Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, August 30, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 28
Item number 23, receive comments regarding Travis County's stance on pursuing a traffic calming program including the creation of a traffic calming policy.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners.
got several folks here will introduce themselves.
this is a request to the court for some guidance on whether or not they would like t.n.r.
to establish a traffic calming program.
all of you at one time or another have probably been asked to put speed hump as a particular road or some sort of traffic calming design, and we do have records of several -- well, approaching several hundred requests tore that type of design out in the county.
so there's a need, it comes down to funding and maintaining that.
and there are other issues that these folks will explain to you.
I would like to hand off to david greer to give you more background.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners, david greer, t.n.r., traffic and engineering.
and I guess the agenda item today is sort of two-fold.
it's a lot of informational, something we can bring to you as far as information on what traffic calming is, maybe what some of the effects of it will have on our roadways or citizens, our emergency responses.
then also if we ever do a traffic calming program the cost it would maybe be to the county.
the intent of this agenda item is really just to get some direction from the court.
do we want to pursue traffic calming in the future, do we want to pursue a proposed traffic calming program.
I guess some of the things I hope to provide today is basically what traffic calming is.
what is it.
where has the traffic calming been requested throughout the county and how many we've had.
how much the traffic calming program would cost the county.
we have expert testimony from gary shots from the city of Austin and a little bit of information about their program and some other programs he's been involved with.
and then some representation from Travis County's emergency services division.
but first I would like to say what the traffic calming.
I guess everyone thinks of traffic calming as a speed bump and that's really how it started a long time ago, but it's basically a railway design feature, the intend to slow traffic and volumes.
it's evolved over the years.
it used to start out at speed humps or bumps and now it's a variety of things like speed cushions, traffic circles, curb extensions, diverters, all sorts of items, design features that can either shift traffic to the left or right or vertically like a speed hump.
and so that has evolved over the years and I'll let -- when I introduce to you gary, he will explain more about some of those items. In the last ten years, we've been keeping track of all the traffic calming requests and we've been mostly dealing with them over the years by either getting -- trying to get to the root of the problem.
we've been helping the communities with making sure the speed limit signs are up, warning signs and roadway striping and working with the sheriff's department for selective enforcement and making sure people obey the speed limits.
we have had 161 requests throughout the county over the last ten years.
and about 140 different locations.
and they are scattered throughout the county.
all the residential areas I think have probably called us over time and asked for traffic calming at one time or another.
now, what would this be the impact to the county as far as cost.
if we ever did decide to go with traffic calming, probably the first thing we would do is come up with a traffic calming policy.
and that would be something we would bring to the court maybe in the next six months if we decide to go this route.
but then after that it's when you implement it you have some costs associated with it.
you would need one person, an engineer on staff that would actually run the program because it is a lot of intensive neighborhood meetings, design, working with the communities, taking the phone calls, designing the -- designing and installation as far as contracts of the installation of these things.
the actually material cost item of installing these if we decide to either contract it out or use or own in-house crews.
three a year would be $300,000 a year.
along with about $90,000 for an engineering position.
and then, of course, there's maintenance, ongoing maintenance of those devices over time.
so that gives you an idea of what it might cost the county.
and I'd like to do now is introduce gary schatz, he's joining us today to provide expert information on traffic calming.
he's an assistant director with the transportation department as the traffic engineer of record.
he's a nationally recognized expert on alternative introduction and road design.
he used to manage the city of houston's traffic calming programming and he is an advocate for contact sensitive design and the round-about committee.
gary is a present presenter on these topics, the most recent balancing roadway safety and emergency services needs through an appropriate traffic calming calming strategy.
at this time I would like to turn it over to gary and after that we'll get with emergency services districts.
>> david, thank you very much.
your honor, Commissioners, good morning and thank you for this opportunity.
I wanted to share with you kind of some philosophical sides of traffic calming.
as david mentioned a little bit of it, it's really a retrofit of existing roadway where there is actual adverse driver behaviors or perception of adverse driver behaviors occurring and it responds from an engineering standpoint to try to mitigate those behaviors.
the two primary issues that people seek to have mitigated is either adverse levels of speeding along an individual street segment or adverse levels of what's termed cut-through traffic through some neighborhood bounded area.
the strategies for addressing either of those have some similarities, but there are also some significant differences.
traffic calming did begin in the early 1990, mid 1990s throughout the country, seattle portland being some of the leaders in that.
Austin followed, houston did a lot of research and a lot of work on it and arguably at one point in time houston had one of the largest programs in the country processing 500, 600 requests a year, building approximately 400 speed humps a year.
that was a primary tool in their toolbox and working with six to eight neighborhoods a year trying to mitigate cut-through traffic.
the two challenges we run into in these programs both involve consensus.
consensus on what constitutes and problem, and you get that then consensus on what to do about it.
and what we have found helpful is to have a conversation with our elected officials, with our policy makers, with our community leaders on what are some of those benchmarks.
in other words, what constitutes a speeding problem.
and is the program or the policy anticipated for this, is it to be one that can be administered through changes by staff with just empowerment from the governing body to say you are authorized to go do this, work out the details and let us know, or in some cases it's actually been ordinance, law, et cetera that spells it out in fairly grisly detail.
pros and cons to both of those which we can discuss at another point.
but a big question becomes is there a desire for a zero tolerance program so that if the speed limit is 30, if you are going 30.1 miles an hour that's a problem.
or is it a reasonable performance program where if I'm going 32, that's okay.
for a cut-through issue, do I want absolutely no one driving through my neighborhood that lives in this neighborhood, or do I recognize that they are public streets and that people will use those streets to go from here to there and that there is a par for the course in that.
there is always some level of cut-through traffic.
and if you are cutting through the neighborhood and behaving yourself is that okay.
the other challenge is what is our method of mitigation.
there are national studies and they are well done that document vertical deflection devices, specifically speed humps do adversery impact travel times for emergency service providers, anywhere from two to fine seconds, two seconds for a pumper, nine seconds for an ambulance treating a patient.
so are we now -- we now are faced with the issue of do we address -- do we accept the acute conditions or acknowledge the acute condition, which is fire and life safety matters, immediate needs, as opposed to the chronic issue, they are speeding on my street all day long, I'm afraid for my children and pets.
or do we address the chronic issues and put up the acute issue occasionally.
we've had very good luck in city of Austin of partnering with fire and e.m.s.
to revise our traffic calming policy which we're now referring to as local air traffic management.
it does dove-tail with the arterials and how well they work.
but we're looking for opportunities other than just the traditional speed humps or speed cushions.
we want to use more of the horizontal deflection devices that dave mentioned, round-abouts, other traffic islands, medians, et cetera, some things like that that give us landscaping opportunities, that give communities a chance to create a sense of place, that allows us to perhaps start purging holes in impervious cover that is concern to us from an environmental standpoint.
in that we work very closely with fire and life safety providers that they get to see these concepts very early on to make an informed decision about yes or no we can live with this.
and having those conversations early even on a philosophical level where that, for example, work with city of Austin, they are okay with us considering their primary travel routes for traffic calming but no vertical deflection device so no speed humps or tables, but you could do round-abouts and median islands and things like that.
so it's a discussion that's ongoing, and as I've said previously it's kind of climb a chile recipe and some like it with beans and jalapenos but it's going to be what the community is comfortable with.
>> jerry, thanks for coming and thank you for lending me your round-about book to take a look at.
I really appreciated that.
with regard to our ability to -- I'm hearing what you are saying as far as designing in traffic calming into your actual roadway design, but at the county level, david, do we even have the ability to require that?
since we don't even have the ability to require subdivisions to connect up their roads -- my impression, and I'd like to have your bead on this, is that much of what we're seeing and I see it a lot in my precinct, people asking for road calming on what has become a major thoroughfare through a residential development, is brought about because their development doesn't connect to the next development which doesn't connect to the next development which then diverts all the traffic on a small number of conduits to the major road.
>> correct, and that's pretty common in the county.
we don't have probably as strict standards as far as connectivity to the neighborhoods.
I think some of the issues we would have to look at is we have several emergency service districts.
we don't have just one fire department.
you know, we do have one sheriff's department.
but in an emergency the ambulances work through the city, but sometimes it might be a little difficult to coordinate approval from all the fire districts that we go into and there may be different views between each service district.
we would have to work it into the program, the traffic calming policy that would state that we would have to work with the fire department and they could possibly have veto power over those individual programs forever neighborhood that they are reviewing.
there's ways of doing it and it would just be a policy standard and I think it could happen, but then I think we would need some general consensus from the emergency service districts do we even want to go try this.
and I think that's where we are right now.
>> do you -- let me just make full circle on this.
even assuming that we could get a consensus or buy-in from all of our emergency service districts, steve, would we even have the ability to in a subdivision development as they are planning their roads say, well, obviously you've got x number of cul-de-sacs and this road through the middle is going to be a major thoroughfare.
we suspect you will have an issue on there that then five years from now, ten years from now all the residents will call and say I want speed humps.
do we even have the ability to say you will design this road with a traffic calming feature in it?
>> as a design for the roadway, I believe we can -- we have that flexibility.
we don't have a policy or a design guidelines that could have to be created to establish consistency, but I believe we could do that if -- put them in right up front.
one of the things that is often proposed by a developer is, well, let's go with narrower lanes because that tends to slow people down naturally or if you have parking on the street that slows people down.
>> or if the road curves.
>> ride, make it curve linear, it will slow down the rational driver.
but sure, you can design up front a way to keep the speed down to where the roadway is intended to operate.
>> thanks.
>> let's hear from the e.s.d.
and the sheriff.
>> gary warren, fire chief of west lake and oak hill fire departments.
I just wanted to share a fire chief's perspective on this.
clearly for public safety there are some areas that traffic calming is not a bad idea and I think we could all agree that school zones, places where pedestrian traffic is necessary for access, public parks, hospitals and those kind of areas, I can see traffic calming being for the good of everyone.
but let me share with you one of the principles around which fire chiefs plan strategies and it has to do with seven minutes.
and when we were talking about the development of fire in a structure, science has proven that in a general roundabout way all conditions being normal it takes about seven minutes to reach flashover stage which is the deadly critical stage in the fire development.
coincidentally, it takes about seven minutes for permanent brain damage to start setting in when someone is suffering respiratory or cardiac arrest.
so seven minutes keeps coming up over and over when it comes to emergency response for fire departments.
so all the strategies are built around trying to get to someone's home within seven minutes.
traffic calming doesn't help that.
there are some things, like I said, that need to be considered for the public safety.
but you could say that the longer it takes to get a fire truck to someone's home, the greater chance there is that there will be loss of life.
in fact, there have been some studies that have theoretically proven that the losses will go up as those times are increased.
so we know it will increase the time and we suspect that it will cause greater danger to the public.
but I know that speeding vehicles can be a danger to the public as well.
so there's a good side and there's a bad side and that's why it's up to leaders like you to make policy to decide which way you want to go.
>> now you are going to shift it to us after you said all that, now you are going to say y'all make the decision.
>> [laughter]
>> there's two aspects that I would be concerned about.
one is saturation, what is the saturation of these traffic calming devices in a neighborhood.
abuse the greater number there are, the slower the response will be.
second one is arterials and collector streets.
the people that live along those arterials and live along those collector streets may benefit from traffic calming, but those streets serve a much greater population than just the people that live on it.
and their times are increased as well.
so those are the two biggest areas that I would be concerned about should you choose to go forward with it.
>> thank you.
>> major?
>> ellis claire, major of the law enforcement bureau for Travis County sheriff's office.
thank you for letting me speak on this.
>> I was glad to let you know about this and I'm glad you are able to make it, but go ahead.
>> I would echo what my counter part says here certainly about priority one response times.
we talk about that a lot.
the reason we picked nine minutes was based on the response time for e.m.s., and as he points out, if we're not there to let e.m.s.
in, that could be a problem.
if law enforcement -- sometimes e.m.s.
stagees and waits for law enforcement to get there.
if we're delayed in getting there, that could be a problem so that builds on what he was speaking to.
the other thing I would point out, we were talking about neighborhoods that are not connected one to another and so it diverts traffic down one other roadway.
I guess that's a problem, but my officers are appreciative when a neighborhood is not connected to another in some ways because when something has gone wrong and the folks who don't want us to know that they are there are trying to leave, there's only one way in and one way out.
so that's another consideration to give when we're talking about trying to divert traffic from that single roadway that seems to experience so much traffic flow.
did you have specific questions?
>> I have a question.
I'm concerned because it is a safety issue and I understand that reducing speed is something that can probably compliment safety concerns within any subdivision.
however, I'm also concerned about for those particular violators of the law that do speed as far as citations that are given.
you know, there are some cities here -- I'm not going to call no names, you all probably know who they are, there are-cities in -- well, within close range of Austin, you go through them and my goodness gracious you are going to slow down.
you know why?
because they have a very strict reputation of issuing citations.
we know what their names are, but I'm not going to call them on the air, but there's a lot of cities that have a strong reputation for issuing citations for folks that speed through their city, within the city limits.
so my question is what has the sheriff and anybody else doing to deter such violators of the law when it comes to speeding, which is also something I think is a part of what we're talking about here.
so is there any way to know -- or maybe another question are you staffed adequately enough to deal with a lot of these particular violators as far as speeding is concerned within particular neighborhoods?
let me ask that question.
>> well, I don't know if you recall that last year we did take some of our traffic officers and move them to work our patrol assignments because we were experiencing a lot of leave and some shortages.
so we did have to rob from peter to pay paul.
I know that the court is entertaining more ftes for us and I appreciate that and that would allow us to keep our traffic units in traffic assignments doing that job.
we have issued over 40,000 tickets in 2010 --
>> 40,000?
>> 40,000 tickets, about 22 on the east side of the county and a few less on the west side.
we do selective enforcements, and mr. Greer works with us on that one.
he gets a call, he sends people our way or he makes sure that the information gets to us, and our officers are directed to go to a specific location that a citizen has advised us of and work that location in the time and on the days thattist citizen advises us that is a problem and we evaluate whether or not it is a problem.
and again, we talked about getting a consensus on whether or not there's a problem.
that is difficult for us too because we'll go out there the date and time specified when there seems to be a problem and we don't get anybody speeding.
so it becomes not valid at that point after three tries.
on the other hand, we'll go out and we will issue eight or nine keepers, tickets, or warnings, and we keep track of that.
so we're doing what we can with the resources we have.
certainly we would be able to do more of that if we were able to keep our staffing levels in our traffic and motorcycle traffic enforcement units up.
>> okay.
and I guess a couple more questions and I'm going to shut my mouth.
but one question that comes to my mind is the cost.
if I understand what david greer was stating earlier was that, you know, $100,000 per situation, it was 161 of them that we're talking about as far as requests that are suggesting some type of traffic calming apparatus.
but even in some of those things requested he mentioned a staff and he also mentioned the construction and he also mentioned the maintenance of that in just selecting three, that's well over $400,000 just for those three.
what I need to find out is this, is that where -- and I heard the presenter of the city of Austin, I'd like to find out where are they now as far as funding, where they are as far as funding for these particular traffic calming situations.
is the city still within their aggressive program of funding or have they pulled back funding?
>> thank you, Commissioner.
the 2010 bond did afford us a million and a half or two million dollars to continue with the implementation of traffic calming throughout the city.
there are a variety of old bond moneys that we are also using on some historic neighborhoods -- or historic traffic calming projects.
the program as a whole, we have put on hold at the moment.
we are revamping the program.
>> okay.
>> previously as originally founded, it would look at a neighborhood as a whole and come up with strategies, concepts for the neighborhood as a whole.
and from a philosophical standpoint, that makes a lot of sense.
what we have found in practice is we have just not served our constituency really to the level that they are demanding.
in the 1990s, the staff divided the city into about 240 neighborhood study areas.
since that time we have only looked at 25 of those neighborhoods.
and the problem is, again, a significant amount of time to try to figure out, reach consensus, what constitutes a problem, et cetera.
so we're revising that.
we're going to a process where individual street segments can be considered for street mitigation.
we are looking at least restrictive that best documents a mitigated problem.
whatever speed or traffic volume data we collect we do share with a.p.d.
so they can choose to do targeted enforcement.
and that if eligibility is determined, then there is a ranking for funding process because there's just not enough money to address every single street.
but we also need to better meet expectations.
tell me yes or no I'm eligible, and if I'm eligible, tell me yes or no I'm going to be funded.
if I'm not going to be funded, just tell me I'm expired, just don't keep me hanging.
that's the things we need to address.
>> and I'm assuming the budget, I try to look at the figures the county is talking about just to do three and we're talking whether we're $500,000 -- not 500,000, a little short of $500,000, and, of course, I heard you talk about a million or so budget.
you know, and this is for the entire city of Austin.
my concern is, though, that what are the first responders saying from the city of Austin?
you've heard something from our first responders here, e.s.d.
situation with the county, and, of course, there is a relationship between first responders with the county and the city.
we kind of share in that responsibility.
so my concern -- my question to you is what position has first responders with the city of Austin, what are they saying?
>> the police department on meeting with them, they are comfortable with the draft policies.
they just want to be advised on a policy level.
they feel as city of houston police did if there's traffic calming back in a neighborhood that means there are resources utilized elsewhere.
you are not having to go to a particular street and set up for a day or a couple of days just to document technically not much happened.
fire and life safety folks, we have offered to them a veto role.
they will -- if a requested street segment initially is eligible just because we've documented adverse level of speeding, we develop a conceptual design for what that mitigation would look like.
and then it goes to fire and e.m.s.
to say yes or no are you okay with this.
and they have a veto role.
they are very comfortable with us bringing them on in very early on.
we've had conversations about actually building some of these devices at the fire academy and letting fire and life safety drivers experience these.
we have an obligation from the engineering side to do that and these folks spoke to it very well, do that which is least restrictive.
the more aggressive a program, the harder it is to reach consensus on that.
but to give people a chance to understand truly what it is and be careful in how we build them.
>> okay.
have they reflected to you any -- any -- and I'm saying your first respondents, whoever they may -- fire, law enforcement, e.m.s., just on down the line, have they reflected anything about the possibility of reducing -- increasing arrest far as time to get to a victim or whatever else; in other words, does the calming devices prohibit -- prevent them from getting to them in a timely manner, have they brought that point up to you?
>> absolutely.
and it's a conversation we have across the country.
we have said we want to do that that is least restrictive that best mitigates.
and it may be in responding to a situation at the very -- in the very last cul-de-sac at the very end of the very long and winding road, on the front end that may not be an appropriate thing to do.
but that's why fire and life safety has a veto role in our process.
>> okay.
>> they need to be able to say yes or no I can live with this and reach an appropriate balance.
>> okay.
thank you very much.
>> yes, sir.
>> anybody else here on this item?
if so, please come forward.
two questions.
has the city been able to measure the effectiveness of its program?
>> the old program, yes, sir, we have.
we have done traffic counts before and after.
>> so do you deduce from that that the streets are safer?
eye do.
I do.
let me be very clear, your honor.
there is always risk along streets.
there is no such thing as a, quote, safe street.
I would not just wander out in a street without regard to traffic.
we also know unfortunately that the probability of a pedestrian being killed when struck by a moving vehicle increases exponentially with speed.
so we are looking for those things that balance appropriate safety on the roadway that with the need for mobility and with the need to provide emergency services along those streets.
>> so do you focus on streets where speeding is actually at a high speed rather than just over the speed limit?
>> we are -- our revised program anticipates a threshold.
those are those that will tell you write a ticket at 31.
on the other side of the coin, if you draw your threshold at 35 or 40, does that really better serve the overall need.
and it comes down to a policy decision.
city of houston's policy was speed limit plus three enabled you to be eligible, but just because you were eligible you were not guaranteed funding.
>> so does the city have a written evaluation that documents effectiveness?
that we can look at?
>> we will have, in the revised policy we will talk about that absolutely.
>> but does the city today have a written evaluation that documents the effectiveness of what's been in place up to now?
>> not formally to my knowledge.
anecdotally on a case-by-case basis.
>> okay.
going back to my old precinct 1 days, we installed speed bumps on springdale and a couple of the other streets there.
so I don't know that we had a policy back then, but we certainly had a practice of trying to address residents' concerns.
so is that still in place?
>> actually it was traffic circles on springdale road and then the speed pillow, humps, whatever was put on sansome and they are still there.
>> if you go down springdale and take that second left, there are speed bumps, right?
>> yes, there are speed cushions on that road.
the traffic circumstance that's originally went in were to reduce truck cut-throw traffic until tuscany way was completed.
one way to deal with that was traffic circles.
and they created a problem on sansome and that's why the speed cushions on sansome.
>> I don't know that we had a formal policy.
we basically made it a practice to try to address residents' concerns.
is that practice in place or did we abandon that at some point?
>> unfortunately I wasn't here at the time we did this up on springdale.
I mean we can make design changes to roadways.
we have that ability.
the further we deviate from standards, the more risk there is for us.
but if you've identified an area in the county where you wanted the same sort of treatment, we can do that.
>> I thought that was the exception to the rule because the problems there were real bad.
my thinking is I don't know that the other 160 would fall into that category.
they may be as bad, they may not.
and when I think of 160 over ten years, that's not many, but at the same time it really depends on the nature of the complaints.
and how bad they really are.
I was convinced that springdale you had trucks, you know, really going 15, 20, 30 miles over the speed limit through a residential neighborhood and I concluded that was unsafe and we tried everything else.
so the designs that we put in to reduce speed were really sort of as a last resort and we did try three or four things.
but we would do that today without a policy, wouldn't we?
>> sure, if the court directed us to, we would do that.
>> it boils down to funding.
>> that's true too.
>> judge, you are correct though what your assessment on that.
the complaint from springdale road from the neighborhood association they would get a lot of traffic just zooming from 290 especially down springdale road going north.
and, of course, that -- that circle, turn-about there in the road really for two purposes and one was that no through truck traffic situation that people were not adhering to, and, of course, -- and then the speeders going through that.
so it served basically two purposes.
of course what we later ended up doing when we got the tuscany way improvement and a bridge and everything else installed to make sure those trucks had an opportunity
>> [indiscernible] stuff like that.
so you hit the nail on the head on that.
>> you are right, Commissioner.
I would also add also that the sheriff's department did selective enforcement out there and they can do a lot to keep the speed down but not a whole lot for stopping cut-through traffic.
just something to keep in mind.
>> court members, any other questions or comments?
>> the only one that I remember, this issue has been discussed before, has the liability issue gone away for the county?
if we put these out where there aren't any street lights or that kind of thing?
>> I would characterize it as it's the same liability you risk when you make a lot of other decisions about streets.
and I think steve summed it up best, the farther you deviate from standards, the greater your liability risk.
you know, it's not a whole new level of liability, it's an added dimension to the liability you've already got for how you construct and maintain any road that's part of the county system.
>> so I guess we would be real careful to make sure that it's a lighted area so -- or some kind of warning for people to know way ahead of time that that is happening.
now, some of the speed bumps in the city of Austin are barely visible and you know you passed one at the last minute.
and so I wonder why those can't be marked a little brighter as well.
>>
>> [inaudible] to route out the people not from the hood.
>> we're aware our devices need maintenance and that's an ongoing issue.
we have programmed maintenance for those to refresh the markings.
and as steve and david have spoken to, you have to keep those maintained.
failure to warn is one of the biggest risks you will face in litigation.
but we face that anyway and it's a matter of how do we better manage, you know, the travelers' safety with all those other matters, but yes, we have to be very cautious and very deliberate in our conversations on those.
>> and so do those others that -- that circle where you have to make a circle, they've got a lot of shrubbery that is dry.
probably needs to be removed for visibility purposes.
>> judge, I will -- I'll simply add a few things.
number one I think in the documentation that was mentioned that there also is a availability of partnering with neighborhood associations and with groups in regards to how you actually put in place those particular-whether it be speed bumps or whether it be the circles.
in one particular neighborhood that I worked with the actual homeowners association actually took care of that themselves.
they didn't ask the city to come out and do it.
so there's funding, there's availability of people coming in volunteering to maintain those things.
on the emergency services side which I'm supposed to represent, as he just described with the city I would hope we would do the same in the county, before anything is put in a neighborhood there be real coordination with our emergency services agencies so we're a part of that and I like the idea you are allowing them to participate as heavily as do you because even though you may reduce speed, if you are endangering life in regards to public safety agencies, that's not a good thing either.
so there needs to be full coordination.
>> absolute, and I think at a time when we're trying to improve the response time out in the county for ambulances, and let me tell you that is extremely important with a family.
I have a personal experience with that.
I live in the city of Austin and they got there very quickly and so I need families would appreciate that time to be considered highly.
>> thank you all very much.
this has been very informative.
we are posted comments and I assume there will be an action item later on.
thank you very much.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
