Turning Hays County into something roughly resembling Round Rock is a sad proposition, though it is one that will make lots of money for a select few people
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Guest commentary
By Susan Cook
DRIPPING SPRINGS – Despite the latest Hays County road bond being tens of millions more than last year's defeated one, it passed by a wide margin. Voters were either not as skeptical of these road projects as they were just one year ago, or sadly, didn't do their homework.
Do my fellow citizens not realize that many of these projects will do little more than increase suburban sprawl at a time when energy prices and our looming economic shifts have made it pretty obvious we need to rein in this kind of growth and pay attention to mass transit and more compact city options?
Turning Hays County into something roughly resembling Round Rock is a sad proposition, though it is one that will make lots of money for a select few people: those who own those swaths of land the road companies and developers have slated for our next transit corridors and for the people whose chosen occupation it is to build roads and subdivisions and strip malls...and again, sadly for the politicians those people have bankrolled into office to make the laws sync up with their development plans.
They talk of these development projects like they were inevitable patterns of growth. They are not. There are many ways to build cities and towns and manage our open spaces and the one that has been dominant in the US for the past 60 or so years is running out of fuel. Literally.
Our Hays County countryside should not be allowed to be paved over with unnecessarily large roadways and overpopulated by unsustainable housing projects. Our limited water resources should not be strained further from overuse or polluted with urban run-off. Development COSTS the taxpayer money, it never pays its own way.
Cities should protect and enliven their open spaces and agricultural outer rings. We should be aware of the advantages of growing food close to home and of the benefit of undeveloped land as a source of natural beauty, recreation, and aquifer regeneration.
If our "leaders" keep taking their marching orders from those who would transform Hays County into one big urban neighborhood like the interior of any city anywhere, then we must replace them and work harder to protect our lands, our water and our way of life.
Business as usual is not an option.
3 comments:
Thank you, Ms. Cook: Those in the development "business" are quick to allude to their being environmentally conscious but not OPENLY publish their plans as openly testified to in court yesterday. Roads in the Wimberley area are already being expanded to accommodate "urban" sprawl...not all in a negative manner because where the expansion is being done on FM2325 was NEEDED,in part. The entry/exit at W Valley Springs was life-treatening and WSP waited 7 1/2 years to begin work at that spot...but that entity is also making pretty for its ultimate sprawl over Hill Country land...see Commisioners' Court agenda today: item #10. How much $$ has passed into "appropriate" pockets to push this through the Court?!
Thank you, Ms. Cook: This Hill Country sprawl is being added to by virtue of FM2325's being expanded to accommodate entry/exit onto W Valley Springs Road. Not that this work was not needed...Indeed, it has been needed...for 7 1/2 years!!! It has been life-threatening to use this area of road, to say the least. BUT Wimberley Springs Partners (aka Quicksand, etc) now intends to replat and build out its properties to the tune of 146 new lots/homes with a proposed $$ amount for lots of upwards of $40,000 per lot. See Commissioner's Court agenda for this morning...Item #10...lots adjacent to new school. Entrance repair needed, yes. But ulterior motive paving way into requested new platted area for above mentioned new subdivision...Water??
Mr. Conley now needs to pay for his being re-elected with monies garnered in part from his old family friend, Mr. Porterfield and backers from the Midland/Odessa area...Kyle/Buda neighborhoods to go along with more expansion along this route??
I don't know what's wrong with "Round Rock Hill Country". Why, they burn lewd un-American textbooks in Round Rock (or at least have them removed from the dangerous hands of those overeducated liberal librarians). That sounds mighty Christian wholesome to me.
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