Commissioners approve RM 150 realignment

HAYS COUNTY  — At its March 26 meeting, the Hays County Commissioners Court unanimously approved the selection of American Structurepoint to provide engineering design services for the realignment from IH-35 at Yarrington Road to RM 150 at Arroyo Ranch Road and authorize staff and counsel to negotiate a contract.

Commissioner Lon Shell explained that this project has been in a transportation plan since at least 2012, possibly earlier, and that funds were introduced in a 2016 bond to pay for the route study, which has been ongoing for the last seven to eight years. During this time, multiple routes were analyzed, but problems arose due to the Kinder Morgan Pipeline, which ran both directly on and through potential routes. Although, the route has since been refined.

Over the years, there has been increased development in the area, some of which has been coordinated with the city of Kyle and Hays County and some that has not.

“We are finding it very hard to preserve this right-of-way and if we don’t continue on the design, I’m afraid we’re going to lose our opportunity to get some of these parcels preserved, so that this can happen,” said Shell.

Shell noted that he considers this a “top three solution,” as far as transportation solutions, especially because of the congestion at RM 150 in downtown Kyle.

For now, Shell wants to bring a contract to the court, hopefully within a month, and would like funds to be set aside until the next fiscal year, as they continue to work on the project.

“This has been in at least four different commissioner’s precincts. Four different commissioners have had this [project] and I’m relatively new, but we have done so much work. We have had so much public involvement [and] different options,” explained Shell. “A lot of work has been done and we have finally found, what I believe, to be the best route possible and to not take advantage of that I think would be wasting all of the work.”

Shell continued by stating that there are a lot of options to “leverage” the county money and he believes that the state is interested in partnering with the county for portions of the right-of-way, if not the entirety of it.

“If we don’t go ahead with … getting some of [this] on paper right now, we could end up having to purchase entire parcels instead of right-of-ways because development is happening so quickly,” concluded commissioner Walt Smith.

The commissioners court will meet again at 9 a.m. on April 9.