By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
County commissioners court members discussed seeking state grant funding for several local projects, including installing sidewalks and improving connectivity between local schools and neighborhoods.
Members of the court discussed the projects on Thursday, during their first meeting of the New Year.
After the meeting’s opening ceremonies, County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. welcomed the court’s two newest members, County Commissioner Pct. 1 Kerr Wardlaw, who is succeeding his father, Martin Wardlaw, and County Commissioner Pct. 3 Fernando Garcia, who is succeeding Beau Nettleton, who did not seek re-election.
Owens also thanked County Clerk Teresa Esther Chapoy for her work on Wednesday’s swearing-in ceremony for the new county officials.
At the start of the grant funding discussion, Owens read the heading of the agenda item, “discussion and possible action (on) applying to TxDOT (Texas Department of Transportation)’s Transportation Alternative Program call for projects, deadline to apply, February 2025.”
Owens told the court, “We’d had a couple of projects that we’d talked about. One of them was maybe the overpass going over (Highway) 90 East (near the Dr. Fermin Calderon Elementary School and the Del Rio Middle School). The other one was maybe applying for sidewalks along Cienegas Road, and in visiting with Kerr – Commissioner Wardlaw – he had said that he might probably throw in (a suggestion) sidewalks from the Chavira (Elementary) School.”
Wardlaw added, “Chavira School down Brodbent (Avenue).”
Owens continued, “The Chavira School lies outside the city limits. It lies up on (Highway) 277, going towards Eagle Pass, and there’s no sidewalks to get (students) back into the community, and that might be something to look at also.”
“Those are the three projects that I know about. I don’t know, commissioners, if you all have anything else that we could look at,” the county judge added.
County Commissioner Pct. 2 Juan Carlos Vazquez said, “Those were the main ones.”
“I think, in those discussions, there was nothing (no projects proposed) that had come up yet, in Precinct 3. All the other precincts had something, so Precinct 3, I think we had also talked about whether there might be a need for sidewalks at a school (in Precinct 3) or something like that,” Owens said, turning to speak to Garcia.
“We can figure it out,” Garcia said.
“If you can come up with something, then we can bring it back to the court,” Owens said.
He noted Wardlaw and Garcia will be absent from the court’s next meeting on Jan. 15.
“We can have something more definite (less than) a month from now. It would still be in January,” Owens said, speaking to Carl Esser, the county’s contracted grants administrator.
Esser told the court, “The county’s eligible to submit two projects, and at the end of the day, TxDOT will fund no more than one (project) per applicant, so what we have here, actually, is a period to submit, in a timely manner, a pre-application to TxDOT by Feb. 8, and TxDOT will review those applications from each individual applicant and (applicants) will either be invited or not invited to submit a full-blown application.”
County Commissioner Pct. 4 Gustavo “Gus” Flores asked, “Carl, when you’re talking about applicants, you mean counties?”
“Counties or cities,” Esser replied.
“So this is limited to certain projects only?” Flores asked.
“You can submit a maximum of two (projects), but at the end of the day, they’ll only fund one,” Esser replied.
Owens asked, “Carl, would it be to our benefit, the overpass over (Highway) 90, we’ve talked about it as a county. We’ve talked about it as a county, and we’ve talked about it as a city, also, trying to apply for something. Would it be beneficial, maybe, to go ask the city if that’s something that they might want to apply for? That would take it off our plate, because they get an opportunity to apply (for this funding) also.”
“Sure, and they can have a separate project; absolutely,” Esser replied.
Owens added, “At one point, it’s something the county even offered a letter of support for, to the city, for them to apply.”
Esser said, “If your project demonstrates connectivity between an existing path to a, say, school, that really does enhance your effort. In other words, if you’ve got a piece in there where there’s no sidewalks and kids are using it to walk to school, and you want to connect that, make it a complete connectivity application, that really does enhance your effort, so you may want to take a look at that.”
Vazquez asked, “So you want this project through the city, judge? I have no problem with that.”
Owens replied, “My deal is maybe we send an email sometime today, send it to the city and see what their thoughts are, maybe (find out) what they’re going to apply for. There’s no sense in us applying for the same thing. I know it’s been on their radar also, so if this is something they would like to undertake, it comes off our plate. We can give them a letter of support, and then we can submit two other projects.”
Wardlaw suggested the judge solicit a letter of support from the school district as well.
Owens said he would send an email to the school district, asking them which of the projects they would like to county to submit for possible funding.
The court took no formal action following the discussion.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com.
