's cost beneficial for us to do it in house. I guess you don't know these things until you see somebody that says here's what I can do. It may be a small enough things that you don't necessarily have to have some massive amount of -- of -- of design on this thing. It's like what would you do to fix the culverts, what would you do to do this to perhaps some of these folks have the ability to do that. I mean, we are in a spot here where obviously not prepared to -- to -- to deal with this thing in this manner. But I mean there is an interesting question that arises out of this that we all find ourselves a little sheepish about at time as being in government, being an elected official, but why didn't you ask somebody if they could do that. If that's not what we are doing is probably confusing to people that's watching this this morning.
>> what we have Commissioner in our work plan, we typically divide our drainage projects into minor and major typically on the -- on the number of hours it takes to complete this job. We do these jobs on a routine basis. This is routine work for us. We have adequate crews, both east side and west side that do these. And like I say, this is a routine item for us. And we don't feel that it's a major project. When it is -- when it becomes a major product we did include the construction drawings and plan and go through the bidding process. And we feel this is -- this is a routine drainage issue for us and like I said, we do these on a frequent basis.
>> these are --
>> the argument for routine is typical bureaucratic argument. They want to maintain the status quo. When we used to do it this way, we are going to continue to do it this way. Waste the taxpayers money. We watched wolf lane construction last year. Several very high priced pieces of equipment sitting idle day after day after day, the weather was good to work, but they were somewhere else working. Machine was here. Work was not being done, we were in a state of repair of various degrees of repair for months. I can see this happening again. The reason we came down today is to try to make a sensible argument for a -- doing it a different way.
>> yes?
>> the only point that I want to make is that we already have people hired in house on the payroll right now to do this work and it's embedded in our work plan. We don't have a separate extra budget established to have to hire out people to do this work. I think in this particular case this is absolutely within the course and scope of the duties of our very fine people who work in our road and bridge office. They know how to do this work. They can quickly get this work done. Thank for you the prodding, but I think we are going to have some eyes and ears out in the community making sure that this thing is done as quickly as we can. And we can't do anything about the weather. We are supposed to get a heavy amount of rain tonight. We might get some icing. These -- the weather happens. So we are not going to take one more day than it's necessary, I think mr. -- mr. Ward hears you loud and clear in terms did of get it done. Okay we need to get it done.
>> your name.
>> brenda sweeney, when you look at the people who live on wolf lane, there are maybe 10 families, that doesn't seem significant. But there are thousands of cars who do travel it. So this being routine, then I think he's probably going to get it done in a shorter amount of time, I just wanted to emphasize there are many people who will be affected by this.
>> okay.
>> thank you so much for your comments.
>> thank you.
>> would anyone else like to give testimony during this public hearing?
>> move that the public hearing be closed?
>> second.
>> all in favor, that passes by unanimous vote.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, December 13, 2005 3:38 PM