Travis County Commissioners Court
June 30, 2006
Citizens Communication
Citizens communication is first, and mr. Barstow did sign in. This gives residents an opportunity to address the Commissioners court on any matter not on the agenda for up to three minutes. Yes, sir?
>> judge, I want to give each of you one of these. I'm bob barstow. I own windy point park on Lake Travis adjacent to your bob wentz park. We have troubles out there. I've been trying for some time to create a safe situation where your customers are not endangered by boats and cars using the right-of-way that I have over lcra land to launch boats. You built a boat ramp over there and you require me to use it, but the boundary passes through the boat ramp and the boat ramp is completely out of water now, so I have to launch elsewhere at some places of my choice on the rest of the lcra land. That's right through the middle of your most populated recreation area. People are walking there, they're lounging, they're storying. There are things there on the ground while they're in the water. And I foresee a lot of problems. What I'm hoping is that by the end of the day you will have a plan in place to protect those people from the boats that are coming in to meet the trailers and the trailers that are being backed up and driven through that area. I am not aware yet that such a plan is in place. I have been working for it for some time, but you know the easement has the highest right to use your property, and I have a right to run my business through there and it creates dangerous situations and it's a problem that needs to be faced. I'm willing to make any reasonable solution to resolve this. It is going to require, I think, some transfer of property rights because this is a property rights question. And if your parks people cannot manage their park within the limitations of the property rights that they got from the lcra land, because my right is the most preferential right to use the lcra land, we've got a really fundamental problem. Please post an officer down there to keep people away and keep the area clean so that we do not risk injuring someone. Backing trailers sometimes jackknife very suddenly, there are blind spots. Children friendly swim underwater and pop up after a long time in front of boats. Someone needs to be there to keep control of that situation. And we don't have authority to do that. I wish we did. We would keep it clean and get it cleaned up. In addition, if you have a ranger down there -- you've had several drownings out there already. It's a dangerous area. He can keep his eyes open and his ears open for any distress calls. There are a number of incidents out there where people have been in trouble and have been rescued by people other than your people. My son has rescued one. Other people have rescued people in distress and having problems. Your park rangers normally do not have their windows down in their cars when they drive by. They can't hear anything and they sit some distance from the water. But a person on the ground would help, not only to keep us from hitting someone with our vehicles or hitting someone in the water, but in the event there is a potential drowning about to happen they can see the actions or they can hear the yells for help. Please have a plan in place by the end of the day.
>> thank you. We'll share that with our parks personnel.
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Last Modified:
Friday, June 30, 2006 3:12 PM