10-OCT27TRN
TEXAS TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION
COMMISSION MEETING
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Ortiz Center
Nueces Room
402 Harbor Drive
Corpus Christi, Texas 78401
COMMISSION MEMBERS:
Ric Williamson, Chairman
John W. Johnson
Hope Andrade
Ted Houghton, Jr.
STAFF:
Michael W. Behrens, P.E., Executive Director
Steve Simmons, Deputy Executive Director
Richard Monroe, General Counsel
Roger Polson, Executive Assistant to the Deputy
Executive Director
I N D E X
AGENDA ITEM PAGE
CONVENE MEETING 8
Receive comments from area public officials, 14
community and civic leaders, and private citizens.
Report by the Corpus Christi District. 69
1. Approval of Minutes of the September 29, 2005, 83
regular meeting of the Texas Transportation
Commission
2. Public Transportation 84
El Paso County - Award Rural Transportation
Assistance Program funds to El Paso County (MO)
3. Discussion Item
Discussion on various Vehicle Title and 88
Registration public outreach and marketing
efforts
4. Promulgation of Administrative Rules
a. Proposed Adoption Under Title 43, Texas
Administrative Code, and the Administrative
Procedure Act, Government Code, Chapter 2001:
(to be published in the Texas Register for
public comment)
(1) Chapter 17 - Vehicle Titles and
Registration (MO) 108
Amendments to ((17.2-17.3, concerning
Motor Vehicle Certificates of Title,
((17.21-17.24, (17.28, (17.30, (17.33,
and (17.36, concerning Motor Vehicle
Registration, (17.54, concerning
Automated Equipment, (Registration and
Title System), (17.61, (17.62, (17.65,
and (17.68, concerning Nonrepairable
and Salvage Motor Vehicles, and (17.72,
(17.73 and (17.79, concerning Salvage
Vehicle Dealers
(2) Chapter 21 - Right of Way (MO) 111
New Subchapter N, Rail Facilities,
New (21.801, Acquisition of Real
Property, and New (21.802, Disposal
of Real Property (relating to rail
facilities)
(3) Chapter 23 - Travel Information (MO) 113
New (23.13, Links to Community Web
Sites from Rest Areas and Travel
Information Centers (Travel
Information)
(4) Chapter 28 - Oversize and Overweight 115
Vehicles and Loads (MO)
Amendments to (28.11, General Oversize
and Overweight Permit Requirements and
Procedures (General Permits), (28.14,
Manufactured Housing, and Industrialized
Housing and Building Permits, (28.15,
Portable Building Unit Permits (Highway
Crossings by Oversize and Overweight
Vehicles and Loads) and (28.92, Permit
Issuance Requirements and Procedures
(Port of Brownsville Port Authority
Permits), New Subchapter H, Chambers
County Permits, New ((28.100-28.102,
Purpose
b. Final Adoption Under Title 43, Texas
Administrative Code, and the Administrative
Procedure Act, Government Code, Chapter 2001:
(1) Chapter 7 - Rail Facilities (MO) 117
Chapter 7 - Rail Facilities; Subchapter
B, Contracts, New (7.11, Comprehensive
Development Agreements
(2) Chapter 15 - Transportation Planning 119
and Programming (MO)
Amendments to (15.4, Unified Planning
Work Program
(3) Chapter 25 - Traffic Operations (MO) 121
Repeal of ((25.400-25.409, Subchapter
G, Specific Information Logo Sign
Program and New ((25.400-25.409,
Subchapter G, Information Logo Sign
and Tourist-Oriented Directional
(TOD) Program, and Repeal of ((25.700-
25.708, Subchapter K, Major Agricultural
Interest Sign Program
5. Transportation Planning
a. Approve the 2006 Statewide Mobility Program 123
(MO) (Draft SMP)
b. Approve the Texas Rail System Plan (MO) 126
(Draft Summary) (Draft Plan)
c. Various Counties - Application for approval 129
to deviate from the terms of the railroad
clearance statutes for the following
companies (MO):
1. Synsil Product, Inc.
2. Cemex, Inc.
3. Prime Rail Interest, Inc.
4. ConocoPhillips Sweeny Refinery
5. Rohm and Haas Company Bayport Plant
6. Toll Projects
a. Bexar County - Consider final approval of 132
a request for financing from the Alamo
Regional Mobility Authority to pay certain
engineering, legal and financial planning
costs to study and analyze competing
proposals submitted for the proposed Loop
1604 and US 281 turnpike project and its
impacts on other potential elements of a
proposed toll system in Bexar County (MO)
b. Bexar County - Authorize the executive 136
director to negotiate and develop an
agreement with the Alamo Regional Mobility
Authority (AlamoRMA) for the planning,
financing, and potential design, construction,
operation, and maintenance of managed or
tolled lanes on I-35 from the Bexar/
Guadalupe County line to the San Antonio
Central Business District, managed or
tolled lanes on SH 16 west from Interstate
Loop 410 to Loop 1604 northwest, and the
tolled interchange at US 281 and Wurzbach
Parkway, including the license or lease of
state-owned right of way to the AlamoRMA
for the purpose of developing these potential
AlamoRMA turnpike projects (MO)
c. Bexar County - Consider the preliminary 137
approval of a request for financing from
the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority to
pay for certain costs for developing
preliminary feasibility, environmental,
public involvement, schematics and
preliminary financial plans for managed
or tolled lanes on I-35 from the Bexar/
Guadalupe County line to the San Antonio
Central Business District, managed or
tolled lanes on SH 16 west from Interstate
Loop 410 to Loop 1604 northwest, and the
tolled interchange at US 281 and Wurzbach
Parkway (MO)
d. Travis and Williamson Counties - Accept 149
the General Engineering Consultant
quarterly progress report as of August 31,
2005, for the 2002 Project of the Central
Texas Turnpike System (MO)
7. Finance
Travis and Williamson Counties - Accept the 152
Quarterly Investment Report as of August 31,
2005, for the 2002 Project of the Central Texas
Turnpike System (MO)
8. Pass-Through Tolls
a. Authority to Negotiate Agreement
(1) Galveston County - Authorize the 154
executive director to negotiate a
pass-through toll agreement with
Galveston County for improvements
to FM 646 from FM 1764 to FM 517 (MO)
(2) Hays County - Authorize the executive 156
director to negotiate a pass-through
toll agreement with Hays County for
improvements to various highway
projects in the county
b. Authority to Execute Agreement 167
Williamson County - Authorize the executive
director to execute a pass-through toll
agreement with Williamson County for
improvements to various highway projects
in the county (MO)
9. Traffic Operations, 176
Dallas, Harris, and Tarrant Counties - Proposed
lane use restrictions for trucks on I-20 in
Dallas County, I-10 and US 290 in Harris County,
and I-30 in Tarrant County (MO)
10. Contracts
a. Award or Reject Highway Improvement Contracts
(1) Maintenance
(see attached itemized list) (MO) 180
(2) Highway and Building Construction
(see attached itemized list) (MO) 181
11. Routine Minute Orders
a. Donations to the Department 194
(1) Brazos County - Consider a donation
from Keep Brazos Beautiful for
approximately $30,000 worth of
wildflower seeds to be planted on
state right of way (MO)
(2) Bridge Division - Acknowledge a
donation from the Precast/Prestressed
Concrete Institute (PCI) for a department
employee(s travel expenses to attend the
PCI Convention and National Bridge
Conference that was held in Palm Springs,
California from Oct. 16-19, 2005 (MO)
(3) Human Resources Division - Acknowledge
a donation from KARRASS for two department
employees( registration fees to attend a
showcase on a training program entitled,
(Effective Negotiating in Your Own
Organization.( The showcase was held in
Dallas, Texas from Sept. 15-16, 2005 (MO)
(4) Live Oak County - Consider a donation
from Mr. Bruce Harvey, a private
landowner, for funds associated with upgrading highway fencing alongside
I-37 (MO)
(5) Texas Turnpike Authority Division -
Consider a donation from Infrastructure
Journal for a department employee(s
travel expenses to participate in the
Transportation Investment Forum to be
held from November 7-8, 2005 in
Glasgow, Scotland (MO)
b. Eminent Domain Proceedings 194
Various Counties - noncontrolled and
controlled access highways (see attached
itemized list) (MO)
c. Highway Designations 194
(1) Brown County - Designate a segment of
FM 823 along a new location on the
state highway system and redesignate
a segment of FM 3064 as FM 823 in the
city of Brownwood (MO)
(2) Kaufman County - Remove a segment of
FM 548 from the state highway system
and return control, jurisdiction, and maintenance to the city of Forney (MO)
d. Load Zones & Postings 194
Comanche County - Revise load restrictions
on a bridge on FM 1689 (MO)
e. Right of Way Dispositions and Donations 194
(1) Bexar County - Loop 1604 at Huebner
Road in San Antonio - Consider the
sale of a surplus drainage channel
easement (MO)
(2) Chambers County - FM 2354 south of
FM 565 - Consider the release of a
surplus easement (MO)
(3) El Paso County - FM 258 (Socorro
Road) at Southside Road in El Paso -
Consider the sale of a surplus
maintenance site (MO)
(4) Johnson County - I-35W at FM 917 in
Burleson - Amend MO 109998 to revise
the value of the consideration for
surplus right of way (MO)
(5) Travis County - US 183 at Tracor Lane
in Austin - Consider the exchange of
right of way (MO)
(6) Travis County - FM 685 at CR 138 -
Consider the release of a surplus
channel easement (MO)
f. Speed Zones 194
Various Counties - Establish or alter
regulatory and construction speed zones
on various sections of highways in the
state (MO)
12. Executive Session (none required) 195
OPEN COMMENT PERIOD 195
ADJOURN 196
P R O C E E D I N G S
MR. WILLIAMSON: Good morning.
AUDIENCE: Good morning.
MR. WILLIAMSON: What do you think, Richard, do it again?
MR. MONROE: It's all up to you, Mr. Chairman.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Good morning.
AUDIENCE: Good morning.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Man, we're asleep. One more time. Good morning.
AUDIENCE: Good morning.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Good morning. It's a great day to be a Texan.
It is 9:24 a.m., and I call the October 2005 meeting of the Texas Transportation Commission to order here in the Sparkling City by the Sea, Corpus Christi, Texas. It's a pleasure for us to be here this morning and we thank each of you for joining us.
Please note for the record that public notice of this meeting, containing all items on the agenda, was filed with the Office of the Secretary of State at 1:55 p.m. on October 19.
Before beginning today's meeting, we characteristically stop, take a moment, pat our pockets, find our cell phones, iPods, Dewberries, and everything else we carry, and we ask everybody to put them on the silent or no-ring mode so that we won't disrupt anybody while they're offering testimony. If you will join with me in doing that, I will be appreciative. Thank you.
This is officially the sixth time a highway or transportation commission has convened a meeting in Corpus Christi. Interestingly for us, the first meeting was held on July 17, 1920, in the wake of the devastating 1919 hurricane. At that special called meeting, the Highway Commission approved $100,000 in state funds to cover 25 percent of the cost to reconstruct the causeway. The causeway, as most of you from Corpus Christi will remember in your history lessons, was completely destroyed by the hurricane.
In that era, counties were entirely responsible for building and paying for their roads and their transportation infrastructure. As motorized transportation has become more important to the state's economic growth, the federal government has joined with the state government in providing funds for the infrastructure business.
This $100,000 in 1920 was an early example of state and local partnerships to solve a local and state problem. The relationship between the state and local transportation officials is a long-standing one, and as you will learn from the meeting today, continues to grow and evolve.
Now, it's our practice to take a commission meeting on the road three or four times a year. It gives us a chance to see firsthand what's going on in different parts of this great state. It also gives us an opportunity to listen directly to the leadership and the citizens of every part of the state as they express their compliments and their concerns about the future of transportation in our state.
It is our custom to open our meetings by permitting each commissioner to make a quick comment to the audience and then proceed with our agenda. So with your indulgence, Commissioner Houghton.
MR. HOUGHTON: It's a lonely way down here, the far left, far right, depending on your perspective. It's a beautiful facility, and to the hospitality by the citizens and the employees of Corpus Christi, I thank you. This has been a marvelous couple of days, and we look forward to this meeting.
And to the leadership in this community, there's a lot of great things happening in your court, as demonstrated yesterday, and in the state of Texas many, many things are going to happen in the next couple of months that will be very profound.
And I thank you again for your hospitality.
MS. ANDRADE: Good morning. I'd like to also thank you all. Craig, last night was an incredible evening with our staff. We truly enjoyed ourselves, and you made us all feel so special. So thank you, City of Corpus Christi, the hospitality that we have received during this trip has been incredible. Thank you so much.
I applaud you and I congratulate you for such a community that works together, and that understands the challenges that we face and are willing to step up and take advantage of the many tools that we have.
Thank you all for coming to listen to our commission meeting and what we discuss here, and for helping us keep moving transportation forward in Texas. Thank you.
MR. JOHNSON: My turn?
MR. WILLIAMSON: Yes, sir.
MR. JOHNSON: First of all, a note of apology. Craig, I know the district went to great ends for a fun-filled, informative day yesterday, and I apologize for not being here. I attended a baseball game last night and I just heard on the news that the Astros bat rack was examined this morning and they found a termite infestation.
(General laughter.)
MR. JOHNSON: It was a great thrill to have a World Series in Texas and in your hometown, and so I had to avail myself of that opportunity, and unfortunately wasn't here to partake in the hospitality of the district.
But as the Chairman alluded to, being in the Sparkling City by the Sea is a great treat. I've come here often as an adult, came here more as a child, and it's wonderful to see what's happened here in terms of community involvement, as Hope referred to, and getting things done. This is really a gem. If there's a better example of the success in multimodal challenges around these United States, I would be surprised.
Congratulations to each and every one of you for what you do and have done to get us where we are, and of course, for what you will do to get us even in better shape. Thank you.
MR. WILLIAMSON: And I'd like to associate myself with those same remarks, Craig, to you and your staff. It was a fun time last night, and we appreciate the hospitality shown by yourself and earlier in the day by the business leadership in welcoming the commission to the city.
Let me remind you that if you wish to speak during the commission meeting this morning, we have a system -- we're an engineering firm at heart, so we've got plans and procedures and a system for everything -- we have a system for testimony.
If you are going to comment on an item that's on the agenda, I need for you to fill out a yellow card, and you'll find one of those in the lobby, and please take time to tell us what item you're going to comment on.
If you want to comment in the open comment period on just whatever is on your mind, please fill out a blue card, and you can find those in the lobby.
We normally in our meetings in previous years proceeded with the local presentation and at that time recognized local legislators. For those of you who are not aware, I did have the privilege of serving in the legislature for 13-1/2 years, and it's my habit to first permit sitting members of the legislature to speak if they so choose. If they choose to be part of the program, then that's their choice, but having been through the ringer, I'm tremendously respectful of the time and the effort men and women have to put into serving on the legislature, and so I place their remarks at the highest top of the list for attention, and I always try to operate on a seniority basis, so I think Vilma is more senior.
MS. LUNA: We'll all come together if you'll allow us.
MR. WILLIAMSON: You are a legislator, madam. Whatever you want is okay with us. Ms. Luna, Mr. Seaman and Mr. Herrero.
MS. LUNA: And actually, you just forgot to mention that Senator Chuy Hinojosa is right here standing shoulder-to-shoulder with us, and in fact, does send his regards and regrets that he's not able to be here.
First of all, I am Vilma Luna, State Representative of District 33 and welcome each and every one of you, Mr. Chairman, Commissioner Johnson, Commissioner Andrade, and Commissioner Houghton. We are so pleased to have you here and I know that it is a tremendous amount of time and energy out of your very busy schedules to come here, but we really welcome you.
I have been very lucky in my life -- and I always share this with you guys and your staff knows this -- but our family has a real direct link to TxDOT. My grandfather worked for the State Highway Department for 45 years on a road crew, and as a matter of fact, I was reminiscing with some of the staff this morning about it was not unusual that one of our weekend outings would be going from highway marker to historical marker to highway marker because he was so proud, as were many of the other gentlemen that worked with him on that crew, to show us the work and so proud of the maintenance and the upkeep that they did on roads and bridges throughout this entire area. They had a big territory.
But more important is the work that you guys now do, and we want to thank you. I know that you are very focused on the needs of this region. I am very heartened every time I hear you speak, Mr. Chairman and the rest of you all, to hear you talk about what we're going to look like in 35 years, in 35 years we won't have the congestion, in 35 years we will have done our part for air quality, in 35 years, in 35 years, and so on. But it's not just looking down there, we're looking at all the steps in between now and then, and I want to thank you all very much for being so forward-thinking.
We have worked very closely together on appropriations. As vice-chair of Appropriations and sitting on LBB, I think I know your budget inside and out. If there's any little thing I've missed, you know what, Mike, brings it to my attention pretty quickly. So not only does Mike and all the rest of your staff, but your field staff do a tremendous job.
So we as a delegation would like you to know that we appreciate very much the work that you're doing, and ask you to please pay special attention to the needs of our region. We have done our part. I think we are being very forward-thinking in how we're trying to use our dollars and our resources, be partners -- which is what I consider us. I think you all are partners with us as legislators; our local community wants to be a partner with the state in making sure that we make the best use of all available resources and be very forward-thinking and creative.
And we do have an outstanding staff in this region. Frankly, I think we have an outstanding staff throughout the state of Texas, it's not just because my grandfather was there all those years that you all have a special place in my heart, but I do think that you've got an outstanding staff, individuals that do not only a lot of work for TxDOT but incredible work for the community, such as Cliff Bost, who is my son's soccer coach.
And so thank you and welcome.
(Applause.)
MR. SEAMAN: And I echo what Vilma said. In fact, when we came up, I said, Can I carry your purse? Being the vice-chair of Appropriations handles the money, I always want to carry her baggage.
As Murdock said, we're going to go from 22- to 44- in a couple of decades, million, and if we don't do education and taxation -- this is from Sharp last week for a session on the tax bill, and John Sharp, and education and taxation but most of all transportation.
Thank you for being here, I commend you for what you're doing, I support your goals. Thank you.
MR. HERRERO: Mr. Chairman and members, I'd also like to reiterate the welcome. It is extremely important, not only for Corpus Christi but also the region, the issues regarding rail and port issues and also highway.
And as Vilma mentioned, we are members of the transportation industry. I worked for the Highway Department also one summer, and so I cut brush under highways, I poured sand on the hot asphalt as it was beading on the highways, and so I understand the hard work that it takes both in the field and behind the desk where you work, and I understand the responsibility and the dedication that all of you have as commissioners.
I'd also like to commend the work that your executive director has done. Just in the short time that I've been in the legislature, he's done a tremendous job, and I want to thank him for the great work that he's done, as well as your local district offices here, Craig Clark as well. But I want to thank you, especially, because I understand the significance and the importance that you give to the commission and also that you bring to the state of Texas. Thank you.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Thank you. We appreciate your comments.
(Applause.)
MS. LUNA: I'm sorry. Did you have a question or a comment?
MR. HOUGHTON: No. Go ahead.
MS. LUNA: I was just going to say I'm calling an emergency delegation meeting down the street, and so we will allow you to go forward with your work and get out of your hair, figuratively speaking.
MR. HOUGHTON: I'll let you go ahead, Ric, and respond to that.
MR. JOHNSON: Thanks so much for searching for our hair.
MR. HOUGHTON: Well, she obviously wasn't referring to me.
(General laughter.)
MR. JOHNSON: Representative Luna, thank you for everything that you said. I also wanted to thank you, the last time our paths crossed here, I wasn't disheveled but my tie was not exact, and you were nice enough to get me more neatly dressed, and I remember that and I thank you for it.
MS. LUNA: I've got to keep you looking good.
MR. JOHNSON: Well, I need a lot of help.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Ted?
MR. HOUGHTON: Representative Luna and I have a common goal down in this part of the world and in El Paso, and I look forward to working with you not only that but the transportation issues. And Abel and Gene, thanks for your support. It's something we take note of. Thank you.
MS. LUNA: Thank you all very much.
MS. ANDRADE: Thank you also so much. Representative Luna, I had the pleasure of meeting you last year, and I was touched by your story of your grandfather working for TxDOT, but I have to tell you that you're absolutely right, we cannot do this by ourselves, we need partners and supporters, and you certainly have been that, all three of you. So thank you for your leadership, and I'm just looking forward to working together with you all. Thank you.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Anything more, John?
MR. JOHNSON: No.
MR. WILLIAMSON: You know, I said this yesterday to a slightly different audience, and I take great pleasure in saying it to anyone who will listen: we do not waste our time saying thank you to legislators, past or existing, who do not understand the importance of transportation, we just stay silent. When we have the opportunity to address the legislators who understand transportation, we never pass up that opportunity.
When Rick Perry sent me to the commission, he reminded me there are no Democratic highways, there are no Republican bridges, there are no Liberal right of ways, there are no Conservative parking lots, transportation is for all Texans, and we maintain that here at the commission.
And in your representation, particularly with Ms. Luna and Mr. Seaman, who I served with -- and Abel is going to get tired of me saying this, when I get to serve more with him, I'll understand him better, but he appears to be the same way -- they understand the importance of transportation, and we could not be where we're going to be in 35 years if we didn't have you on the legislative side as our partners, and we're very appreciative of your leadership. You're to be commended for what you've done for transportation in the last six years.
Thank you for being here, and we'll take care of our business.
MS. LUNA: Very good. Thank you.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, thanks.
(Applause.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Mike?
MR. BEHRENS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We'll begin today by introducing Craig Clark who is our district engineer for the Corpus District, and he will lead the district's delegation and then introduce the local folks that have been our hosts and who are part of the backbone of transportation here in the Corpus area. Craig?
MR. CLARK: While we're trying to find our presentation, I would also like to recognize our local political delegations who are so valuable to us and do such good work for our area. We also have Esther Oliver from Congressman Solomon Ortiz's office here with us, and Sondra Zuniga with the office of Senator Chuy Hinojosa.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, Craig, while you're looking for your CD, let me speak for the commission to the young lady representing Congressman Ortiz.
Now, you don't need to hear me say it but everyone else does. We consider Congressman Ortiz one of the best transportation congressmen in the United States Congress. He understands transportation to the level that most people can only dream of. We're very grateful for his service.
MR. CLARK: While we continue to look, we have a team atmosphere in our community.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Are you going to try to read it, Craig?
MR. CLARK: We recognize that Commissioner Johnson was called up to the big show last night and couldn't be with us at our event that we had with the commission, but to make up for that and recognize him as part of our local team, I would like to approach the dais and provide Commissioner Johnson with this jersey for the Hooks.
(Applause.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: We wish that he was really called in to play and maybe we could have a little better offense last night and made some more history.
MR. JOHNSON: Craig, I was at a Hooks game in June -- I believe it was June -- and there was eleven innings of free baseball, they played 20 innings that night, and what an experience. This is great for the community, Whataburger Field and the Hooks, a great family atmosphere, and for the price of entertainment today, there's no better value, and I had a fantastic night.
And I'm deeply appreciative for this; in fact, I'm going to put it on. You can only wear one hat but you can wear many jerseys. Where's Representative Luna when I need her?
(General laughter.)
MR. JOHNSON: Send me in, Coach.
(Applause.)
MR. CLARK: Commissioners, we're going to continue on with our team report, and I would like to begin the first part of our presentation for our district with the very durable city manager for Corpus Christi, Skip Noe.
(Applause.)
MR. SKIP: I have to admit I've been called many things but durable has not been on the list. Thank you, Craig.
Mr. Chairman, members of the commission, members of the staff. Good morning and welcome to Corpus Christi. We're very pleased you're here. We're very excited to have the opportunity to share with you some of the things that are happening in Corpus Christi.
Before I start, I really want to thank Craig and his staff. This is about team work and we do have a great working relationship with your folks here at the district office. They work with us every day, day-in and day-out, on all those little problems, making sure that we get things done here in Corpus Christi, and we appreciate the great relationship we have with the staff here.
You had an opportunity, a number of you, to tour a number of things that are happening in Corpus Christi yesterday, and we're going to take a minute today to share some of the things that are happening.
You'll find two words in our vocabulary here: one is investment, we're investing in our future; the other is partnership, virtually all these projects we're working on here have a partner we're working with, either at the state or federal or local level.
This map shows you the five areas we cover just so you can get a sense of the geography of the various areas where there's been significant investment, and we'd like to talk about them just for a few minutes.
We've been fortunate that the community and the leadership of the community and the voters have been willing to invest in our community for the last six years. Beginning in 1999 with the decision in our airport, over $30 million, a new terminal, reconstructed runways, new parking areas, a new tower, all resulting in a reinvigoration of our airport.
In fact, we were able to announce this last week that for the first time in many, many years we'll have international service out of the Corpus Christi International Airport to Monterrey starting November 21.
The partnership with TxDOT, the JFK Causeway, that improvement is significant to Corpus Christi, and we learned that no better than this last hurricane season when for the first time in the EOC we weren't sending staff members out to check the level of the water over the causeway to see if we could get folks off the island. That improvement made a significant difference for folks who live on the island, their ability to get out of the way of those kinds of storms and disasters we've seen this year.
A number of bond issues. In 2000 the voters approved $30 million worth of improvements, as well as two sales tax-supported propositions that paid for improvements to the seawall and the marina.
The Packery Channel project, the decision, in partnership with the Corps of Engineers, the General Land Office and a number of others, to build the Packery Channel project which has been on the agenda here in Corpus Christi for many years, a partnership effort, $30 million.
The convention center expansion. Recognizing that tourism is part of our future, reinvigorating our convention center, a $25 million expenditure funded predominantly from the hotel tax.
You all got a chance to take a peek at Whataburger Field last night, our $29 million project, a joint venture with not only Ryan-Sanders Baseball but also the Port of Corpus Christi, the landowner and our partner in the parking and development of that area.
Marina improvements. There's a big demand for marina slips and a need to improve our facilities there. We have our own Riverwalk, only it's called the Bayfront. We're investing in new slips and facilities to support our folks who have boat slips in the marina.
And then lastly, in November of 2004 the voters approved another $95 million in capital improvements all intended to invest in our long-term future.
The Bayfront is obviously important for Corpus Christi because of our tourism base, and this shows you a number of the projects that we've been involved with, the top being the arena on the left with the convention center on the right, Whataburger Field -- and by the way, it did exceed 500,000 fans this past year, which was a feat that's only been accomplished several times in minor league baseball.
In the middle there at the bottom you see the marina facilities we're constructing, and then the seawall.
The Packery Channel project, a major investment on our part, $30 million, $20 million from the Corps of Engineers, the federal government and $10 million funded from a tax increment district on the island, causing and spurring significant potential growth and real growth in our community. To the right you see the channel itself that cuts through to connect the Gulf of Mexico with Laguna Madre, and the area in front of the seawall on the island is being restored with the dredged sand material.
There's an opportunity there for significant development and we're seeing that development occur.
On the left you see a bigger picture of the island itself. In the upper part of that picture you see the JFK Causeway and the bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway.
As this development occurs, we see continued interest in looking for opportunities for a second crossing in connection to the island as we try to deal with the growth that occurs there.
Texas A&M Corpus Christi is part of our foundation for our long-term future. It's the fastest growing regional university in the state. They've seen significant growth and development on the campus, and as you might suspect, with the campus being an island of 240 acres, they're starting to run out of room.
There's a partnership developing with the city and the university and the community on how we can assist them to make sure they will continue to be able to grow in the future. Part of that involves looking for opportunities to develop off-site, either spinning projects off the campus into the community or other sites for development of university facilities.
One of those is a project that we hope to bring to the commission soon. This is a picture of one of the opportunities is a private developer who is willing to donate property the university could use if Spur 3, which is currently under construction by TxDOT, is extended southward from 358 to 357, creating an opportunity to have a connection to that property.
To assist the university in this effort, the council has authorized an application for a pass-through toll financing project that we submitted this last week, and we're looking forward to having the opportunity to discuss that with your staff over a period to accomplish this important project.
The south side of Corpus Christi has seen significant growth. What you see here is a facility near the intersection of SH 357 and Farm to Market 2444. We're fortunate enough to have the opening of the first HEB Plus store, a store of over 180,000 square feet, a new concept for HEB.
The good news is the great facility is attracting lots of shoppers; the bad news, you might suspect, an already congested intersection continues to see growth and pressures. We know congestion management and dealing with traffic is going to be a significant issue on our south side as we deal with the growth that's occurring there.
As we look to the future, the community is committed to economic development. One of the things that comes out repeatedly in all of our surveys is the high priority on growing our economy and providing jobs for our future. We recognize we need to take advantage of a lot of the options we've been given by you and the legislature to fund these kinds of projects and we're working on those.
We're working to manage our congestion and that's a bit of a challenge, but we know we need to do that for the future and do it in advance of development.
And then lastly, with this hurricane season we've spent a lot of time looking at the impact of storms and potential storms on our ability to evacuate. Our evacuation this last September with Hurricane Rita went very smoothly, but we learned some lessons and -- the best dollar of the day to assist us in the event of a hurricane.
At this point I want to turn the program over to Ruben Bonilla, the chairman of the Port of Corpus Christi.
MR. HOUGHTON: I've got one question. What's the enrollment at the university here?
MR. NOE: About 8,300.
MR. BONILLA: Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I have the opportunity of introducing to you one of our commission members for our presentation on the port, but I first wanted to acknowledge fellow commissioner Mike Terrell who is here. Mike is secretary of the Port Commission, and I believe other than Commissioner Hawley, we may not be graced with the presence of other commissioners.
I did want to assure you that as we coordinated your trip and visit with the World Series when we planned this several months ago, we anticipated this Astros rebound and we were assured of a sweep so that we could celebrate today, but we forgot to tell them we wanted an Astros sweep.
(General laughter.)
MR. BONILLA: But it is true what you said earlier, there is a little bit of a problem with offense in Houston, and we attribute that here in the Port of Corpus Christi to their problem with air quality. As you know, we have a significant competitive edge here at the Port of Corpus Christi, we have no problem with air emissions, we have clean air, clean water, abundant transportation arteries, and I think it all goes to the issue of congestion and poor air quality in Houston.
And when you think about, the Houston Texans have also got trouble with offense. They're also zero-and-six or so. In fact, I don't know if you heard about the anthrax scare that happened on the Houston Texans practice field and they found a white powder and they called in the FBI just two days ago. And the FBI arrived and conducted a complete investigation, and of course, the coach suspended practice while they did that investigation.
They took it to the lab real quickly in downtown Houston and then discovered that white powder was actually the goal line chalk. That's why the Texans were petrified because they hadn't seen that white powder all year long.
(General laughter.)
MR. BONILLA: Well, that's just a mild-mannered introduction. If it was a bad joke, blame Judy Hawley.
MS. HAWLEY: I thought it was a bad joke too.
(General laughter.)
MR. BONILLA: With all due respect to our president.
The Port of Corpus Christi, Mr. Chairman and members of the commission -- and my remarks are going to be very brief because I don't want to duplicate Judy's presentation -- we have a strategic vision that results from our decision several years ago to diversify our mission.
As you know, historically the Port of Corpus Christi arose really from the debris and the tragedy of the hurricane of 1919, that hurricane which moved inward, to the development of the Inner Harbor with the vote and the endorsement and encouragement of our citizens, and it began as an agricultural port, made a transition to a petrochemical giant to where now we're the sixth largest port in America in terms of tonnage.
We provide 90 percent of the gasoline that is provided to the city of Austin via pipeline. We provide about 56 percent of all diesel and jet fuel that's consumed at DFW Airport, also by pipeline. So that its importance strategically and economically is vast, and therefore, that's why we've placed so much importance on strengthening our security subsequent to the 9/11 tragedy. With the help of federal and state grants, we believe we are well positioned to protect our assets and to prosper in the future.
So that's what Judy will set out for you is how our diversification program is vital, is vibrant, it also depends on seamless transportation arteries both by rail, by road, by water. And we are appreciative to you for your support in helping us carry out this mission, and we're gratified that the community of the Coastal Bend has also endorsed our efforts.
Lastly, I would say that Judy's presence on the commission has transformed us and allowed us to be more visionary, because we have taken the navigation district, the port authority into San Patricio County. This was a result of legislation passed only a few years ago. Some people were cynical about that, but what it has allowed us to do is to position the Port of Corpus Christi into greater growth, and we believe that the future growth and prosperity of the port and the Coastal Bend is going to extend far beyond the borders of Nueces County into San Patricio County because of our assets at Naval Station Ingleside which reverts to the Port of Corpus Christi, the development of our container terminal and the elevation of the Harbor Bridge, to name a few, that link us not as two counties, eliminating those artificial boundaries, but as one region that's going to provide great job creation for the state of Texas.
Without further ado, let me call upon Commissioner Judy Hawley to provide some highlights.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
MS. HAWLEY: Thank you. While we have this slide up, I would like to just show you the parameters of the navigation district now. You can see that the Port of Corpus Christi really wraps around, it's kind of encircled in that area, the blue area that's sort of like a triangle. The Port of Corpus Christi literally has ship channel going through San Patricio County and then coming on into the Inner Harbor. So it is a greatly expanded port and port jurisdiction, and a lot of that is what we're going to talk about today.
You see the visual, this really does wrap all the way around Corpus Christi Bay.
We'll go to the next slide which is one of our first real successful joint ventures, and actually, this was a first for TxDOT as well: the Joe Fulton Corridor and the rail corridor.
What the Joe Fulton Corridor has done is it has -- and I know some of you traveled it yesterday as you came in early before the reception -- what it does is it opens up 4-1/2 miles of deep water frontage on certainly the largest tract in Texas and maybe one of the largest tracts available in the United States.
What that does for us -- and you know how timely this is with the events of the last few months -- is that is land, 1,200 acres that is eminently suitable and appropriate for expanded refinery capacity, and deep water right there, the infrastructure is already in place, rail is going in, so you've got the pieces that are already there, and you have partnered with us in making this happen.
This was your largest project -- and Mike, you were intimately in on this when we pulled this together, and Billy Parks as well -- it's the largest project where you have had a public entity be involved on the contracting and project management and the engineering, and it was one of those that just worked so successfully, in record time, and with just tremendous trust between TxDOT and the Port of Corpus Christi with our engineering department led by Frank Brodie who has done such an exemplary job with the management of this project.
Not only does this project open up huge assets for the United States, for the state of Texas and for the Port of Corpus Christi with the refining capacity, but it also provides opportunities for some expanded trade, even some spillover of the container trade that we're anticipating once we have the La Quinta Trade Terminal open.
Not only was it an engineering partnership that was so eminently successful, but it was also a funding partnership, and you can see that the very sources of funds, just like all projects today, you just have to cobble together the pieces wherever you can find them. Local funds, federal funds, state funds, and the Port of Corpus Christi actually put up half of the cash involved in this project.
Those of you that travel that corridor can see how close we are to being able to develop that and actually have that materialize into some economic gains for the state of Texas and certainly handle some of our strategic refining capacity needs.
The La Quinta and Port-to-Port corridor has been a project we've really worked on for the last ten years, really before the container trade increased so exponentially. And we've talked about that before with the commission with the China trade, Far East trade, CAFTA and NAFTA and lots of reasons for that happening, what's happened at LA-Long Beach and on and on and on.
A couple of statistics that I'd like you to just sort of hold in your back pocket, because I think they are significant, is that in ten years the population of both California and Texas together will increase to 65 million. In that same ten years, we are anticipating that the container traffic coming into the United States -- and this is really amazing -- will increase by 40 percent. And to put that in just real terms from where we are right now, in ten years that means we will need 12 more Houstons, the capacity of 12 more Houstons to handle that increased container traffic.
So it lets you see how timely we are and how well positioned we are with the La Quinta Trade Corridor. We have a lot of the infrastructure in place; we have the permitting; the financing is in the Worther bill in front of Congress right now, the parts that we don't have are the parts where we have opportunities for partnerships with you all, and that is capitalizing on that container facility and linking it to our other corridors in Mexico -- we're handling the water part, but the corridors in Mexico and then the corridors on up into San Antonio and points north, into Houston as well.
One of the advantages of having two container facilities in Texas is it allows Texas to grow exponentially. Houston does a great job, Houston is expanding; Houston does not have the ability or the capacity to handle all of the volume that's out there.
Chairman Williamson mentioned, I think last night, if you go to Mobile, if you go to somewhere in Louisiana, if you go to Florida, that trade is going to come into the Gulf of Mexico, and we as Texans need to capture that. Huge opportunities for export/import, huge opportunities for expanded business opportunities, and certainly more jobs.
The NASI redevelopment, as you know, we fought a valiant fight to keep Naval Air Station Ingleside under the Port of Corpus Christi. All the communities joined together, it was a huge fight for us to keep that naval facility in this area. We did not prevail. The Navy and DOD decided to disseminate those assets to both coasts.
But there is the issue of the property which is on a deep water ship channel, and the port is one of those very few entities in the history of DOD which has reversionary rights, and what that means is that we get the right of first refusal. It's all in the details and working out if there are going to be dollars associated with that and what those dollars will be.
But the port, just as Austin was -- just as actually Mobile was, Staten Island, there's just a handful of examples, Pascagoula now is in that same position, where instead of having to go through the public conveyance process which is very time-consuming, you have this option of just reverting back to this single entity point of contact and then they can go ahead and handle shift of the assets.
We're in that position in the Port of Corpus Christi right now, and in that capacity we see that there are many opportunities in that property, many of them still militarily related. Before the BRAC, we had the Coast Guard very interested in being there, the Army Reserve wanted to put warehousing there, Military Sea Lift wants to be there.
You know, you have partnered with us in a lot of ventures to try and make us more military compliant for the efficiency coming in, especially from Fort Hood and Fort Bliss. That's another opportunity to handle that military deployment there.
There are a number of other commercial opportunities that avail themselves of that property. The key to that is getting rail into there, and we were working very closely with the Governor's Office as we were going through the BRAC process about how to make that property more military suitable, and part of that was to bring in rail. We're still following that, looking to bring that rail corridor in, working with the Governor's Office, working with you all.
There are a number of options about how it might be best to do that, but that rail into the La Quinta/Ingleside area is critical for some of the economic and certainly the military options that may be available with that particular piece of property. So we'll continue to visit with you on that.
Parlaying on this, I think you saw -- if you haven't, please step out on the apron outside and you'll see one -- again another deployment, and it's so interesting to watch the loading of the material that's heading over to Iraq.
We've played a huge role in this and we'll continue to play a huge role, and I think you've been briefed on this before, but with the relocation of a lot of the force that were in Europe over back to Texas, Fort Bliss has had a huge increase, Fort Hood as well, and a number of those have just sort of funneled down into the Gulf Coast, the Port of Beaumont and the Port of Corpus Christi are going to have an even larger role in deployment.
Even as the war winds down, we're still going to have those military deployments for exercises, and we are ramping up. We've invested a lot of our own dollars into building some expanded apron space and staging areas, and you all have come in and helped us. And this is a huge success story because this is about not only doing what's right to make things happen, this is about being American.
What you all helped us do with this, and not only did you help us find a way to fund it through some dollars that we managed to move some dollars from one project to another project and it's really been such a creative way to handle problems of strategic importance, but what we have done is we've been able to do it fast enough to make a difference.
We started talking to you less than a year ago about the extreme need to get expanded rail into the Port of Corpus Christi so that we could deploy quicker. And with this rail, $5.2 million that you have helped us work through, with that rail expansion -- which will be completed by the first of next year, of 2006 -- we will be able to handle those military deployments twice as fast as we've been able to up to this point. So tremendous investment being able to deploy that material through here much, much faster.
So thank you for that partnership, thank you for being responsive, and on top of that, it's the right thing to do. And you talk about economic development, what greater partner do we have in Texas than the military. The military is a huge economic partner as well as being good friends, good neighbors and a vital part of what happens in our state.
Another project that we have on line with the port is the channel improvement project. What we have now, if you watched the exercise, if you watch ships pass in our ship channel, it's narrow for them to especially pass. They call it Texas Chicken where they have to literally kind of sidle up close to each other and pass.
Fortunately, we have, I think, probably -- well, I say think, I know we have the safest record in the state of Texas as far as moving traffic, a great pilot organization and they do a great job. But one of the things we're going to do to be able to handle more traffic is to expand and have barge shelves on the outside, and you can see that that gives us 400 additional feet for the barges, and we have considerable barge traffic here.
We're also going to deepen to 530 feet and by deepening, we'll be able to handle the larger ships, the petrochemical ships, the tankers that are going to be coming in. They don't have to be lighter so it becomes an economic efficiency for them coming in to use this port. So anticipating the huge size of those tankers, ultimately positioning ourselves for some of the bigger container ships as well.
Harbor Bridge air draft limitation. Right now we are limited to 138 vertical clearance. You don't think about that when you think about ships, but if you've ever been on the Harbor Bridge and one of those tankers it was kind of a close call. We have to have more air draft for a couple of reasons. Some of the larger ships that are coming through that have been developed have not been able to use this ship channel, so that's one of the pieces that helps us economically; the other, there's a huge interest in the cruise industry in this area, and those larger ships are not able to come through either.
But the big rationale from the port's perspective is that it will allow us to take advantage of bringing in these supertankers that do need an air draft up to 200 feet, and we're limited right now to 138 feet. And that's a project that we've done some initial work, one of the MPO's concerns, and you'll be hearing more about that in the future.
And the Inner Harbor redevelopment initiatives, one of the things that we have found in the port business is successful ports use their assets wisely, and their assets are waterfront assets but people also like to be by the waterfront, and areas that maybe traditionally have sort of been rundown can be converted into areas that the public can use and take advantage of and they become real assets for the community.
So that redevelopment, retail, sports, entertainment, hotel district of which this is a part, is part of that redevelopment effort to allow the public to have more access and use that land better.
The Harbor Bridge replacement, you saw has military labor, the Fulton Boat Dock 3, military labor that's over there on the north side, and new terminal locations that's on the north side as well.
So lots of projects that are going on, we're a vibrant port, but the reason we've been so successful is because of the great partnership we've had with the State of Texas and the vision of this particular commission has really made our job easier and it excites us to think about the opportunities we have by working with you.
So thank you again for your presence here. Before I sign off, I would like to say, and I'd be remiss in not saying thank you to our district engineers. We've had such a great string of district engineers in this area. Mike Behrens, once we have you, you're always ours, and we had you for a while. Billy Parks is here, we had him as a great district engineer. We had David Casteel and you stole him from us, Hope, but we almost forgive you for that, and he did a great job. And now we have Craig Clark and what a super job you all did last night, I've just heard rave reviews about that, and we're just delighted to have your leadership in Corpus Christi as well.
Thank you to the commission for being here.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Wait. Any questions for Judy?
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, thanks.
MR. BONILLA: Mr. Chairman, I'm back briefly wearing a different hat, as Mr. Johnson stated earlier, as chairman of the MPO. As a member of the Port Commission and as chairman of the Port Commission, I have the pleasure and privilege of serving on the MPO. It's called the Corpus Christi Metropolitan Planning Organization which is really a misnomer because it includes the City of Corpus Christi, the City of Portland, Gregory and San Patricio County through its able and very committed judge, Terry Simpson.
But let me recognize Thomas Fallon and his staff from the MPO -- if you would stand, please -- just so you'll know the team behind this effort, the staff that is here. Thank you.
I have a few prepared remarks and I'd like to make those for the record because these are matters of achievement and matters of cooperative and collective efforts between the MPO and your agency.
As chairman of the MPO, I'd like to thank the commission for providing communities across Texas with progressive financial alternatives that will enable us to accelerate the development for needed projects on the Coastal Bend.
As you know, the replacement of the Harbor Bridge, its elevation is vital to the safety and increased cargo opportunities, as outlined by Commissioner Hawley. Linked to construction to the new Harbor Bridge is needed capacity on State Highway 286, known locally as the Crosstown and added capacity on Padre Island Drive, or SH 358.
We're currently exploring the financing alternatives available to build these projects in the next ten years by using the tools you have provided. Otherwise, it would take us 30 years.
Local mobility projects are not the only priority of the city and the Port of Corpus Christi. Projects that provide regional connectivity are essential to sustaining the economic vitality of South Texas.
The MPO is making certain we establish a transportation network that capitalizes upon our global competitive position, our productivity and our efficiency. I would like to emphasize those projects of regional significance that will establish a trade triangle between Laredo, the city of San Antonio, Corpus Christi, all leading, with seamless transportation arteries by rail and land, into Mexico.
The first being what Judy referred to as the La Quinta Terminal, that we also refer to as a Port-to-Port, Laredo to La Quinta freightway. The continued development of intermodal port facilities in Texas is vital and necessary to meet the demands of international trade.
The need to link our inland ports like Laredo to seaports that have the capacity to efficiently move freight and cargo are readily apparent. The MPO continues to stress the feasibility of developing an exclusive freight corridor between the Port of Corpus Christi and Laredo.
A TxDOT-sponsored feasibility study is underway that is developing a concept for a truck-only tollway linking Corpus Christi and the 21-mile Camino Colombia Tollway which was recently acquired by TxDOT. This exclusive freightway will be designed for overweight, high-speed operation of trucks only from the inland port of Laredo to the Port of Corpus Christi and the La Quinta container terminal.
The second project of regional significance is the US 77 Cross-Border Trail. Connectivity to the Rio Grande Valley is equally as important as trade routes from Latin America and Mexico seek alternatives to the Laredo port of entry. A coalition of economic development interests from Harlingen to Corpus Christi have been exploring the benefits of an initial phase appropriating existing US 77 from the Valley to I-37 in Corpus Christi, providing an interface with the highway system in Mexico.
Projects in the TxDOT Pharr District have resulted in the majority of US 77 being improved by the controlled access corridor. However, major projects in the Corpus Christi District remain unfunded, including a relief route around Driscoll, a relief route around Ricardo, and additional intersection crossings at Kingsville, Ricardo and Sarita.
Development of this trade corridor benefits the entire Gulf Coast, including the Port of Corpus Christi and our colleagues at the Port of Houston.
Recent natural tragedies like Katrina and Rita have underscored the need of having significant alternative ports of entry. During the recent hurricanes, almost 35 percent of our nation's refining capacity was shut down. Much cargo was diverted to the Port of Corpus Christi, and with these improved corridors, we can expect increased freight traffic as shippers learn the opportunities and the efficiencies available in South Texas.
The third regional project which was also referred to in Judy's comments is the strategic military support, but it has a highway linkage. Due to the war against terrorism, the efficient deployment of military materials and vehicles through the strategic military ports of Corpus Christi and Beaumont have become a high priority.
The development of a strategic military highway, utilizing US 181, State Highway 123, and the new Austin toll road, SH 130 between Fort Hood and the Port of Corpus Christi, will support the capability of the Port of Corpus Christi. Obviously other supporting projects are in various stages such as improved rail access which has been earlier explained.
In addition, improvements to the Port Avenue which is the entry path of Whataburger Field leading to I-37 will permit the improvement and the movement of oversized and overweight cargo from I-37 to dock facilities in our port efficiency operations. The planning and design is scheduled for 2006 and accelerated funding is being sought for construction.
Project number 4 is the South Loop. This is a creative idea arising from the growth of South Texas which has resulted in significant population growth on Padre and Mustang islands.
Safe access to the island was enhanced with the elevation of SH 358 causeway, but planning for the development of additional capacity is needed. The initial concept of a relief route from I-37 to south Corpus Christi and Padre Island was developed in the late '90s. The funding for the first phase, the environmental review -- which I believe is $1.5 million -- is programmed for this year, and is a collaboration between the MPO, TxDOT, the county, and the City of Corpus Christi that is of high value to our region.
This new corridor will provide not only a relief from I-37 around Corpus Christi with a new connection to the island but will also provide a relief route around Robstown that connects US 77 to SH 55 and IH 37. The development of this new capacity is only possible utilizing the new financial tools offered by the legislature and by the commission.
Lastly, a word about the importance of hurricane preparedness. Recent events have shown the vulnerability to our coastal transportation network. Although improvements to SH 358 and US 181 causeway has improved the region's evacuation potential, other water crossings, such as the I-37 bridge over the Nueces River, are of concern.
The MPO Policy Committee has asked our MPO staff to explore the issues associated with the safe evacuation of our area and improvements needed to ensure access by relief vehicles and equipment following an emergency event.
The demands on our transportation network have increased as health, safety and security have become increased priority for our region. Our MPO supports collaborative planning and welcomes the financial tools you have provided to make our plans a reality. Our regional mobility with the Free Trade Alliance in San Antonio, USA, and the San Antonio Economic Foundation headed by Mario Fernandez, as well as stakeholders' incentives in Laredo will help refine our trade triangle in Texas and promote seamless transportation links by sea, land and rail into Latin America.
Finally, just a couple of days ago there was a headline here where the city council okayed flights to Monterrey, providing needed air service, direct passenger service between our two great communities that compliments the thoughts and strategies that are outlined and envisioned by your body and supported by the MPO.
We believe that the Coastal Bend, and specifically the Port of Corpus Christi, is indeed the gateway to the world. It's a message that we are shouting across the country.
I might just conclude, Mr. Chairman, that as I see you sitting under the Port of Corpus Christi Authority, the same seating where Commissioner Carrell and Commissioner Hawley and I sit, that your presence here certainly elevates the stature of our port commission.
I'll be happy to entertain any questions.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I thought the joke was good. I don't think the Houston Texans do know where the goal line is.
(General laughter.)
MR. BONILLA: My son at the University of Texas, who thinks the BCS is the greatest thing in the world, was the architect of that joke, so I'll be sure and advise him of that.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Being from North Texas, I can tell you the Dallas Cowboys are having a hard time finding the chalk line too.
Well, I'm sure we have several questions, Commissioner, Chairman. We, first of all, want to thank you for the presentation.
Anything specific, members?
MR. JOHNSON: I have one or two. I had a question. Commissioner Hawley's presentation talked about deepening the channel, and I was curious as to both the additional depth that the channel is going to and also the additional width, and what do you see as the timing of that.
MS. HAWLEY: Well, the timing, of course, depends on the financing and the financing or the big hunk of that is right now in WRDA and I think it's passed the House but it hasn't passed the Senate. It's been in WRDA since last year and they just didn't pass the WRDA bill which is the Water Resources Development Act, they just didn't get it done. So our consultants in Washington are giving us a little more hope that it's going to get through this year.
The La Quinta project, part of that deepening is tied up with this, but if the WRDA does not come through at this point in time, we have the authority to go ahead and deepen that and then when WRDA comes through then being compensated for that. So the La Quinta project we could and would move forward regardless of that, but we're looking at as soon as the funding is made available, and there will be a local match, of course, that we'll have to come up with. And that's still variable, they're not sure if that's going to be 15 percent, 10 percent. It hasn't been defined yet, so there are still some issues out there, and that, of course, will determine when we start as well. But it's a project that we'd like to get underway as soon as possible.
MR. CARRELL: I think the cost is significant as far as the match because the deeper you go, the more the sharing.
MR. JOHNSON: What is the additional depth?
MR. CARRELL: Forty-five to 50 feet.
MR. JOHNSON: And the additional width?
MS. HAWLEY: Four hundred; 200-foot barge shelves on each side.
MR. BONILLA: If we go to 55 feet, there's a more favorable sharing formula, the percentage for the Port of Corpus Christi is less, and that legislation is tied up in Congress, and since the attention seems to be focused on Supreme Court nominations today, we may or may not have that legislation passed favorably this session. But it's presented each congressional session and this is the first time it has passed one of the houses, so we believe it's inevitable.
And as we deepen the channel we'll be able to receive ships of greater depth so they'll be able to bring in more cargo, and that will ultimately reduce the cost of, we believe, fuel, also reduce the cost of consumer goods.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Just to give us some comparison, how deep is the Houston Ship Channel.
MR. BONILLA: Houston just went to 45 recently, and we've been at 45, Frank?
MR. BROGAN: Since 1989.
MR. CARRELL: I think part of the significance of having the port -- we keep referring to Frank. Frank you might want to come up.
MS. HAWLEY: Frank is the engineer to whom I referred and sort of the brains behind the Joe Fulton Corridor process.
MR. CARRELL: Yesterday when Commissioner Houghton and I were taking a tour of the Fulton Causeway, I think he made a comment about how many times ships get to the port, and I think you said three to five different times to lighten it to get to the size where it can transport into the Port of Corpus Christi.
And back on Chairman Bonilla's comment about the cost, help us on that.
MR. BROGAN: Total project price for the deepening, widening and extension is $200 million total. That would include government share, local share and private share for things like pipeline lowering.
MR. CARRELL: And I thought at a 50-something-foot depth we had like 50 percent sharing and at 45 it's only 75-25.
MR. BROGAN: That's correct. The old formula was 75-25 and the break point if we went deeper than 45 feet, then the local sponsors were obligated to put up 50 percent. And as more ports around the nation are going deeper than 45, the West Coast and the East Coast, there is increasing pressure to revisit that matching formula and try and adjust that to get it back to the 75 federal and 25 local, so that's an effort we're working on.
MR. CARRELL: And I think if WRDA takes enough time, we'll finally outlast them and have a better equation, because we can't move forward without the WRDA bill.
MR. BROGAN: And I think one of the significant advantages that our own port has over other ports in the gulf is that we're closer to the deep water line out in the Gulf of Mexico than any other port is, and what that does is that reduces the length of the channel that has to be dredged and reduces the cost.
Houston, for example, wanted to go from 40 feet to 50 feet, but that cost is going to exceed $1 billion to do that because their channel is so much longer. Because our channel is so much shorter, then our cost is that much less. But it's just a few miles offshore to get to 52 feet, whereas it's much, much longer in Houston, and that's why we've always had that advantage. We're the first port on the Gulf Coast to have 45 feet, and with any luck, we'll be the first port to have 50 feet. But other ports around the nation are getting ahead of us, on the West Coast and the East Coast, and we need to continue to press forward with that project.
MR. JOHNSON: Mr. Chairman, with your permission and indulgence of the port commissioners, and with this many potential voters in the room, I wanted to talk about the importance of Proposition 1 on the ballot Tuesday.
There's an interplay here between the port and rail that it's a multimodal issue. The port owns 26 miles of rail that circulates throughout the port assets, and the creation of the Texas Rail Relocation Fund provided for in Proposition 1 will serve as a twin to the Texas Mobility Fund which has been the huge shot in the arm for surface transportation. And this will enable a fund to relocate rail and to do rail improvements, and I think the port will benefit and our urban areas around the state will benefit.
I mentioned this morning it's sort of been conspicuous by its absence, the fact that there is an election on the 8th and early voting is on seems to not be in the public focus. So I want to take this opportunity to mention that and how important it is from a multimodal aspect, and as I mentioned in my prelude, I don't think there's any community that I'm aware of that has done the job on a multimodal basis as Corpus Christi and the surrounding area.
So please consider that one vote and please consider that when you do vote.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I appreciate you bringing that up because you're right, the linkage between the rail relocation fund and what the commission wishes to do with their port is pretty apparent.
Ted?
MR. HOUGHTON: It looks to me that your container operations is a big part of your future. Who is your partner, or do you have a partner in that on the private side?
MR. BONILLA: We're engaged in discussions. We had an MOU with ICT-SI for about six months, and that's one of the largest Philippine container terminal operators in the world. That did not quite materialize when they shifted their focus to Asia.
However, we have engaged another firm and we have met with their senior staff and we anticipate taking some action on that in November. So while it hasn't been ratified by the commission, therefore it's still proprietary information, we're very optimistic. We have cleared all the environmental hurdles, we've received permitting by the Corps of Engineers, the community of San Patricio County and Nueces have endorsed the project so that we have uniform stakeholder support. And we've even spoken to GLO about some innovative financing tools that may enable us to sell the land and lease it back.
So there's various financing tools, and we're very confident we're going to have a private equity partner here in less than 30 days.
MR. HOUGHTON: Is there a demand by the manufacturers/shippers for a container port here?
MR. BONILLA: We believe there is. For example, as a result of CAFTA, we're seeing new opportunities in Central America. We have just announced the importation of melons for the first time into Corpus Christi from Honduras via shipping interests in Colombia. Just this week we had a Colombia vessel bring in imported meats.
As Judy was explaining, the idea is that we develop alternatives to the congestion on the West Coast. We don't have the labor problems that exist on the West Coast and we don't have the congestion that exists on the West Coast. And while the West Coast, Long Beach and LA may bring in 12 to 13 million containers a year, China is building new ports almost every six months that are generating 15 million containers per port, so the congestion is only going to increase. And what Asian shipping lines are looking at is an alternative, and that alternative, one alternative, other than the Panama Canal and on into La Quinta, would be coming to the West Coast ports of Mexico, Lazaro Cardenas, specifically.
And there was a slide earlier -- we might bring it up -- linking Lazaro Cardenas with Laredo and then on into the Port of Corpus Christi, and that underscores the importance of that freight corridor.
Kansas City Southern, you may recall, bought out TexMex and TFM, and so now Kansas City Southern has seamless transportation link from Kansas City right to Lazaro Cardenas. There needs to be some rehab on some of the rail in Mexico, but it's going to happen. And so La Quinta, as it develops, we believe, is going to be an ideal location and will not in any way be in a competitive environment with the Port of Houston.
Lastly, we're looking for a major retailer that will set up a distribution hub. That has to be a Wal-Mart, could be a Target, could be a Toys R Us, a Lowe's, and once that distribution center is set up at La Quinta, then we believe that the shipping lines will come automatically because they're going to follow the cargo.
We have already a 500,000-square-foot cotton compress warehouse facility at La Quinta, so we already have an agricultural hub, so ultimately we will not only have a general cargo distribution center but also be a magnet and a distribution export center for cotton worldwide.
MS. HAWLEY: Ruben, just to follow up on what you said, in some of our conversations with some of the major retailers, we have learned -- this is anecdotal -- that had we already had La Quinta operational, that would have affected/impacted their decisions on where to locate their distribution centers. So it's the chicken-and-egg thing.
So we know that there's huge interest, it's just when they needed to the access, they need it now, and we're still three years away from having something operational. So that's one.
And the other thing -- and Hope knows this -- in the interchange with Kelly Field and Toyota, there's a lot of interest in getting our container terminal. There's a lot of drive there because the cost of shipping containers to them is exponentially less. So we're getting some demand from that direction just because of our location.
MR. JOHNSON: I probably shouldn't say this because I might not be able to return home, but don't be apologetic about being competitive to the Port of Houston. If nobody is going to challenge them, they're not going to get bigger and they're not going to get better. I believe very firmly that the only way we improve is that somebody is challenging us, whether that's in your business or what you're trying to provide, you know, it's the people of this area and the people of the state. So don't be apologetic, please.
MR. BONILLA: Well, an example of that, Commissioner, is the strategic military designation. I really welcome and appreciate your comments because when that opportunity arose in the mid-'90s , not too many ports wanted it. You know, we were at peacetime, relative peace, and the Port of Corpus Christi, under the leadership of Frank Brogan and Alice Faber, sought it aggressively. Port of Houston did not express any interest, the Port of Beaumont had an interest.
So now these two ports, Beaumont and Corpus Christi, provide almost 50 percent of all cargo that's being shipped to Iraq in defense of our freedom, so it's a great story and I think it underscores the importance of your declaration. So thank you.
MS. ANDRADE: Mr. Chairman, I have a question. First of all, for the record, I'd like to thank you for all the support that you've given this corridor from Laredo to Corpus Christi. I want to thank you for arranging the meeting a couple of months ago where Commissioner Houghton and I were present. I truly think that was a historical moment when we got two communities together to support this, so thank you.
But my question on La Quinta is if all negotiations move forward with the potential partner that you may have, when do you think you will hang a sign "Open for Business"?
MR. BONILLA: I'll let Frank Brogan answer that one.
MR. BROGAN: Three years is, I think, a very realistic time frame, and if possible, we may be able to cut some time off that. But I think three years is the target I would set.
MS. ANDRADE: Thank you.
MR. BONILLA: And I might add that -- without, I guess, violating the public trust here -- we have already scheduled meetings between senior staff and the private party, so it's gone beyond the policy level, and that's in anticipation of refining the MOU and having strategic timetables about construction.
MS. ANDRADE: That's great. I still remember when I came here, it was your dream and your vision, so congratulations.
MR. BONILLA: Thank you. We look forward to working with you as that project unfolds.
MS. ANDRADE: We do too.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I want to echo something John said. Don't be apologetic about Houston. I mean, we're going to invest in Houston. The state is going to invest in Houston, its going to invest in Brownsville, it's going to invest in Corpus Christi. The state is going to invest wherever there's an economic opportunity to be increased for its citizens, and if that's Corpus Christi, that's fine, and we believe our partners in Houston understand.
We know in the past there's been some perhaps sibling rivalry in our state between ports, but we hope the governor has kind of made clear to everybody those days are over, no more whining, no more begging. You know, we need to get ready for 35 years from now, 30 years from now, and that includes an aggressive deep water port in Corpus Christi, without a doubt.
MR. BONILLA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Using a sports analogy, we don't expect to strike out. As a matter of fact, Houston needs us because our Hooks are hitters.
MS. HAWLEY: We'd better sit down.
(General laughter.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Was Mr. Noe coming back up, or is he done with his piece?
MR. BONILLA: He's done.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Let me just comment right quick about you made a couple of points in your presentation about some projects you're going to be working with us on.
We don't want to be scary but we do believe in being direct about where we're headed. We will increasingly tell our employees in the districts and they will increasingly tell their contacts in the communities, we're going to ask the question how does this project reduce congestion or increase safety or improve air quality or offer economic opportunity or conserve and improve the value of our asset, because that's the key question.
That question popped into my head when you were talking about the spur and helping Texas A&M Corpus Christi. The first thing I thought about was: Well, where does the state benefit from that.
And so we're trying to look at things like is this a local road and are we primarily addressing a local issue and is it local congestion, local air quality or whatever, or is this a regional road and are we addressing a regional issue, or is this a statewide road and are we addressing a statewide issue.
You know, by inference, things that are more local and less regional and state that don't reduce congestion or improve air quality or advance economic opportunity or improve the safety or improve the value of our assets are going to be less attractive for state partnering than regional roads or state roads that do meet those qualifications.
So the governor's instructions were clear, he didn't want Texans to have to beg for their own money. He wanted a process in place where every Texan, whether it was a Texan from Brownsville or Texarkana or Amarillo or El Paso, knew what the criteria was for hoping to have the state as a partner in these projects. And I would just emphasize that to you on your work with the locals.
We're going to be very aggressive in helping, but we have filters we have to use to keep from building the road to nowhere for no reason.
MR. NOE: And we certainly understand that. In our application there's areas of transportation congestion and arguments for our proposal, and it's in the application
MR. WILLIAMSON: And maybe I shouldn't have focused on this. That one just happened to catch my eye. I mean, it's any of them, really. Like helping with the rail in the yard, that meets the highest check mark qualifications for everywhere we want to go. That's why the governor was so quick to tell us to do that, because it meets his criteria.
So I don't want to like throw cold water on your project, but we are looking at things a little bit differently across the state so that we can honestly tell the citizens, you know, your money is being leveraged with the private sector and partnered with local and regional government on a rational basis that will produce clear results.
MR. NOE: And we appreciate that.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Did you ever find your business, Craig?
MR. CLARK: What's that?
MR. WILLIAMSON: Weren't you looking for your CD or something?
MR. CLARK: That was the CD.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I thought we were looking for a new CD.
MR. CLARK: No. It's all the same one, and I appreciate your indulgence while we obviously go into extra innings.
MR. WILLIAMSON: And Johnson is sent to the showers. It's a long walk down the dugout.
(General laughter.)
MR. HOUGHTON: I did notice one thing on the presentation that I should have pointed out real early, the campus of Texas A&M -- I don't know if you can pull that slide back up. I'm helping John kill some time here. It's slide number 7, page 7. Now go and enlarge that.
Do you notice anything there, Ric? Did you have a private beach at your university? Did you notice that private beach sitting there?
MR. CLARK: It is a research site.
(General laughter.)
MR. HOUGHTON: We've got a lot of beach out in El Paso but we don't have any water.
MR. WILLIAMSON: We didn't have a private beach but we did have a football team that could score a touchdown. It's okay, it's been a few years since we could say that, though.
MR. HOUGHTON: I was just curious. That is quite interesting, a private beach. Very nice.
MR. WILLIAMSON: How are you going to enlarge the campus? Are you going to go across the water or are you going to recover, or what are you going to do?
MR. NOE: The university is in a long-range planning process. There are number of things that are currently focused on campus that can be located out in the community, the nursing program and a number of others. They're also looking for another second campus site that can serve as a point for a much larger campus.
MR. HOUGHTON: Are they capped out on enrollment?
MR. NOE: There's not a cap. They're growing at significant rates and will be at 10,000 probably in the next two years.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, the problem that is unfortunate is that -- and the legislative members aren't here -- the problem the state faces -- our focus is transportation and we will stay focused on our business, but the problem the state faces is if your population is going to 50 million, the implication is you've got to have more universities, you've got to have more medical schools, you've got to have more law schools, you have to have more public schools, and we have been for so long a state of -- and I think should remain -- a state of limited service, limited taxation and limited regulation.
It is sometimes hard for us to kind of get a grasp on the fact that there's a reason why these college guys go beg for more money because they've got more students to educate. And if we wanted to put colleges on 100 percent toll collection and make the students pay for everything, they wouldn't come ask us for money. It's a dilemma for the state to figure out how to deal with this stuff. But it's a good dilemma, it means we're tight-fisted and we watch the people's money carefully.
John is back. I didn't know they let people return in the pros, I thought once you were out, you were out.
MR. JOHNSON: So does that mean I'm supposed to leave?
MR. WILLIAMSON: I'm like Ted, I'm just trying to buy some time.
(General laughter.)
MR. CLARK: As a district, we welcome you to the Corpus Christi District, an area where thousands of people come every year seeking sun, the beach, fish and birds, our rich history, and every 30 years or so a white Christmas.
Located along the Gulf Coast between San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley, we include ten counties covering 7,806 square miles. There are just over 550,000 people and 440,000 registered vehicles. We have 2,800 centerline miles and almost 6,900 lane miles of highway.
Truly multimodal, the Corpus Christi District includes a port, a ferry system, the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, an international airport, 14 general aviation airports, a regional public transportation system, and a rural public transportation system.
As you have seen in the previous presentations from Corpus Christi, the port, and the MPO, we have many transportation challenges. We have emerging congestion, arterials clogged by commercial development, high growth areas needing commuter connections, and corridor transportation limitations that impede commercial and industrial growth.
But we have a plan and we have new tools, and when we combine these tools with willing local partners and combine with conventional resources, we can meet these challenges.
Transportation planning in a coastal area requires consideration of hurricane evacuation. The Corpus Christi District has several projects coming to completion to enhance our evacuation.
Two projects totaling $18.4 million provided signs and paving that allowed for reconfiguration of 83.5 miles of the northbound lanes of Interstate 37 to convert a 10-foot shoulder to a 13-foot hurricane lane that can be opened to provide added capacity. This allows for the existing three-lane urban section to operate as four lanes and the existing two-lane rural section to operate as three lanes. Our friends in the San Antonio District have a project currently under construction that will continue this section all the way to Pleasanton.
We also have raised the JFK Causeway eight feet, increasing the available evacuation window for a growing island population. We widened northbound Graham from SH 358 to Interstate 37 to allow for a two-lane connection and enhanced operation in an evacuation. We raised and added capacity to US 181 from the Nueces Bay Causeway to Portland, and we are constructing a grade separation in Gregory that will allow for continuous traffic flow.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita threatened us early and allowed us to test our evacuation plans. We also got the chance to view evacuation experiences from other areas and apply them to our situation. We intend to collect a wide variety of lessons learned and improve our plans, infrastructure and public information efforts.
Our three-year transportation improvement plan, developed through our MPO in the metro area and through regional rural TIP meetings in the rural area, includes 115 projects totaling nearly $380 million.
Our district allocation under the UTP provides almost $800 million over a ten-year period in the Statewide Mobility Program fund and $360 million in Statewide Preservation funds, and this provides the base funding to plan for our needs and leverage or use in equity for plans that we develop with our local partners to deliver transportation infrastructure with new funding tools.
The increased demands for transportation in Texas requires that we plan in terms of corridor needs. The improvement along the US 181 corridor is needed to meet the demands of expanding industrial activities, to provide critical hurricane evacuation capacity for growing populations, as well as allow access to tourists at recreation areas east of I-37.
As was indicated in the port and MPO presentations, the Harbor Bridge presents a significant mobility impediment for US 181. It's a 46-year-old steel structure over saltwater, squeezing six lanes with no shoulders that cross 60,000 vehicles a day. With a steep vertical grade and sharp horizontal curves on each end, the bridge presents a safety risk. With high truck volumes and many petrochemical cargos moving through population areas, there's also a public safety issue as well.
The US 59 corridor is a rural trunk system corridor that provides east-west connectivity from Laredo to Victoria, then Houston. This corridor was the subject of a report to the commission in August by the Tri-County Coalition. We are interested in working with our counties along this vital corridor to look for ways to advance capacity and add operational improvements.
The US 77 corridor provides a vital commercial route from the Rio Grande Valley Border areas to Corpus Christi and on to Victoria and Houston. We have a couple of active projects adding controlled access highway sections in Corpus Christi and Kingsville. We have a $6.5 million earmark in the Federal Highway Bill to be used to help fund the continuation of a controlled access section of highway through Robstown. We will continue to look for opportunities to enhance mobility along this critical corridor.
The Port-to-Port project envisions a truck tollway that would provide high-speed and extra weight traffic east and west from the ports of entry at Laredo to the Port of Corpus Christi and other Gulf Coast ports. We are studying the market forces and potential that would allow this corridor to provide enhancements needed to meet growing international trade and economic development.
SAFETEA-LU also provides a $5 million earmark to study a site near Robstown for a trade-processing and inland center. We've expanded our Port-to-Port study area to include this location and explore the effect of this combination to improve and enhance trade and transportation.
The Corpus Christi District lies in the crossroads of the TTC I-35 and I-69 TTC segments of the Trans-Texas Corridor. Thirty-one public meetings have been held in the Corpus Christi District on the Trans-Texas Corridor, and many in our area are keenly aware of the huge economic advantages available from this proximity to these super corridors.
In the BUILD IT component of our business, we have a robust current construction program of 59 projects across the district totaling $464 million. We have several active projects adding controlled access highway sections. We have several projects that provide operational improvements that mitigate congestion and delay. There are a number of projects around the district that provide added capacity and operational improvements on clogged local arterials.
In our USE IT business category, we start with our ferry operations. Currently we have six 20-car boats in operation with four sets of landings. This system carries well over 2 million vehicles per year. We can see rapid resort and residential development and ever-increasing peak demands that will exceed our existing capacity. We have a fifth set of landings under construction and SAFETEA-LU included an earmark of $320,000 for the design of a larger 28-car ferry boat.
We held a public hearing in Port Aransas on September 19, 2005, regarding the rules for establishing fees for priority boarding. There was good attendance and great interest in how this would apply to our ferry operations.
There was also legislation passed last session, Senate Bill 1131, that would allow Port Aransas direct access to many of the new funding tools and apply them to ferry operations.
We're excited about the implementation of our ITS system here in Corpus Christi. Besides the ability to improve traffic operations and safety on our urban expressways, we are looking forward to applying the technology to our hurricane evacuations and exploring applications to enhance trade and freight movements.
As I mentioned before, we have 14 general aviation airports in the district and many of them have made good use of TxDOT programs for maintenance and capital improvements.
We have three active rural public transportation providers serving our rural populations.
Our district is active in TxDOT traffic safety activities. We have great cooperation from our local law enforcement, local media, and local groups interested in traffic safety. We are convinced that our efforts have a positive effect on driver behaviors and improve safety and save lives.
We very much appreciated the great help and cooperation we received from the new Whataburger Stadium and the Corpus Christi Hooks on our Click-it or Ticket event, so much so that I was led to showcase my services on the mound. I offered to work into the rotation, but so far the Hooks have not called me.
(General laughter.)
MR. CLARK: In our MAINTAIN IT category our area presents some great challenges to highway maintenance. Much of our district is low elevation with large flat flood plains and active clay soils. Besides the coastal climate and geological challenges, we have a mix of marine, petrochemical and agricultural traffic. This brings a lot of routine wide and heavy loads, sometimes super-heavy loads.
The load shown is a Texas record that moved through the Corpus Christi District and weighed in at nearly 2 million pounds.
These conditions, combined with a large volume of narrow pavements, create many problems for our maintenance forces. As you can see, over 50 percent of the FM mileage in our district is deficient. We are fortunate to have dedicated personnel in our maintenance operations that are innovative in finding solutions to preserve a quality transportation system.
Besides our Harbor Bridge, Corpus Christi has over 1,200 bridges on this on-system of many types and eras, from the first segmental bridge built in Texas to 28 steel-timber structures. Our current three-year TIP includes 15 on-system bridge replacements totaling over $16 million. Our three-year off-system bridge plans to replace 19 bridges totaling over $7 million.
To manage these challenges and the many areas, I am blessed with an outstanding district organization, comprised of dedicated and talented people. We maintain our personnel numbers to stay close to our FTE allocation of 437 and maintain a staff-to-supervision ratio of nearly 12.5 to one.
We have a relatively young but highly experienced management group. Our directors average 19 years with TxDOT; my area engineers average 20 with TxDOT. Across the organization, over 70 percent have more than five years' experience.
To help us meet these many challenges, we're fortunate to have a good local pool of consultant engineers available with a wide variety of disciplines and experience.
As I wrap up our district report, I am showing a slide from the time when the Harbor Bridge was new and our challenges were different but our dedication to the task was still the same.
I would like to end by allowing the Honorable Glenn Guillory, our Aransas County judge, to come up and address the commission. He has requested an opportunity to thank the commission for the work that TxDOT has done in Aransas County.
JUDGE GUILLORY: Mr. Chairman, members, thank you very much for the opportunity to address this body. We're talking a project that we recently completed in Aransas County. By some standards it's a piddling little contract, it only cost about $20 million, but the importance of it will be made up in a minute.
I know you want me to be brief --
MR. WILLIAMSON: No. Take your time.
JUDGE GUILLORY: Thank you, sir. I'm a Louisiana Cajun by birth and a Texas politician by occupation, so I've got two strikes against me.
(General laughter.)
JUDGE GUILLORY: About a decade ago, there was a four-lane, divided highway with access roads and overpasses designed to replace the Highway 35 between the San Patricio County line and Rockport. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, a two-lane highway was built.
In the first year of operation of that highway, we lost 16 people, the next year we lost people at the average of about one a month. To put that in perspective, if we opened the Houston-Galveston highway, just on a census basis, the first year they would have lost 500 people. If you would have extended that by distance that they have four times as much highway as we do, it would have been 2,000 people. Of course, that wasn't acceptable.
So we put together a delegation -- San Antonio -- with about 2,000 signatures on a petition which is about 10 percent of the people in the county. When we got to San Antonio to make our presentation, we found that we were behind Houston asking for $200 million and San Antonio asking for about $150 million. So we figured by the time they got to our $20 million we had about a chance of a snowball in hell of getting funded, we thought the commission would probably be out robbing banks to try to fund those projects.
Well, we were wrong. The project was funded, the commission in the meeting made a commitment to try to fund that project, and in fact it was. They scratched around and found bits here and there, they went ahead and redesigned the project, and over the next five-year period, that project was built.
As Judy mentioned -- and Judy was at the delegation, she was a representative then, and Gene Seaman was as well -- there were three managers during the term of that project: Billy Parks who has subsequently retired and gone over to the dark side --
MR. WILLIAMSON: Absolutely.
(General laughter.)
JUDGE GUILLORY: -- and of course, David and Craig. And there's been an amazing amount of consistency over those three managers during the project, but that's not the amazing part either, although I would be probably remiss in not mentioning one more name, and that's Bill Wrightman who was the engineer for the entire project. He's your engineer out of Sinton and he did a wonderful job.
It's a marvelous project, and the marvelous thing about the project is that 4-1/2 years, with all the heavy equipment running up and down that highway, the amount of work that was done, over a million cubic yards of dirt moved over a five-year period, there were two deaths, and that's just amazing.
It shows you can get things done if you try hard enough, and it's a credit to your predecessors and yourselves, and of course, the work that TxDOT did to make that project come together the way it did that really strikes us to the heart. And we want to thank you very much and your predecessors very much. If you ever sit up here and think that the time you spend may be spent better, don't, because there's no higher project result than to save lives.
So on behalf of myself, the commissioners court and the citizens of Aransas County, we thank you and TxDOT very much.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, you're very kind to say that.
(Applause.)
MR. CLARK: And that would conclude our marathon report.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Questions, members?
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Craig, I've just got a couple. You touched on the corridor and the chairman touched upon the importance of the Laredo-Corpus Christi-Lower Rio Grande Valley triangle. I guess we're all kind of dancing around and touching around 281/77, which is it, which should it be and so forth, and that's what the public hearings are attempting to do. We're smart enough to not, if we even have a preference, to indicate what that would be publicly while the hearing process is going on.
I would just, I think, encourage you to encourage your business community and your civic community to be thinking logically about where's the logical path of an international corridor to be, and to begin to talk to those who would be impacted by that path and see if you can't begin to create if not partnerships, at least least-resistance decisions kind of ahead of time.
We understand how difficult it is, probably more than most people, to sell these wide corridor concepts. We're also totally convinced this is the correct thing for the future but we understand that it may not be so important right now.
But it will be very important four years from now when we have an excess of electric generation we need to ship to Mexico in exchange for other natural resources not yet processed that can be brought back into Texas and processed by high-quality Texas labor. We understand that if someone were thinking about that in the year 2005, someone in the year 2025 will say thank you for figuring that out 20 years earlier.
So we do understand the difficulty in this. We also understand it's the correct thing to do and we encourage you and Judy, the port, the city and county to be talking. We know you're talking west but if you're thinking south, then you need to start talking south as well. The more talking that can be done, the better, I think.
Members, anything else before we take a quick break?
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, you did a good job and you thoroughly educated us about your operation and the Corpus Christi area. It's our custom, members of the audience, to take a break at this time and give everybody a chance to relax, and we'll do so and return to the state's business, and we hope you come back to watch us work. About 15 minutes, please.
(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: We are going to return from our brief recess and take up the regular order of business. And the first order of business, members, is the approval of the minutes from last month's meeting. Do I have a motion?
MR. HOUGHTON: So moved.
MS. ANDRADE: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
Michael?
MR. BEHRENS: Going to agenda item number 2, under Public Transportation we'll have a minute order looking to award Rural Transportation Assistance Program funds to El Paso County. Eric?
MR. GLEASON: Good morning, members of the commission, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Behrens.
The minute order before you awards $145,000 of federal funds under the Rural Transit Assistance Program to El Paso County Rural Transit District in support of development of a public transportation system there in El Paso County. This award is actually part of a much larger project in El Paso County that is not only looking at ITS development to assist in coordination of services and efficiencies in customer service improvements, but it's also one that includes the introduction of a new vehicle in service in El Paso County, one that does have the latest technology in natural gas engine technology, and includes with it something called hydraulic line assist which helps in the fuel consumption by assisting the vehicle in initial acceleration. So that when it consumes quite a bit of fuel, it assists that phase of the acceleration thereby reducing fuel consumption, and coupled with the natural gas technology, it improves air quality as a part of that.
The Intelligent Transportation System portion of the project of which these funds are a portion, again, a larger overall effort, looks specifically at researching and then assessing the feasibility and developing the software applications to address issues of automatic vehicle location programs, systems to allow the operator to know exactly where its vehicles are, to help with communication between the central dispatch center and those operators in the field, to ultimately allow for the introduction of automated fare payment or smart car technology as a part of the operation, as well as passenger information, real-time passenger information on the service.
What these $145,000 will do specifically is that initial assessment of technology and its application in the El Paso County area. In addition to our funds, as a part of that there is a significant CMAQ contribution which, as I understand, is up for approval tomorrow. That actually constitutes about 80 percent of the ITS investment, our share is about 20 percent.
This project intends then to have, by the fall of 2007, 17 vehicles operating in El Paso County that are equipped with an automated dispatch system radio, the technology to allow for communication, and will begin to assess some of the benefits of that application to the extent of improving the coordination of our services, and the significance of that improvement with respect to overall statewide to coordinate our systems better. It will allow us to examine the impact of fuel technologies on fuel economy and fuel consumption.
So I recommend your approval of this award today and will be glad to answer any questions you might have.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the explanation. Do you have questions?
MS. ANDRADE: Mr. Chairman, I have a question. Eric, will you keep us posted as to how well it's doing?
MR. GLEASON: Absolutely. I had a conversation yesterday with the project manager where one of the things that we talked a lot about was making sure that we had both some up-front work around the outcomes and what we would expect to happen and then the ability throughout the project to measure the results with respect to those anticipated outcomes, not so much in the context of success or failure but in the context of learning what we can learn from this for other applications throughout the state.
MS. ANDRADE: And we've invested $145,000, and what's the price of the total project?
MR. GLEASON: The total cost of the ITS development portion of the project is $725,000; the balance of the funds are coming from the CMAQ area.
MS. ANDRADE: Thank you.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Any other questions or comments, members? Do I have a motion?
MR. JOHNSON: My sense is this is a tremendous project, first of its kind and certainly worth doing and following it to see how it does.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Absolutely. Okay, do I have a motion?
MR. HOUGHTON: So moved.
MS. ANDRADE: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
Eric, how are you finding Texas, buddy?
MR. GLEASON: I'm finding it fascinating. It is a real challenge. It is a very different environment than I'm used to working in. I'm enjoying it tremendously.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, by all accounts, you're doing a good job. Everybody is very complimentary.
MR. GLEASON: Thank you.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Thank you, sir.
MR. BEHRENS: Commissioners, agenda item number 3 is a discussion item where Mike Craig of our VTR Division will talk about our public outreach and our marketing efforts in order to try to increase vehicle registration in Texas. Mike?
MR. CRAIG: Thank you very much. Good morning. We've got quite a few projects underway, four of which we feel like have enough visibility or interest either on the legislative side or enough impact statewide that we wanted to bring them to you and let you kind of get some idea what's going on so if you're starting to hear things about it, you're aware.
The first one is the marketing and sales of special license plates. This is one that has legislative interest. It was presented in two forms, one in the 78th Legislature and again in the 79th Legislature, and it changed at that point.
As you can see, it was not mandatory in the 78th, it was optional, it was permitted if we wanted to pursue it. Definitely we had a lot of projects going and that was one that definitely wasn't a priority.
It's an unprecedented type of program in the United States, there's no other state that has this, so we feel like there was a high risk involved with it until we had time to do more analysis. So we did not move out initially with it.
MR. WILLIAMSON: But we weren't afraid to be the first one to do it?
MR. CRAIG: We're never afraid to be the first. As long as we can make money and help people in the public move goods and products.
MR. WILLIAMSON: We don't ever want to be afraid of taking risks.
MR. CRAIG: We're not afraid to take risks at all.
So in the 79th they changed that up quite a bit. Came back to us, required us, in effect, to implement this program, but in so doing, they also gave us some benefits associated with that. In the prior bill they had not provided funding up front. We shared that risk with whichever vendor was the successful one that we were to select. So in that respect, we benefitted from it.
We have moved out on that and as you can see there, there's certain things that it provides for: personalized plates, organizational plates, collegiate plates. Those are all involved in this process, plus they can bring new plates to us as well, new plate designs. It does specify that we recover all costs, but under this provision, as we'll see later in the slide, those costs ultimately would be paid back off the revenue generated from the sale of these plates -- which we'll get into a little pricing scheme as well later on.
Our goal is to increase revenue to the state. We've had two bidders on this project, both feel that they can do a really good job marketing and selling plates and getting us an increased revenue from them.
As I mentioned earlier, the cost-sharing, the risk-sharing, if you will, $632,000 was estimated by us to start this project. Out of that, half of that would be paid up front by this vendor. So they feel it's a very viable project, we feel it's viable, and we're both going to put money into it to prove it truly is a viable project.
To give you some idea of the timelines, we initiated the initial RFP based on prior legislation in February of 2005. This rocked along during the 79th Legislature. At that point, it appeared that new amendments to that law were going to be passed. We went ahead and published the RFP as it was, based on the prior legislation, and then provided through interviews and negotiations with the two bidders, that we would work in those new provisions and they would agree to it, and then they would base their bids on that. So that's where we are today.
We show there that October 27 is when we were wanting to announce this winning bidder. We actually, at this point, because of legislative interest, we knew even prior to this that we wanted to brief those legislators who did have interest, or their staff, as to where we were on this, what we did, how we got to where we are, and why we made the selection that we had, so that's going to happen actually on November 2, next week. As soon as we can brief those folks up on that, then we'll announce the winning bidder.
Any questions on that? I've got four here so I'll break at each one.
MR. JOHNSON: Mike, what sort of steps are they going to take and venues are they going to use or outlets to market specialty plates that, you know, we don't sort of already do internally? How are they going to increase outreach, I guess is my question.
MR. CRAIG: Correct. We don't really market specialty plates, currently we don't have that capability, we don't dedicate funds for that. Organizations who come in, if there's an organizational plate, they do it possibly, as well as the colleges if they want to. We don't do that; this provides us that mechanism.
They'll go into dealerships where there's an opportunity at that point where they're buying the vehicle, hey, would you like a special plate with that? Obviously we can put it in other venues as well, similar to another project that we'll be talking about which you and I have met with the press earlier on.
MR. JOHNSON: I think since the chairman is not here that we should appoint him a committee of one. His alma mater, I think, has moved to number three in terms of the number of college license plates, and we should make him the chairman and sole member of the committee to get them back up, especially proportionate to their population of graduates and interested parties.
MR. CRAIG: As we deal with our new vendor, we'll certainly make that one a priority.
MR. JOHNSON: Well, volunteer his services.
(General laughter.)
MR. CRAIG: Any other questions?
(No response.)
MR. CRAIG: Let me move on. The next project we have that you would like to know about is the vehicle registration compliance and public awareness campaign. This is one that we've had going in a grassroots method for the last number of months, and basically what we found out, for a little background, Texas residents, as we all know, need to title and register vehicles before they're operated on the highways of our state.
We've got about 18.7 million vehicles currently, and obviously as we get our toll roads and our infrastructure in place and provide more opportunities for industry, we're going to have more vehicles coming in. And that brings in about $1.3 billion a year total; out of that, a third goes to local government, to the local county for their road and bridge funds, so it helps them maintain their roads as well.
As we went through this bid process, there were five bidders. We selected one bidder, obviously, named Think Street. They've done a very good job, very creative in the way they're going to market this campaign statewide. We've had some public outreach already on these things and I'll get into that just a little later, but so far we've been very pleased with what they've done to this point.
The project scope, we didn't want to go into it with a negative, you know, we want to beat you over the head because you haven't registered your vehicle, we wanted to make it positive to the public who may or may not be aware what the requirements are associated with the registration of vehicles and where that money actually goes.
So what we tried to do is we have a very diverse population, we're putting this out not only in English but Spanish as well, to get it to everybody who may have a vehicle that's operating. We're rolling it out, as I said, with a positive message. It's basically to remind current Texans and any newcomers who are coming into the state because any newcomers who are in here that are operating off the previous state's registration, they have six months, eight months, ten months left on that and they don't know that once they've established residency, they've got to register their vehicle and title it in Texas. Many of these people are going to want to comply and if we just get the information out there to them, we think they will.
Within 18 months we're seeking to reduce registration noncompliance by a minimum of half a percent, and half a percent of what, I think, begs the question. We have done ten years of public parking lot surveys, and through that period of time we've consistently found of Texas-plated vehicles, 4.5 percent are not currently registered. So that's our base. From that we're trying to reduce that by half a percent.
What that equates to is through that analysis of that 4.5 percent, it comes to about 720,000 vehicles a year that are not registered for the entire year. Extrapolate from that $60 in registration, it comes to $43.2 million of just the Texas vehicles. We can't quantify those that are coming in with out-of-state plates, out-of-country plates, we don't know if they're truly Texas residents or not. That's where the information, the public awareness will be targeted.
If we can reduce that by half a percent, we bring in $43.2 million. Well, overall if we did all 4.5, this half percent, we basically get $5.6 million.
We benchmarked this, we've gone through and modeled the program that we currently have in progress. We take that data on, we'll extrapolate from that later on to developing our improvement. We're going to follow up with research again in 2005 into 2007 to gauge the effectiveness of this campaign. We really encourage Texans, let's go out and do the right thing. And Texans, if we know about it, all tend to do the right thing, and I believe that we find that to be true with Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, Hurricane Wilma, everybody steps up and tries to help. In this case, you've got a product that you're paying for that you're actually going to benefit from because you're putting that much back into it.
The cost of the project is $2.5 million over a two-year period. Again, if you think back to what I just mentioned, if we can drop it by half a percent, we can more than pay for the project within 18 months, and we feel like we can beat that.
As I mentioned earlier, the out-of-state/out-of-country registrations that are running on our highways, if those in fact turn out to be Texas residents and they will come in and register their vehicles, we think there's more money to be had than the $43.2 million. So we think this will make some real inroads on that.
Actions to date and timeline. We have done posters; we have done phone calls. We found that one-fifth of Texans think that registration is a source of revenue-building to maintain Texas highways, only one-fifth. Eighty percent don't; they weren't aware of it. When told where the money goes, they are much more supportive, much more inclined to come in on time to register their vehicles.
We did telephone calls. More than 95 percent of these folks agreed that liability insurance -- which is another area I'll touch on a little bit later in another presentation -- is very important, and obviously we all want our vehicles that are out there to have current insurance. Almost three-fourths believe that individuals who drive without vehicle registration are also less likely to have that insurance, so there's a connection.
The target audience was identified, strangely enough, as the 18 to 34 group which that's in my rearview mirror, but there certainly is a large contingent out there of those folks and we're trying to touch that particular group.
We're doing a statewide radio campaign that began in September and it's going to run through December of this year. Public relations grassroots efforts is being conducted in three pilot markets, and that's underway right now. Those three were in Longview, El Paso and Houston.
Commissioner Johnson and Commissioner Houghton were nice enough to come out and meet with us, we had press conferences there, we think they went very well, and we think that this is certainly a process where as we see changes may need to be made of what we're presenting to the public, but I think we're very positive on how that's going to work for us. And that's going to go through the end of this year.
We've got special promotional events underway. We've already done one at the Astros game, prior to the end of the season, obviously, that we were actually in the booth with the announcers and they were discussing this with us. That's going to continue on with the Houston Texans games. Hopefully they'll score some touchdowns and more people will be watching. But that's going to continue as well.
As I said, we've got bilingual available print material and you'll see some of those things in the press package you got. We've got rack brochures, bumper stickers, posters, we've got all kinds of things. We're going to style this somewhat along the lines, hopefully as successful, as the Don't Mess With Texas campaign. We hope to get to that level of success.
Statewide kickoff. As we finish these grassroots, we're going to move to a statewide implementation in '06 in January. You're going to see a whole lot of heavy television and radio spots on this, you're going to be seeing more and more of it. You'll also notice in your package you got CDs that have musical jingles and they really are catchy. Put them in your cars as you drive around and I think you'll find them very interesting.
Outdoor advertising obviously is another area that we're going to really focus on to try to get the information out there.
As said, we're going to try to get this into the driver's education curriculum in the schools too. We think that if the young child is aware of it and they notice their parent's windshield is not displaying a current registration that they may place a little pressure on them. It's not a punitive issue; it's one of encouragement by their child.
Any questions on that particular campaign?
MS. ANDRADE: I have one. I have to say that I really like the Spanish one, and [speaks in Spanish] is very catchy, but do you have a bumper sticker in Spanish?
MR. CRAIG: Yes, we do. All those are going to be bilingual.
MS. ANDRADE: Great.
MR. CRAIG: This campaign they have three registered trademarks. What they're focusing on is Put Texas In Your Corner.
MS. ANDRADE: I really like that.
MR. CRAIG: That's the one. They also have Registered Texan, and Check the Date and Love your State. We feel like we can get the folks, when they step in their car every day and put the key in and look over at their windshield, if they will do that and check that date, even if we don't get them a renewal notice -- which occasionally we don't -- it will prompt them for coming in and registering their vehicles. This will certainly be daily prompt for them if they will just get in the habit.
MS. ANDRADE: Thank you.
MR. JOHNSON: Mike, how are we progressing on the issue of the sticker itself and unbundling that from its paper container when you receive it in the mail and making it either childproof or genius-proof, pick your poison?
MR. CRAIG: Well, what you're asking about is our current point of sale sticker that we've just implemented and had some issues with. I'll steal a quote I recently heard, without attribution, we've got a problem, we've got a plan and we're moving up to correct that.
(General laughter.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: That's the best way to deal with it.
MR. CRAIG: That's where we're going. We're working with our partners which are the tax assessor-collectors, they're giving us good input from the customers. Obviously we're getting direct input from the customers as well.
The process itself, the system itself is flawless, the automated system has been perfect. We're working, right as we speak, to improve that project, the actual functional portion of that project to get something out. It's going to take three months to simulate actual usage through our lab with Thomas Bohuslav and Construction, but once we get that new design in and make sure it works as it should under laboratory conditions, but we're also going to look at the practical application as well to make sure that we don't slow down the customer and cause any inconvenience.
MR. JOHNSON: Well, laboratory conditions are fine but field trials might even be better.
MR. CRAIG: And in truth, we had field trials. We piloted this in numerous counties and never had a problem with it. The problems really came up where we've got the larger counties and we do more volume, and they're more vocal.
MR. JOHNSON: So the larger volume created an inconsistency in the way people received their registration stickers and how do you unbundle the registration sticker from its contents?
MR. CRAIG: I think they're more vocal about it.
MR. JOHNSON: Or the larger areas just more bumblers and fumblers like I am and can't separate it.
MR. CRAIG: It seems like where you have a more rural group, and we were in the smaller counties or less metropolitan counties, smaller metropolitan counties, they had more direct contact and conversation with those customers and were able to explain it better to them, or they would physically show them how that works, and so there was less dissatisfaction.
Then we had actually defective forms. It was a little complex on how you did it anyway, and then you factor in the defective forms as well, then you have some real problems, and we are addressing those.
MR. JOHNSON: Thank you.
MR. WILLIAMSON: John, whenever you move out to Old Washington, you'll find that those of us who live in the country have a little more time to do things.
MR. JOHNSON: Well, I look forward to that day.
(General laughter.)
MR. CRAIG: Any other questions on this?
(No response.)
MR. CRAIG: The next one we had is the vehicle registration renewal outsourcing. This is a brand new bill that was introduced last session, a new statute. Previously we had not had the capability to advertise in our renewal notices that we send out each year to 18-something million of our customers. This provides that under House Bill 2702.
What it provides is -- and the commission does have involvement here because they are the ones who authorized us to proceed with this -- a contract with a vendor for not only the insertion of the advertising in the renewal, but we're looking potentially at having them do the whole process for us, we'd like to outsource it all, if possible. That would be the printing, the inserting, the envelopes. If they feel like it's advantageous to them to change the size of the envelopes, the style of the renewal, they'd pick up all the costs of that.
There is precedent for this one, as opposed to the special plate marketing that I spoke of earlier. We checked and there are two other states currently doing this, there's New York and Florida. And they've realized benefits from it, it seems to have worked well for them to this point. We talked to both jurisdictions and they fully support it.
The project scope, as I mentioned earlier, they will produce these inserts, they will coordinate these with any, like General Motors or Ford Motor Company, any of the larger corporations who would like to advertise, and they'd use that revenue to offset any additional costs associated with this.
It's a cost-sharing project. We'll pay for basically what we have done in the past, but if they add weight to that mail package, it goes above an ounce, they're going to pay the cost of that. As I said earlier, they're going to pay for any programming associated with this and any changes that are associated with the envelopes or the renewal notices themselves.
And basically it's a possible bonus. We would see this as a potential bonus of about a million dollars a year for the department.
Our goals, again, reduce costs associated with the mailing of approximately 1.5 million -- that's 18 million a year, that's 1.5- monthly, and then there's no computer program costs associated, they pick up all the costs.
Where we are now, we've got our timeline developed for it, we've got our RFP being developed, we're going to try to get this out on the street by January 2006, and basically do the things that I spoke about, their redesign, all those things would be part of our discussions with that vendor as to how we're going to proceed.
Any questions on that?
(No response.)
MR. CRAIG: Okay. Last but not least is our financial responsibility verification program. This is a subject that's been tackled by the legislature for a number of years without resolution. It was also at one point given to the Texas Department of Public Safety to address. They came out with a report recommending a delay, if you will.
In the last session under Senate Bill 1670 it was given to the Texas Department of Insurance to lead but partnering with TxDOT, with DIR, Department of Information Resources, and also with the DPS, to sit down and try to work out a program that will provide a means to reduce, obviously, noncompliance, those that don't have current insurance to come in and register their car or get their driver's license or get their vehicle inspected, to have that in place when they do come in.
And in addition to that, it's not just an event-based process, so when you come in and register your vehicle and you walk out and you go cancel your insurance and nobody knows about it. What we want to do is provide a means that we have ongoing verification so when you walk out the door and you cancel that insurance, we know about it, and we get back to that person to bring him back into compliance or we flag their record in some way to cause them to provide more evidence the next time they come in as to what their current status is.
So we're trying to fulfill the goals of 1670, we're trying to decrease the number of uninsured motorists in Texas, we want to enhance the goals to validate proof of insurance and we want to provide ability to law enforcement to identify insurance coverage on vehicles involved in accidents. And we feel like we're moving ahead quickly on this.
The cost. We have a $6 million appropriation for this to spend on this. That money is in actually TxDOT's Fund 6 budget. From that the TDI, as they sort of pay for this development or whatever costs associated with it, the implementation and maintenance will start to build out of that fund.
Actions to date, the project charter has been approved. I have noted there a request for proposal. It's actually an invitation to negotiate. I found out after we did this kind of what the difference is, but it's similar, I would think. Those responses are due back. We have a pretty strict timeline on this. By law the vendor is supposed to be on board by December, so the window is closing rapidly to get that done.
And implementation of the system is due, and again mandated by the legislation, for the end of 2006. What we really foresee at this point is a phased implementation, doing the passenger vehicles first and commercial vehicles last. So that's the status on that.
We really do feel like this program and the level of interest of all the departments involved and the agencies, along with the insurance industry -- that obviously has a high interest in how this is going to be structured -- that we're going to come out with a very good product.
Any questions?
MR. WILLIAMSON: Questions, members?
MR. HOUGHTON: Good show.
MR. WILLIAMSON: We like what you're doing.
MR. CRAIG: We'll keep you posted as things move along.
MR. HOUGHTON: Remember the committee that Chairman Williamson is a member of one.
MR. CRAIG: You weren't here, Mr. Chairman, but you were volunteered in absentia.
MR. WILLIAMSON: As a committee of one?
MR. CRAIG: Yes, I think it was. I didn't see any other hands go up.
(General laughter.)
MR. CRAIG: Okay, that's all I've got.
MR. BEHRENS: Okay, Mike, you can just stay up there.
We'll go then to agenda item number 4(a)(1) where we're going into our proposed adoption of rules.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Mike, have you heard anything from the automobile industry about any of this, from the automobile dealers?
MR. CRAIG: About which?
MR. WILLIAMSON: About any of this.
MR. CRAIG: Well, let's see, there's really not anything negative. The insurance issue is one that we've already dealt with as far as the dollar fee that's collected. Dealers are not required to verify insurance by law, however, we do provide that they can collect a dollar insurance fee. So as long as they're exempted from that requirement to verify insurance, I doubt if we're going to have an issue with it at all. I think that would be the only one that would kind of lap over something they might be concerned about.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay.
MR. BEHRENS: These rules pertain to some corrections in rules that pertain to VTR.
MR. CRAIG: What I'm bringing to you today are proposed amendments that we would like to obviously present to you for an option and they're really clean-ups, there's not a lot to them. They were bringing forward some statutory cite changes from the 78th Session, and then we've got specific ones that are just non-controversial legislation that was passed in the 79th.
I can walk through this with you real quickly, if you'd like. Just for example, we're touching on cotton vehicles and the ability of those to also transport chili peppers, to use that same statute, which provides a little broader width for operation of those modules on the highways. Again, not controversial at all.
We've got classic travel trailers. Again, these are older vehicles, 25 years old or older, that can operate the vehicles without limitation. They pay an additional $15 fee for registration of that vehicle.
All-terrain vehicles were also addressed the last session of the legislature. Basically instead of having only a three-wheel vehicle and only having a saddle. they've also now provided for a multi-wheel vehicle, a redefinition of that, and also a bench seat as opposed to just a saddle. You can see these are not real complex.
The last one that I can address for you was salvage vehicles, they redefined that to less complex but probably equally contentious at some point by the public because it provides for totaling of vehicles by insurance companies that many people feel like older vehicles should not be totaled, but by the value, pre-damage value. If the damage itself is of such a dollar value, the insurance company tends to total those out, and the upshot of that is when they do that under current law -- used to you could pay a total loss and the individual would keep that vehicle and continue to operate the vehicle as if it were not totaled out, now we have to be notified. We then flag that record, they do become salvage vehicles, and that's noted on their subsequent title which reduces the value of it, and there's money associated with that process that the customer has to pay.
But for this purpose, all we're doing is citing that change to that definition of what a salvage vehicle is.
So having said all that, I would recommend at this time and propose that we adopt these amendments.
Any questions?
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the recommendation. Do you have questions or comments?
MR. JOHNSON: So moved.
MR. HOUGHTON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. BEHRENS: Agenda item 4(a)(2), these are rules pertaining to right of way, and John Campbell will present these for you.
MR. CAMPBELL: Good morning. For the record, my name is John Campbell, director of the Right of Way Division.
I'd like to present for your consideration this morning Minute Order Number 4(a)(2) which provides for the proposed adoption of new Section 21.801 and new Section 21.802 concerning acquisition and disposal of real property from rail facilities.
Section 21.801 is a new section which adopts essentially the same acquisition procedures that apply to right of way to accommodate rail facilities. It describes the requirements for those purposes, it provides for a unique two-step process of review and approval by the commission. So the commission will actually first approve the investigation of the purchase of the property, and then will come back to follow up with approval of the actual acquisition. It also clarifies that the department may use a right of way acquisition provider under a CDA to acquire real facility property.
Section 21.802 essentially adopts the same procedures for existing real property, disposal for rail facility property. It also creates a priority for consideration of the sale of surplus rail property and that also allows for a little bit more flexibility when we have an exchange situation so that we can deal with a party to an exchange.
It also authorizes the commission to consider the cost of future maintenance as fair value consideration for the transfer of property to another governmental entity. It also directs the revenue from the sale of any rail facility property be credited to the State Highway Fund.
Staff recommends your approval of these motions. Any questions?
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the explanation. Do you have any questions or comments?
MR. JOHNSON: So moved.
MR. HOUGHTON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. BEHRENS: Agenda item 4(a)(3) concerns travel information and is to link community websites to our rest areas and to our travel information centers. Doris?
MS. HOWDESHELL: Good morning, commissioners. For the record, my name is Doris Howdeshell and I'm the director of the Travel Division.
The minute order before you today is for proposed adoption of new 23.13 concerning links to community websites from rest areas and travel information centers. The purpose of this minute order is to outline the policies and procedures that communities must follow in order to make that link.
The purpose of the links is to provide information to the traveling public when they are standing in a rest area, for example, that has a Wi-Fi connection. There are paragraphs in here that provide for how to get approval for links and also removal if there are complaints in regard to the link.
Staff recommends approval and I'll be glad to answer any questions.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the explanation and recommendation. Do you have questions or comments?
MR. JOHNSON: Doris, you mentioned what would be one of the reasons that there might be a removal?
MS. HOWDESHELL: If we get three complaints from the traveling public, for example, if the information on that community's website is outdated or inaccurate, then we would work with that community to get the information either updated or remove it from the link.
MR. JOHNSON: While I've got you in my sights, I wanted to mention personally the terrific job the Travel Division did on the film at the short course. I thought it was exceptional. I made those comments but I didn't get to see you and congratulate you.
And then more subtly, I want you, for mapping purposes, to consider the difference between Yellowstone National Park and Old Faithful, just a subtle difference there.
MS. HOWDESHELL: Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Do you want to respond to that Old Faithful-Yellowstone shot or just leave that lay.
MR. JOHNSON: No. That's another issue that we've been discussing.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, do you have other questions or comments for staff?
MR. HOUGHTON: So moved.
MR. JOHNSON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. BEHRENS: Agenda item 4(a)(4), these are proposed rules for adoption concerning oversize and overweight vehicles. Carol?
MS. DAVIS: Good morning. I'm Carol Davis, director of TxDOT's Motor Carrier Division.
The minute order you have before you proposes rule amendments to Chapter 18 concerning oversize and overweight limits. These amendments are mostly clean-up: they clarify motor carrier registration requirements for permit applicants; they clarify escort vehicle requirements; implement several bills that were passed during the past session; they eliminate a requirement for certain permit applicants to provide tax lien information; and clarify reporting requirements for an extended expiration date for Port of Brownsville permits.
We also have a new section, Subchapter 8, which implements provisions of House Bill 1044. This establishes the Chambers County permitting program, provides for the county to issue permits for the transfer of overweight loads on FM 1405 and the frontage roads of SH 99 and Cedar Crossing Business Park. And requirements in these proposed rules were modeled after the Port of Brownsville permitting program.
We are recommending approval of the minute order.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the explanation and recommendation. Do we have questions or comments?
MR. JOHNSON: Carol, again while I've got you in my sights, I think few people realize or recognize the amount of work that you and your team did in concert with the districts as a result of Hurricane Rita and her visit and the repercussions afterwards, and I appreciate what everybody did and what you were able to do in response to my call in terms of some of these overweight and oversized residential moving of residences getting back into place.
MS. DAVIS: Thank you. I appreciate that.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Other questions or comments, members?
MR. JOHNSON: So moved.
MR. HOUGHTON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. BEHRENS: Moving to our rules for final adoption, agenda item 4(b)(1) concerning rail facilities and comprehensive development agreements. Doug?
MR. WOODALL: I'm Doug Woodall, TP&D for the Turnpike Division. I'm here for Mr. Russell who is on a well-deserved vacation.
MR. WILLIAMSON: He sure doesn't look like Phil. Now, who determined well-deserved, his employees? I mean, who was the well-deserved vacation? Did you need a vacation from him?
MR. WOODALL: Yes, sir.
MR. WILLIAMSON: One thing about this commission is we'll help you dig that hole just as deep as you can.
(General laughter.)
MR. WOODALL: House Bill 2702 of the 79th Legislature --
MR. WILLIAMSON: Is this your first appearance?
MR. WOODALL: Pardon?
MR. WILLIAMSON: This is the first time you've been in front of us?
MR. WOODALL: Yes, sir.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Oh, man, this is a free shot.
MR. HOUGHTON: There's no video record of this either.
(General laughter.)
MR. WOODALL: House Bill 2702 authorized the department to enter into comprehensive development agreements for rail facilities or rail systems. This minute order would adopt new Section 7.11 concerning comprehensive development agreements for these facilities or systems.
Rules implementing this were part of a new Texas Administrative Code Chapter 7 entitled Rail Facilities. The additions to the rules were posted in the Texas Register, an opportunity for comments was offered till 5:00 p.m. on September 12, 2005. We received no comments.
Staff recommends your approval.
MR. WILLIAMSON: No comments?
MR. WOODALL: That's correct, sir.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Everybody liked it?
MR. WOODALL: Pretty straightforward, a little bit over one page of rules that pretty much defer the processes and procedures for rail facilities to Chapter 27 which is our established process for comprehensive development agreements.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the explanation and the recommendation. Do we have questions or comments?
MR. HOUGHTON: So moved.
MR. JOHNSON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. BEHRENS: Jim is going to talk about final rules for adoption concerning our Unified Planning Work Program.
MR. RANDALL: Yes, sir. Good afternoon, commissioners. Jim Randall, director of the Transportation Planning and Programming Division.
Item 4(b)(2), this minute order adopts amendments to Title 43, Texas Administrative Code Section 15.4 relating to the Unified Planning Work Program. Section 15.4 currently provides that travel outside the metropolitan area boundary by a metropolitan planning organization staff and other agencies participating in the MPO planning process shall be approved by the department and funded from the Transportation Planning funds. The amendment to Section 15.4 removes this requirement and instead requires department approval of travel outside of Texas.
The amendments further provide that the travel through Arkansas by the Texarkana MPO staff and travel through New Mexico by the El Paso MPO staff shall be considered in-state travel.
The proposed rules were published in the August 12, 2005, issue of the Texas Register and comments were received through September 12. One comment was received from the Association of Texas Metropolitan Planning Organizations, or TMPO. TMPO agrees with the amendments to remove the requirement that the department approve travel beyond metropolitan area boundaries but raised other issues outside the scope of the proposed rules. The department staff will consider TMPO's other comments for possible future rule amendments.
Adopting these rules will reduce administrative burdens on both the department and the MPO staffs. Staff recommends approval of this minute order.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the explanation and the recommendation. Do we have questions or comments?
MR. HOUGHTON: So moved.
MR. JOHNSON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. BEHRENS: Agenda item 4(b)(3) are rules for final adoption concerning our Logo Sign Program. Carlos?
MR. LOPEZ: Good afternoon, commissioners. My name is Carlos Lopez and I'm director of the Traffic Operations Division.
The minute order before you provides for final adoption of rules to implement Senate Bill 1137 and House Bill 2453 of the last legislative session. The rules allow for implementation of a tourist-oriented directional sign program for wineries, agricultural interest facilities, and other tourist-oriented businesses, allow 24-hour pharmacies to participate in the Logo Sign Program, and repeal the Major Agricultural Interest Sign Program.
The proposed rules were published in the Texas Register on September 9, 2005, and we received two comments. The Railroad Commission of Texas has requested that propane retailers be allowed to participate in the Tourist-Oriented Directional Sign Program. The department declined to accept this comment since propane retailers do not represent a significant or unique tourist attraction, however, these proposed rules would allow gas stations that have propane-refueling capabilities to have a propane legend added to their logo sign.
A private citizen requested that the proposed rules be amended to allow the use of an RV-friendly symbol on the logos of those businesses that meet certain requirements for the parking and movement of recreational vehicles on their property. The department agreed with this comment and has incorporated in it the new language.
We recommend approval of this minute order.
MR. WILLIAMSON: So now we can drink and get plenty of propane on our way, those signs tell us where to do that.
MR. LOPEZ: Yes, that's exactly right.
MR. WILLIAMSON: This would be Frank Madla's pet project.
Members, you've heard the explanation and recommendation. Do we have questions or comments?
MR. HOUGHTON: Move to approve.
MS. ANDRADE: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: You have some thoughts, John?
MR. JOHNSON: I don't have any comments, no.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. BEHRENS: Agenda item number 5 is our Transportation Planning minute orders; there are three minute orders and Jim Randall will present those to you.
MR. RANDALL: Again, good afternoon, commissioners. Jim Randall, director of the Transportation Planning and Programming Division.
Item 5(a), this minute order approves the 2006 Statewide Mobility Program of the Unified Transportation Program, or UTP. The UTP is the basic transportation planning document that guides and controls project development and construction for the department.
In order to align the UTP with the simplified budget strategies outlined in the Strategic Plan, the department has divided the UTP into two documents: the Statewide Preservation Program and the Statewide Mobility Program.
The Statewide Mobility Program is part of the BUILD IT strategy and contains all the department's categories which enhance the transportation system. Additionally, the 2006-2008 Aviation Capital Improvement Program, as recommended by the Aviation Advisory Committee at its August 4, 2005, meeting, is being submitted with the SMP for your consideration.
Also included in the SMP are public transportation project listings and program information for 2006 through 2009. Actual transit program allocations and your grant recipients will be approved by future minute orders.
The 2006 SMP will authorize over $12 billion in transportation projects through Fiscal Year 2009. Along with the major mobility categories, the SMP will allocate $840 million in new programs for congestion mitigation and air quality funding, STP mobility funding for our eight largest metropolitan areas, district discretionary funding, and other transportation programs for state parks, railroad crossings and landscaping.
The 2006 SMP incorporates funding from the recently passed federal transportation bill SAFETEA-LU. As part of SAFETEA-LU, Congress authorized new congressional high-priority projects for Texas. In the 2006 SMP, we will ask the commission to authorize $660 million in new federal earmarks for project development and construction.
Overall, SAFETEA-LU will provide an estimated $14.5 billion for Texas through Fiscal Year 2009. This is the third such increase over the last federal bill TEA-21.
A 30-day comment period regarding the draft 2006 SMP ended October 7 with no comments received. With approval of this minute order, the department may continue the project planning and development for Fiscal Year 2006 and beyond.
Staff recommends approval of this minute order.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Now, Jim, you said this would result in what level, what dollar contract level in 2009?
MR. RANDALL: In 2009 we're probably looking at at least $3 billion. This is $12 billion over the four-year period, 2006 through 2009.
MR. WILLIAMSON: And how does that compare with say the current year?
MR. RANDALL: I believe we're over that right now as far as we're in the $3- to $4 billion, I believe, as far as actual letting.
MR. WILLIAMSON: So by inference, the plan itself doesn't anticipate what changes might occur at the local or regional level, nor what concessions the regions might be executing.
Members, you've heard the explanation and the recommendation. Do you have questions or comments?
MR. JOHNSON: So moved.
MR. HOUGHTON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. RANDALL: Thank you, sir.
Item 5(b), this minute order approves the 2005 Texas Rail System Plan and plan summary. The purpose of the plan is to identify current and proposed rail projects, determine infrastructure and capacity needs on the Texas rail system, and to develop an awareness of the issues and processes by which to address transportation needs by policy-makers around the state.
The plan focuses on major rail relocations and improvements to the state's rail system that provide public benefits related to improved safety, reliable mobility, economic vitality and system preservation.
House Bill 3588 and House Bill 2702 passed by the 78th and 79th Texas legislatures, respectively, broadened the department's responsibility concerning rail facilities.
In an August 31, 2005, letter to the Federal Railroad Administration, Governor Rick Perry designated the department as the agency that will administer and coordinate Texas's participation in rail-planning activities and responsibilities as required by federal regulations.
A public hearing notice was published in the Texas Register on September 9, 2005, with comments accepted through October 10, 2005. A public hearing on the plan was held in Austin on September 23, 2005. Six oral comments and 34 written comments were received, and a summary of the comments and responses is shown as Exhibit A.
I might also mention yesterday we received a letter from Speaker Craddick also supporting the Rail Plan.
Upon approval of this minute order, the 2005 Texas Rail System Plan will be submitted to the Federal Railroad Administration through the Federal Highway Division office.
Staff recommends your approval of this minute order.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I was just reading through some of the comments. You didn't just print all the nice ones, did you?
MR. RANDALL: Oh, no, sir. Go back to the back.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Oh, there's some in back? I didn't get there yet.
MR. RANDALL: As far as the comments they were basically that they were pleased that we have the plan, they were encouraged with and wanted us to put a little more emphasis on passenger rail, especially high-speed passenger rail. And of course, we got various comments on supporting various corridors around the state. They encouraged safety, also encouraged us looking at new technologies to implement in the future.
One of them recommended that we reroute existing proposed corridor beyond the existing one. This was, I believe, out in the Coupland area those folks would like to see us go farther out to the east if we could, consider maybe rerouting that area.
Also, we made two slight revisions in the document itself. We had mistakenly included a designation of major metropolitan districts, leaving out Corpus and Lubbock, and they showed us the error of our ways, so we removed that reference from the report and the map, corrected that. Also, some mistake over affiliations we needed to update.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, members, you've heard the explanation and recommendation. Do you have questions or comments?
MR. HOUGHTON: So moved.
MS. ANDRADE: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. RANDALL: Item 5(c), this minute order recommends the approval of five applications --
MR. WILLIAMSON: Isn't it amazing that we're talking about rail? It's amazing. Six years ago, who'd have thought we'd be talking about rail? It's amazing. Go ahead.
MR. RANDALL: Okay, sir. We recommend the approval of five applications seeking to deviate from statutes on railroad safety that concern minimum clearance distances between railroad tracks and structures.
On October 1, 2005, the department assumed all powers and duties of the Texas Railroad Commission that relates to railroads and the regulation of railroads, and with the new law established by House Bill 2702, the department is authorized to perform any act and issues in your rules in orders permitted by the Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970.
Five applications concerning railroad safety were filed with the Railroad Commission that are now pending before the department. The applicants have provided information such as plans, site restrictions and photographs to describe obstructions within clearance zones and the relative locations of existing and proposed rail facilities.
A summary of the applicant information and their requested railroad clearance deviations is shown in Exhibit A. Each applicant has requested a deviation from requirements specifying the minimum clearance between railroad tracks and structures.
All plans and sites have been requested and reviewed by department rail safety inspectors. The claims for deviation requests have been reviewed and are recommended for approval with specific qualifying conditions.
Department rail safety inspectors will conduct follow-up site visits to ensure the qualifying conditions, such as warning signs, lighted signs and other safety features are installed as outlined in their applications. Inspectors will also ensure that the servicing railroad companies are notified of the clearance deviations.
Your approval will allow for greater, more cost-effective use of these rail facilities while ensuring the safety of railroad employees and facilities.
Staff recommends approval of this minute order.
MR. WILLIAMSON: This includes the item the governor wrote us about with regard to cement?
MR. RANDALL: Yes, sir. There were five applications pending that came over to us effective October 1.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Mike, how bad is the cement shortage impacting us on our construction business?
MR. BEHRENS: I think it's somewhat better but there still are some contracts where they're still having to get in line to get some cement, but I don't think it's as bad as it was several years ago. But I think it's probably if you have a bigger concrete business like some of our contractors, they probably have some priorities. If you're a small person, it probably is more of an impact. Say the individual that goes out, he might have to wait in line while large pours are being made.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the explanation and the recommendation. Do you have questions or comments?
MR. HOUGHTON: Move to approve.
MR. JOHNSON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries
MR. BEHRENS: Agenda item number 6 concerns toll projects. We'll have Doug come back up, and there's three minute orders concerning Bexar County and the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority, and then one concerning our quarterly report concerning Travis and Williamson counties on the Central Texas Turnpike System. Doug?
MR. WOODALL: Good afternoon again. My name is Doug Woodall with the Turnpike Division.
Item 6(a), the minute order grants final approval of a request by the Alamo RMA for financial assistance in the amount of $1 million to enable them to participate in the CDA procurement process on the US 281/Loop 1604 project, and also allow the RMA to obtain engineering, financial and legal services for project development and developmental financial terms proposed by the Alamo RMA for inclusion in the CDA.
This minute order also directs the executive director to implement the actions authorized and required by these provisions.
Staff recommends your approval.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Why?
MR. WOODALL: To allow for participation of the Alamo RMA with the Department of Transportation on this project.
MR. WILLIAMSON: You're good. He only skipped one beat.
(General laughter.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: We have the Honorable Dr. Thornton with us, but if you don't mind, we'll lay out all three and then speak about all three after all three are laid out, if that's okay with you.
Is that okay, Richard?
MR. MONROE: Yes, sir.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Amadeo, can I talk with you a moment, please? I'm sure the members have questions besides myself, but I need to clarify something.
I'm keenly aware that when we do things we're basically laying the groundwork to treat everybody the same in the future, and I'm for all doing this, but I just want to be sure I understand.
MR. SAENZ: For the record, Amadeo Saenz, assistant executive director for Engineering Operations.
What we're doing here is we're working closely in partnership with the Alamo RMA in the evaluation of the CDA proposals that were received for the toll system project on US 281 and Loop 1604. These toll equity requests for $1 million will be allowed so that the Alamo RMA staff can have resources to help us in the evaluation.
We're treating this toll equity request as a loan with the understanding that we will have a success story. If we have a success story, then the money that we have basically provided to the RMA for their evaluation can be paid back to the department so that we can then have that money to be used for the development of other potential projects across the state.
MR. WILLIAMSON: So if you're the Nueces RMA some day, or you're the Coastal Bend RMA, and you're in the process of thinking about your first project and Kiewit comes along and proposes a CDA, much the same way as the Cintra or Zachry American did to Alamo, we're basically saying to the Coastal Bend RMA we're sitting here ready to advance you the money to help you analyze it along with us.
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir.
MR. WILLIAMSON: By habit, we're not going to treat one area different from another.
MR. SAENZ: No, sir. We're going to basically treat every area the same. We will advance you the money so that you have the resources to be able to evaluate, whether you're evaluating as part of the team, both of us together, or if the project team be you as an RMA that was independent, it could have a toll equity request for doing the evaluation, but then as you go to closing and you go out there and either get a concession fee back to the RMA or you go out there and do your bond issuance to finance the project, and at that point then you would basically reimburse the department so that we would basically have that money to be used elsewhere across the state.
MR. WILLIAMSON: And how will your recommendation as the lead staff person differ if Kiewit makes that proposal to the Coastal Bend RMA, not to us?
MR. SAENZ: It will work the same way. If the RMA had already selected the project and were moving forward with the project and they needed assistance for the preliminary development and selection of a potential concession, they would be doing the work, they would be taking the lead, they can still come back and ask for toll equity and we would treat it exactly the same.
But when they finish and go through their process and do select someone to do the project, whether they get a concession or they go through a bond issuance where they get the resources to pay for the project as a design-build project, and at that point that money could be reimbursed back to the department. So it works the same way, whether we're lead or they're lead.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the staff's explanation and recommendation and Amadeo has answered my questions. Before I ask staff to lay out the next one, do you want to ask questions about this, or do you want to wait and hear them all?
MR. JOHNSON: Hear them all.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, thank you, Amadeo.
Mike, if you don't mind, let's go ahead and lay all three of them out and let Dr. Thornton speak.
MR. WOODALL: Item 6(b), this minute order grants preliminary approval for the executive director to negotiate and develop an agreement with the Alamo RMA for the planning, financing, and potential design, construction, operation and maintenance of several projects by the Alamo RMA.
This will also include a license of state-owned right of way to the Alamo RMA for the purpose of developing these potential projects. These projects are Interstate 35 from the Bexar-Guadalupe County line down to Interstate 37 in the San Antonio Central Business District, State Highway 16 west from Interstate Loop 410 to Loop 1604 north, and the US 281/Wurzbach Parkway interchange.
This minute order also directs the executive director to present the draft agreement to the commission for its future consideration.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Again, members, want to question and comment now or wait for the third? Okay, go ahead.
MR. WOODALL: 6(c), this minute order will grant preliminary approval of a request by the Alamo RMA for financing in the amount of up to $7.5 million, also in the form of a loan. The requested assistance will be utilized for project-related work performed by the Alamo RMA staff and administration, as well as legal, financial and engineering consulting, for the purpose of developing preliminary feasibility, environmental, public involvement, schematics and preliminary financial plans. The assistance may also include plans, specifications and estimates, as needed.
The initial projects will include adding capacity on the projects in the previous minute order: Interstate 35, State Highway 16, and the US 281/Wurzbach Parkway interchange.
This minute order also directs the executive director to implement the actions authorized and required by those provisions.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Do you have questions?
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay. We have as our witness the Honorable Dr. Bill Thornton, who is the chair of the Alamo Regional RMA. Bill, good morning, sir.
DR. THORNTON: Hi, Ric. How are you doing?
MR. WILLIAMSON: Fine. How are you?
DR. THORNTON: Hope, in all this misery of athletic teams, you should remind them that San Antonio is the home of the World Champion Spurs. We don't worry about chalk and things like that.
(General laughter.)
DR. THORNTON: Let me say to Corpus Christi, as a former mayor, former chairman of our chamber, the things I heard this morning are very exciting, and I will tell you clearly that those decision-makers in San Antonio, led by primarily our Commissioner Hope Andrade, we look forward to working with Corpus Christi and doing it in a regional way, as you mentioned several times, to benefit the people of Texas. It's very exciting what you're doing. Congratulations.
Ric, I think we're seeing that vision you and I talked about once casually and the governor's plan to involve local involvement in addressing congestion problems. This action today is a major step forward in accomplishing that and taking it to a reality, and I think it will be an exemplary act that you take here, and we will take this very seriously and do a very good job.
These three items are significant. I remember, Commissioner, and you said this is going to be a challenging task, and we know that it is, and we take that very seriously. But it also then binds us more closely, which I talked about at your meeting in Austin. What we're recognizing, I think, even more as you take this action today is our partnership, our proper relationship with TxDOT, that being the RMA and TxDOT.
As we talked about, we'll be using your right of ways, we're using your resources, we will fit into your system, we will fit into the interoperability of these toll projects around the state. You clearly are what binds all of this together, yet you, I think, very wisely and generously allow for local participation.
This partnership is developing now with people, not just documents and dollars, and I will tell you that our engineer -- I call him ours -- David Casteel and his staff, have done an exceptional job in bringing us into this. And also Amadeo Saenz which we've talked personally several times just simply to say thank you for the way we're being managed, and this partnership is being nurtured, I think, very, very well.
Let me say our community, since our meeting in Austin last month when other polls were coming from other communities, our community of those citizens who live closest to this project are supporting these efforts at the rate of 62 percent. That's a good estimate, and that's before we've even started putting our message out of the benefits of acceleration of these projects and moving them along much quicker.
The task is before us. If you vote favorably on this, you've given us an opportunity. We're here to say thank you for that. The resources are tremendously important for us. Every dollar we're spending is a loan borrowed from the city and the county to this point and then from TxDOT here.
Let me just add parenthetically, some way in there, if there are ways to find some of our just day-to-day, turning on the lights and paying the phone bills, that would be helpful too, but clearly these are funds to carry us through these major projects.
This nascent movement of RMAs, I promised you several months ago we would become your favorite one and that we would try to be a model for those who would follow, and we do share advice with other RMAs that call us. We take this very seriously and we're saying thank you.
I will also tell you this, first one -- and I mentioned this to Amadeo -- that we're going through with your leadership -- and this, Commissioner Houghton, goes back to what you were talking about -- as we look at these future three projects, we will not look for separation from TxDOT but rather we will be looking for more partnering with TxDOT as we do any of our functions in the future. We recognize how closely tied we are.
So we hope for a favorable vote on these and we promise to do some good work for you, Mr. Chairman.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I appreciate those kind words, Bill. You've worked hard and I think we've all demonstrated patience as we go through the rough spots.
Tell me, it appears to me -- it could be a good friend of mine once said you tend to project to the public that which you wish to occur, you have to be careful about that -- but it appears to me that almost suddenly across the state people have kind of blinked twice and said, Well, you know what, we don't have any money, I guess we really do have to do this. It doesn't seem to have near the emotional negativism that I saw even a couple of months ago. It's almost like overnight people have kind of opened their eyes and said, Look, it's either congestion or pay for it; don't think it really matters, gas tax or tolls, you've got to pay for it.
Are you seeing that in the San Antonio area?
DR. THORNTON: We are. Our polling shows and our meetings with the citizens groups, if someone is finally confronted with the truth of limitation of funds -- and I point it out, I said, TxDOT is spending money in San Antonio, 410 and I-10, 410 and 281, I-10 as it comes into the downtown, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, TxDOT is spending in San Antonio. Now, if you want further dollars spent, we're going to have to bring new dollars for these projects to be accelerated. And people understand that.
If they recognize an effort, a tremendous effort is being made but if we want more, we're going to have to bring new dollars. And if you give them the choice: raise your taxes, isn't going to happen; raise your gas tax, I don't believe will happen. And both of those are not choices, they are impositions, and everybody in Bexar County will pay those when you fill your car or pay your taxes, as opposed to tolling which is a choice and only those who benefit from the improvement will pay.
So I think the vision, the creation of what you've done several years ago -- and that's why I say this nascent movement -- it's going to be received well if people understand. And if we can get 62 percent of the people before we send our message out, Commissioner Andrade, already 62 percent, when we get the message out, it's going to be much less volatile, it will be a welcome approach to solving these problems in our cities.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, it just seems to me like -- and I was talking with Mike last night -- I travel the state a lot and just almost overnight it's changed, it's been remarkable.
DR. THORNTON: You have served in elected office. There are always those who say no, there are always those who say no.
MR. WILLIAMSON: The easy way out, grabbing the Road Fairy.
DR. THORNTON: But I will tell you, this effort that you are giving us an opportunity to participate in addresses these problems, I think, very fairly and very effectively, and you involve local participation. It's a very creative, farsighted way to do it.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, we've got three minute orders before us, and you've heard staff's explanation and recommendation and the witness speaks on all three. Are there questions or comments of the witness?
MS. ANDRADE: I'd like to make a comment. Chairman Thornton, it's great to see these agenda items, and I'm pleased at what we finally have arrived, and I know that we've been through some rocky roads together, but at the end I knew I was confident that it would all work out. I think it was just the infancy of the RMA, and as a parent, I think that we still wanted to make sure that it was going to be okay.
And as a parent also, I'll tell you that you are my favorite RMA, but we parents have a way of showing that all of our children are our favorites, so Cameron County is also our favorite RMA and so forth.
But thank you for your leadership, thank you for hanging in there with us, and I'm glad that we're going to make this loan, and I think it proves our commitment to keep you involved in the decision making. So thank you for your patience in all this.
MR. THORNTON: I'm not an engineer, but any great road that's going to last a long time is going to have to have some dirt moved and some disruption of people's lives to get a foundation. We established a firm foundation to build something that will last long beyond my time. I tell people all the time: we will not see the benefits of RMAs and their ability to address problems in the future, but it's on a firm, firm foundation.
Thank you to you, Hope, and Mr. Chairman, to you.
MS. ANDRADE: Thank you.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Ted, did you have anything?
MR. HOUGHTON: The message that I've been preaching -- it sounds like I'm preaching -- across the state is One Texas, and Mr. Chairman, that message I've taken to Houston Monday that we are One Texas, as Houston goes, goes the state, as Dallas goes, goes the state, and no one is bigger than the state of Texas. And I look forward to working with the Alamo RMA as well as all the other RMAs, and this is a dynamic state, it's incredible what we've got going. And when we look at as the whole, the whole is bigger than the pieces, if the pieces start falling apart, we're in trouble.
So with that said, it's going to be lot of fun. There's a lot of heavy lifting but it's a lot of fun heavy lifting. Look forward to working with you.
MR. WILLIAMSON: John?
MR. JOHNSON: I listened to a conversation between a reporter and one of the members of the commission, and I was under the impression this item was going to be deferred.
MR. WILLIAMSON: We were just trying to pull that reporter's leg.
MR. JOHNSON: Oh, so I didn't hear that accurately?
DR. THORNTON: That's not funny, sir.
(General laughter.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, you know, is this as big as CTRMA, Bob, the initial projects at the Alamo, are they bigger than the initial projects at CTRMA.
MR. DAIGH: Everything is always bigger in Austin, sir.
DR. THORNTON: That's slow-pitch softball, isn't it.
(General laughter.)
MR. DAIGH: This is substantially larger than the CTRMA.
MR. WILLIAMSON: So this will be basically the next step, this will be our largest RMA effort now.
MR. DAIGH: Yes, sir, but we'll be back.
(General laughter.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Bill, I want to thank you for pointing out about the state's commitment in regular gas tax dollars, because that does get lost in the background noise. And I know Patrick and Ben in Austin and other guys in North Texas, they've got to write about what they've got to write about, but no one has stopped investing gas tax money in Travis County, in Bexar County, in Harris County, in Dallas and Tarrant counties. I'm thinking that we've let something like $400 million so far in gas-tax-related construction projects in Bexar County.
We're going to keep on doing that, it's just a question of no road, slow road, or the toll road. If you want to get it faster and if you want the economic opportunity, the congestion relief, the improvement of air quality and safety that comes with it, then this is the choices that we make.
DR. THORNTON: You are doing a lot of work in San Antonio for which we're grateful.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Thanks for coming all the way down here, we appreciate it, and we appreciate your comments.
DR. THORNTON: Thank you, sir.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, do we have questions or comments to staff?
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, Mike, let's bring the first one forward, please, sir. It's item what now?
MR. BEHRENS: 6(a).
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have item 6(a) before you, members.
MS. ANDRADE: So moved.
MR. HOUGHTON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries. I have item 6(b) before you.
MS. ANDRADE: So moved.
MR. HOUGHTON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All oppose, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries. And now I have item 6(c) before you.
MS. ANDRADE: So moved.
MR. HOUGHTON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries all three times on the very capable and strong back of Hope Andrade.
Thank you, guys. Let's go forward and build some roads. Hey, the real fun is going to be when we figure out how to move that railroad out of downtown San Antonio and Austin. That's going to be fun. If we get Proposition 1 passed, we'll get that done first.
MR. BEHRENS: Okay, Doug, let's go to 6(d).
MR. WOODALL: Item 6(d) seeks your acceptance of the General Engineering Consultant's quarterly progress report for the Central Texas Turnpike Project. The project is on schedule; it's open to traffic with construction completion on or before December 2007.
The estimated completion cost is currently $437 million lower than the original GEC's projections. The current costs are estimated to be approximately $2.5 billion compared to approximately $2.9 billion in the original GEC report.
Some progress items to mention since the last report. On Sections 1 and 2 which is the MoPac North extension, the southbound frontage roads and major utility tie-ins are completed, and that frontage road facility is open to traffic. On Section 8 which is east from the Parmer Lane/620 interchange over 183, the westbound frontage road is completed and open to traffic. The traffic switches allow mobility along the corridor while facilitating completion of the main lanes, allowing more room for completion of the main lanes.
On State Highway 130, some milestones on 130 with the opening of the State Highway 195 bridge over Interstate 35. Also construction has begun on three main lane toll plazas and eight ramp plazas. Substructural work has being completed at three of the interchanges and the largest utility relocation along the project in terms of scope was completed, that's a reroute of the TXU utility line along FM 685, and that has been completed under this quarterly report.
As far as the right of way, a total of 411 parcels were required for construction; 329 of those parcels are now available for construction; the remaining 82 parcels are primarily corner clips, slivers and minor acquisitions. Segments 1, 2 and 3 of State Highway 130 are under construction and scheduled to be completed prior to September of '07, and Segment 4 they're anticipating initiating construction this December and will be completed with that segment on or prior to December of 2007.
Staff recommends your approval of the quarterly report.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the explanation and recommendation. Do you have questions or comments?
MR. JOHNSON: I have a question.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Mr. Johnson.
MR. JOHNSON: Doug, concerning the interoperability of electronic tolling of our other toll systems around the state, are we satisfied that we are well advanced in making sure that all these systems are interoperable, especially the CTTP?
MR. WOODALL: In discussions with Mr. David Powell of the Turnpike Division, it's my understanding we obviously have agreements with the existing toll authorities and have numerous options available to us for the advancing RMAs, their projects, and we feel confident that we'll have interoperability on every system.
MR. JOHNSON: Well, you know, agreements are one thing but the actual interoperability of the toll tags and the readers and the toll plazas is another. We need to make sure that everything works.
MR. WOODALL: Yes, sir. And the tags that we have in place and I believe in August you approved the CDA for systems integration, and that system that's proposed under there would be interoperable with the existing systems in place. So we think we're well on our way to achieving interoperability.
MR. JOHNSON: Good. Thank you.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Other questions or comments?
(No response.)
MR. JOHNSON: So moved.
MR. HOUGHTON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. WOODALL: Thank you very much.
MR. WILLIAMSON: That wasn't too bad, was it?
MR. WOODALL: No, sir, not at all.
MR. BEHRENS: Agenda item number 7 under Finance will be the Quarterly Investment Report for that same Central Texas Turnpike System. James?
MR. WILLIAMSON: James, I'm glad you finally decided to travel with us for once.
MR. BASS: Mr. Munoz was busy today.
For the record, I'm James Bass, director of Finance at TxDOT.
Agenda item 7 presents the Quarterly Investment Report for the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2005 which ended on August 31.
At the end of August, the balance of investment funds for the 2002 project stood at $1-1/4 billion. The detail of those investments have been provided to you in the quarterly report.
Staff recommends your acceptance of the report and will be glad to answer any questions you may have.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Did we buy natural gas futures with some of that money?
MR. BASS: No. I don't believe you have allowed that in our investment policy.
(General laughter.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, members, you've heard the report and the recommendation. Do you have questions or comments?
MR. JOHNSON: So moved.
MR. HOUGHTON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. BEHRENS: Agenda item number 8 concerning pass-through toll financing, we have two minute orders, one requesting that we have the authority to negotiate an agreement, and one to give us the authority to execute a pass-through toll agreement. James?
MR. BASS: The first item seeks authorization to begin negotiations with Galveston County on a pass-through toll agreement. The county submitted a pass-through toll proposal providing for improvements to Farm to Market 646.
Your approval today would in no way be an agreement to any specific terms but would simply allow the department to begin negotiations with the county in hopes that we would then be able to come back in a future month and provide you with those specific terms for your final consideration at that point.
Staff recommends your approval of this minute order.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Amadeo? Is this a local road or a regional road or a state road?
MR. SAENZ: This is a regional road in Galveston County.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Is this solving primarily a local problem, a regional problem, or a state problem?
MR. SAENZ: It's solving a regional problem, it's solving some safety issues and some mobility issues. As we go through it and evaluate it further, we'll be able to tell how much of each of those will gain benefit.
MR. WILLIAMSON: So it's primarily to reduce congestion and improve safety project?
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir. And this will lead to some economic development in the area by being able to add capacity to this corridor.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I'm sure it will assist in economic development but will it provide any additional economic opportunity?
MR. SAENZ: I think as we look forward that you allow for this added capacity you will have some economic opportunity for making some changes in the type of development that will be there, for example, if we're building residential there's some potential economic opportunity in more commercial development that would allow the possibility for having some facilities to move into the area that will bring additional jobs.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the presentation and recommendation and heard Amadeo's comments about this particular project. Do you wish to authorize staff to negotiate on this matter?
MR. HOUGHTON: So moved.
MR. JOHNSON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries. Don't get too far, Amadeo.
MR. BASS: Item 8(a)(2) seeks your authorization to begin negotiations with Hays County on a pass-through toll agreement. The county has submitted a pass-through toll proposal providing for improvements to US 290, Ranch to Market 12, Farm to Market 1626, and Farm to Market 967.
Once again, your approval today would simply give us the authority to begin negotiations and would not be agreement to any specific terms.
Staff recommends your approval, and I would like to bring to your attention that Hays County Commissioner Will Conley is in the audience in case you might have any questions for him.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Is he the one that is always saying no toll roads under any circumstances?
MR. BASS: I'm not so advised.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I suspect that's from Comal County, that's not from Hays County.
Okay, Amadeo. I'm going to take you through each one, one at a time.
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir.
MR. WILLIAMSON: 290, local, regional or state?
MR. SAENZ: 290 is a regional and state. In this area where we're talking about here, it's a regional area providing some added capacity and mobility improvements on 290.
MR. WILLIAMSON: So as it's used now, this section of 290 is thought to be a regional and a state road?
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir.
MR. WILLIAMSON: And is this problem we seek to solve a local, regional or state problem?
MR. SAENZ: A regional problem with some statewide issues.
MR. WILLIAMSON: And is it primarily focused on which of our five benefits?
MR. SAENZ: It will be focused on the reduced congestion; it will focus in the Austin area because they're near non-attainment and to some improvement of air quality; it will be focused on safety that we're going from a four-lane, undivided to a four-lane, divided facility; it will be some congestion relief. So that's four of the five, and of course, economic opportunity will also come as this corridor gets developed.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Farm to Market Road 1626?
MR. SAENZ: 1626 and 967 are a major commuter route from the south to the northern part of Hays County in Austin, parallel to 35, so it's a regional road. It will solve a regional problem and allow, I guess, some statewide benefits in that if you have this corridor you could move some traffic off of 35 which is a statewide corridor.
MR. WILLIAMSON: So it's primarily congestion relief?
MR. SAENZ: It's congestion relief.
MR. WILLIAMSON: So would you anticipate an improved level of service for both these roads?
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir. Both these roads that we're building and some slight level of service as traffic moves off of 35 and into this facility that we could see some improvements on 35.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Highway 12, the fourth project?
MR. SAENZ: Highway 12 is a regional, more local. It's from San Marcos going west and for traffic that travels from the west to San Marcos, to access San Marcos but also 35. So there is some local and some regional, maybe leaning more towards the regional. This also will solve a safety issue in that it is through the Hill Country area. It will also solve a congestion issue and you have some benefits then for regular access to 35.
MR. WILLIAMSON: It's okay to solve a local problem, but it's more a local problem we're solving.
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir.
MR. WILLIAMSON: On a regional road.
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, do you have questions of Mr. Saenz?
MR. HOUGHTON: Amadeo, when are these projects slated to be improved in the Unified Transportation Plan?
MR. SAENZ: These projects are not currently in the Unified Transportation Plan.
MR. HOUGHTON: Not at all?
MR. SAENZ: No. Hays County, of course, is part of the CAMPO area and they are not in their short-range plan, they're somewhere in the middle- to the long-range plans. Hays County is very aggressive and has done bond elections and has some resources, and they'd like to partner with us as they develop these projects, either through some partnership money, or some of them, like 290, as well as some pass-through toll opportunities on the other projects.
MR. HOUGHTON: What's their total investment and our commitment? Obviously, ours is a payback over time.
MR. SAENZ: Right. We have been in communication with the county. $43 million is the total cost of all the projects, of which they're asking for $33 million in pass-through tolls, so they're investing close to $10 million in the proposal. And we will meet with them and discuss the terms and conditions, applying the benefits and the indexes to determine kind of what the final number really is.
MR. HOUGHTON: So we don't have a real formal index to analyze the road as to the state issues versus regional issues versus local?
MR. SAENZ: No, sir. Some of these indexes we're still in the process of developing to determine what is the actual benefit to air quality. We know that as you add capacity to the road, you add capacity so your volume over capacity ratio improves. When you have a lower volume over capacity ratio, you get an improvement in air quality, so we know there's a benefit there.
We also know that if you add capacity to this road and traffic moves to this road can have an impact to the roads around it, both positive and negative, so that could give you a regional or a very wide air quality impact, and we're working to develop those.
It's the same thing with some of our congestion indexes and such and so forth.
MR. HOUGHTON: I can't see the future but I can sure see what people are maybe starting to think is solving local problems with pass-through financing which may not be in our best interest. That's my view.
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir. We will look into that. I think one way to look into that is that as we go through it, if the road is local and it's only local, maybe the level of investment from the department and the level of investment from the local entity that their shares maybe need to change so that you have more of an equal, so that you can have some kind of balanced level of input into the project.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, it's a shame that we'd be having this conversation in Corpus Christi and not in Austin, but I hope we'll continue next month in Austin and in December.
But you make a good point, Ted, and I think all members have to start focusing on and project to the public our concerns. I'm aware that the department has approached TTI for some help on finalizing the measurement indexes, and I think it's time for us to be talking about them so that Bob Daigh and David Casteel and Craig Clark all understand the criteria.
MR. HOUGHTON: The thing is these aren't on the Unified Transportation Plan, they pop up as well, here, we found a road that needs to be improved, where we have this plan out here as major state and regional roads that are sitting out here five or ten years from now and not being brought forward, but we may be solving local issues with state funds and that, in my opinion, may not be in our best interest.
MR. WILLIAMSON: But it also might be in our best interest.
MR. HOUGHTON: It might.
MR. WILLIAMSON: And I haven't asked you about the timeline of solutions, I'll start asking you about that next month. I need for you to be prepared, and in turn, your employees need to be prepared to tell you just straight up is this a local or a regional or a state road, and is this a local problem, a regional problem or a state problem. And next month I'm going to be asking is this solution long-term, short-term, or mid-term, and then we're going to know what the indexes are that measure the impact of the investment.
That's the only way we can get to a point that this program will be self-sustaining and is supportable by the legislature.
MR. HOUGHTON: Are some of these communities abandoning these long-term projects or these short-term fixes? I'm sorry, that's a loaded question.
MR. SAENZ: Well, I think every proposal is different. These are certainly priorities, for example, in Hays County, these are the priorities they've identified. Unfortunately, through the resources that they have, working through their normal traditional funds that come through the MPO and such, they were not able to fund these projects, so these projects kind of got left behind.
MR. HOUGHTON: So they could be circumventing the MPO.
MR. SAENZ: Right, and that's where we need to evaluate to see what impact these projects have on the system with respect to the indexes, and that will determine the level of commitment or reimbursement that we can maybe put into these projects to see what happens. There was a time that these projects competed with all the other projects at their level and they did not make that list.
MR. HOUGHTON: Didn't make it.
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir.
MR. HOUGHTON: And now some communities could be, in fact, circumventing the MPO, they didn't get what they want and they show up here.
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir, and that's the first thing we check because there are some projects that we've received that were in the plan but may have been in the plan somewhere down the road, and so the community wants to advance them because it's a huge project that solves either a local problem or solves a regional problem, some of them are statewide problems. But the area as a whole did not see it as a highest priority so they put it on down, but maybe the regional importance and the local importance are such that the local community will now want to spend money on that project and bring it forward, it's important to them and we're all going to benefit because that asset is put on the ground.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Again, not unlike Category 12 has been treated in the past, but hopefully towards a little bit more self-control by requiring that the local government put the cash up first and take a chance on whether or not they're going to get their money back very fast.
But it was time for us to start having this conversation and we need to spend about three months talking about it.
MR. SAENZ: That's why we set some standards as to how much and at what rates we will pay back to make sure that we are going to be paying back based on the usage. So if the traffic is there, then that repayment will be fast.
MR. WILLIAMSON: That poor Hays County commissioner is sitting back there saying, Holy crud, you guys are fixing to bust my deal.
MS. ANDRADE: Amadeo, I have a question. And I agree, I think I'd feel much more comfortable when we have guidelines so that when we go into communities and we talk about if it's a local road, this is what we have. But I would ask you, at what point do we start reimbursing them on these pass-throughs?
MR. SAENZ: We do not start reimbursing them until the project is completed and open to traffic.
MS. ANDRADE: At the end of the year?
MR. SAENZ: Well, what we do, once we negotiate it and we come back to you with the terms -- as you'll act on the next item -- then we will execute an agreement. The local entity will go out there and build a project and in that agreement we'll decide whether we're going to reimburse you every six months or once a year, and it's all based on the traffic that uses the facility over that period of time.
MS. ANDRADE: Okay, thank you.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Just one final question, Amadeo, is this package --
Or maybe you know, Mike -- is this wrapped up in a previous deal we had with Hays County for them to do something else and we wanted done?
MR. SAENZ: Yes.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I mean, this is a little bit of us holding up our end of the deal?
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir. This is one, as I mentioned, we have been in communication with the county judge, and one of the things that we had suggested to the county is that if they went out there and they did certain things, we would entertain a pass-through toll agreement.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Certain things on our statewide long-term system.
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Seek a long-term solution to a statewide problem on a statewide road.
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir. So this is tied to that. We will take that into consideration as we move forward.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Any other questions or conversations with Amadeo, members?
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: You've heard the explanation staff and the recommendation.
MR. JOHNSON: So moved.
MR. HOUGHTON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. BASS: Item 8(b) would authorize the department to enter into a pass-through toll agreement with Williamson County. Under the agreement, the county would initially finance the construction of various improvements.
The department would reimburse the county over time based upon the actual traffic on the improved roads at a rate of 10 cents per vehicle mile, with a minimum of just under $7.6 million per year which would lead to a 20-year payback, and a maximum of just under $15.2 million per year which would equate to a payback over a ten-year period, until such time as just under $152 million is reimbursed to the county.
There are a couple of things I'd like to point out before moving to the staff recommendation. One of those is a technical correction to the minute order you have before you. The next to the last paragraph on the first page, you will note on the second line it says, "Through tolls of $152,942,000." That should read "$151,942,000."
MR. WILLIAMSON: Oh, they won't mind giving us another million; leave it like it is.
MR. BASS: No, this is what we pay them.
(General laughter.)
MR. BASS: The second thing I would like to point out, from Williamson County with us today, Judge John Doerfler and Commissioner Frankie Limmer are also here in the audience, I believe.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Oh, there they are over in the hole. Hey, guys. Where's Krusee? I saw him last night. He must be stuck out in the bay fishing.
MR. BASS: And staff would recommend your approval.
MR. HOUGHTON: Is this the first one that gets approved, executed?
MR. BASS: No. This would be the fourth one that has received final approval with the terms from the commission.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, Amadeo, step up and let's go through it. We have done a lot of this already about these projects, so I don't want to drag it out, I just need to be sure that we go through the exercise.
Let's take, for example, item number 2 out to the right, project 2.
MR. SAENZ: Project 2?
MR. WILLIAMSON: That is clearly a regional road.
MR. SAENZ: Item number 1 and number 2 are regional roads but really with statewide implications. US 79 in Williamson County is a four-lane, undivided facility.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Does it go all the way to A&M?
MR. SAENZ: I'm sorry.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Does it go to A&M or Hearne?
MR. JOHNSON: Jacksonville.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Oh, is that the Robert Nichols Express?
MR. JOHNSON: It will have a special toll lane for him.
MR. WILLIAMSON: That's right, a high-speed toll lane for Robert Nichols.
(General laughter.)
MR. SAENZ: As you go past into Milam County, then it goes into a four-lane, divided highway with a grass median, so this closes the gap.
For this project, like I said, it's regional because it provides regional mobility but it also provides statewide mobility. If you look at the traffic on those two projects, as you get closer into the Austin are, they're operating at levels of service where you do have congestion. As you get further away, they're operating at a little bit higher level, Cs and Ds, A and B being very good, C and D being fair to good, and E and F being basically you're experiencing congestion.
By changing the facility from what I would call a four-lane, undivided with no shoulders to a four-lane, divided with crossovers and left-turn lanes where you control the access to both sides of the highway, you improve that level of service to C in the areas near Austin and to A and B in the areas further away. So in essence, you're improving that whole corridor from a congestion perspective.
MR. WILLIAMSON: This has got to be a mid-term to short-term solution, this can't be a long-term solution for that area.
MR. SAENZ: This is a mid-term solution. I think eventually the next solution would be the possibility that you would expand and as traffic builds up that this facility would be developed as a potential controlled access facility expressway, with the possibility of future main lanes to be managed lanes or tolled lanes.
MR. WILLIAMSON: So has Williamson County done its traditional fine job of advance planning and acquired enough right of way for those express lanes?
MR. SAENZ: This project will be acquiring right of way. We will be working with Williamson County with respect to the amount of right of way so that we do have it.
One of the other projects that we'll talk about, the 183 project, is regional for the projects we're talking about, but the 183 also has very significant statewide implications. But that project, what is simply being done right now is getting the right of way, widen out and build only the frontage so that in the future you can expand the main lanes as tolled lanes, and it will tie into the 183A system that is currently being developed by the CTRMA.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I just want to be sure on that with regard to particularly the 79 part, that we've either negotiated with them to be sure and get the right of way bigger or we ourselves are going to go out and buy bigger right of way, because you can never buy it cheaper than right now.
MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir. The right of way is a big expense on those projects, and we negotiated and I will verify that, but I'm sure that we are buying enough right of way to be able to address the future expansion.
The other projects are more regional and local, the project on 1660 and 2338. For example, the 1660 project, is the realignment of an existing farm to market road, and this will allow for, in essence, almost a bypass around Hutto that will improve safety, mobility, move commercial traffic out of the downtown area of Hutto because 1660 goes through Hutto. So it will improve safety, it will improve mobility.
All these projects, as you add the capacity, as I mentioned earlier, will have a positive impact on air quality. I don't have what the measure is but that's something that's being developed.
So all these projects will meet all of the factors that we've been talking about and have a positive impact for the whole area.
The 2338 is also a major arterial that's going from a two-lane highway to a five-lane, curb-and-gutter rural facility with left turns. It will improve mobility, it will reduce congestion. That one, for example, is currently operating at level F which is basically almost gridlock. By expanding the extra lanes and putting in your left-turn lane, you, in essence, improve that level of service to B. So you have now a facility that will operate. That is, like I said, a local-regional facility.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Let's let members ask questions, Amadeo.
Members, questions or comments for Amadeo?
MR. HOUGHTON: Mine is the same one, the Unified Transportation Plan, were these in the plan or did these just pop up because they were not approved?
MR. SAENZ: These projects were in the long-range plan but were out in past the ten-year mark, more into the longer term. And again, Williamson County has gone through and they're willing to go out there and bring these assets forward.
MR. HOUGHTON: So our investment is $151 million.
MR. SAENZ: Right, $151-. Their original request was $174-, and we're at $151,942,000, $152-, and we would pay it over a ten-year period, so we would probably start paying in 2010, and if the traffic is such, we would pay it in a minimum of ten years so we would pay out by 2020, but if the traffic is not there, then it really would be stretched out till 2030.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Krusee's original request was like $600 million; this is pared way down.
MR. HOUGHTON: They're willing to vote for bonds in Williamson County for $600 million?
MR. WILLIAMSON: Mike is an aggressive guy.
(General laughter.)
MR. SAENZ: What James brought before you when we presented the original submittal, it was presented with a lot more projects, but working with Williamson County and their folks, they decided to break it up into a Phase 1 and Phase 2.
MR. WILLIAMSON: And I might have been overstating it. How close was it? It was much bigger than this originally, was it not?
MR. SAENZ: It was like $272- or something like that.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, $272-. $600- was what he dreamed about. I like Krusee, he's not afraid of anything.
Any other questions of Amadeo?
MR. SAENZ: Just a few more statistics with respect to the safety index and looking at the crash rates for these facilities. A four-lane, undivided facility, for example, on 79, the crash rates on 79 which is the number of accidents per 100 million vehicle miles, is running about in the 100 to 110. If you look at the statewide average for similar roads, that's pretty close to the statewide average.
That piece of 79 that is towards the Milam County line, between 1999 and 2001 had six fatalities. Going to a four-lane, divided highway will certainly improve that because now you have, in essence, separated the traffic. Right now you've got four lanes and no shoulder, so if someone wants to turn left, they're turning left just immediately next to the oncoming traffic, and now you'll be able to control that with left-turn lanes and crossovers.
So those projects, from the safety index, have a great improvement in safety.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Any other questions of Amadeo, members?
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: James is back up. James has given you his explanation and his recommendation.
MR. BASS: With a minor revision.
MR. WILLIAMSON: As revised.
MR. JOHNSON: So moved.
MR. HOUGHTON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. HOUGHTON: Don't leave, James. Can I ask you one more question back on 6(d), what out of the $2.9 billion for the project is equity from all parties?
MR. BASS: On which item?
MR. HOUGHTON: Texas 130.
MR. BASS: There was $700 million from the state and $500 million from the local governments into the project.
MR. HOUGHTON: Thanks.
MR. BEHRENS: Agenda item number 9, Traffic Operations, this is a minute order to recommend some lane use restrictions in Dallas County and Tarrant County and Harris County.
MR. LOPEZ: Good afternoon, commissioners. Again for the record, my name is Carlos Lopez, I'm director of the Traffic Operations Division.
The minute order before you authorizes the creation of a left-lane restriction for trucks on portions of I-20 in Dallas County, I-10 and US 290 in Harris County, and I-30 in Tarrant County.
This restriction will prohibit trucks from operating in the left lane of these highways. Trucks would be allowed to use these lanes to pass other vehicles and to exit the highway. The department conducted traffic studies and determined that these restrictions could be beneficial for safety and mobility.
The department published notices requesting public comment on these restrictions in the August 19 and August 26 editions of the Texas Register and also held a series of public meetings. No comments were received.
We recommend approval of this minute order.
MR. HOUGHTON: Can you amend it for I-10 in Harris and El Paso counties, Carlos?
(General laughter.)
MR. LOPEZ: I think Chuck is looking at I-10 in El Paso.
MR. SAENZ: We're working on El Paso County on I-10.
MR. LOPEZ: Yes, Amadeo is looking at that.
MR. JOHNSON: Carlos, I've been under the impression that there are lane restrictions for trucks on I-10 East in Harris County.
MR. LOPEZ: Yes. This is adding another about nine miles to that, and it covers that same distance because they're going to change it to a 24-7 operation instead of a 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. operation. By the way, all the ones in Houston will be 24-7.
MR. JOHNSON: And when will these go into place as being enforced?
MR. LOPEZ: As soon as we can get signs up and the cities pass ordinances.
MR. JOHNSON: So we're waiting on the city in this case.
MR. LOPEZ: This is the first step in making it all happen. I think, in any case, our signs are already getting fabricated, hoping that you will approve this minute order and the ordinances will be passed.
MR. HOUGHTON: A leap of faith.
MR. LOPEZ: Trust.
MS. ANDRADE: Carlos, I have a question. Do we work closely with that community to see if they can also enforce it? I mean, it's okay we put the signs up, but if they don't enforce it, it doesn't do us any good.
MR. LOPEZ: One of the first things we ask our district engineers to do -- and they've been doing this -- is see if they get that commitment from enforcement, because you're exactly right, a sign doesn't make it all happen, you've got to have the enforcement in place also.
Up to now we've been very fortunate. I talked to Houston before yesterday and they report a very high compliance rate in Houston, that they just had a real good focus on enforcing this in that area. They're not getting complaints from the public or the trucking industry. The public perceives them working well and they're asking for more.
So this is something that started off with a letter that Commissioner Johnson sent back in 2000 and I think it's starting to catch on around the state.
MS. ANDRADE: Sometimes the general public doesn't know when it happens, so maybe we should have a press conference or something to announce it, just not hang up the sign and not do anything else.
MR. LOPEZ: I think in Dallas it might be more kind of a big splash.
MS. ANDRADE: Good.
MR. JOHNSON: Hope's point is a good one, though, in terms of enforcement. My recollection is that on I-10 East there in Harris County, the City of Houston really did a bang-up job in enforcement and got people recognizing the fact, and the traffic accident rates with trucks involved were reduced 68 percent. So I mean, these are meaningful ways to deal with the safety issue, as long, as she points out, enforcement is there. If it's not, people are going to take shortcuts and leeways.
MR. LOPEZ: Right, and I'll just point out that's something that we'll continue to do is look at these after a period of time to make sure they're doing what we intend for them to do.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the explanation and the recommendation.
MR. JOHNSON: So moved.
MR. HOUGHTON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. LOPEZ: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Thank you, Carlos.
MR. BEHRENS: Agenda item number 10 is our contracts for the month of October, maintenance contracts and highway and building construction contracts. Thomas?
MR. BOHUSLAV: Good afternoon, commissioners. My name is Thomas Bohuslav and I'm the director of the Construction Division.
Item 10(a)(1) is for consideration of award or rejection of highway maintenance contracts let on October 6 and 7, 2005, whose engineers' estimated costs are $300,000. We had 20 projects, an average of 3.35 bidders per project, total bid almost $10 million.
There's one project we recommend for rejection, Project Number 4013 in Collin County. This is a sweeping and debris removal contract that came in at 143 percent over. It's a bit high and we want to go back and see if we can get better prices for that contract.
Staff recommends award of all projects with the exception noted.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the explanation and recommendation.
MR. HOUGHTON: So moved.
MR. JOHNSON: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
MR. BOHUSLAV: Item 10(a)(2) is for the consideration of award or rejection of highway and building construction projects let on October 6 and 7, 2005, and it also includes Cameron County Project Number 3208 which was deferred last month. We had 89 projects, an average number of bidders of 3.45 per project, total bid amount almost $410 million.
We have three projects to recommend for rejection. The first project is Project Number 3227 in Panola County. It was 40 percent over, we had two bidders on the project that overbid about $5.8 million, for widening of about 50 miles of lane sections on FMs in Panola County for some safety work.
We feel this price is too high and we'd like to go back and relet it, and hopefully get additional contractors to bid as well.
Another project recommended for rejection in Terry County is Project Number 3214. It was 85 percent over and two bidders on it, $2.9 million was the total bid. This is for some safety work for end treatments over a nine-county area, 16 separate project locations.
These prices are high, and again, we'd like to go back and see if we can actually change a specification requirement in there that might help us get more material suppliers for concrete there and that they might supply the product as well and get better prices for that reason.
The last project recommended for rejection is a project in Grayson County, Project Number 3233. It's 45 percent over, we had two bidders, $2.7 million was the total bid. It's reconstruction of some frontage roads there, and we believe we can get better prices by going back and reletting that one and hope to solicit more competition for that one as well.
Staff recommends award with the exceptions noted. Any questions?
MR. WILLIAMSON: Thomas, I want to ask you about one. You know, every month when I go through these things, I look for the largest contracts and kind of put my eagle eye on those and see what I know about them, and I was reading through here and I think the largest single low bid amount is this one in Goliad County on US 59. Does that sound right to you? Corpus Christi District. Do you want the controlling project number?
MR. BOHUSLAV: I see it there. It's sequence number 3201.
MR. WILLIAMSON: That's the biggest one this month, isn't it? I believe it is.
Now, the reason that I honed in on that was because I had remembered receiving some letters or some copies of some letters from a county judge about that project, so I went back to my file, and then strangely enough, I think yesterday -- and I can't be sure, but I think yesterday that same county judge accosted me at a public meeting about this project.
And I want to ask you a couple of questions because this county judge wrote some pretty serious things for the public record that bothered me quite a bit, and I want to be sure we're not approving a contract that in the end is going to cause more trouble than it's going to help in Goliad County, because based on this fellow's words, I'm not sure we want to move forward with this contract.
And I didn't find his first letter, I just found the second. He addressed this letter to the Assistant Attorney General of all people, he doesn't address it to the chairman of the commission or the executive director, doesn't address it to his district director, he addresses the letter to the Attorney General.
And he says: "Dear Mr. Click, We appreciate your efforts" -- this is him saying this to Mr. Click; I don't know what he's got to do with our highways -- "in continuing our quest for a facility that by TxDOT's own estimation will satisfy the traffic numbers anticipated for another 40 to 50 years. Goliad County has been on this quest for five years" -- this is the egregious part -- "and when we became aware TxDOT was not considering our input for this project from the results of various public meetings, we decided" -- I guess we, there must be more than one county judge involved in this -- "we decided to make the attorney general, the comptroller" -- what in the heck has she got to do with anything? -- "members of the Highway Commission and the Board of Professional Engineers aware of our frustrations.
"Our request today is obtain from the following counties and other persons such correspondence and graphics as they have in their files, Michael Behrens, Craig Clark, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, Comptroller, members of the Highway Commission," the three senior members only -- sounds like an open records request.
"You began receiving our correspondence about the same time Commissioner Andrade began receiving duplicates of our submission. Time is of extreme importance. We ask your immediate attention with complete presentations for two pieces of correspondence. These are necessitated by the news article appearing on August 19, submitted by Turner Collie & Braden."
What's that all about? What do you know about this, Thomas?
MR. BOHUSLAV: I'm not involved on those aspects of planning for this project, but the DE is here, he probably would be able to respond to this.
MR. HOUGHTON: I'd like to state one thing, they said the three senior members, it's those three down there.
(General laughter.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, I mean, I see a copy of this letter less than a month ago and this project pops up now, we're approving it, it seems to me that we've got a very angry county judge that doesn't like the way we're doing business, why would we approve this project? I think we need to stop and make sure we've got him satisfied.
MR. HOUGHTON: I'd like to ask a question. Craig?
MR. WILLIAMSON: Craig, I'm just telling you, I take great offense at people who write letters like this, and I don't want to make him any madder than he obviously already is.
MR. HOUGHTON: Can there be, I call it, bait-and-switch? Can we award this project and then the county judge or somebody intervene and want to change the design of this project?
MR. CLARK: Not at the point that we would award the project and proceed.
The difficulty with this judge and this project predates me in this district, even predates my predecessor, David Casteel. I think it began when Billy Parks was district engineer here when they began a process of public hearings and design development for this expansion of this section of 59.
In the course of that public involvement, this judge was particularly interested in some different design approaches that would be made in this section of highway, some different standards by which it would be built that differed from the controls and the limitations that we had associated with the trunk system program that this project was being advanced under.
Those discussions with my predecessors, myself, and Commissioner Andrade were all made in terms of trying to re-enfranchise this judge in our process and in the ultimate facility that we were going to deliver. We have been able to meet with him and bring some of the proposals that they had into our design at the time that we were advancing it, but we didn't completely satisfy him.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Should we carry forward with this contract? I mean, this letter was dated September 13, that's less than two months ago. If we're going to keep having him complain about what we're doing, why would we spend $49 million, why don't we wait till we satisfy his complaints and go spend this $49 million someplace where people are satisfied?
MR. CLARK: I believe that the information he tried to convey to you and mentioned to me, as late as yesterday when we had the meeting hosted by the city, was that he believed that this project should be approved and awarded as it was let because of the need of his constituents in that county for this facility and the problems that it would address.
MR. HOUGHTON: Is there an election coming up?
MR. CLARK: Probably.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I mean, people ought not to write letters they aren't serious about. Was this need not apparent as recently as two months ago?
MR. CLARK: I think that that letter and previous letters were mainly to try to influence design decisions in that project and change design decisions.
MR. WILLIAMSON: By writing the attorney general of the state and the comptroller who doesn't know anything about building roads?
MR. JOHNSON: Craig, are you including routing decisions when you say design decisions? My recollection was early on he wrote at least one and maybe more letters, but it was a routing issue to the west of Goliad, 59 after you cross the river.
MR. CLARK: And more of his routing was in another section of 59 that we have yet to advance. The section that we're talking about here, there was some routing areas that they did not agree with the exact alignments, but they weren't greatly different, and we were able to, I think, address most of those with him.
MR. WILLIAMSON: What's his reference to this Turner Collie & Braden news article of August 19? Do you know anything about that?
MR. CLARK: That article, I believe, was part of a press event in Victoria where they talked about a variety of projects, this being one, and I think Turner Collie & Braden was involved in some of the other projects, but because of Mr. Parks's knowledge of this particular roadway segment, he made comments with respect to it, and that's what they focused in on the article.
MS. ANDRADE: Mr. Chairman, let me add to Craig's comments. I've had two personal visits, along with Craig, to this judge. I've gone to Goliad and met with him, and this has been an ongoing issue. In fact, one of the challenges that I gave Craig was let's end this because it's just been going on.
He's got a different view as to where he wants this and we pulled the public hearings that were held and that didn't prove that, because he kept saying that the community wanted it also, and it did not prove that. This is where he wants it. The choices that we gave him were: this is where we have it funded; if you want it over there and your constituents want it also, this is how much extra it costs, if you're willing to pay for it, we'll put it there. But he doesn't want to pay for it.
MR. WILLIAMSON: So it's your view that we're not going to have someone unhappy even after we spend this money. Oh, no, you're not saying that? You're just saying we have to move forward.
MS. ANDRADE: I believe the community deserves this. It's been going on for years and years, and it's time that we get it done. It's just the way he, and I believe his brother also has worked with TxDOT before. But we've given him the time.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Oh, that got Monroe up.
MS. ANDRADE: Oh, I'm sorry. We've given him the time and I think Craig spent a whole afternoon with him when we did the second visit. So we've made every effort to listen to him and made every effort to meet his needs.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Don't let us go too far here, Richard.
MR. MONROE: For the record, Richard Monroe, general counsel of the department.
I believe this is one of at least two letters I'm aware of that the judge has written. Grady Click has referred both of those to me, and I wrote to the judge saying these other people are not in a position to answer your questions. Your questions and requests for information should be addressed to this department.
However, I think if you will read that letter carefully, it is difficult to find out what information he is actually asking for. So in this letter of which I am speaking back to the judge, I said you will need to be specific and define for me what information you want and then we will proceed accordingly under the provisions of the Public Information Act.
To my knowledge, he has never responded to my letter, but if you'd like, I can check into that with the people that actually handle the Public Information Act requests. But usually a request from a person such as this and with my prior involvement, I probably would have been made aware if he had ever responded to my letter. As I say, as far as I know, he has not.
MR. WILLIAMSON: But it's your feeling, Commissioner Andrade, is we need to move forward no matter what.
MS. ANDRADE: Yes. It's been a project there for many years.
MR. JOHNSON: Is my recollection in the ballpark as being accurate that we had a visit from that three-county delegation, Bee, Goliad and Victoria, and the Bee County judge was the spokesperson and they were requesting improvements on 59, talking about safety issues?
MR. CLARK: Yes. That was in August.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I think they were requesting something different than this.
MR. JOHNSON: But basically it was 59, it wasn't necessarily this specific, because it covered a three-county area where 59 is quite prominent. In the big-picture, small-picture sort of mentality, I'm confused.
MR. CLARK: The Tri-County Coalition, Goliad being one of the tri-counties, was looking to update the commission on the activities on the 59 corridor in total. In some of the other segments of this 59 corridor, we have projects that are operational changes, that being Super 2 construction of two-lane roadways, that would help the safety but not necessarily adding capacity, and they were trying to make a case with the commission that the conditions have changed and the demands on the system may require us to look again at the possibility of adding capacity.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay. Well, I was just caught off guard, Mike, because I saw the county, I saw the amount, a bell went off, I went back and looked at my file, I found this letter, and I'm asking myself why we're approving the contract when the county judge, an important official in the county, this guy obviously is angry, obviously doesn't like what we're doing, and we obviously have a shortage of money everywhere, so why are we moving forward with a contract that's just going to make somebody madder when we can stop it and go do someplace else until he gets calmed down and we've worked it out.
But are you saying it's not going to work out and the citizens have been waiting many years and we need to move forward no matter whether this person is happy or not?
MR. HOUGHTON: With that said, Ric, you and I were the only ones at the event last night and he made it a point to talk to me about this and said, I really would appreciate your vote to approve it. And I said, Sure, be glad to approve it. I was unaware of the letter since he referred to the three senior members of the commission.
(General laughter.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, like I said, I take things like this really serious.
MR. HOUGHTON: And I did threaten that I could take the money out to El Paso, and he proceeded to tell me I'll come find you. But he was very, very much proactive in his remarks on approval.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay. Well, you've heard the explanation and recommendation and probably more than you wanted to hear about one in particular about this minute order. What's your pleasure?
MR. JOHNSON: I have one question of Thomas. Where did you get them boots?
MR. BOHUSLAV: The tall man's store.
(General laughter.)
MR. JOHNSON: So moved.
MS. ANDRADE: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries. Thank you, Thomas.
MR. BEHRENS: Agenda item number 11 is our routine minute orders, and they've all been duly posted as required. I've looked at all the minute orders and I don't think any of them have any impact on any of the commissioners. I'll go through them if you'd like to; otherwise, I recommend approval of the routine minute orders.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I do have one question about 11(a)(4). Now read that sentence, the explanation.
MR. BEHRENS: "Consider a donation from Mr. Bruce Harvey, a private landowner" --
MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, stop. Now, if he wasn't a private landowner, what else would he be? I kept looking for the hidden trick in this deal. What's the deal?
MR. HOUGHTON: Engineers don't have tricks.
(General laughter.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've had time to look it over. What's your pleasure?
MR. HOUGHTON: So moved.
MS. ANDRADE: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.
Mr. Monroe, do we have reason to go to executive session?
MR. MONROE: No, sir.
MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay. Thank you, Mike, for a job well done.
MR. BEHRENS: We have no open comments.
MR. WILLIAMSON: We have no open comments. We thank Craig one more time for your hospitality, and members, the most privileged motion is in order.
MR. JOHNSON: I don't have a World Series game to go to, so I'm not going to make the motion.
MR. HOUGHTON: Move to adjourn.
MS. ANDRADE: Second.
MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second to adjourn. All in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye.
(A chorus of ayes.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.
(No response.)
MR. WILLIAMSON: For the record, we stand adjourned as of 1:48 p.m. Thank you, members.
(Whereupon, at 1:48 p.m., the meeting was concluded.)
C E R T I F I C A T E
MEETING OF: Texas Transportation Commission
LOCATION: Corpus Christi, Texas
DATE: October 27, 2005
I do hereby certify that the foregoing pages, numbers 1 through 197 inclusive, are the true, accurate, and complete transcript prepared from the verbal recording made by electronic recording by Penny Bynum before the Texas Department of Transportation.
10/31/05 (Transcriber) (Date)
On the Record Reporting, Inc.
3307 Northland, Suite 315
Austin, Texas 78731
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