Commissioner details $185 million bond vote
A vote for the $185 million Travis County bond doesn’t necessarily mean every project listed on the bond will come to fruition, or so Precinct 3 Commissioner Gerald Daugherty said to guests at the monthly Bee Cave Chamber of Commerce meeting Oct. 17.
In particular, he wanted to allay the concerns of Homestead neighborhood residents who might be spooked by the suggested $4.3 million bridge project proposed at the low-water crossing on Great Divide Drive at Little Barton Creek.
“If you have a tremendous amount of pushback in the community where there is a project, then I’m not out looking for a street fight,” Daugherty said. “The obvious one on the list is Great Divide . ... When you go to that part of the community and say, ‘What do you think,’ unless something has changed, I’ve got to think that the overwhelming majority of people in the Homestead do not want a bridge built across the creek.”
Some residents say the bridge might create an avenue — so to speak — for more development just outside the Homestead, a subdivision that has existed longer than Bee Cave has been an incorporated municipality.
“The (low-water crossing) was a positive feature for buying a house in this particular neighborhood,” Homestead resident Carrell Killebrew said in an email. “Crossing the LWC represents leaving behind the distraction and annoyance of noisy fastpaced way of life for a slower, quieter way of life.”
Daugherty suggested he might do more to verify the sentiment in the Homestead, but if opposition to the project is confirmed, the project doesn’t need to be built, he said.
The bond is split into two parts — Proposition A, which includes projects addressing road capacity, drainage, bicycle and pedestrian safety, and Proposition B, which includes projects addressing parks and conservation easements. Voters can vote for both, or one, or neither.
The biggest project on the list for Precinct 3 is the approximately $23.6 million sports complex proposed to be built on the Lakeway-purchased site off of Bee Creek Road. Daugherty emphasized his promise that the Lake Travis Youth Association will have preferential reservation at the county-operated sports complex.
“Some people have asked, ‘Why will it cost ($23.6 million)?’ Well the main reason is because we’re going to build this facility with artificial turf,” Daugherty said. “Artificial turf has a couple of really very advantageous things. Number one, it doesn’t take a lot of water ... (and) if you play as much as you need to play on natural turf, pretty soon you don’t have turf. I know the Bee Cave folks understand because the Field of Dreams, where the (youth association) plays right now, a number of those fields don’t have a lot of turf. They’re out there playing on dirt . ... So about 40 percent of the cost of the youth complex is artificial turf.”