Travis County Commissioners Court
July 29, 2008
Item 19
Item number 19, mr. Gieselman. 19 is to consider and take appropriate action on the approval of acceptance of dedication of street and drainage facilities for ranch at deer creek phase 3, section 4, a subdivision in precinct 3.
>> this is standard acceptance of streets in a subdivision once the roads have are passed their warranty period we inspect them to make sure that they've held up and the engineer, one of our engineers inspects them and then makes a recommendation to the Commissioners court to bring them on to the -- permanent loy to the county road and bridge system for ongoing maintenance. And this action would increase our miles by .55 miles.
>> okay. Three residents have come down on this item, if y'all would come forward. Give us your name, we will be be happy to get your comments.
>>
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> my name is anne hawkins. I own 24 lots in deer creek ranch. Since this project was conceived and advanced to this stage, we've had another emergency occur. Mail service is about to be stopped to 100 individuals in deer creek ranch. Rather than this particular stretch of road, we would like to propose a reconsideration of a stretch of road that is con continuous with longhorn skyway serving sandy beach, which would allow us to purchase a lot or provide mail service with the help of our local church for the 100 residents that are about to lose service. It would also allow for school buses to roll further and serves the main community rather than being contiguous with hays county. That's my main point.
>> okay. Now, we -- so joe, the developer has built roads --
>> basically we would have to take a look at the road and determine whether or not it meets county standards. The only reason the county accepts roads is because they've been built to county standards, and then we take them over. If the road has not been constructed to county standards, we typically do not because of the cost of upgrading the road to county standards. We do have a substandard road program that over the years the court has authorized a limited amount of funding to bring roads that have been platted years ago, below standards, to go in and upgrade them and then accept them for maintenance. And I believe deer creek has been a candidate for that. It's just a matter of funding.
>> judge, let me give you a quick history of what is going on today. I think we all discovered yesterday at lunch that the citizens were going to come and ask for probably some reconsideration: deer creek is an area in western Travis County off hamilton pool road that most of the roads on the Travis County side are beyond deplorable. I mean, you've got emergency vehicles that have just about told us they're no longer going to use them. You've got the post office that is in strong consideration of stopping the delivery of mail. You've got school buss that won't even enter the neighborhood because they just literally can't get down the roads. And this is a typical example of what you have in several parts of Travis County where a developer has gone in and really never -- and this is way before it really got on our radar screen to say that we were going to force developers before they could get their platting capabilities moved forward to build the kind of road that we know is going to stand up and the kind of road that quite frankly everybody wants to pay their taxes and have county maintained. There's a lot of history on this. Now, when we first started this about two years ago, that was when I came to the court and asked that the court, that we put some substandard road money into -- back into existence. We got $500,000. Knowing that -- and there's about 5 -- about 7 miles actually if you take all the linear feet of needed roadway in deer creek that's not done. They've got a small portion of their road that has been substandard county road acceptance. We started two years ago going down this path that we were going to eat this element or buy it at the time and use that $500,000 to just kind of eek along and hopefully keep enough money in the pipeline over the upcoming years to continue to put money in the substandard road program so that all of us could find a pot of money. Now, I think what has happened, and again, I mean, it was kind of startling to me yesterday accused r. And probably startling to a number of folks that what we have worked on is there's a registered engineer that lives in deer creek, and most of the effort that has been put toward the leverage if you will that we asked for wherever it comes to doing the substandard road, that registered engineer has done a lot of work to get it to this stage here where we would move forward with doing only just a half a mile. Steve, you're not even aware of this because I haven't gotten to tell but it after yesterday's lunch, but I think what the neighbors are here to do, and I'm in favor of pulling back and trying to sit down with the neighbors again. Because the homeowners board, it really doesn't exist anymore. We do know we talked yesterday at lunch that we would have to really get people back to the table and say, what are we going to do, how would we spend the limited dollars that we have in the substandard road program, but I think what they're asking is we may feel like that we need to reconsider this thing as opposed to doing half a mile. And quite frankly we know at the cost of everything we do with roads today you're not goating a whole lot. In fact, there are instances that we might find that we can't even do half a mile. I think the neighbors want to regroup, sit down and -- most of the work that's been done to date on this has been done through the work be of one of the residents in the neighborhood. And I haven't reached him yesterday. I don't know whether any of y'all were able to reach, travis, but I will do that today. But I'm going to ask that we take and pull back on what we have done to date so we can sit down with the folks. We all know or the neighbors do understand that there are some issues with how you really move forward in taking county monies and doing something with roads that may not get them up to a standard to where we then can take them over. And I think most of the neighbors do understand that if you're going to go out and go through the motions of a road, the likelihood that those roads are going to stay intact is not very great, but I think that where these neighbors are coming from is we understand that, but we have such dire needs to do something with our roads right now that we have somehow got to try to find a way to work with the county, kind of regroup and say okay, how can we go to plan b and let us rethink this thing? Is that sort of the articulation of where y'all would like to see us go.
>> yes, sir. Very well said. I would like to add that we have been spending a lot of our own community money on roads and we would like to be able to spend that money in a more useful manner, over $77,000 have been spent from the community in the last two years on 'piecemeal work. We need to coordinate that, organize it, think it through. We would also like the opportunity to apply for a hud grant such as apache shores has gotten. We see some opportunities here in the middle of crisis, but we ask you to bear with us as we are a neighborhood in crisis with elderly people losing mail service, a fairly significant deal that we would like to rethink what our priority is and address the most -- spend this money the most meaningful way we can. Thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> let me make sure I understand this now. So what's the name of the road that y'all are advocating for?
>> longhorn skyway is a county accepted road. Sandy beach is contiguous with longhorn skyway. On sandy beach --
>> so the name of it is sandy beach.
>> yes, sir.
>> hold on.
>> so joe, what does sandy beach have to do with these four roads on this item?
>> nothing.
>> these roads have already been improved by a developer. We have a policy that says if you start a development, your responsibility is to put the roads in. But if you put the roads in and come up -- bring them up to county standard, let us come out and do an inspection, then we may accept them for future maintenance. So I'm with you on sandy beach, but I don't know what that has to do with the four roads we're asked to accept today.
>> I don't think there are four roads, are there, sir?
>> well, the name --
>> mancuso, cinco and rowley.
>> that is panorama.
>> then there really could be some miscommunication here.
>> I don't understand what's going on.
>> joe, what they may be confused with, which could lead me into a little confusion, is that we were thinking that this was the half a mile that we were going to be doing on panorama, the signoff on moving forward with panorama. And what we are saying that that is not -- steve?
>> this is normally pretty standard.
>> 19 deals with the four roads that he just mentioned. A developer has already improved those to county standards. And we have a policy that says if we come out and do our inspection and of course they're up to county standard, we'll accept them. That's what I couldn't understand a minute ago.
>> yes. Okay, then I'm definitely confused because 19 says consider and take appropriate action on the approval of acceptance of dedication of street and drainage facilities for ranch at deer creek phase 3, section 4, a subdivision in precinct 3.
>> help us on that.
>> but it's these four roads in that subdivision.
>> no, sir, those four roads are not in our subdivision.
>> then we've got a problem be.
>> we're not talking about the same ones.
>> the issue about panorama, we do have a joint venture with the --
>> I don't know that we can legally discuss panorama.
>> okay. Now it looks like we need to take another week and make sure that these roads -- then if we need to bring a separate item back where we deal with sandy beach, doak that too. We can do that too.
>> but none of these are up for acceptance, judge, as those stated earlier as we normally do when we accept and bring roads in under our pavement management system?
>> I do believe there is another deer creek ranch. In Travis County.
>> and that's exactly what I was about to say. Here is the issue that we have. And the reason this has come back is because yesterday's lunch got folks to the point where with they said let's make sure that we go down and before we move forward on spending any of the substandard road money on panorama, which is the reason y'all are here, and I can see where you've gotten confuse odd this. This obviously --
>> we're all confused. -- is not the deer creek --
>> this is a legitimate subdivision in the Cedar Park area --
>> this is off anderson mill road.
>> okay.
>> then we have something to say to that matter. Then we have nothing to say to that matter.
>> but what you really came down to talk to us about, which I thought you were going to do in citizens communication, but that's fine. We've talked about it, may have to come back down and talk about it again, but we have alerted the department that there is going to be a concern from y'all's standpoint as to how we want to move forward with deer creek off of hamilton pool road.
>> I think we understand each other.
>> bingo.
>> [ laughter ]
>> so we're good to go.
>> we're good to go with with this deer creek.
>> thanks could coming down.
>> that explains it. So with with that I would move approval.
>> second.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 2:51 PM