Voting no to a project with nine years of work and consideration requires much discussion.
That is what occurred Tuesday morning, before Fredericksburg City Council members and Gillespie County Commissioners eventually voted to approve a resolution halting additional work on the proposed relief route.
The consensus was that in the past nine years since discussion of a bypass — which has come up many times since the late 1960s — the people aren’t willing to pay for a $40 million, 294-acre road that could come through their property.
“This issue is not going away. I don’t know how often it’s been dealt with since I’ve been judge for the past 27 years,” said Gillespie County Judge Mark Stroeher, whose father was on a committee that Judge Mark Wieser appointed back in the 1980s. “The design that we have now is basically the same thing we dealt with 15 years ago, when the public said it’s not going to fly here.”
For the most part, county commissioners and councilmembers reiterated this statement. Commissioners Donnie Schuch and Keith Kramer both said they’ve heard multiple times from the constituents in their precincts that they don’t want this type of project.
Tom Musselman, a city councilmember who can remember the efforts on this bypass from the 1970s, believes this resolution to halt work on the project is “in the best interest of our community across the county.”
“The city’s transportation projects, if we can get those going, would do a lot to alleviate traffic on Main Street,” he said.
The city has been working on projects with Kimley-Horn, a planning and engineering consulting firm that conducted a Traffic Impact Study for the city in 2019.
These projects are made up of short-term minor traffic improvements, as well as four possible extensions of:
• Post Oak Road and Cherry Street (completing the gap from Bowie Street to Main Street;
• Mulberry Street (connecting Mulberry at Llano to Main and Eagle streets;
• Frederick Road (Texas 16 South to U.S. 290 East); and
• The inner loop (formerly Friendship Lane or the ‘Interim Relief Route’ from Texas 16 South to U.S. 87 North).
Musselman also said the work on this project over the past nine years won’t just be thrown away.
“The City of Fredericksburg had a plan for Cross Mountain Park that sat on the shelf for 20 years,” Musselman said. “I don’t think all the effort that has gone into this plan is wasted.”
“This is a plan that’s going on the shelf,” he added. “In the future, (the Texas Department of Transportation) might say, ‘we really don’t need a 400-foot right-of-way, we really don’t need an extension of U.S. 290 going around town.’”
He added his belief that if the city would’ve discussed a Texas Highway-16-type of road several years ago, this might have gone a different way.
Even with years of workshops, public comment sessions, news articles and calls to commissioners, councilmember Kathy Sanford O’Neill felt strongly about tweaking the resolution and bringing this to a vote of the citizens.
“If I were going to be in charge, I would think we would want to know for sure whether the citizens of the community want this or not,” she said.
Kramer said he feels confident that if a vote came before residents, his constituents would vote it down.
Stroeher also made the point about the land of people along TxDOT’s technically-preferred route being “in limbo” for the past nine years.
“It’s not fair to keep it in limbo any longer. They haven’t been able to do anything with their property,” he said. “To me, we’ve had almost nine years to get input from the public, and I’m satisfied that I know how most of the public feels at this point.”
Public comment
Ahead of the elected officials’ discussion, members of the public came out one last time to speak on this issue.
Cord Switzer, a local businessowner, said he’s been involved with these discussions as a committee member and under other hats for several years, said he feels confident it will come back up again.
He also said the concept of the design and the cost has become extensive over the years.
“The bottom line always comes back to cost,” he said. “When you’re looking at this in the future, the first thing to ask is, ‘Is this going to pass in a bond?’ If you don’t believe that and you don’t have good research on it, don’t bother to do this thing again.”
Gary Saucier, the founder of Citizens for an Informed Relief Route, said while the intent of a bypass is to address a problem, the solution currently on the books is not the right type of road.
“Yes, someday maybe an interstate-type road might come through here and the world will be very different, but most people want that to happen at a slower pace, not at a flip of a switch,” he said. “I want to thank you for all of your interest, support and all of what you guys listened to from our organization that tried to bring the voice of the people to you.”
Eric Hammersen, a city resident, urged city and county staff to focus on improving the roads in place today before looking at an interstate type of road.
The vote
After all was said and done, the city council voted 4-1 and commissioners voted unanimously in favor of the resolution to discontinue efforts to design and construct the relief route. Councilmember Sanford O’Neill opposed.
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