One commissioner in particular is looking to challenge current County Judge Liz Sumter. It makes sense for him to start collecting chits from the developer and real estate community in the western half of the county . . .Send your comments and news tips to online.editor@valleyspringcomm.net
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By Bob Ochoa
RoundUp Editor
Reports are arriving that last night's Tuesday, July 21 commissioners court meeting & workshop on the proposed new subdivision rules was a wing-dinger. "It was overwhelming," said one attendee, "people came out of the woodwork; they were packing in there like sardines."
Wimberley, we are told, came out pretty solidly in favor of the much debated 6.5 acre proposed rule. Dripping Springs, led by its chamber of commerce, said 'no way, Jose.'
A representative from the Texas Homebuilders Association said forcing larger minimum lot sizes on developers, like the proposed 6.5 acres versus the current 2 acres, would hurt the feelings of many real estate agents and home builders and hasten new sources of imported water into our region. The RoundUp thinks that's a low hand bluff. There doesn't appear to be a lot of "surplus" water out there that wouldn't cost an arm and a leg to import. If imported water ever does arrive, you might want to plan on cashing in your gold ingots.
"About 200 people were present. It was so warm (inside) with so many people it was like a pressure cooker feeling," said David Baker of the Wimberley Valley Watershed Association. "It really wasn't quite as contentious as I thought it would be. There were about 27 speakers. Only five spoke out against the 6.5 acre recommendation.
"The northern side of the county (Dripping) seemed to be more interested in the economics of being able to subdivide for smaller lots, and the southern part (Wimberley) saying you have a responsibility to protect my groundwater in making sure you spread out the lots more."
Baker added this insightful note: "We need to figure out how to cut back and actually reduce aquifer pumping . . . others don't see that limitation as an impediment. (Our aquifer is being way over-pumped, by some estimates, 500 million gallons a year more than is sustainable without tons of rain recharge). We have two different sets of values approaching this. When it becomes a political vote, not based on hydrology, then we're really pitting two factions of the community against themselves that is not in either of their interests."
Commissioners heard from a lot of folks. Public comments lasted about 2 hours. The meeting started around 6 p.m. at Wimberley council chambers and adjourned around midnight. Commissioners could have voted to adopt the new subdivision rules, but, no surprise, decided to punt down field. County Judge Liz Sumter later explained some commissioners "just were not ready" to vote. Other issues arose in the proposed rules that needed some cleaning up, she said.
The judge said a commitment was made to vote on the new subdivision regulations at the commissioners court's Aug. 11 meeting. A final discussion on lot sizing will take place a week prior, at the Aug. 4 meeting. Judge Sumter noted that, "the last statement made (at Tuesday night's meeting) was somewhere between five and a half and six and a half (acres). That will be the fighting ground" in the final vote.
We asked the judge, what's the big difference between five and six and a half acres? She said, "There is a major difference. Going to five acres doesn't incentivize to think about water differently. Going to 6.5, it does . . . the best we can do is vote for something that will change the way people think about development of the land and buy us some time to the next legislative session (two years away)."
Sumter pointed out that three major efforts in the last legislative session – to give counties more control over development, provide more authority to our groundwater conservation district and provide more incentives for rainwater collection – ALL FAILED. The judge was polite enough not to mention the stellar performances of our representatives in Austin – Rose and Wentworth – in the failed legislative attempts. Now, Sumter said, "it comes down to the county doing what it can."
It was evident, said one observer, that during the meeting some on the court were playing up to some in the crowd and ignoring the wishes of others.
One commissioner in particular is looking to challenge current County Judge Sumter in the Democratic primary next year. It makes sense for him to start collecting chits from the developer and real estate interests in the western half of the county to undercut Sumter's and Pct. 4 Commissioner Karen Ford's home bases, Wimberley and Dripping. The old 'divide and conquer' routine. Only this is Dem on Dem – makes one wonder where this guy's loyalties lie, outside of his over-stretched ego.
The mystery challenger, who is more SHAMocrat than Democrat, probably thinks he's already got the eastern half of the county sewed up. Give you three guesses who it might be. Lord have mercy, drought, followed by the arrival of a plague of special interest toadies.
20 comments:
Kim Johnson,Dripping Springs Chamber of Commerce President (Staff), stood up at the podium at this meeting and with as much bile and venom she could muster tried her level best to persuade the Court and the citizens that the scientific FACTS regarding the aquifer, rivers, streams, lakes, and springs was not true. If she was representing DS Chamber of Commerce Members then she was representing the likes of Rose Realty. Representative Rose do you agree with Kim Johnson? If not your family should withdraw their membership from the Chamber sooner than later. I think all Chamber members should be aware of how they were being represented by this less than professional dragon lady.
Do greed, power and money always have to determine how our county functions?
I am tired of the whole bunch of leaders we have.
Our commissioners are like little dysfunctional children who can't get along and work together to benefit the entire community.
Personally, I think the East and West of Hays County should be separated and made into 2 different counties.
For all the squabbling, residents are NOT in a better place financially than we were 5 years ago.
We voted in new commissioners because we couldn't handle the special interest "good ol' boys" who were in there, but honestly, we are in the same place in many ways.
Any sort of change is a hassle. Nothing is easy. No one wants to give and take. It's all take, take, take.
I am sick of it. My family and neighbors are going to vote for someone other than the current incumbents.
Maybe if we keep on pulling the levers eventually the political slot machines will come up with winners.
“Judge Sumter noted that, "the last statement made (at Tuesday night's meeting) was somewhere between five and a half and six and a half (acres). That will be the fighting ground" in the final vote.”
“Going to five acres doesn't incentivize to think about water differently. Going to 6.5, it does . . . the best we can do is vote for something that will change the way people think about development of the land and buy us some time to the next legislative session (two years away).”
Sorry Judge Liz, that’s the biggest bunch of BS I’ve ever heard from a politician. It is right up there with some of Billy Clinton’s double-speak about “is”. It exemplifies one who is running for higher office and at the same time shows why they shouldn’t.
It is time to clean house again in the Commissioners Court, forget the political labels, vote them all out every chance you get. That’s the kind of term limits we need.
Nice to hear from the Wimberley contingent of lunatics. My understanding is that everyone from Wimberley were the old hippies who came off of the pot high long enough to find a ride to the City Council chambers. Turns out some of them even know how to turn on and use the computer enough to post on the internet. Amazing! Just goes to show you that even dipsticks like those knuckledraggers in Wimberley can operate a keyboard.
Seriously though, I would almost assure you that Kim's representation of the Drippin' Chamber is spot on. The great divide between DS and Wimberley is that we want to grow, and them goobers down in the Valley don't. Cool. Let us have the growth and tax dollars so we can lower our taxes in the school district while you fools keep growing and keep shelling out the dollars to the local district because you don't want commercial growth. What imbeciles, what buffoons.
Am I smelling a right wing conspiracy here, anonymous 2 thru 4? Voting out the incumbents in November of next year, Sumter and Ford? They're the only two sane people we have on the commissioners court. Voting them out means we get "Bullcorn" Barton as county judge and "Drill Baby Drill" Wisenhnant as commissioner from precinct 4. That would be a total catastrophe!
We should give them all a lie detector test to determine their levels of honesty. Bullcorn and Drill Baby would I'm sure would fail miserably.
Please tell Mr. Barton to stay in his overcrowded east side with his development side business and buddies. We don't want him out here mucking up our western hills and views.
Please allow this email to advise one and all that Ms. Johnson of the Dripping Springs Chamber of Commerce IN NO WAY represented me or any of my many Dripping Springs neighbors who attended last night's meeting. Perhaps this wasn't made clear, but many of the pro-6.5 speakers were from Dripping Springs, including the woman whose well went dry while her family was visiting, the man in the white shirt who spoke briefly, and the woman who talked about the banks who will loan for rainwater systems. If we'd suspected that Ms. Johnson, whose organization has no less vested an interest in rampant growth than the developers, was going to be taken seriously as an objective representative of Dripping Springs, we would have spoken, too. I thought Ms. Johnson was patronizing and smug, and the axe she was grinding should have been obvious to all. So let's drop all this divide-the-county talk. There are plenty of people in Dripping Springs who believe these regulations should be approved.
OR we can let Loopy Liz and Kooky Karen around a little longer and chase the development out of our County into Travis so that we get NO sales tax and property tax from a commercial base, that way us dumb ole hayseeds on the west and northern sides of the County can continue being the hillbillies that we have always been...duuh...
I hope Kim Johnson and DS Right (or are they one and the same?) takes a lesson from Anonymous #7. Anonymous #7 writes with grace, dignity and obviously from the heart. It appears only a few Dripping Springs citizens are following the greedy developer(s) agenda driven by the likes of Chamber President Johnson.
I speak as spoken too. If the hypocrites of Wimberley would "speak from the heart" with the same respect for those they disagree with, they will get back the same respect.
It is not following the "greedy developer(s) agenda" just because we want to have commercial growth to help alleviate the tax burden our school district imposes upon us residents, and as well the convenience of having retail opportunities and jobs that provide local opportunities for employment without having to go to Austin to work and shop. (That means leaving our tax dollars in either Travis County and Austin, thus supporting their political agendas with the loose and free sales tax revenues that come in that aren't dedicated to specific budget categories.)
Instead monies spent in either Hays County or God forbid Dripping Springs actually stays in OUR community. The enviros love to talk about the idea of less use of vehicles, but fail to realize that this means sometimes taking the business to where the people are. Otherwise, you continue to get sprawl. DS is trying to get the growth centered around the center of town, they should be applauded rather than jeered by the ne'er-do-wells that rather live in the huts and eat tofu and sip tepid recycled pea-water.
Of course, if we only knew those who really live like that might give us cause to believe them. Funny enough, most of those complaining about "more" growth are happy to live in their suburban subdivisions that started the trend, and they live on their two acres, and dare anyone else to come. (Kind of like a sick version of "red rover, red rover, let the next person who wants to move here come over"!)
Still RIGHT in DS!
While I personally love to see the "Sham-o-crats" tear each other apart - funny, leave it to the dingy dems to come up with their own insult, I love it! - I think Barton taking Judge Liz's place in the center of the dais would represent change. (real change? who knows, he's a democrat to, but one that I think listens to more people than those who share his agenda).
As for DS - ha! - DS will elect a Republican because regardless of the tomfoolery b-s that gets spouted around by the demagoguery that goes on around by the liberals, this precinct is still conservative. Our JP and constable races from last go round can easily point out the obvious. Two non-incumbents won, one against the incumbent JP (a Republican); and then the Constable's race against an incumbent Democrat, who just happened to be a local fave (no party issue).
So if Ron Hood can take the race away from a local fave, regardless of party, in a year when it was "throw the bums out", then why pray tell could it not be anything other than a Republican precinct? So Karen, just keep up the good work, and we'll be writing you your last paycheck in a few months. Wishing you the best.
DS Right, what's your beef, pardner? You've got gobs of LCRA surface water up in your neck of the woods. You can develop until you explode for all I care. Just make sure in the process you don't suck our aquifer dry. Ya think maybe that surface water/connections/et.al. is too expensive you just now?
And instead of pimping runaway growth on the rest of us for the sake of tax revenues, maybe your chamber of commerce ought to spiff up its Shop Locally department. With the new HEB coming in, how many of you 'support your local business' blowhards are gonna give a rats arse about tried and true Super S?
As for you 'Repubs rule in four', there never has been any CONSERVE in CONSERvatives of your variety. You probably also worship the ground Will Conley walks on. I know Whisenant's campaign operatives do. The secret to his success is he lets all the grunt taxpayers pay for his development priorities.
10 to 1 Conley refuses to vote for a tax rate increase in the new county budget, even though he championed the road bond that is the cause of the tax increase. Two- faced. Have you asked him lately how our county is paying for those precious road projects of his?
DS Right(?): No amount of your nasty name-calling tactics will make a dent in our intentions here in the still beautiful Hill Country..you may want Dripping Springs full of ticky-tacky houses on a hillside but we don't and I would venture a guess that most of the citizens of Dripping Springs don't either.
I wait for the time when our politicians wind up kicking out the working (old timers and such) working families here due to higher property and other county taxes and then look at each other to pay the ongoing astromical taxes that we will have in this county.
I won't vote for Sumter, Ford, Conley, Barton, "the fence-sitter", the phony Vietnam Veteran Chef who lost last time, or Wisen-boy. I will vote for anyone else running against those people.
We need some real people at the helm. People who know the life struggles the majority are going through and who want to make this county a significantly nicer place to live it.
Is there anyone like that out there????
All: Please plan to attend the Commissioners Court sessions on August 4 and 11th at 9a.m. Let's watch the Court as they hedge, squirm, bully, delay and lie their way out of this. It is up to all of us to keep them honest and hold their feet to the fire.
A Quote from DS right (wrong) . . . “Let us have the growth and tax dollars so we can lower our taxes in the school district while you fools keep growing and keep shelling out the dollars to the local district …”
Well, I’m one of them fools, who can’t believe someone would think that more development growth and taxes will alleviate the oppressive school tax load on DS or any other community. It is a fact that more development makes for more students, more over priced schools not to mention more stadiums and other waste. The DS school district will never lower its tax rate and would double it tomorrow if they thought they could get away with it. The district is a malignant growth and there is no cure, certainly not more growth. Now, who’s the fool?
Fighting Growth in Wimberley
Go back to the story and read what David Baker has to say about politics pitting the community against one another. It's happening right here in the comments. Can't you see it. Those jerks, mainly Bullcorn and Will the Shill, are laughing all the way to the bank. I think we voting citizens and taxpayers need to start kicking some a**. And I think we know whose a**es to kick. Peace out.
We are running out of water. Period. More growth = less water for all of us who are already here. Until and unless we get some major, continuous source of water here, bickering over who is Democrat/Republican/Developer/Old Hippie is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Yep, I am an Old Hippie from Wimberley, and damned proud of it.
The developers have for way too long gotten around the regs of "Average lot size" by making lots and lots of small lots with one big greenbelt. Still makes for too many people in too small a space.
6.5 acres is a good start....but not enough.
What's that old saying, "whiskey's for drinking, water's for fightin."
If there was any intellectual honesty to these proposed rules, then the proposed rule would require 6.5 acres average irrespective of whether there were individual wells or a central groundwater system. Instead this is blatantly a proposal to force homeowners to be involuntary customers of these privately held water companies.
How many plans for 6.5 acres/lot subdivisions have been submitted? Without a doubt: few if any at all. This isn't about "conservation" but rather an extraction of property from homeowners for the benefit of everyone except the homeowner. The result will be to accelerate the growth of high density subdivisions.
Who profits? The county (from the high density tax base), the developer selling the overpriced lots and selling the water, the HTGCD (which collects production fees based on consumption of water from the private water company), and vendors of these subdivisions.
This isn't about water conservation because there isn't any minimum lot size for groundwater-based central well systems. These aren't municipal water systems, they are typically developer owned water systems. The county has been implicitly mandating the creation of nothing but HOA subdivisions for quite some time and the turkey has come home to roost. These new subdivisions will invariably be in HOAs because developers like the control over a population that HOAs provide. The management companies and vendors that prey upon homeowners in HOAs won't hesitate to threaten homeowners with fines and foreclosure over "brown grass", etc.
Have you seen any non-HOA neighborhoods being developed in the last 20 years? No. The HOA will be used to compel water consumption - especially from a water company owned by the developer. These aren't "homeowner associations" they are homeowner financial enslavement subdivisions. You will do what the HOA dictates to you. You should not be surprised when the developer-controlled HOA wants you to purchase water from the developer-owned water company.
County rules designed to eliminate choices for citizens is NOT going to help solve the problem. The county should be adopting rules to PRESERVE THE RIGHT OF THE INDIVIDUAL. Instead you are creating an environment where others will profit from forcing the homeowners to consume water and directing who the homeowner must purchase the water from. The management companies and developers running the HOAs will not hesitate to threaten homeowners with fines and foreclosure on their homes lest they consume water per HOA Board mandates.
These companies profit from selling water, not from conserving it! If you want to "fix" something, then quit removing the choice from the homeowner. Instead, the county is pursuing a course of forcing homeowners into subdivisions where consumption of water is going to be mandated AND the homeowners will be obligated to consume from particular vendors. This will be implemented in the form of 'deed restrictions' and the county will then turn its back and claim that the residents "chose" this and that it is a matter of private contract.
Q: Exactly how does forcing someone onto a central system conserve water? Answer: it doesn't. Q: Who is the water being conserved for? A: not the homeowner. What you will find instead is that the fate of the entire neighborhood will be dictated by the whims of the investors in the privately held water company.
If the county was so interested in "saving" the public, then perhaps the county can bear the expense of running surface water lines to the subdivision. Instead, the county expects to tax the residents and dictate their land use without providing any services at all.
The county's current path is ill-conceived and intellectually dishonest. The adoption of the rules will accelerate the growth of high density housing and the lowering of the water table for the profit of those operating these central water systems.
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