June 26 Transcipt



TEXAS TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION

MEETING

Tuesday, June 27, 1995

125 East 11th Street

Austin, Texas 78701-2483

COMMISSION MEMBERS:

DAVID M. LANEY, Chairman

DAVID E. BERNSEN

ANNE S. WYNNE

STAFF:

William G. Burnett, Executive Director

Russell Harding, Director, Staff Services

I N D E X

AGENDA ITEM PAGE

Delegation from Harris County 5

Approval of Minutes of May 25, 1995 meeting 36

Funding Authorization 36

Awards and Recognitions 38

Contracts 40

Programs 49

Routine Minute Orders 50

Transportation Planning 54

Guidelines-Restoration & Resurfacing and

Preventive Maintenance 57

Authority to Award Contracts Less than $300,000 58

Promulgation of Rules and Regulations 59

District/Division/Special Offices Reports

Houston District 66

Management Services Office 82

Waco District 89

Report - Texas Historic Bridges Study 102

P R O C E E D I N G S

MR. LANEY: Good morning. I would like to call the meeting of the Texas Transportation Commission to order. We are very pleased to be back in the main office hearing room, and I hope that you all appreciate, as much as we do, the new refurbished look of the room. It is a little bright up here, so if occasionally we don't see you very well and recognize anybody that might be here, please forgive us. We will be working on these lights, hopefully, for the next few weeks to get them something short of our having to wear sunglasses.

Commissioner Bernsen is out of the country and will not be here today; however, we do have a quorum present with Commissioner Wynne and myself.

A public notice of this meeting containing all the items on the proposed agenda was filed with the Office of the Secretary of State at 2:59 p.m. on June 16, 1995 as required by Chapter 551 of the Government Code.

We will begin today's meeting with the delegation from Harris County. This delegation's appearance was arranged at the request of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and State Representatives Senfronia Thompson and Garnett Coleman. I don't know if any of these officials are here today. If they are, we would be very happy to hear from them, and once we hear from you, if you have something to say to us, we would proceed to hear from the other members of the delegation.

DELEGATION FROM HARRIS COUNTY

(Representative Senfronia Thompson, Leroy Chevalier, Allen Provost, Albert E. Coleman, Rev. Jew Don Boney)

MS. THOMPSON: Good morning. I am here with the North Houston Chamber of Commerce, and we are here in opposition to some of the work that the Highway Department is doing in our area, particularly out Highway 59 in northeast Houston. There are several persons here from that community that I would like to ask to speak, and if the Commission would give me an opportunity to speak after they close, I would appreciate it.

MR. CHEVALIER: My name is Leroy Chevalier and I am president of Houston Northeast Quadrant Citizens Chamber of Commerce, and it is a pleasure to speak before the Board this morning. I would also like to recognize my state representative for taking time out to join us this morning who is also a member of this great organization.

There are some things that are involved in the Northeast Quadrant that we felt that we needed to bring to the attention of the Board, and, of course, one of them being the fact that we support African-American males and females participating in the contracts as well as employment practices of the Texas Highway Department, and at this time we would like to bring to the Board's attention that we feel that there is room, obviously, for some more input from minorities in the program.

Now, the U.S. Supreme Court obviously feels that the state of Texas, as well as the rest of the states, must be doing a fine job with minorities as well as blacks on the decisions that they made the other day. So what we are here to do is ask you all to work just a little bit harder, if you would, to make sure that our contractors and subcontractors get an opportunity to participate in the state projects here in the state of Texas. And I understand that you have a great program; we just would like to see a little more participation.

Another area that we have a lot of concern about is the 59 North Freeway in Harris County, Texas, and in particular Tidwell and Laura Koppe. These are two entrance and exit ramps that will allow us to get to the freeway to have access. We, of course, talked with Mr. Burnett at Texas Southern a month or two ago, and as of yet, we have not gotten a report from that meeting, but we are sure that is forthcoming. Had we had it, we would probably be in a better position to know what your position might be in reference to these matters.

But it is very, very important that our community be allowed to get on and off this system, and, of course, we understand that Highway 69 will eventually evolve from 59. Well, we would like to participate in that commerce also, and it would be very, very detrimental to the growth of the community as well as ingress and egress from the system.

I am also general counsel for North Forest ISD School District, and we need to promote economic development, not cut it off. And I am sure you all realize what happens if a community does not have access, especially to an interstate highway -- which I presume this eventually will be. But at this point we need to be able to go to downtown Houston as quick as we can, and that is the way that we go; or in leaving the county going north, we enter at these exits and entrances.

Another area that we have not gotten a lot of help in also -- and this will be brought to the attention through the general contractors -- is that we don't feel that enough African-Americans are being involved in the training programs, of course, that the legislature has appropriated funds for -- as well as this great Board here have felt that the best interest of this state would be had by allowing its citizens to be trained to participate in projects, i.e., the labor program that allows a person to become a journeyman or an apprentice to become a journeyman. We would like to see more African-American participation on these programs.

And I would like to applaud you all for having a program of this magnitude where a person can come on as a laborer on a project, over a period of time, if they are committed and, of course, learn what needs to be done on these projects, are elevated to journeyman, and sometimes this can be from $6 up to $10, and in our community that is sometimes quite a bit of money.

And what we are asking you all to do, if you would, is just to take a look and see whether or not our general contractors -- who I am sure are doing everything that the plans and specifications call for from the Texas Highway Department, including these programs -- doing everything they can to enhance the community. Well, we feel that we are not getting any input in that particular program, African-Americans. And we aren't offended by it; we just have the right to come up here and tell you about it because we know you are going to take care of us; we know you are going to do that.

And there is also another area -- and someone else will hit on this -- but we have a farm to market road called Mesa Road -- I can't remember the number -- in Harris County. Our school district administration, as well as one of our high schools, are located on this street, and it was our understanding that this road was going to be made into a four-lane road beginning last summer, and no work has been done on it.

I visited with our superintendent of schools who had asked us to speak with you in reference to this to see what could be done in order to get this program started as soon as possible. It is my understanding that the land acquisitions had already been made and --

MR. LANEY: What is the name of that road?

MR. CHEVALIER: Mesa Road.

MR. LANEY: Okay, thank you.

MR. CHEVALIER: Yes, sir. And ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate the time that you have given this organization -- well, myself at this point, and it is always a pleasure to talk to any of our state agencies, and, of course, you know from time to time, TEA and other agencies we do have to talk with. But I am sure that I can go back and tell my community that you all will do everything that you possibly can to assist us in doing what we can to make this program work.

And another thing our chamber would like to ask, if you all would like the assistance, if we could work with the Highway Department as well as the general in giving them any assistance in trying to assist them in getting employees that they feel are suitable for the training program. And it is not a money thing, doesn't have anything to do with money in reference to our organization, we just would like to see people working. We understand what the posture of this country is and that is to take as many people off the welfare as we possibly can. Well, we cannot do that unless we put people to work, and this is what we are asking you to do. Thank you very much.

MR. LANEY: Thank you.

MR. PROVOST: Good morning. My name is Allen Provost from Northeast Houston Quadrant Citizens Chamber of Commerce. Thank you all for having us to speak today.

Basically I am going to speak about a little specific and also give you a little case history on the time that we have presented this to the Highway Department in regards to the closures of these exits and on-ramps on Highway 59. If you all are familiar with Houston, I am going to start with 59 and I-10, going all the way from 59 and I-10 past Little York. That includes all of Fifth Ward plus the Northeast Quadrant Citizens Chamber of Commerce boundary which ends on 59 and Little York which is Scenic Woods and Fontaine and all that area over there.

From I-10 and 59 to Little York -- and this is about my third time I have come before, not necessarily the Board here but someone that represented the Texas Highway Department in regards to the closures of these exits, and it started back in 1992, so this isn't the first time that we have presented this here in regards to the closures of those exits.

And the excuses that they gave us as to why they were closing them was because they indicated it was unsafe, they had to have a certain amount of space between each exit ramp, and so I went along with that until I went on 59 South. That is on the southwest side of Houston around Westheimer, Galleria area, all over there. Within less than a mile you have two exit ramps and one entrance ramp in less than a mile, so I couldn't see why that couldn't have been done on Highway 59 over there, the same traffic there, and as of today we still haven't had an answers yet at all.

And like I said, I met with some people from the Highway Department three years ago when they first started working on Highway 59 over there, because some citizens and business people got with us and asked us if we would work with them, and Senator Ellis arranged a meeting with us to meet with the Highway Department during that time there. They told us that they couldn't do anything, but since then we have seen and we have gone and researched and saw where they had other exit ramps.

Basically, what all this is doing to our community is basically killing our community from economic development within the community, and we can't do anything within our community if we don't have any growth coming into our community. We have a lot of businesses leaving because they are all dying because there is no accessibility for the businesses.

We have approximately four ramps that are supposed to be closed on Highway 59 over major thoroughfares: Collinsworth, Crosstimbers, Tidwell, Laura Koppe, all those exits there are major avenues into our community over there, and it is killing us. So basically, we are here today to ask for your assistance in making sure that these ramps aren't closed and we have on and off privileges on Highway 59. If you all could assist us with this, we would appreciate it.

But we are not going to stop with this right here, just like I didn't stop two or three years ago when they told us there wasn't anything could be done, and I went and got some pictures of Highway 59 South to -- some of them where something was being done, the same thing they said was dangerous to be doing. Why is it dangerous over here and it ain't dangerous over here for the same thing?

So basically -- that is basically what we want to ask your assistance with, and if you all could do that, we will appreciate it, and if you need us to take you on a tour of it or whatever, come down there, we would be more than glad to do it, to show you what we are talking about. I could take you on 59 South to show you that over there also. So I appreciate your time and thank you very much.

MR. LANEY: Thank you.

MR. COLEMAN: My name is Albert E. Coleman. I am also a member of the Northeast Quadrant Chamber of Commerce, and also am a board member at the North Forest Independent School District of Houston, Texas, and I appreciate Ms. Senfronia Thompson and the state representatives that represented us in Austin, Texas.

I am here in defense of -- Mr. Chevalier kind of touched upon the Mesa Road problem situation there. To get the geographical boundaries for that particular street, you do have a maintenance station on that road. It is on Mesa and your station is just north of McCarty Drive which is old 90 Highway and it extends north, and your maintenance plant is on the most improved part of that road.

However, a few years ago -- maybe two years ago, the State Education Agency was at our school district doing an accreditation visit and observed that portion of that road during the time that children were walking to and fro from one school to the other. We have two schools there: a middle school along that road and a high school; 2,500 at the high school and about 1,000 students at the middle school which is Kirby and the high school is Smiley High. And they observed the dangerous, very hazardous situation there; students were walking on both sides of that road.

And that was at that time an accreditation count down against North Forest because of something we didn't have any control over. And at this time we are having to bus students within a mile, both evening and mornings, and so this has been a burden on us and this is something we would like to have very seriously looked into.

The City of Houston did come out and put a raised curb on the west side of that street which has made it more dangerous at this point, and we are confronted with that situation now. So we appreciate anything that you could do as far as helping us at this time. It is very critical, and I invite you to come out and visit with us -- I have a card; I believe I left it on the pink -- and we would like to give you a tour of that. And we would certainly appreciate it if you take this under your immediate advisement. Thank you very much.

MR. LANEY: Thank you, Mr. Coleman.

REV. BONEY: Good morning, Mr. Harding and Mr. Laney and Ms. Wynne and Mr. Burnett. My name is Reverend Jew Don Boney, and I am with the Northeast Quadrant Chamber of Commerce and representing the Minority Contractors Alliance of Texas, and I chair the Houston Chapter of the National Black United Front. I have been down to Austin many times before. You may have heard of the coalition that freed Clarence Brantley off death row, the Gary Graham Justice Coalition. I also chaired and was a lead organizer in those efforts.

I should say that just by virtue of just understanding my remarks that they are pretty much concerned with diversity, with equity, justice and racism, and I want to just offer a disclaimer that I don't have a lot of good expectations about this meeting. There is a lot of frustration that I represent in our community, anger, and a lack of trust, and that really has come about from a track record of a history of what has happened when we have come to these state agencies and state institutions and asked them to be responsive to our needs and concerns of the community.

We have basically been cut out, we have been ignored, and that would be bad enough. I think when Republican President Richard Nixon was around they called it Deny and Neglect, but it is not denying anymore and it is not neglect.

There are a lot of problems with the Texas Highway Department of Transportation, and one of them is the lack of diversity I am looking at right now. It is incredible that an agency that is responsible for literally billions of dollars doesn't have any people of color represented in the highest decision-making body. I am happy to see that there is a woman here.

I remember a woman told me once that when she sees another woman speaking, she is able to hear her own voice. There is nobody here that I have any confidence in that is going to hear our voice. And I have been in so many meetings with representatives and officials and agencies where people look back politely and look interested and nod their head, and then after everybody leaves, they go on and do exactly what they intended to do in the first place.

And as I was thinking about this meeting and all of the effort and time and money it cost this small delegation representing a much larger body to come up with to come up here, that phrase of Martin Luther King kept going through my mind: How long, how long, how long are we going to have to continue to go through this process to be put off, shut off and continue to beg and plead for what simply ought to be ours.

Here it is 1995 and we are having the same discussion again to try to basically put what a really rational and logical, not too emotional, passionate discussions before you about what you really already know ought to happen. You know that there is not enough diversity at the top of this. There ought to be an African-American sitting on this commission. I don't care whether it is expanded or kept the same.

But basically we are tired of look at all white groups making decisions that affect our community, over billions of dollars of our tax money making decisions how to distribute that, and somehow consistently overall, that money never trickles down in any equitable or just way. Minority contractors aren't receiving their fair share of opportunities for contracts in this state, and it is not because there are not some that are capable and able, but there are systemic problems.

We have raised this before with Democratic governors and Republican governors, but the reality still remains the same. There have been issues that have been raised regarding employment of minorities on these contractor systems. An interesting thing about it is people have basically said we need some central location where everybody can come and put in their application, and it still hasn't been done. That is an easy thing. It is not really affirmative action, it is just an affirmative effort toward providing a possibility of equity and justice and diversity that will serve the entire population of the state, small things but more than things that give little signals, things that can make a demonstrative difference in what happens with regards to people's lives.

There was a report that was promised to us back in May or June, a draft report, that we would have the opportunity to review and comment. It is the end of June, basically, and there is no draft report for our review and comment, so there is not much of an opportunity to measure our remarks based upon what we expect to be the decisions and actions by this body.

Representatives of the Northeast Chamber of Commerce have really been, I think, overly polite and basically trying to ask that you don't kill their community again. I am not that polite.

Basically, the black community and business community and neighbors and Fifth Ward was destroyed by the actions of the state and how they develop highways, not just one freeway, Interstate 59, but 59, 45, I-10, three just utterly devastated and destroyed Fifth Ward and all the black business communities in that area, and there was no excuse and justification for it at all except somebody decided, well, those black people over there ought to bear the brunt of the burden of this transportation development that is going to facilitate downtown Houston and the suburbs while destroying our community.

Basically, in 1995 that ought not happen again. It simply must not happen again. And I know that people will say that we are dollar short and a day late, it is going to cost too much money, the cow is already out of the barn, the concept has already been done, the work has been started, so now here we are trying to stop something that never should have been started. But the reality is that if you don't stop it, then the blood of the people whose lives are going to be killed is going to be on your hands as well as those who preceded you.

I prefer not to bear the sins of my predecessors so I try to live and basically a right and just person so I am not willing to go along with what happened just because some money and time was spent on doing that if it is wrong, and the bottom line is this cannot be justified in any sense except to say that you really don't care what continues to happen and are going to deal another fatal blow to that community.

When 59 was expanded just recently and they bought up land on both sides, we had a thriving black restaurant on the corner of Cavalcade and 59. Well, that restaurant was facing eminent domain, they gave them some money for it, but it wasn't enough money to build a new restaurant, so one more black business closed.

When the toll road was established and built, I was one of those who was a staff leader for the Metropolitan Organization to try to stop the Hardy Toll Road. Well, we couldn't stop it, and so a number of churches were destroyed, a number of businesses were destroyed, a number of homes destroyed in that same neighborhood again.

You know, there really comes a time when enough is enough. Somebody else ought to bear the burden of this development and not that neighborhood again and not the African-American community again, not another black community ought to ever be burdened. The same thing happened when 288 was put in. They put in, because of community protest, a few exit and entrance ramps so it didn't completely and wholly destroy the neighborhood, it just crippled it, so it is running around disabled and it hasn't really fully recovered yet, but at least it bears some life and that is probably because it probably, more than the Fifth Ward, is an integrated neighborhood.

And I basically would hope that we could speak to you basically at the core of your soul, that we take basically a moral position of basically what is right and just, that somehow that might reach you. I am not really convinced that that really works in the area of public policy and public officials these days, because generally what we find that public officials do -- not just this body but from the state and federal and local level on down -- do what is expedient. And so then we are driven to take extraordinary type measures, file lawsuits, ask for federal investigations, protest march, demonstrate, boycott, create public awareness and initiatives so that the media has to pick it up and we have to talk about the racism of the State of Texas.

That was required to save Clarence Brantley's life. If it hadn't become a worldwide issue, if it hadn't been on 60 Minutes twice, if indeed the credibility of the entire state and the governor and the legislature weren't held in the balance, then Clarence Brantley basically would be six feet under in a cold grave and dead by now.

Now, even though they did appoint a special judge and when the judge reviewed -- Perry Pickett, a white man who was fair, honest and just and honorable -- came to the conclusion that indeed public officials had framed Clarence Brantley for a murder that he did not commit, that the two likely suspects were white, and that Clarence Brantley should immediately be released and was a victim of a travesty of injustice by corrupt and racist public officials, it took another year for Clarence Brantley to get out of prison. He did finally get out, the prosecutors never prosecuted the real suspects, and Clarence Brantley never got a dime for the ten years he spent on death row for being the only color was the color of his skin. That is not justice, but at least he is alive.

If you fail to do the plan that is already put forward and you don't eliminate these exit and entrance ramps and you allow these existing exit and entrance ramps to continue, you won't have given justice but you will at least have done some measure toward not having their blood on your hands and allowing a community to have at least some shred of opportunity to continue to live.

I want to tell you a story and it may explain something to you. Back in the '50s there was an elderly black mother and father who had a home in the Fifth Ward. They bought their home about 15 or 20 years earlier, and when they decided to build Interstate 10 and 59 and expand it, they decided that they needed their home so it faced eminent domain. Well, even though that family had added three rooms to that home, even though they had lived in that home and improved it and had been in that home for some 20 years, what the Highway Commission in all of its great wisdom decided to do was to pay them exactly the amount of money that it cost when they originally purchased that home.

Obviously, they couldn't buy another home. It broke their hearts and it killed them. Those are my grandparents, and that is the legacy that I bring when I come to this Highway Commission and say please don't kill these other black businesses, these other families, don't break any other hearts. And I really say please, saying I don't really believe that is going to work. I think we are going to have to make this a dramatic issue. I think we are going to have to lay the responsibility at the highest elected official in the state, all the way down to the lowest. I think it is going to have to be an issue that involves the governor and the legislature and the public and federal officials and the court and the community.

I would hope that in 1995 we all have a lot greater wisdom than that. I think if we want to, we can really work together. I think diversity is good for the public interest and the community interest, I think it is good for the state. I think there is a way that we can be in partnership where the white community in southwest Houston as well as the black community in Fifth Ward and the multi-racial community in Third Ward could live intact, because all of us want homes and intact neighborhoods.

And it just seems strange and odd that somehow in southwest Houston somehow the state and the federal government in its wisdom found the need to put up noise abatement walls in southwest Houston, but the freeway that runs through our neighborhood has nothing to stop the noise and the sounds of the traffic and the trucks. And we are just clear in 1995 that the only bottom line reason that this continues to happen is really racism and white skin privilege, and the reality is in 1995 we are not going to continue to say please, please and how long, how long, we are going to say no more and what is it that we have got to do to make this reality different.

So I would really urge you in the strongest way that you produce that report, that it be forthcoming, that we move from a question of dialogue and asking to structuring a relationship that is going to be a relationship of equity, that we move to find mutually, jointly workable solutions to these problems. And I think all five exits ought to remain open, quite frankly. I won't say keep some of them open. Keep them all open because you have already taken too much from us, we have already paid more than our share of the cost. You can't repair the damage that has already been done, so let's you not add to the damage that has already been done. Thank you.

MR. LANEY: Reverend Boney, before you leave, what report are you referring to?

REV. BONEY: This was the draft report from the staff that was promised by Mr. Burnett.

MR. LANEY: Thank you.

MR. LANEY: I have one other name, Marcie Wiehagen.

MS. THOMPSON: You can tell from the testimony that has been presented to you today that we are particularly interested in maintaining the economic development that has been developed in our area and that would be maintained by having access from egress and ingress on the freeway. What has happened is we have a proliferation of businesses along that particular corridor that developed there that we thought was a great asset to our community, and as a result of the new structure of Highway 59, those entrances have been deleted and that has a direct impact upon the businesses along that way.

When someone exits to go back three or four blocks, usually they change their mind as to whether or not that they want to go and render some services or do business with a particular business that is located in an area. They rather just go on down further on the freeway.

Also in that area we have a vast number of persons who work, and being able to access the freeway at those various levels is of great benefit to those persons to be able to get on the freeway very quickly and get off very quickly. And we would certainly hope that you would take these things into consideration in giving us some help in alleviating some of the problems that we are encountering in that area. Thank you.

MR. LANEY: Thank you very much, and I appreciate the presentation of the delegation. I think there might be some comments from my fellow Commission member, but let me say something at the outset. I believe there was a public meeting a week ago, Wednesday, on the issue of the exits, and I also believe that a response from the Department will be forthcoming in relatively short order.

I know there has been a delay of sorts, but it is an issue very clearly and very much on our radar screen, so to speak. We are interested in it because we know how interested you all are in it, and we are not at all interested in doing anything that somehow or other undermines or jeopardizes the economic development of the Fifth Ward.

I do want to digress and say one thing in response to Reverend Boney's comments and just one slice of his comments, and that is Ms. Wynne to my left, I think, as far as I am concerned, has one of the strongest records of any appointed official in state government over the last four or five years on issues that you addressed, and I don't think you have a more receptive ear in the state than you do before you right now, and I cannot speak more highly of anyone that I know of in an appointed position than I can of Ms. Wynne in that regard. So let me respond in that regard with respect to those comments.

Other than that, is there any other questions or discussion? Ms. Wynne?

MS. WYNNE: Bill, can you give us kind of an update on where we are on these entrance and exit ramps and sound walls?

MR. BURNETT: Okay. On the entrance and exit ramps at Cavalcade and Collinsworth and up in that area of Houston, when the district first prepared the scenario of what was to be constructed out there, we received a lot of comments very similar to what you heard today as to the impact in those neighborhoods. The Houston District went back and held a meeting -- I believe it was June 22 -- and we held it up in the neighborhood, and the district received comments from the public. And I think the meeting was advertised, it was held at a local church, and I know that Representative Harold Dutton was very active in helping the Department set this meeting up. And the district is probably in the process right now, Commissioners, of reviewing the information they received and making some recommendations to the administration of the Houston District as to how best to address these concerns.

On the area of sound walls, Commission Wynne and myself, back in late April or early May, met with Representative Dutton -- this has been a great concern to Representative Dutton and I am sure it is also with Representative Thompson -- and we listened to what Representative Dutton was telling us about sound walls and the procedures that the Department uses on sound walls, and in a nutshell the Department's procedure is to contact the landowner and ask the landowner if the landowner is interested in sound walls, but we also realize that there are a lot of tenants, be it businesses or homes, that have a different opinion than the landowners.

So we have asked our Environmental Affairs Division to do two things. One is reformulate the way we go out and poll the public as to the needs of sound walls to, number one, to see that we obtain not only the landowner's opinion but also the tenants' opinions, and I think that we will have all this in place by October 1 of this year.

We have also asked our Civil Rights -- excuse me -- our Environmental Affairs Division to put together a packet so that when we talk to landowners as to what a sound wall is, that they don't envision just a massive gray concrete wall. I mean, technology and aesthetics have come so far in this century that sound walls can be pleasant and can actually enhance the values of some properties. So the Environmental Affairs Division is also in the process of putting together a brochure that when we contact someone by mail as to the need for sound walls or their opinions, they will have a brochure that show them what some of the options are what sound walls should look like.

The third major change we are making is that we have asked that when we go out and start polling the public in a neighborhood of the affected properties on sound walls, that we send these out certified mail, return receipt requested. And what we used to do is that no response was the same as I don't want a sound wall, and a lot of people get a lot of mail and a lot of people may not realize what they have got in the mail and may have had a response or wanted to make a response and didn't realize that by discarding it into the trash or it just being lost or delivered to the wrong address or whatever, they missed their opportunity. So we have made those three changes and those will all be in effect October 1.

The report. I thought we had a very good meeting at Texas Southern University back on May 4 and we had promised the people in attendance at that meeting that we would furnish them a copy of the report that we gave the Commission. The report was finished late last night or yesterday afternoon. I have reviewed it and it will be given to the Commissioners in its final form today. We will be glad to mail to each of you a copy of that report in this afternoon's mail or tomorrow's mail at the latest, but the report is complete.

And the report goes in there and addresses primarily 42 issues or questions that were raised at Texas Southern, gives the Department's response. Some things like how can the Houston Area Urban League or how can City Representative Yarbrough work with the Department to improve some of the issues you have raised today, we have spelled out to the Commissioners what the Department proposes to do.

On the issue of how do we notify -- how would a citizen know where to go to get work on a construction project, we make recommendations to the Commission on that. And then the other major issue was or two other major issues were input into our programs and we make a recommendation into the report that the Department create a joint liaison committee with the Texas Alliance for Minority Contractors in the Houston area and that be in place by August 1, I believe is the date -- it may be September 1. And then there was one other issue, and I can't remember what it was, a major issue, but we do have statistics in here and we do have numbers, and this report was finished yesterday.

REV. BONEY: I just wanted to ask a question for clarification. It was our understanding that this was going to be a draft document. As I heard you respond to Ms. Wynne, it sounds like a final document, so that is the first question. And second, could we get at least one copy of that draft document to take with us this morning so that we would be able to review and comment? Thank you.

MR. BURNETT: And you will notice that it is still marked draft.

REV. BONEY: When will it be made final?

MR. BURNETT: I think our intent was to let the Commissioners review it, and then at their direction we will make any improvements they request and then it will be final in, hopefully, a relatively very short time.

MS. WYNNE: I think the question that is being asked is are you all going to have any input on what is in that document.

MR. BURNETT: We will be glad to receive input from you.

REV. BONEY: What is the time line?

MR. BURNETT: If we could receive input by, say, the first of August. If that is too long, we can move it up.

REV. BONEY: That is long enough, sure; it may be too long.

MR. BURNETT: Would you like to look at the 15th of July?

REV. BONEY: July 15.

MS. WYNNE: So we will keep it in draft form until we get your responses.

MR. PROVOST: If I may, you didn't address Crosstimbers, Laura Koppe, Tidwell or Parker, you stopped at Collinsworth and Cavalcade.

MR. BURNETT: I am not today -- do not have the input from what was given at the meeting on June 22, so I do not know what input the district received on the other ramps or other locations that you refer to, and I think that we will go back and be sure that the district has input on those, sir.

MR. PROVOST: That came up at our meeting at TSU and also three years ago when I first addressed  -- 

MR. BURNETT: Yes, sir, and there is a possibility that those were discussed at that meeting last June 22, last Wednesday. You know, just trying to remember roads off the top of my head.

REV. BONEY: Excuse me. You know, we spent a lot of money to get here and really took out our schedules, so I am just asking for clarity. I can assure you that whatever input you have got from the community has been consistent with what you have heard here. On this particular matter, our community is fully united from elected officials to community to church leaders to civic clubs. There is no disagreement among us about what we want on this matter. What we are interested in is hearing you, Mr. Burnett, tell us -- at least so far as the staff and the Commission is concerned -- do you have any preliminary response to those exits and entrance ramps.

MR. BURNETT: I do not have today, no, sir.

REV. BONEY: Do you have a time line on when you may have at least a preliminary recommendation?

MR. BURNETT: I would like to have the opportunity to sit down with the district engineer and visit with him and understand what his time frame is. I hate to give you a date and then find out that the date was not an appropriate date, but we will move on it expeditiously.

REV. BONEY: Okay. Now, what does that tell us in terms of what we should do? I mean, what I am saying is if we don't know when you are going to meet with your engineers and then you don't know what your recommendation is going to be until you meet with your engineers, then that basically puts us in an unusual and uncomfortable position as a community because we want -- if we don't have a commitment from you that the response is going to be something that we would agree with, then we need to have a certain strategy, and that is why we would like to leave here with clarity as to what our next position and step ought to be based upon your response to these unified concerns you have received from us.

MR. BURNETT: I think it is probably practical that we can sit down with the district during the next several weeks and have a response by the first of August.

REV. BONEY: And then we would have an opportunity to come back and visit with the Commissioners before there is a final decision?

MR. LANEY: Sure. If you would like to, that is no problem at all. And my guess, Bill, is there any difficulty in responding to them this week on some further clarity in connection with a time line?

MR. BURNETT: No, sir. We will visit with the Houston District and try to get them some preliminary information.

REV. BONEY: So you could send us a letter once you have your recommendation from the staff and engineers and that way we would have that in writing and then we would be able to proceed with an opportunity to come back to the Commission if -- whatever, even if it is in total agreement so we can come back and celebrate with the Commission on the good work it has done.

MR. BURNETT: Yes, sir.

REV. BONEY: Thank you.

MR. LANEY: Thank you.

Anything further on the issue of the exits and entrance ramps?

P R O C E E D I N G S

MR. LANEY: The next item on the agenda is a bit more mundane: approval of the minutes from the meeting of May 25. Are there any comments on the minutes, Ms. Wynne?

MS. WYNNE: Move approval.

MR. LANEY: Second. Are we in favor?

MS. WYNNE: We are.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. BURNETT: Commissioners, the next item on the agenda is funding authorization. I think Russell Harding is going to present it, or I can present it.

MS. WYNNE: Oh, come on, Russell. Do something up here.

MR. BURNETT: Well, it has got your initials at the top.

The Department has spent the majority of 1995 reviewing the Department's position in regards to a contractor's claim filed by Grady Management and Construction against the Department and Williams Brothers Construction Company, and the Department had back in March made a recommendation to the Commission, the Commission accepted that recommendation. Since that time Grady Management has had further discussions with the staff of the Department and has agreed to a full and complete settlement and satisfaction of all complaints and claims of Grady Management and Construction against the Department and the Department's employees for projects F 514 (102) and F 514 (104).

The settlement and release of claims has been executed by Grady Management and Construction on the 21st day of June 1995, and what we have before you is a minute order to accept this settlement.

MR. LANEY: Let me just say something to Commissioner Wynne who may not be up to speed on it. We had a lengthy, but I think a very positive, discussion with Mr. Grady last week and came to a conclusion, basically, during the period of that meeting, and if anybody is here who can pass the word back to Mr. Grady, it was very positive.

MR. BURNETT: Mr. Grady is here.

MR. LANEY: I didn't see him, sorry. You are there. I am sorry I can't see you back there, but it was a very positive meeting; I hope you felt the same way. But we were very anxious to conclude the matter and I know you were, and we would like to compliment you on the way you handled that meeting.

MS. WYNNE: Move approval.

MR. LANEY: Second. In favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. LANEY: The minute order is approved, and Mr. Grady, thank you very much.

MR. BURNETT: Item 3, Awards and Recognitions. We have first a presentation to be made to the Department from MBNA American Bank for our Don't Mess With Texas Campaign, and I guess we will turn it over.

MS. WIEHAGEN: Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Marcie Wiehagen. I am very pleased to be back here in front of the Commission again on behalf of MBNA, especially in your beautiful new building. For those of you who are not familiar with my company, we are the largest issuer of Affinity Credit Cards in the United States and the second largest issuer of credit cards in the industry. We have had an office in Dallas for about 2-1/2 years and one of our more successful card programs has been the card with the Don't Mess With Texas slogan on it.

Last year we made a donation to the Transportation Highway Cleanup Campaign, and with me today is Deanna Baldwin who is also in our Dallas office and Deanna is primarily responsible for marketing of this card program. So on behalf of MBNA, we present the Transportation Commission with a check for $25,000. It is our hope that the contribution will help further the intent of the Don't Mess With Texas Campaign and help keep Texas beautiful.

MR. BURNETT: I think they would like a photo opportunity. And Doris Howdeshell, if Doris would come up. They manage the program for us. Doris has recently been selected as the new director of the Travel and Information Division, replacing Don Clark that retired at the end of March.

(Off the record for photographs.)

MR. BURNETT: Commissioners, also under awards and recognitions, not listed on your agenda but as we normally recognize those that support the Commission, I think Ms. Wynne has a presentation she would like to make to Ms. Pellegrino for 25 years of service to the Department.

MS. WYNNE: Well, it is my pleasure to present Josie with this goody bag for 25 years of service. She started working here when she was 12 which is why she still looks so young, and I am sure the last two years we gave her time-and-a-half because she had to put up with me during that time. So, Josie, here is to you from all of us. Thank you for your service and we look forward to another 25 years.

MS. PELLEGRINO: Is there a $25,000 check that goes with that?

(Whereupon, a short recess was taken.)

MR. BURNETT: Item 4 on the agenda is Contracts, Bobbie Templeton.

MR. TEMPLETON: Good morning. I am glad you didn't refer to this as mundane because this is the lifeblood of our business, this is our contracts. Behind Tab 4(1) we have the maintenance contracts that were let at the state level on June 7. We had 16 of those projects, we averaged three bids per project. The total of the low bids was $2.6 million and that was a little over a half a million dollars under the engineer's estimate, or 16.7 percent underrun. One of these contracts was won by a DBE/HUB firm for a total of $86,000, and that is 3.27 percent of the total letting of our state let maintenance contracts. It is recommended that all of these contracts be awarded.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second. In favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. TEMPLETON: Behind Tab (2) we have the building projects that were open on June 1. There were six of those projects, average 3.1 bids per project. The low bid was $2.7 million total of those six bids at an underrun of $66,000 or 2.3 percent. All six of these contracts were won by DBE or HUB firms for the whole letting of $2.7 million which gives us 100 percent of this category. It is recommended that all of these be awarded.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second. All those in favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. TEMPLETON: Behind Tab (3) are the construction contracts let on June 6, 7 and 8. There were 120 of those projects at an average of 3.89 bids per project which, in my judgement, is pretty good for the number of projects that we were letting at that particular time. The total of the low bids was $260.5 million and that was an underrun of $17 million or 6.14 percent. We have three projects that we will be showing you in a moment to reject.

Of these contracts, seven of those were won by DBE or HUB firms, totalling $1.497 million, and that is approximately .57 percent of the total letting. We have DBE or HUB goals assigned to other contracts in this category totalling 13 percent, and that amounts to $33.9 million in work that will be subcontracted to DBEs and HUBs.

On page 16 of the attachment to this category is the first of the projects to be rejected. It is a project in Jefferson County. We had only one bid on the project. We do not think that was a competitive showing by bidders. There were contacts made with contractors and it was learned that there were several unknowns and risks that they foresaw in that and some details that were absent in the plans, and so they bid high prices to cover those risks. The district proposes to re-evaluate the plans and the details and try to eliminate some of those unknowns and relet that one in the near future.

The next project is on page 18, Kendall County, the top line. The district feels like their estimate was reasonable on this particular project and that the one bid we received just has excessive prices in it, and they propose to relet that in the near future. This was a local let project, not a routine maintenance but a local let project, and they propose to relet that in the near future.

The third project is on page 25. It is in Reeves County, the third project on the list. Again, we think the estimate was a good estimate. It took into account the size of the project being small, the remote location and the fact that the work was slow production, and the district proposes to relet this particular project and try to solicit more bidders and improve the competition.

The fourth project to be rejected -- and I said three in the beginning; there are four -- is on page 27. It is in the Tyler District, Smith County, the third listing there. This project had some problems with it. It has high daily traffic between November 22 and January 7, the contractor couldn't begin work until after the rush hour traffic, and he is also prohibited from having any lane closures. There is a very rigid sequence of work on this particular project, and so it prohibits continuous operation and would necessitate several move-ins by the contractor.

The district believes that they took into account all of these factors and have a reasonable estimate, and they propose to relet it in November, thinking that by the time we actually get the work order to the contractor, we will be beyond the seasonal shopping period and will not have these complications.

So with the exception of these four projects, it is recommended that the other 116 of these projects be awarded to contracts.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second. In favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. LANEY: Let me take you back to something in the earlier section just so you can confirm my understanding of it. In connection with the construction and delivery of the ferry vessel, the Arnold Oliver, as I understand it, we took the low bid -- although it was close -- as a matter of law. We had no choice despite the fact that it was an out-of-state contractor.

MR. TEMPLETON: That is correct. Texas has a law which allows us to take the same advantages that other states do against out-of-state contractors. There are only a couple of states in the country which have those provisions today -- New Mexico and Montana, I believe. Alabama, where the resident bidder bid this project from, does not have a reciprocity or a rule that favors their local bidders, and so we were not empowered to impose that against that bidder. We have to take the low bid in this case, and so it is recommended to award that to the Alabama firm rather than the Texas firm.

MR. LANEY: Excuse the interruption. I just wanted clarification.

MR. TEMPLETON: No problem.

Before I leave the construction projects, let me make a report to you on the incentive provisions that we have been experiencing. This is a feature that is in our contract that if a contractor exceeds the DBE and HUB goal on a project, we will pay him a pro-rated percentage of the increase, and for the month of May we had a total goal of 13.6 percent on all of our letting, and that amounted to $6.5 million. The contractors actually brought in $8.4 million in DBE commitments and raised the 13.6 percent to 17-1/2 percent. That is a $1.8 million increase in DBE and HUB participation, and for that amount of increased participation, the Department has the potential of paying out an incentive of approximately $135,000.

To date, since we instituted this for the fiscal year, September '94 through May, all of our projects have had an aggregate goal of 14.5 percent and that was $59.8 million. The contractors have actually brought $65 million worth of DBE participation and raised the commitment to 15.86 percent. This is a $13.8 million increase in DBE and HUB participation that the incentive has generated, and for this increase the Department has the potential of paying slightly over a million dollars in incentive. And the reason I say it is the potential, the incentive is not paid until the actual work and participation has been accomplished, and some of that may not come to fruition, and if it doesn't, then the incentive that we pay will be slightly less. So it seems that the incentive is accomplishing the intended purpose.

MR. LANEY: There seems to be a correlation there. Let me ask you the flip side of the question. If the incentive wasn't there, do you believe the levels would be at the levels they are at or close to the levels they are at, or not?

MR. TEMPLETON: I doubt it. I think they would be closer to the prescribed goal in the contract itself.

MR. LANEY: That is great then.

MR. TEMPLETON: The fourth category are the locally let routine maintenance projects. These were let between May 6 and June 7. We had a total of 70 of those projects and we averaged 3.1 bids per project. The total of those low bids were $3.5 million and we experienced an underrun of $82.7 thousand on those projects, or 2.38 percent. There were 18 of these contracts that were won by DBE and HUB firms and that total was $569,850 or 15.99 percent, almost 16 percent of that total letting.

We have six of these projects that we would propose to reject. Turn, if you would, to page 2 of the attachment. The first project is at the very top of the page in Tom Green County. This project was bid by folks who were unfamiliar with the work, the quantities are quite small and it has a very short time frame and there is a rigid sequence of work. The district proposed to redesign and mitigate some of those problems and then relet that in FY '96.

The second project is Hamilton County. It is the --

MR. LANEY: Let me stop you for a second. We are having a problem finding where you are.

MR. TEMPLETON: The first project was the one at the very top, page 2. Would you like for me to repeat the Tom Green County?

MS. WYNNE: No.

MR. TEMPLETON: The fifth project on that page is the Hamilton County project. The district believes they need to re-evaluate the estimate. They did not get a good competition on this one and they propose to relet that one in Fiscal Year '96 as well.

And then two down from the Hamilton is the Limestone County project. This project also proposes to have its estimate re-evaluated and relet that project at some later date.

Then on page 4 -- again, it is the back side -- the first project is in Ellis County. It is three, six -- looks like the eighth project down. This project has bids which were too high. There was an inordinate cost, and the district proposes to add this work to an ongoing contract. They have an ongoing seal coat contract. They believe they can add this same work to that contract for approximately $2,000 extra cost and so that is what they propose to do, and it is recommended that that bid be rejected.

And then the last two on page 4, the first is Dallas County. Dallas believes the estimate was reasonable on that particular project and they propose to relet it to try to solicit more competition. And the final project is Harrison County, same thing: it has a reasonable estimate in the view of the district and they propose to relet that later in the off-season, hoping to get more bids.

So with the exception of those six projects, it is proposed that all of the locally let routine maintenance contracts be awarded.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second. In favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. TEMPLETON: Behind tab 4.b. we have one default. We had a project let in the month of April and it was for reflective pavement markings, and the firm, Flasher Equipment Company, failed to sign and return the contract and bonds in the required time and they have been declared in default. This minute order proposes that you appropriate the proposal guarantee in the amount of $8,000 and deposit that in the State Highway Fund and authorize the Department to re-advertise that project at the earliest date.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second. In favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. TEMPLETON: We have two assignments. The first is by Tommy L. Johnson Construction Company. The firm has incorporated itself and so we have exactly the same entity proposing to continue the work but they would like the contracts transferred over into the corporate name, and they have nine of these projects, and the minute order empowers the Department to do that. We recommend your approval of that one.

We have also one by Dean Word. Dean Word has been a general partnership and has been changed to a limited partnership, Dean Word Company, Ltd. They have 12 construction projects, they would like to have those in the new partnership name, and so it is the same people, same organization still performing the work, but they would like to assign these contracts to that new limited partnership.

So it is recommended that the Tommy L. Johnson Corporation and the Dean Word Company, Ltd. be permitted to have these contracts assigned to their new firms.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: And seconded.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR.BURNETT: Item 5, Programs, Bobbie Templeton.

MR. TEMPLETON: Item 5 is the 1996 Highway Safety Plan, and I believe you have a copy of the document there. This Department implements an annual safety plan each year. This is under the provisions of the 1966 National Highway Safety Act and the Texas Traffic Safety Act of 1967. The purpose of this program is to reduce accidents and the associated deaths and injuries and property damage.

These funds are allocated to program areas authorized under federal regulations, and they are such police traffic services speed control, alcohol and other drug measures, occupant protection, traffic records, roadway safety, motorcycle safety to name a few. This program is needed for us to go forward and we recommend that you approve that program.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Will this be affected at all by any new federal legislation?

MR. TEMPLETON: I am not aware that it is, sir.

MR. LANEY: Second. In favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. BURNETT: Thank you, Bobbie.

Commissioners, Item 6, Routine Minute Orders. Subsection a., Speed Zones. This is to establish or alter construction speed zones and regulatory speed zones on various sections of the system as attached to the minute order.

Item b., Load Zone Restrictions, very similar. It is to post load limits on various roads and bridges on the state-maintained highway systems as enumerated in the attachment.

Item c., in Lampasas County, under Highway Designations, requests the extension of Farm to Market Road 1715 from its present termini and extend it to FM 1580.

Under Item d., Disposition of Existing Right of Way and Property, in Dallas County is a minute order proposing the sale of the surplus access rights along State Highway 161 at Walnut Hill in the City of Irving. Paren (2) on US 75 at Mockingbird Lane, to remove a 475 square foot track of right of way from the state system.

Number 3 in Grimes County is FM 3090 northeast of State Highway 6 is to authorize the quit claim of a surplus highway easement in exchange for new fee title of right of way. Paren (4) in Tarrant County on State Highway 114 west of Main Street in Grapevine is authorize the quit claim of a surplus drainage easement.

Under e., Authorization of Building and Ground Improvements, in Harris County, authorize the construction of a laboratory building and service station; in Montgomery County -- also in the Houston District -- authorize the construction of an area engineer's building, maintenance building and fueling station; and in Victoria County in the Yoakum District authorize paving and concrete work, including drainage and security fences, for a new headquarters site.

Under item f., Interstate and U.S. Highways on the U.S. Highway, State Highway and Farm to Market and City Street System, in Cameron County authorize federal funding for a federal demonstration program, and in Fort Bend County on US 599 between Sweetwater Boulevard and State Highway 6, authorize Level III programming authority in the 1995 Project Development Plan for this project.

Under Item g., Funding Authorizations, this is a contract claims resolution that is in various counties. It is on IH 20 and US 79, and this authorizes funding of a claim settlement to C.A. Green Mowing, dba B&G Contractors.

And then finally, under Item h., Eminent Domain Proceedings, as attached, this is requesting your approval for the Department to proceed with eminent domain on various parcels of right of way needed for highway construction as enumerated in the attachment to the minute order.

MR. LANEY: What about i.?

MR. BURNETT: The Sesquicentennial License Plates. And to give you a little detail on this, at last month's Commission meeting we asked the Commission to approve a minute order -- which you did -- that said concurrent upon passage of legislation and the signature by the governor, authorize the Department to create such a license plate for a very short period of time as Texas celebrates its sesquicentennial of becoming a state.

The bill did pass the House, it got tied up in the Senate in the late hours of the session and did not pass. The Senate and House did pass and the governor did sign legislation creating a sesquicentennial commission to oversee the 150th anniversary of Texas becoming a state, and what this does is ask you to approve a license plate that looks like that for a short period of time during the sesquicentennial, and the logo on the plate is the approved logo of the sesquicentennial. And I think two weeks ago -- didn't they, Russell -- the U.S. Post Office issued a stamp with the same logo. So this is to ask your concurrence.

MS. WYNNE: Move approval of all items in Item Number 6.

MR. BURNETT: What we would like to recommend to the commission now is that we skip over Item 7. I think for the public's information, the Commission has to adjourn roughly at 10:30 to attend a press conference with Governor Bush and the Department of Public Safety and others to try to bring caution to people as the drive over the 4th of July weekend, so what we would propose to the Commission is to go through regular business until about 10:30 and then adjourn.

MR. LANEY: Skip Item 7?

MR. BURNETT: Bring Item 7 back when we come back, Chairman, instead of getting one of these district engineers or Ms. Walsh in the middle of their presentation and everybody leaving.

MR. LANEY: Absolutely. I would also like to hold Item 11, if there is any length to that.

MR. BURNETT: We can also hold Item 11, the report on the Texas Historical Bridges, until the Commission returns.

So then moving to Item 8, Transportation Planning, Al Luedecke. Oh, I am sorry. I guess you need to vote on Routine Minute Orders. It is just so routine that you vote.

MS. WYNNE: I moved approval.

MR. LANEY: Second. All in favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. BURNETT: Now Item 8, Transportation Planning.

MR. LUEDECKE: Good morning, Commissioners. I am Al Luedecke with the Division of Transportation Planning and Programming.

In December of 1994 the Commission approved the first report of the Project Development Plan Task Force and the portion of that report dealing with the State Farm to Market Road System made a number of recommendations, one of which was to reclassify the existing farm to market and ranch to market roads in urban areas of 50,000 population or more as urban roads. This redesignation was necessary since these roads in the urban areas no longer function as the original farm to market road program was designed. Many of these roads, like Westheimer in Houston, Bee Caves Road here in Austin, and numerous other roads in our large cities function as urban collectors and arterials and require extensive funds from the program to expand and maintain.

In an effort to designate the new Urban Road System, the headquarters staff developed a proposed Urban Road System for each of the 25 urban areas in the state and then forwarded them to the affected districts for review and coordination. The minute order you have for consideration today establishes the Urban Road System and the exhibit attached to it describes the individual segments of the system in each of the urban areas. We have also provided a book of maps that delineates the various proposed urban roads throughout the state.

In order to minimize the driver's confusion over this change, the number of the existing FM, farm to market road, will remain in place and the sign will be revised to change only the designation from FM or RM to UR for urban road. All changes will occur at the urban boundary of the city and at points of logical terminus like intersections or terminations of the road itself.

Participation requirements for the UR System were included in the rules that you covered last month at the last Commission meeting and were made part of that approval process. We believe this change will enhance the rural FM program and help assure that the Rural Transportation System can be properly funded and maintained into the future. We recommend your approval of this minute order.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: How long will this conversion take place over? What kind of period?

MR. LUEDECKE: The signs will have to be changed over and we are working with the traffic operations division, and I don't have a time frame for it yet, sir.

MR. LANEY: About a couple of years probably?

MR. BURNETT: No, sir. We are talking early in the fall.

MR. LUEDECKE: Early in the fall, certainly by the end of the year, no later than the end of the year.

MR. LANEY: All in favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. BURNETT: Item 9, Guidelines for Restoration and Resurfacing and Preventive Maintenance. Commissioners, we bring a minute order before you. This minute order modifies the type of work authorized for the following bank balance allocation programs: in Category 2, Interstate Maintenance; Category 8, State Farm to Market Road Rehabilitation and Restoration Program; and Category 14, State Rehabilitation and Restoration Program. The Commission had previously approved various Project Development Plan bank balance programs. The programs that I just listed allowed for the rehabilitation of the existing facilities. The Department has recently obtained approval from the Federal Highway Administration to utilize interstate maintenance funds for preventive maintenance work and the Department has also recently developed a two R -- R being restoration -- design guidelines for farm to market highways in low volume roads, and these restoration guidelines provide more flexibility and focus more on the scope of the work and the emphasis of restoring existing facilities. And we make this recommendation that you approve this minute order.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second. In favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. BURNETT: Item 10, Authority to Award Contracts Less then $300,000, Bobbie Templeton.

MS. WYNNE: This is the Bobbie Templeton Bill.

MR. TEMPLETON: That is right. We have waited a long time for this bill.

The minute order here behind Tab 10 is slightly deficient and I would like to clarify that for you. House Bill 2176 was passed by the 74th Legislature and it overhauls the contract letting laws of the Department, and there are three opportunities for empowerment in the new bill.

The first was for the proposal form itself. It allows you to delegate that authority to the engineer, director or his designee not below a division head. It also allows you to delegate the acceptance or rejection of bids for not being in the proper form or not being properly signed or executed to the executive director or his designee, and it also allows you to delegate the award of the locally let routine maintenance contract to the executive director or his designee for projects that are under $300,000 -- that was formerly $100,000.

So we would propose approval of these delegations so that the Department can streamline and expedite the way it does business and would recommend your approval.

MR. BURNETT: And Bobbie, we are going to make a correction on the minute order where it says any contract less than $300,000, or is that in the rules?

MR. TEMPLETON: It will be covered in the rules later on under Number 12, but we will do some corrections on this minute order so that it is accurate as we get it executed.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Great idea. Second it. In favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. BURNETT: Under Item 12, Commissioners, we have several rules we would like to propose. Under the Management Section, Bob Jackson would like to visit with you about advisory committees.

MR. JACKSON: Bob Jackson, Deputy General Counsel for Policy. This minute order does two things. In '91 in our sunset legislation we created the Environmental Advisory Committee to advise the Commission on rules of the Department that affect the environment. That committee has been meeting for three years. This last session the legislature chose to repeal that law, so this minute order complies with that new legislation and removes the committee from our advisory committee rules.

The second thing is that Senate Bill 3 moved regulation of the trucking industry to TxDOT. In that bill it required that we appoint a committee to advise the Department on rules that affect tow truck operators and operators of vehicle storage facilities, and this minute order proposes the establishment of that committee.

MS. WYNNE: It says we have got to?

MR. BURNETT: Yes, ma'am.

MR. JACKSON: Recommend approval of the minute order.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second. All in favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JACKSON: The second minute order, legislation two years ago required that we create all department advisory committees by rule. WE did that. The bill also required that we sunset every committee at least once every four years. We chose to do these committees every two years, so we have to recreate them or they will be abolished as provided for in the rule. I think four of these committees, after talking with the divisions that operate the committees, we were told that they are through with their work, so we will go ahead and abolish those committees and recreate the remainder of them. Recommend adoption of this minute order.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second. The committees you are talking about are the ones listed there in the minute order?

MR. JACKSON: Yes.

MR. LANEY: All in favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. BURNETT: Chapter 3, Finance Division, and Chapter 9, Contract Management.

MS. CARLSON-REED: Chairman Laney and Commissioner Wynne, my name is Cassie Carlson-Reed, Deputy Executive Director for Administrative Services. The last legislative session, Senate Bill 532 was enacted which removed the requirement that the Department retain 5 percent of the contract price until the work is complete and accepted for contracts for routine maintenance and for contracts basically for design work. This minute order is proposed to repeal 3.1 concerning partial payment and propose adoption of amendments 9.11 concerning definitions and new provision concerning partial payments whereby routine maintenance contracts and design contracts plans and surveys preliminary to construction would not be retained the 5 percent.

And as you see on the minute order, first page, one of the whereases, this is to encourage small businesses. Many times the routine maintenance contracts, because they are typically small contracts, as well as some of the design, this requirement impedes cash flow for these small contractors, and we recommend adoption of this minute order for proposing this rule.

MR. LANEY: This applies to those types of small contractors as well as larger contractors? This is across the board. Right?

MR. BURNETT: It would, Chairman, apply to maintenance contracts such as mowing contracts, sweeping contracts and those type contracts.

MS. CARLSON-REED: Any of those routine maintenance contracts that are not let through the construction contracting procedure.

MS. WYNNE: And what about design contracts then?

MR. BURNETT: Contracts the Department has with consultants for engineering services, architectural services, the Department would no longer hold retainage on those contracts.

MS. WYNNE: And what do we do about the ones where we have their money now?

MR. BURNETT: There is an amendment on the bill as passed that grandfathered those to where we could release the retainage.

MS. WYNNE: Where we can release it?

MR. BURNETT: Yes, ma'am.

MS. WYNNE: And are we going to do that?

MR. BURNETT: Once the rules are adopted, yes, ma'am.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second. In favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. BURNETT: Item 3, Chapter 11, Design. This is a minute order proposing repeal of Section 11.31 concerning notification and legal advertising of lettings. This provision is no longer necessary because the subjects matter has been reenacted with amendments to Section 9.13 which became effective November 23, 1994, and we ask your concurrence.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second. All in favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. BURNETT: Contract Management Chapter 9.

MR. TEMPLETON: This proposes new rules that will embrace the provisions of House Bill 2176, our letting bill that was just passed by the recent legislative session. It addresses the delegations of authority that I talked to you about back under Tab 10 and it also incorporates the possibility of raising the amount of contracts that can be let at the local level to $300,000, empowering the district engineer to receive those bids, accept or reject same, and then for the executive director or his designee to award those locally let contracts. It cleans up the present rules for us and allows us to operate our business of letting contracts much more efficiently and smoothly. We recommend your approval for proceeding forward with these proposed rules.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second. All in favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. BURNETT: Commissioners, that covers everything except the two items that we will hold until after the press conference.

I would like to have Dorn Smith stand up if we could for a minute. Dorn, I guess Friday, ends his service as the acting director of the Business Opportunities Programs Office, Commissioners, and Dorn has done a tremendous job for the Department this last year, getting this new program kicked off. And Dorn is the one that is responsible, with the help of a lot of other people, for this book right here where we report to you monthly on the activities of the Department, and we would point out to you that since September 1994 through May of 1994, this Department's participation with Historically Under-utilized Business has been at the tune of 20.75 percent which is tremendous gains that we have made in the last three or four years. And Dorn, we appreciate you doing dual service.

MR. LANEY: Thanks.

Let me interrupt the ordinary business of the meeting and recess the gathering this morning for approximately an hour. I expect that we will be back here at 11:30 and then we can take these other items at a more comfortable pace than we have done these prior items. So we are in recess now for an hour.

(Whereupon, the meeting was recessed, to reconvene this same day, Tuesday, June 27, 1995, at 11:30 a.m.)

P R O C E E D I N G S

MR. LANEY: Let's call the meeting back to order, and proceed with one item that we apparently overlooked in the early part of the session.

MR. BURNETT: Commissioners, back under the Proposed Rules in Item 12, Subsection 4, Contract Management, we had a lot of discussion on the previous item up there, Chapter 3, Amendments to Section 9.38, Contract Management. This is the proposed rules language that would allow the Department not to require retainage on maintenance contracts, routine maintenance contracts and all engineering contracts, and we recommend you move adoption.

MS. WYNNE: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second. In favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. BURNETT: If it pleases the Commission, we would like to go back now to Item 7, the report of the divisions and the offices, and first up we have Milton Dietert, the district engineer from the Houston District.

MR. LANEY: Welcome, Mr. Dietert, to the far north.

MR. DIETERT: Thank you. I appreciate the invitation to appear before you, Commissioner Wynne, Commissioner Laney. This morning I would like to give you a very brief -- hopefully ten minutes -- of introduction to the Houston District, our problems and a little bit of what we are doing so you know where we are.

The Houston District is surrounding the Houston area. It is comprised of a six-county area: Harris, Galveston, Fort Bend, Brazoria, Waller and Montgomery Counties. While it is one of the smallest in area, only 2.3 percent of the state, it is the largest as far as population with 21.5 percent of the population, 21.2 percent of the number of vehicles in the state, and 20.2 percent of the total vehicle miles traveled daily.

Houston District only has around 3.5 percent of the highway mileage, center line miles, and around 4.8 percent of the lane miles. Looking just within the district, the interstate mileage only comprises about eight-tenths of a percent of the total roadway miles within the district, however, it carries 23 percent of the vehicle miles traveled. Our other state highways comprise 10.1 percent of the total district mileage and they carry 35.2 percent. So in essence, we only have about 11 percent of the mileage but we carry 58 percent of the traffic in the district.

This is not a very good slide and you might look on your monitors. For some reason this does not pick up the reds very well or the yellows, but this is a level of service map where the red is exceeds level of service E and the yellow exceeds -- or level of service E. Those two categories is what we generally classify as congested highways and freeways. Of the Houston District, 48 or nearly 49 percent of the freeway mileage within the district is classified as congested. On all highways within the district it is about 32 percent. This is an improvement since 1986 when approximately 36 percent of the total miles in the district was congested and now it is down to 32 percent.

In Harris County alone, we are talking about 63 percent of the freeway miles are at congested levels and 58 percent of the total mileage is congested. This is also an improvement since 1986. In 1986 we had 71 percent of the roads in Harris County at the congested levels. However, we have made improvements.

This is a bar chart showing the average speeds in the p.m. peak period and the peak directions on the regular freeways for all of Harris County. Now, I must qualify this slide, this is done under ideal conditions, no accidents, no stalled cars, no rain or anything. As you can see, the low period was in 1979 where our average speed on our regular freeways was 37.4 miles an hour and we have improved that to where it is now 51.1 miles per hour.

Looking at individual roadways, for example, the second one from the left, US 59 South -- that is the Southwest Freeway -- we redid that recently. We have increased the speeds on that from 31 miles an hour to 51 miles an hour. We are working on US 59 North where it shows 43 miles an hour, and I-45 South, we are working on that also, even though it does show some improvement for some of the projects we have completed. But that kind of gives you an indication of where we are making improvements and also where we need to improve.

One other way to show congestion is Texas Transportation Institute's Congestion Index. In 1984 we were at 1.25. At that time we were considered the second most congested city in the United States. Since that time that we have been one of only five areas, cities, that have been able to reduce the congestion levels, and we have reduced it more than any other city. Right now we are about 1.1 congestion index. Our goal or the Houston Mobility Plan's goal was to get that below one which shows right about 1976 level of congestion, so that was Houston Mobility's goal to reach that peak. It doesn't seem like we are going to be able to reach that goal.

In looking at our construction program, our construction program is the bottom bar chart where in the early '80s we are running around $500 million to the peak in 1989, nearly $1.5 billion under contract, and now we are standing right around $1.3 billion under contract. The top line shows our personnel allocation. At the time that we were doing $500 million under contract, we had around 1,486 employees. It rose to a peak of 1,890 and now we are back down to 1,514, or actually only 28 employees above our level in 1982 and '83 when we were doing the $500 million.

The next question that comes up is, well, the inflation during that time has eaten into the dollars where maybe the amount of work is about the same. In the Department's construction cost index, and it is based on 1979 levels, today statewide it is 112, the Houston District is 107 which shows there has not been that much inflation in the years since 1979. It also indicates that our people are doing a good job working with the contractor and the partnering concept.

In the Houston District, an average cost index below that of the statewide, when we have to import all our materials, all the aggregates down to Houston, and to work in the traffic that we have to work in -- I know that probably Commissioner Wynne heard me say this before, when we were redoing the Southwest Freeway, 225,000 cars a day, how much is 225,000 cars a day. If you park them end to end, they would reach from Houston, past El Paso, almost to the Arizona border; that is how much 225,000 cars a day is. And to accomplish this, we have to have a lot more sequence of work, a lot more piecemeal work to get the project constructed, so it is very expensive but we have been able to keep it below the statewide average.

If you would keep in mind this graph of the personnel allocation for the next couple of slides as we talk about design and about right of way. During the same period of time, early '85, we were acquiring 81 parcels of property. We reached a peak, about 484 parcels, in '93 and then we have dropped down to 390. So even with a reduction in personnel, we have been keeping up -- or actually increasing the amount of right of way we have obtained. In the next few years we still have to obtain about 30 parcels per year to keep our construction program going.

In addition to that, we have about 250 jury trials backlogged that we have got to prepare the displays for the for the attorney general for them to handle it. So we are continuing to work on that program.

In our design, for the people that can see this, the red line is our in-house design where in 1986 we were around $163 million. We increased that design production to $294 million worth of plans in '91 and since then it has dropped off to around 232. This is partly due to reduction of personnel. We have reduced the design personnel by 32 percent, and yet, we are still producing more plans than we were in 1986.

The second thing that I would like to point out on this slide is the consultant design. In '87, when we were building up to this big workload -- and these are actual projects that have gone to contract during that year, not when the consultant design was awarded but actually went under contract, construction contract -- during that year that we had over $360 million of plans that were designed by a consultant to go to contract, then it dropped down to a low of $90 million in 1990 and back up to 176.

But what I would like to point out is over the years that we have averaged about 45 percent of our total design work has been done by consultants. We are right on average. This probably will go up some and we will probably approach 50 percent due to the additional reduction in personnel recently, but that is where we stand.

There is one thing about the consultant area that is not understood and that is a lot of what we do is we are getting the consultant being paid for by others. We are paying for the construction work but the plans are being donated by others. For example, the Grand Parkway, all those are being paid for by the private sector. Spencer Highway, all those plans were developed by the county and paid for by the county. So if you look in the last four years, where actually we got more plans donated than we actually paid for by the Department, we saved the Department about $15 million just over those four years in plan donations.

As far as our minorities program, HUB contracting and right of way appraisals, in 1994, 35 percent of the appraisals were done by minority firms, laboratory contracts, 37 percent, and our design, I broke that up into both prime and subcontracts. Of course, we are trying to increase the number of minority prime contracts and get that above 11 percent, but still we do 27 percent total work with HUBs.

MR. LANEY: Milton, let me interrupt you on that last slide. Is that percentage of number of contracts or percentage of dollars?

MR. DIETERT: Dollars.

Now I would like to talk a little bit about our projects. Of course, the first one is Beltway 8, and looking at the South Belt, there where we have the blue is under contract, the yellow is Priority I, and of course the red is Priority II and III. The yellow is projects that we still have to go to contract with and that is in conjunction with the Harris County Toll Road which is building the main lanes as toll facility. The project close to I-45 will be let early in '96 -- it is a direct connector -- and the one over on 59 has just been let.

Looking at the Harris County Toll Roads Project, you see -- on the slide it is pink, but I don't know what color you call that on the screen up there -- the West Belt -- of course that is the Sam Houston Toll Road, the one going north is the Hardy Toll Road, and the one over on the east side is the Jesse Hones Bridge that was formerly Texas Turnpike Authority Bridge which now the Harris County Toll Road has assumed ownership of.

They have everything from there on south under contract now except I think they have one more project down there. They have got about $17 million under contract between 59 and 288 but hope to have everything under contract by the end of September of this year. The completion dates range from next year, late next year to '97.

I-610, of course the big project on there is the West Loop. We have been working with the Galleria area people and the uptown people for the past five years, six years, on what type of facility we are going to be building there. Right now the Galleria people do not want any elevated structure other than what we have there today, so all we can do right now is actually just rehabilitate that and improve some hot spot areas, congestion points like the 59 exit ramp to 59 and the entrance ramp from Westheimer. That is a highly congested area there that we need to some work on.

We are still working with Houston Metro. They want to put in an HOV lane in the middle. What we will be doing, what we have decided to do is that we will leave room for them to build that in the future sometime if they so wish.

I-45 North, we have got the southmost yellow one there is expanding the -- adding the number of lanes to that, and that is immediately north of the Hardy Toll Road where it ties in and to have additional capacity there. The northmost one, that is building some frontage roads and expanding them to three-lane frontage roads in anticipation of some more construction on the main lanes up there.

The Gulf Freeway, the yellow there is in conjunction with the Beltway 8. Those are direct connectors that have to be constructed. They are planned to go to construction early part of -- I think about March of next year. Of course, the blue is under contract now, and of course, you heard a lot about the Eastex Freeway this morning. Of course, the blue is what we have under contract, the yellow is at 610 there is right in the area that they were talking about the ramps. And I might stop and address those ramps a little bit.

MR. BURNETT: Please do, Milton.

MR. DIETERT: We had a meeting on June 22, last week, concerning the exit ramps between Collinsworth and Cavalcade. On our design for the southbound, we had an exit -- no, an entrance ramp proposed, northbound we had an exit ramp proposed. Now, this whole area that is shown on this slide here, public hearings were held in 1986. A public hearing was held immediately north of 610 at the Barbara Jordan School there. There was no discussion from the public about these ramps at that time, so we proceeded with the design to implement these ramps. It wasn't until here recently that we started hearing objection to them.

At this meeting we agreed to change the southbound ramp to an exit ramp to allow access to Collinsworth. The northbound ramp brought a lot of confusion. We said that we would change that ramp to an entrance ramp if the public would so decide, but we want to make sure that that is what they want and allow them time to take a look at it.

As far as the noise walls, we went out to the public, to the property owners with a questionnaire asking them if they wanted the noise walls. The majority of the property owners did not. Commissioner Del Franco Lee himself went out with a questionnaire. The property owners still did not want it. At this meeting I was talking to Representative Dutton and he said he contacted property owners and he said that they did not want it; however, it is his opinion that they still want a sound wall there for the community.

Of course, Houston does not have zoning. These property owners look at that as property that they can develop commercially. If we build that sound wall, of course that kills any commercial development of that. So it is a problem. I am not sure what the answer to it is, but if we go in there and build a sound wall, it seems to me like we would have to pay -- buy the access from those people, adjoining properties, and that would be something that you would have to decide whether we want to go into that.

They brought up several other areas north of 610 there that was not even discussed at the meeting, talking about Laura Koppe and Crosstimbers and some other areas like that. These were not even brought up at that meeting. We would be happy to meet with these people again and look at those areas, and will do so when we get back to Houston.

Looking at the Southwest Freeway, everything in between the two yellow spots has been completed. The one on the east side there, that is from Shepherd into 527. It has a little bit of controversy with it in that it is an elevated HOV lane and some of the adjoining property owners do not want it. We have had some discussion. We have moved it once because of the church, moved from the outside to the middle separation, and we are still working with them on that.

Now, you are going to probably hear a lot about Beltway 8 on south, even past Highway 6 all the way down past the Brazos River. There is a delegation that has written me a letter and requested an appearance before you. Fort Bend County is one of the fastest growing counties in the nation, primarily where it is out there. In fact, I attended an HJCC meeting the other day and they are developing a new model of the growth and projecting all the growth to be outside of Highway 6 because of cheap property and large tracts of land where they can build fine communities.

This is highly congested in the mornings; sometimes the traffic is backed up all the way past the Brazos River and it is stop and go from there. So you will probably be hearing about that in the future.

249, we have got projects on the north that is 17,000 vehicles a day on two-lane roads. We are expanding those -- actually building frontage roads for a future freeway in there. South in the proposed next year's PDP we have a project there to extend the freeway further north.

NASA Road 1, of course, this is another project that we have been working on since 1986 or before 1986 which we have now agreed to build a bypass around Webster. We will be letting our first project the first part of next year on NASA Road 1 and that is the middle section there because we only have one more parcel of property to get, and then we will be doing from Clear Lake Boulevard to 146 later, and then dropping back and doing the bypass.

I-10 East, the only thing we have east is reconstruction of the San Jacinto Bridge which was damaged by the flood that we had last October that is still ongoing. Traffic is narrowed down to both lanes are using the westbound lanes. That is coming along on schedule and will be completed here, I think, by the end of the year.

I-10 West, Katy Freeway, we are doing a major investment study which hired a consultant to do the study. It will be probably about 18 months before that is complete. Of course, we bought the railroad right of way there and now we are trying to find out what is the best and highest use for this corridor, whether it is commuter rail, light rail, HOV express lanes, or just what is the best facility to build in that corridor.

The Northwest Freeway, we are letting our last job -- and that is the one in yellow there -- next month. That will complete 290. The portion in red will still remain frontage road, wide separated frontage road with room to build lanes in between. The only thing that we will have in the near future is building an overpass there at Fairfield, a planned community there that is getting congested there with people coming out of the community.

Loop 201, the project from 330 on to the bridge will be completed in conjunction with the Baytown Bridge. There is a race now to see who will finish the project and be ready to open first, but we all know which will turn out. We have one project left on 225 and that is to be done in conjunction with the 146 interchange which we have Priority I designation on, and that is shown there.

And that leads us to the Baytown Bridge. We anticipate that we will be opening up to traffic in September. There is some discussion about August, but I don't believe it; I think it is going to be September. It has been a long process. The project was let in 1986, it is about three years behind schedule, but it is being completed.

This shows the last piece that needs to be put in, and I might just make a brief comment on it. The last piece was about a 14-foot section to be dropped into the middle. The contractor fabricated it about six inches longer than it needed to be, hoping to cut it off and not have to add to it when they found out the exact distance.

Well, when they got started getting close, they saw six inches wasn't enough, so they added another foot to it, so it was an extension of 18 inches.

After they got ready to drop it in, they measured it and it said eleven inches, so they cut it off at eleven inches extension. They got it up there, a norther had blown in the day before, and of course the bridge shrunk, and now it was two inches too short. So then we had to wait a week for the temperature to rise again and so therefore then we could drop the thing in and bolt it together, and now it is together. But that is just some of the everything that could go wrong -- like they said earlier, Murphy's law -- did go wrong, but it is being completed now.

And I have overrun my time, but I will shut it off at that, and I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

MR. LANEY: Thank you, Milton. A great effort, and to a great extent the economic heart of the state and the transportation needs of Houston are absolutely critical, and you have done a superb job. My compliments, and I think on behalf of the Commission our hats off to you.

MR. BURNETT: Next, Commissioners, we have the Management Services Office, and the director is Joanne Walsh.

MS. WALSH: Good morning, almost afternoon. I am Joanne Walsh and I am the Director of the Management Services Office, and Management Services is one of the five special offices that reports to the Director of Staff Services, Russell Harding, and it was established as part of the reorganization in 1993, so we don't have a very long history and I also don't have any road or bridge projects to show you, so I will probably use a lot less time than Milton did.

MR. LANEY: You can use Milton's slides if you want.

MS. WALSH: Okay. I will just bring those back.

First, I would like to say that Management Services is a fairly small group of people -- it is 21 -- who are doing worthwhile things to help the Department achieve its mission, and I would like to briefly introduce you to some of these people through the slides and tell you about some of the distinct things that they do.

One of the first groups that I am going to talk about is our Commission Support group, and you may recognize some of these faces from the Commission meetings because these are the people who work behind the scenes to help bring about these meetings. They make arrangements for delegations, they assemble upcoming items into agendas to ensure that you have the necessary background materials and minute orders in your briefing books.

They also publish the minutes of the meeting after the meeting is over and they distribute the minute orders to the proper offices for implementation or action and answer all inquiries about past minute orders, and we do get a lot of inquiries about old minute orders, some dating back to the '30s even. They maintain the official archives for all of your actions, and we have made some much needed improvements in this area but we are also going to begin a re-tooling process of the minute orders to make it more efficient and hopefully more automated, especially for retrieving historical documents.

The next group is Committee Support, and this is a group that also supplies you with a lot of your monthly reports. They are continuously striving to improve the information that you get about the Department's use of engineering and architectural consultants, and we try to incorporate suggestions you have made to us and also anticipate some of your needs in doing that. This group of people worked with and under the guidance of Bill Burnett, Bob Cuellar, Robert Wilson and the other members of the Consultant Review Committee to develop the procedures manual that we are now using and the rules that are out there.

We have had a considerable growth in the use of engineering consultants, engineering and architectural, in recent years. We have gone from in 1990 about $3.6 million to $48 million in calendar year '94 and we are anticipating about $90 million in '95. We are also trying to increase the number of new firms and DBE and HUB firms with which we do work through the architectural and engineering consultants, and in the first five months of calendar year '95 we had 161 contracts, 38 were with new firms, 32 with DBEs, and 45 percent of the dollars were going to DBEs and HUBs during that five-month period.

Another one of our goals in this area was to decrease the turnaround time that it takes to get to the point of signing a contract, and that has decreased from seven months to 4.5 months since November of last year, and we are still working to make some further improvements and decrease that turnaround time.

This committee group also supports the Contract Claim Committee which averages about ten claims a year, and this number has been decreasing, I think, primarily due to the partnering efforts that the districts are doing. And our job in Management Services is to communicate with the committee members and the contractor at the time that we get to a claim situation.

The two groups for Commission and committee Support represent kind of the day-to-day ongoing activities of my office, and we work real hard to support you and to support the senior management team and to provide the districts, divisions and other offices with information about agendas and working with their minute orders and the use of consultants.

The other side of our business is more think-tank or future oriented, and the first group I would like to talk about is Special Projects. The Special Projects group handles special assignments that we get primarily from the senior management team that are global in nature or cover controversial or sensitive areas. This is also kind of a small group of people. Usually their assignments are relatively short term, these special assignments, but some of them can last more than a year. And some of the recent assignments that we have handled is the oversight of the Americans with Disabilities Act implementation statewide, we provide support to the Optimum Support Staffing Task Force, we have surveyed other states to see how they do employee classification, and we have prepared some graphical comparison information for the El Paso Court of Inquiry.

The last group I would like to talk about is out Strategic Management, and even though it is the last in the sequence, it is really not the last in terms of long-term impact for the Department. This group is focused on helping TxDOT be prepared for the future through our Comprehensive Long-term Strategic Plan. We have worked with cross-functional teams representing all areas of TxDOT in preparing our current version of the Strategic Plan. That was the one that we came up with last year. We have continued to work with many of these people and others as we get ready to prepare the next version which will be coming out next year.

We are responsible for the ongoing internal and external assessment of TxDOT's strengths, weaknesses and current and potential opportunities and threats, and I guess this is where you can help us by keeping us informed of your strategic direction and your position on key issues, and also by helping us identify potential threats and opportunities.

We are really not satisfied with the status quo, we want to keep making the Strategic Plan better and more meaningful for our managers to use as they schedule out their work and do their day-to-day jobs, and that is why we are trying to make the Strategic Plan a continuous process, not just a once-every-two-year process, and we are trying to ensure that there is an integration between the Strategic Plan and the Texas Transportation Plan.

And as I mentioned, we are going to be coming to you again -- next spring probably -- with the next version of the Strategic Plan which will cover FY '97 through 2000, and we will need to get your concurrence on that plan before we submit it to the Legislative Budget Board and the governor's office and other interested parties across the street. So if you have any direction to be given to us, we would appreciate it as soon as possible.

As part of implementing the Strategic Plan, we are currently managing four customer surveys, and this involves the general public, transportation stake holders, metropolitan planning organizations, and job applicants. Texas Southern University is conducting these surveys for us as well as holding four different employee focus groups, and some of those focus groups are going on this week. When we get the results of these efforts this fall, they will help us gauge how well TxDOT is satisfying its customers' needs, the expectations of our customers, and the surveys will help support both the Strategic Plan and the Texas Transportation Plan.

Another area that we work in where the Strategic Management Group works with our Special Projects Group is on special assignments, and a couple of examples where these two groups have worked together was on the Advanced Intermodal Service Center Proposal and an analysis of the employee-prepared report cards which was a result of our Transportation Conference last fall.

You have seen pictures of the people very briefly and I have talked about some of their accomplishments and responsibilities. Now I would like to tell you something about their credentials. I use the term think tank because these people really do represent an important asset of this department because they can objectively analyze a situation from a lot of different perspectives.

Seventy-five percent of these 21 people have graduate degrees. They have expertise from both education and experience in the following areas: three kinds of engineering, five kinds of planning, they have got skills for solving complex problems -- a lot of this involves computer modeling -- and we also have management experience in both public and private sector. We have some people who have served as TxDOT trainers and college instructors. Sometimes at the same time they are working for us, they are also teaching at UT or ACC.

These folks were selected based upon their complimentary skills and expertise, and several have worked for other agencies or for private companies and some have even worked for consultants.

We practice a team approach to problem solving and sometimes it is just people from the Management Services Office but usually it involves people from other districts, divisions, offices, maybe even some external folks. We also serve as facilitators and members of some of the Department's continuous improvement teams and we facilitated some of the workshops for that.

The bottom line is that we are here to serve you, and as I said at the start, we don't have a long history to talk about but we have made some significant improvement strides in the last 20 months and we look forward to making a lot more and working with you. Thank you.

MR. BURNETT: Thank you, Joanne.

Kirby Pickett, the most bashful district engineer there is, from Waco.

MR. PICKETT: Sounds like my reputation preceded me. Well, it is a pleasure to be here today in the new room with all these electronic marvels to give you a relatively brief overview of the Department's operations in the Waco District and also some of the problems we face.

As you can see from this part of our state traffic map, Waco District lies along the Interstate 35 Corridor about halfway between Austin and the Dallas-Fort Worth area. This picture will probably be a little bit more familiar to you, a section of our travel map. Over 80 percent of our people live in our two metropolitan areas which are Waco and the Killeen-Temple area. These are our two MPOs. Waco is relatively stable as far as its growth is concerned. Killeen-Temple, though -- and we had some information published by Comptroller Sharp on this just earlier this month -- Killeen is one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the state, thanks in large measure to Fort Hood, and although our eight-county district has a lot of it that is still rural in nature, we are seventh in population among the 25 districts.

This is a statistical comparison to other districts. In addition to population, we are also seventh among the districts in center line miles of highway. We also rank eighth in daily vehicle miles. On a number of items we rank generally in the median range, but in two areas we rank considerably lower than I would like for us to, and this is in our construction and our maintenance. Dollars alone really don't give the full picture on this, so I have broken it down in two ways: dollars per lane mile and dollars per vehicle mile traveled. My concern with maintenance, I suppose, is that they decreased over the past two years. On per-lane mile we have gone from 11th in the state to 18th, and per-vehicle mile we have gone from 16th to 19th.

Our construction dollars -- and this is based on the 12-month period ending last month, and although we ranked 12th, as you can see, on both overall expenditure and expenditure per lane mile, we are currently the lowest in the state on expenditure per vehicle miles traveled, and that is an honor we would just as soon not have. And all of this really is in spite of the fact that on our construction dollars we are at record level.

In fact, even since this slide was made it has increased again. We are currently at $83-1/2 million which places us tenth in the state. Our previous record before this stretch was -- you can see from the chart -- back in '88. We were just under $60 million, back then, 59.3. We exceeded the $60 million figure last April and we have continued a steady increase since.

We also are setting a new record this year as far as our letting volumes, both in the total volume of plans prepared and in the amount of lettings, so our amount under contract under construction is not going to go down any time soon.

In addition, we set new records again this year on both the number and the volume of maintenance contracts, as you can see. The drop-off in fiscal '94 was primarily a retirement incentive. The Waco District lost its entire top staff except for me -- I am the dinosaur of the bunch; I have even been here longer than Josie. But we were particularly affected in maintenance because during the year we had three different maintenance engineers and we spent most of our time filling vacancies rather than working on maintenance contracts, but our new maintenance engineer, as you can see, hit the ground running.

I am really pleased with our current district staff, and the fact that we are operating at these record levels really is a tribute to them. Actually, I am pleased with the entire district, all of the supervisors and the employees as well, in handling what would have, not too many years ago, would have really been considered just an overwhelming workload.

Let's go back to the traffic map just a minute. It is obvious from this why -- and this is a blow-up just of the Waco District -- but it is pretty obvious from this why we consider Interstate 35 to be our top priority project or top priority, not a project as such -- we need some projects on it -- but it also represents our biggest challenge. What I am going to talk about really just to has to do with sort of general stuff on Interstate 35 Corridor, and really it would apply equally over in the Williamson County and Austin District and other places as well.

Now, I know that Bill doesn't like to refer to problems, he wants us to refer to this as opportunities to excel, but really, the more I have looked into this over the past few months, I have come to the conclusion that Interstate 35 is on the verge of becoming a problem, and it is by far my biggest concern at this point. And there are really three facets to this problem: the traffic, both the amount of traffic and the type; the age of the system; and the existing right of way.

First, traffic -- which you can see on the map. Milton referred to some stuff about level of service. Really just the numbers alone don't give you the full picture. The capacity of highways has a number of variables, capacities even are considered different in our capacity manual between rural sections and urban sections, so we design on what we call level of service. There are six of these ranging from A to F.

Level of Service A is free-flow -- this would be Interstate 10 about around Fort Stockton; you don't have to worry about the other traffic -- all the way down to Level of Service F which is really a breakdown, and that would be Interstate 10 there by the Houston District office at rush hour with a wreck; you are just not going anywhere quick.

The one I really want to talk about is Level of Service E which is considered to be conditions at or near capacity. At this point speeds are reduced, you have difficulty in maneuvering within the traffic stream, and driver comfort and convenience levels are extremely poor, and driver frustration is generally high.

As you can see, a part of this, too, is perception. We would have different drivers getting frustrated at different levels, I suppose. But really, we are looking at ranges on this. For a rural four-lane freeway, the ranges for Level of Service E are capacity going from about 31,000 up to about 42,000, and for four-lane freeway in an urban area they range from about 52,000 up to about 64,000.

The state traffic map that you are looking at shows 1993 traffic counts. When we update these to the 1995 figures, they indicate that even in the worst case scenario up there just south of Hillsboro at the East/West split -- actually what I am talking about goes from that point back because we do get a split on the part that goes to Dallas and the part that goes to Fort Worth -- but they indicate that even in the worst case, we are already operating in the low range of Level of Service E capacity throughout the entire district.

But the thing that really concerns me about this is if we assume a traffic growth rate of 6 percent -- which is, in fact, lower than our overall traffic increase we had district-wide last year that was 6.6 percent, and more of that is going to be on interstate, so I think that if we really want to get closer to it, we are closer to about an 8 percent growth rate on interstate right now -- but if we just assume 6 percent, that means that we would be at the upper level of Level of Service E in just four more years in 1999.

Even if it drops off to like a 4 percent growth rate, we would still get there by the year 2002, so somewhere around 2000, plus or minus a year or two, traffic on Interstate 35 throughout the entire Waco District will be verging on and occasionally operating at Level of Service F. Well, I don't want to disparaging Houston, but I think the drivers there do expect some stop-and-go traffic. I know I do when I am in Houston. I hope we don't, but it usually happens.

But I really think on this, that the traveling public, while they expect some stop-and-go traffic in Houston, I don't think they are really ready yet for stop-and-go traffic in downtown Abbott and Troy and Lorena. Maybe so on Thanksgiving Day or something like that, but not on just a plain Tuesday or Thursday afternoon, or whatever. And really the only way to prevent this is to add additional lanes.

We are trying to do this. This is a section of the interstate right there in Waco near Baylor that we upgraded three years ago from two lanes to three lanes in each direction, and I think you can see the difference there. The abutting section just to the west, this is what it looked like last year. We currently have a project underway to upgrade that to six lanes as well.

The only problem with this is it is somewhat expensive. This project here is running us a little over $8 million a mile, and referring back to our map again from the 35 East/West split north of Hillsboro, back through the district we have 79 miles of interstate that are still four lanes. At $8.2 million a mile that means that all I need to fix this is enough people to do it and $650 million. That is a problem I can't solve; I will let you work on that one.

The second facet to the problem we have on the interstate is the condition of the pavement structure which you can see on some of this is not in the best shape. One of the problems -- well, there are three different causes for this, really. One of them is just the traffic, the amount of traffic, and also the fact that we are now right about 25 percent truck traffic -- and I am talking about the big trucks. By the time we include the single units, it jumps up to almost 40 percent, but just the big trailer trucks is running -- this is out in rural McLennan County -- running 25 percent.

The other problem is the Waco District was very early in building their sections of interstate and we have some sections of pavement that actually were upgraded to more or less interstate standards even before the interstate program began, and so now we are looking at pavements that are 40 years old, and as you can see from this, it is beginning to show its age.

This is some old wrinkle tin joints and they are beginning to come through, and I don't know how we are going to fix that one either.

Earlier this month we did some exploratory surgery out around West on some of the pavement sections. This is what they ought to look like. This is a solid core all the way down to the bottom. Unfortunately, most of the cores look a little bit more like this, and I don't know how this is showing up on your monitors, but you can see there is a lot of loose material in there. This has just deteriorated with time and traffic. And here is another shot of it. This is a problem known as stripping. What happens is the asphalt just goes away over time and you are left with loose gravel. At this stage, it really has become a problem.

Our current interstate reconstruction project that we are doing there in Waco is using 14 inches of reinforced concrete for the pavement structure over stabilized subgrade, so on this one you can see again out around West -- well, this is just over the line in Hill County -- but we have basically six or seven inches of aging asphalted concrete pavement over loose gravel, and comparing that to the 14 inches of reinforced concrete which we hope will last for 30 to 40 years, I don't know how long this is going to last, so that presents a problem as well.

The third facet is the problem that we are ultimately going to face on the interstate, and this is a worst case scenario, since we also acquired right of way early on for the interstate program, we have some sections that have extremely limited right of way. On the west side of your screen you can see the people riding on the frontage roads. We don't have room to widen to the middle here, we really don't have room to widen to the outside either. Any expansion of interstate, not just here but in a number of other locations, is going to require some additional right of way acquisition and that is going to make it even that more expensive.

I didn't even notice what time it was when I got up here, but I am probably out of time. But that is a brief overview just of what I consider to be our biggest problems right now. Obviously I have left out a whole lot more things than I have covered, but if you really want to know more about the Waco District or even interstate, stop by and we will give you the full 50-cent tour, and in fact, at the Transportation Conference in College Station last year, one of the speakers referred to Waco as bathroom city, a good place to stop between Austin and Dallas, so we are currently upgrading our bathrooms to ADA standards, so they are in good shape. Stop and visit us.

Let me throw in one more thing. This is very brief. One of the things that I had really not considered was travel times, but earlier this month, Dr. Frank McCullough, who heads up CTR out here, sent me some stuff for review that some research was being done by a graduate student, and actually he was looking at travel times between downtown Dallas and downtown San Antonio, going back even before interstate, and at that time it was about an eight-hour trip.

Of course, when we did get the interstate finished in the '60s and in the '70s it dropped down to about 4-1/2 hours, but it is on the way back up now, and according to his figures -- and I didn't have any slides on this because the data is not finished -- but according to his figures, sometime not too long after the year 2000 it is going to take as long to get from downtown Dallas to downtown San Antonio on the interstate -- and this is tied back to level of service and traffic too -- it is going to take as long to get there on the interstate as it used to when you had to go through all those little towns and go through city streets and stop at the stop lights. This is going to be a very gradual process, but again, I don't know how the traveling public really is going to react to that either.

Anyhow, I appreciate your time. If you have ny questions, I will be glad to take a stab at it.

MR. BURNETT: Kirby, could you comment on the Hillsboro Courthouse, Hill County Courthouse, the first enhancement project.

MR. PICKETT: I had a bunch more slides but I couldn't get them all in. Hillsboro Courthouse, the first Transportation Enhancement Project in the state, is underway. We are participating in that to the tune of about $3 million on what really is about an overall $8 million project. We are participating only in the restoration of the exterior. Fortunately, they had the plans already done, because this burned down on New Year's Day in 1993, and it is going real well so far.

One of the things that we are doing on this, really not by design but it just kind of worked out that way, is we are really sort of doing construction inspection by somebody else, we are just looking over their shoulder. You know, we have talked about doing construction inspection by consultants. So far, this is working great. The firm that did the plans, which was an architectural historical restoration firm, is also looking after the construction inspection, and thus far -- and we have had several little blips along the way but they have all been ironed out, and it makes me feel a little bit better because, again, I am one of the old dinosaurs and when you mention inspection by construction, you know, I just kind of shiver; but in this particular case, if this is any omen of what we can look for in the future, that is working out real well.

MR. BURNETT: Thank you, Kirby.

MR. LANEY: Thank you, Kirby.

MR. BURNETT: Commissioners, that completes Item 7. The only item remaining on the agenda is Item 11, and Dianna Noble, Director of the Environmental Affairs Division, would like to give you an update on the Texas Historic Bridges Study that her division has done.

MS. NOBLE: Good afternoon, Commissioners Laney, Wynne, and Mr. Burnett. Item 11, the Texas Historic Bridges, will be presented by Regina Lauderdale.

MS. LAUDERDALE: Thank you. I am here to tell you about a special project you may not be aware of. The Historic Bridge Program has been underway in the Environmental Affairs Division for a number of years. TxDOT initiated the Historic Bridge Program in response to growing interest in historic bridges affected by the Federal Bridge Replacement Program.

One impetus for the project was provided by the 1987 Transportation Act. In addition to stressing the need for a safe and economical transportation system, the act encourages the preservation of important historic bridges. It specifically directed states to inventory historic bridges and evaluate their significance. In 1987, staff from TxDOT's Environmental Affairs Division and the Texas Historical Commission formed a team to develop a comprehensive program to study and manage historic bridges in Texas.

The bridge program encompasses four main goals. The first involved inventorying all older bridges located on and off the Federal Aid Highway System. The inventory revealed nearly 7,000 vehicular bridges that are historic, defined as being at least 50 years old. You may notice on the slide that it says 45 years old. We decided to go ahead and include any bridge that was at least 45 years old so that we would have that five-year leeway as our project proceeded.

Each of these 7,000 structures needed to be evaluated for historic significance -- that is, importance in state or local history. Because of the sheer number of resources, we broke the inventory and evaluation process into two phases. The first phase encompassed metal truss and suspension bridges -- those are the nearly 1,200 bridges that are shown in red on the pie chart -- which are the two types most likely to have historic significance. All other types are covered in the second phase which we are beginning now, so that is the yellow and orange section.

Here are a few examples of the metal truss and suspension bridges revealed in the first phase of the inventory. This is the earliest permanent bridge in Texas, the Waco suspension bridge, completed in 1869. Lightweight, durable and easy to erect, truss bridges gained popularity in subsequent decades. Early on, these bridges were typically built by out-of-state bridge builders at the behest of the county commissioners court. The bridge company would ship the unassembled truss members to the bridge site where they would be assembled and erected. One of these out-of-state bridge builders was the Pennsylvania Bridge Company of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, which built this whipple truss in Bell County in 1889.

By and large, bridge builders marketed smaller stock spans such as this war and pony [phonetic] span built in 1907 by the Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron Company of Leavenworth, Kansas.

A Texas-based fabricator, the Austin Bridge Company, began operations in Dallas in 1910 and quickly became the preeminent Texas bridge builder. In addition to advertising in transportation magazines, the company issued its 250-page catalogue offering mail order bridge products along the lines of a Sears & Roebuck catalogue. The company's ready-to-assemble bridge kits were especially popular, facilitating easy erection on site.

Hundreds of these prefabricated spans were built throughout the state and many still survive today on Texas roadways.

As part of the inventory process, we also researched a number of TxDOT resources, including construction plans and correspondence files from early bridge projects. Much of our research into the history of the Highway Department led to this man, George Grover Wickline, who served as the state bridge engineer from 1918 to 1943. During his long tenure he established practices for the bridge division that set the precedent for today's operations.

Wickline initiated the use of standard bridge components such as piers, railings and individual spans for use on short and medium length bridges such as the Montopolis Bridge in Austin. He also set a high standard for site investigation and design of more monumental bridges such as the 1938 Rainbow Bridge. Through historic photographs taken by highway engineers, we were able to document methods used in the construction of the Rainbow Bridge.

Using TxDOT bridge section files, old construction documents and current photographs, we compiled data packages on each bridge. After conducting research and evaluating the metal truss and suspension bridges under phase one of the inventory, we determined that 20 percent were historically significant, and therefore, eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. The National Register is the list of cultural resources deemed significant to American heritage.

Our ongoing preservation efforts have focused on this smaller pool of bridges which require environmental clearance before being impacted by bridge replacement projects. Over the past year and a half we have prepared nominations for 30 historically significant metal truss highway bridges. In a public hearing in May, these 30 nominations were accepted unanimously by the State Board of Review, a committee which reviews and approves submissions to the National Register. By nominating significant bridges to the National Register, we have fostered awareness of these resources and fulfilled TxDOT's obligation under federal law.

We are now beginning the inventory and evaluation process for the other bridge types, and the next few slides will show examples of different bridge types in this second phase of the inventory: stone arch bridges such as this 1942 bridge in Palo Pinto County; we also have a number of concrete arch bridges such as the Paddock Viaduct built in 1914 over the Trinity River in Fort Worth; concrete girder bridges, including this 1931 structure which carries US 377 over the Trinity River, also in Fort Worth; and steel girder bridges such as the MKT Railroad underpass built in 1937 on South St. Mary's Street in San Antonio.

The Texas Historic Bridge Program also encompasses the creation of a management plan that sets out alternatives for preserving important historic bridges. While this plan is not yet completed, we have implemented interim measures encouraging the preservation of significant structures through efforts such as the Historic Bridge Marketing Program.

Under this program, historic bridges are relocated to other sites such as parks, golf courses or hike and bike trails, where they can serve pedestrian and bicycle needs. For example, this late 19th century bridge was relocated from a city street to a trail in a Comanche City park. Twelve other bridges have been relocated under the program, and five more are currently in the works.

Whenever possible, we try to bypass an historic bridge and leave it in place for pedestrian and bicycle traffic. Vehicular traffic is typically carried by the new structure built alongside the historic bridge. To date, TxDOT has bypassed 29 historically significant bridges. In the case of the historic Bastrop Bridge, which these two slides show, TxDOT worked with the local community to rehabilitate the structure, which serves as the historic gateway to downtown Bastrop.

Another goal of the program is to create a publication covering historic Texas bridges for dissemination to the public, such as these two publications created by the Indiana and California DOTs. Through publications, presentations and conferences, we have worked with the districts, along with communities and preservation groups, to promote awareness of historic bridges and encourage their preservation. Specific examples include dedication ceremonies for preserved bridges and outreach with local libraries and preservation groups.

The Texas Historic Bridge Program has helped TxDOT to move in the right direction. The program has allowed for a more comprehensive approach to managing this important transportation resource. By working together with staff from the Historical Commission, we have developed a project review process for historic bridges that satisfies both transportation and preservation interests.

The program has facilitated a streamlined environmental clearance process for bridges with little historic value. These structures may be removed easily, resulting in quicker turnaround times for most bridge replacement projects. Conversely, greater efforts are now taken to preserve those select bridges deemed historically significant.

And finally, the Historic Bridge Program has helped to educate TxDOT engineers, as well as the public, about the significance of historic bridges and the preservation options available for these resources. The program has fostered a new awareness and appreciation of historic bridges. As the project gains momentum, TxDOT employees are working together to devise new creative solutions for preserving these important links in our transportation heritage.

And that is the presentation. I would like to say that we brought some of our archival resources with us and we have set them in the back room, the delegation room, if anybody is interested. We have our nomination notebook which includes an overview of bridge history in Texas. We have some archival construction photos, Wickline's book of standards that I showed, and they are set out there if anybody is interested. And also, if you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them.

MR. LANEY: Thank you for the presentation.

MR. BURNETT: Commissioners, that is all we have for today's agenda.

MR. LANEY: Then it is 12:37 and I would like to adjourn the meeting. Thank you all for coming, appreciate your presence.

(Whereupon, at 12:37 p.m., the meeting was adjourned.)

C E R T I F I C A T E

IN RE: Texas Transportation Commission

LOCATION: Austin, Texas

DATE: June 27, 1995

I do hereby certify that the foregoing pages, numbers 1 through 110, inclusive, are the true, accurate, and complete transcript prepared from the verbal recording made by electronic recording by Linda Millstid before the Texas Department of Transportation.

06/29/95

(Transcriber) (Date)

On the Record Reporting, Inc.

5926 Balcones Dr., Suite 115

Austin, Texas 78731

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