Oversight of Development: Important to YOU.

When new subdivisions, a single home, a commercial area, or industrial businesses are being built, most people assume that one of the area governments or the City of Austin is overseeing the quality and impact of what is being done.  However, much of the growth in Travis County is taking place outside any incorporated city or town and that puts it under the jurisdiction of the County Commissioners.

Texas Counties lack much of the ordinance-making authority that cities have to assure that growth is safe and responsible – basic requirements such as zoning, building codes, utility and infrastructure planning.  The result of this lack of oversight is rampant growth and sprawl that create more traffic congestion, threats to our water quality and future water availability, stress on school districts and public safety needs. Plus, there are serious impacts on our Hill Country’s natural assets:  Our scenic views, our creeks and lakes are being degraded and even destroyed. 

Effects of Growth:  Important to YOU.

People who live in Austin may not realize that this growth in the County areas is affecting them.  Here’s how – to name but a few ways: 

• School taxes are increasing to cover needed expansion. 
• Tens of thousands of more daily car trips from Western Travis County are being put on our main West to East arteries: SH 290, SH 71, RM 2222, RM 2244 (Bee Caves Road), Southwest Parkway, and SH 1431.  This traffic is coming through your neighborhoods.  These roads are already at or near capacity and there are no plans in place to provide relief anytime during the next several years. 
• The high demands on our available water supplies are resulting in the need to stagger landscape watering schedules – even during mild drought conditions, and Lake Travis water levels are threatened for recreational use even during mild dry spells.  These are important flags for real concern about long-term availability of tap water.
• Fire and public safety personnel and facilities are challenged to increase their capacity to keep up with growth, which results in rising taxes.

Leadership: Important to You.

Our current County Commissioner, Gerald Daughtery is doing nothing to solve these problems.  Instead:

• He continues to promote more subdivisions that put even more vehicles on our highways.
• He supports toll roads, which add yet another cost to taxpayers to subsidize sprawl and real estate developers.
• He opposes light rail and other mobility solutions that would provide transportation alternatives
• He has taken no steps to implement two key recommendations that his own Southwest County Growth Dialog Panel recommended – a Transportation Plan and an Economic Development Plan.  These are important tools for addressing transportation and growth issues both within Precinct 3 and with other jurisdictional agencies.
• He consistently opposes efforts in the Legislature to expand County land-use authority (which would give Counties better ability to insure that growth is responsible) – voting as recently as this past June as the only opposing vote on testimony from the Commissioners Court to the Legislature that outlined the County needs and requests for more land-use authority.

A Course of Action: Important to YOU.

It is the County Commissioners’ actions—or failure to act-- that will have the most impact on our quality of life and the future health of our economy.

As your County Commissioner, I promise to:

• Make full use of the four enabling statutes that grant counties the authority to make land-use decisions based upon the “health, safety and well-being” of the constituents.
  Develop a Transportation Plan for Precinct 3 and work with CAMPO, the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority and surrounding cities and counties to develop an integrated transit plan that works for all.
• Foster regional planning that helps to reduce sprawl, provide housing that meets the needs and the resources for all citizens, addresses the optimum locations for businesses, commerce and industry, such that more people can live, work, shop and play without having to travel great distances to do so.
• Work with LCRA, TCEQ and other governing entities to see that our water quality is protected and supplies are available for the future.
• Work to see that growth pays its fair share and does not pass its costs off to the taxpayer.

 

Travis County has four elected Commissioners, each representing a specific geographic area, and a County Judge, who is elected at-large.  All counties in Texas have this same representation.    Precinct 3 represents the largest geographic area of the county (about 48%) – much of the western half of Travis County.  You will vote in Commissioner Precinct 3 if the first digit of your voting precinct is a “3”.