Revived Boerne loop idea sparks more ire
A controversial proposed 26mile loop around the city of Boerne has gained new life three years after county residents and elected officials soundly shot it down.
Boerne’s mayor and several City Council members are rekindling the idea, drawing the ire of some residents. The potential for the project has re-emerged now that a regional transportation advisory group is poised to deliver recommendations for the city’s future growth needs in the coming months.
City officials say the loop, or new roads like it, would relieve traffic congestion and accommodate future growth in one of the fastest-growing areas of Texas.
Council members have accused residents of being confused and misinformed about the project that would seize land from more than 500 private properties and pave over environmentally sensitive areas in Kendall County.
In recent weeks, Councilwoman Nina Woolard spoke of the need to make “tough and unpopular decisions” to make way for the city’s future. The only solution, she said, is to build more roads.
“Unfortunately, people’s land is going to have to be taken,” Woolard said.
This has angered county residents who say that city officials are attempting to rewrite history by playing down some of the more controversial aspects of the 2018 Kendall County Gateway study, a regional plan that hoped to address growing traffic concerns.
Mayor Tim Handren has spoken repeatedly about the region’s rapid growth and its failure to invest in infrastructure to accommodate a projected 88 percent population increase over the next three decades.
Dating back at least 50 years, proposed loops encircling Boerne have been shot down.
Handren said the goal of planning for the region’s future
growth is not to create something similar to Loop 1604 in Bexar County but to divert commercial traffic off Main Street and River Road, two major thoroughfares that cut through Boerne.
Handren said it was incorrect to portray the project as an expansive, 26-mile, 300-foot right-ofway loop and lambasted county residents, who he said have misrepresented the size and scope of the project.
He also said that Boerne has allowed the “narrative to get out of control.”
“The folks who want to create that false narrative, I don’t have any time for it,” Handren said during a recent public meeting.
Denise Dever, one of hundreds of residents who persuaded the Kendall County Commissioners Court to nix the regional planning effort in 2018, called the comments made by city officials “disingenuous.”
At multiple public meetings, residents have drilled Texas Department of Transportation officials about project details. State officials have been rigid about the size of the roadway, Dever said.
Many of the residents who spoke at prior meetings described the project as an excessive land grab that would take away from the small-town feel of Boerne. Others expressed environmental concerns, especially the potential impact on the Trinity Aquifer, the Hill Country’s major water source.
“We don’t want to make the same decisions that other cities like New Braunfels have made,” Lance Kyle, a county resident who has been involved in the pushback against the proposed loop since 2017, told the Expressnews.
Kyle pointed to Texas 337, the partial loop around New Braunfels that has led to expansive development along the corridor.
“We don’t want Boerne to grow this way,” Kyle said during the meeting. “We want meaningful growth, not a house of cards. That’s why we are so against this. It’s a fraud the way the city keeps selling this program.”
In October 2018, Kendall County commissioners voted to reject the gateway study. Christina Bergmann was the sole commissioner
to vote in favor.
In September, Bergmann and Jeff Carroll, Boerne’s development services director, spoke of the need for a bypass around Boerne at an Alamo Area Metropolitan Planning Organization meeting.
Members of the agency that oversees state and federally funded transportation projects said there is a need for a northeast connection from Texas 46 to Interstate 10.
Texas 46 is the only east-towest corridor in the area and state transportation officials believe it cannot accommodate the high volumes of both passenger and large truck traffic that are projected to increase through 2040.
In the coming months, a regional transportation advisory group made up of officials from Kendall County, Fair Oaks and Boerne is expected to deliver myriad ideas to prepare for the region’s future.
Among the expected proposals from the advisory group will be the addition of roundabouts and improved intersections, Mayor Pro-tem Ty Wolosin said.
A loop, or relief road, might be needed still, Wolosin said, but the city would do everything it could to minimize the impact construction would have on the environment.
District 5 Councilman Joseph Macaluso said it was imperative that the city’s communications department be “very aggressive about the true narrative and discount naysayers who are constantly going off.”
For Macaluso, “it’s a battle to do anything. The public is going to have to grow up a little bit and be more informed about what’s going on. I’m kind of tired of all the negativity.”
Thursday, Macaluso took to Facebook to say that he is not in favor of “expansive new roadways.”
“So, should we do nothing? That’s certainly an option, but one that will only create increasing problems,” he said.