Posts Tagged ‘roads’

Recommendations on Williamson and Travis County Bond Elections

Tuesday, October 24th, 2023

There are some local bond elections on the ballot along with constitutional amendments. Here are my recommendations:

Williamson County

  • Proposition A: Proposed Roads: There are some 38 road projects included in the bond, totaling some $1.68 billion. Most of these seem to be “small ball” improvements on various roads and interchanges. Williamson is the fifth fastest growing county in the state, and the fourteenth in the country. One legitimate purpose of bonds is to support future growth, and the growth is there. Despite concerns over the out-of-state developers supporting the bond election, I think it best to keep ahead of growth and not be stuck with the sort of traffic nightmares that Austin and Travis County’s long-running refusal to properly plan and fund road growth have created. So despite my well-documented opposition to increased government spending, bonds and taxes, I recommend voting FOR Williamson County Proposition A: Proposed Roads.
  • Proposition B: Proposed Parks and Recreation: $59 million, some of it for obvious unnecessary pet projects like “Twin Lakes Park projects with YMCA to construct adventure course and expand parking.” Pay for your own damn “adventure course.” As opposed to roads, parks don’t pay for themselves by enabling growth, and should be paid for out of ongoing operating budgets. I recommend voting AGAINST Williamson County Proposition B: Proposed Parks and Recreation.

    • Travis County

  • Proposition A – Roadway Capacity and Active Transportation: Some of the items in this $233 million bond package are necessary improvements, but there are too many sops to green priorities (everything seems to have a “bike lane” or “mixed use path”). I recommend voting AGAINST Travis County Proposition A – Roadway Capacity and Active Transportation. Maybe next bond election they can come back with a pared-down bill.
  • Proposition B – Parks and Open Spaces: $276 million. Once again, parks should be funded out of ongoing revenue, and when it comes to Travis County, it’s useless putting more money into them since they’ll just became trash-strewn campgrounds for drug-addicted transients. I recommend voting AGAINST Travis County Proposition B – Parks and Open Spaces.

    • Round Rock ISD

    No one in Round Rock ISD should receive a raise as long as the current social justice agenda is in place. I recommend voting AGAINST Round Rock ISD Proposition A.

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    Posted in Austin, Elections, Texas | 4 Comments »

    How Obama Has Recalibrated My Outrage Scale

    Tuesday, August 7th, 2012

    Back in 2008, this sort of news would probably get my dander up. The upshot is that the federal Highway Bridge Program is going to force various levels of Texas government to pay for replacing little-used bridges rather than repairing them, even if some only get 25 cars a day and there are alternate routes available, in order to keep getting federal funds.

    There’s lots wrong with the program: Taxpayer money wasted for one, and the principles of Federalism violated for another; there’s absolutely no reason for the federal government to take money from taxpayers in the various states, put it in a big pot, rake off their bureaucratic maintenance fees, and then redistribute it to states, counties, etc. Let counties and states repair their own bridges, and decide which ones to repair and how to pay for them.

    But even given all that, my outrage meter is barely quivering. Unlike so many Obama-era boondoggles, at least we’re getting something tangible and useful. At least it didn’t line some corrupt solar power company CEO’s pockets before his firm went bankrupt. At least it didn’t screw non-union pensioners to line the coffers of the UAW. At least it’s not a multibillion dollar high speed train boondoggle that will never be finished. At least here’s a public works project that’s actually shovel ready. And, as long as you think that there should be public roads in the first place (there’s a libertarian case for completely private roads, but that ship sailed a long, long time ago), then at least we’re getting something at least vaguely within the purvey of some government entity.

    And at least the program didn’t end up killing a border patrol agent and 300+ Mexican civilians.

    So corrupt, incompetent and scandal-ridden is the Obama Administration that I have a hard time working up indignation over the fact that a significant fraction of $150 million will probably be wasted on bridges we don’t really need, mainly because I’m sure Obama or his cronies will find a brand new way to waste ten times that one something completely useless sometime over the next week…

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    Posted in Budget, Obama Scandals, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »

    Texas Has An 80 MPH Speed Limit?

    Monday, April 11th, 2011

    So the AP is reporting. This is news to me, sine the last time I drove from Austin to Dallas and Austin to Houston, I didn’t see any signs over 70 MPH. According to Wikipedia (the source of all vaguely accurate knowledge), all the ares with 80 MPH limits are in the sparsely populated stretch between San Antonio and El Paso. Evidently the Texas legislature is considering raising it to 85. Great, but it would be nice to have the speed limits on I-35, I-45, and I-30 raised up to the 80 MPH speed people are already driving…

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    Posted in Texas | 1 Comment »