WIMBERLEY — At its Dec. 5 meeting, Wimberley City Council unanimously approved a resolution to authorize an amendment to the 2024-25 operating budget, which allows for the transfer of funds from the General Tax Fund - Unobligated Fund Balance to Roads Maintenance for the RR 12 at RM 3237 Intersection Improvements Project.
According to agenda documents, the city of Wimberley did not budget funds in the 2024-25 operating budget for needed $15,659.01 in Road Maintenance expenditures. By approving the resolution, the council authorizes these funds to be taken from the General Tax Fund – Unobligated Fund Balance. This also stems from an interlocal agreement (ILA) that was signed and executed on Aug. 16, 2021, by the previous city administration, between Hays County and the city of Wimberley, related to the RR 12 at RM 3237 Intersection Improvements Project.
“It’s actually my purview to approve it, but I did not want to do that. I wanted to make sure you were aware of what was going on,” explained city administrator Tim Patek. “We do have an interlocal agreement with Hays County and it was for, I think, raising manholes or improving them on the Ranch Road 12 and RM 3237 addition there. I was not aware that we had a contract with them until I got something from the county, so I just wanted to make sure I was transparent, you were available and knew what was going on. Talking with the county the other day, myself and our accounts payable [person] Monica [Alcala], they were notifying us that they actually only did two manholes, as opposed to the five that were projected.”
The original agreement showed an estimate of $500 per maintenance hole, which was the number given in 2019 before the ILA was signed in 2021, according to Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Area Engineer Victor Vargas, and the invoices were sent to the city of Wimberley as early as 2023.
In the agreement, it showed the estimate was $500 per maintenance hole, which is $2,500, so this is a lot more than that. I just want to make sure you guys are aware of that and what is going on.
“The other items that the waterline needed to have in the contract that were not included in the original estimate, part of that was boring; it was planned to bore under [RM] 3237 to install some of the waterline, but we were able to coordinate with TxDOT to eliminate the bore. The bore was on that avenue of twenty-four-some-odd-thousand dollars,” said Vargas. “We were able to work with TxDOT. They allowed us to close the entire intersection to place their storm sewer across intersections, so we just worked with them [and said], ‘Hey, let’s just do it at the same time.’ We will eliminate the bore. We will still need the pipe for that, which was paid for and is part of that $15,659[.01]. We also had some trench protection that was in the contract that was eliminated because we did not have to dig that deep.”
Issues that were not accounted for in the original estimate include mobilization of the contract and barricades. The total mobilization fee that TxDOT paid was $210,000 and the total amount of barricades was $27,000, but the city of Wimberley is responsible for 1.92% according to the ILA, said Vargas.
“In the ILA, it says the $500 per manhole was an estimated cost based on a pre-construction estimate, but in the same paragraph, it does state that this is an estimated cost,” the area engineer explained. “Once a contractor comes on board and provides an actual bid cost, the cost would be adjusted.”
Wimberley Mayor Jim Chiles questioned if the city basically missed the estimate.
Vargas responded, stating that while yes, that could be said, there are other factors that play into the increased cost, including inflation, which is seen everywhere.
“You could say that, but you could also sit there and say there were items that were left off in that original estimated cost,” Vargas said. “But then, there are also escalations in costs that we all experience, even at the gas pump and buying bread at the grocery store.
While there was some confusion on how many maintenance holes were improved, Vargas explained that five were estimated, four were done, but of those four, one was eliminated as it did not end up needing to be adjusted.
One council member, Rebecca Minnick, shared that she did not have a problem with the expenditure of the resolution, but rather the communication issues.
“What I do have a problem with is this was over three years and we never heard anything in three years about what we would have to do. And we are a small city, so for us to go find that money, it’s challenging sometimes,” she said. “I think we can manage it this time, but … we all could have benefitted from better communication throughout the contract.”
“Some of these things, communication breakdowns are usually [more than] 90% of the problem in this,” responded Precinct 3 Hays County Commissioner Lon Shell, who attended the meeting. “Our team is always trying to improve that, but when these projects take as long as they do, the cost changes over years. Sometimes, it’s just what we are left with, but we apologize for that.'
As the ins and outs of construction projects throughout Hays County, and the state, can be confusing, Shell shared the following:
• “This was a project developed by Hays County on a TxDOT facility. I think the preliminary engineering for this project was probably done 12 years ago, somewhere in that timeframe. The county partners with TxDOT and says, ‘Hey, we’ve identified improvements on your system. We’d like to make them. Here’s what we are thinking.’ They take a look and say, ‘Yes, this looks great. Thank you.’ We do that because normally, TxDOT would not get to the things like this if we didn’t do them.”
• “You see a lot of intersections around this area. Those are usually developed by the county. They are all funded a little bit differently. Sometimes, the county funds the engineering, the right-of-way and utilities and then, TxDOT pays to construct it and constructs it on their own. Sometimes, the county actually bids the project and hires the contractors; TxDOT pays us back if they’ve agreed to.”
• “In this case, the construction [for this project] was funded from the MPO for dollars that were actually deferred about five years ago and then reinstated a few years ago. It’s sort of a complicated way to get to a project. You would think an intersection shouldn’t take 15 years for the most part before someone says that it needs to be improved before you finally do it, but that kind of is the way things work, as long as you’re working within somebody else’s system, which in this case, [is] TxDOT.”
• “When we identify the utilities within the TxDOT right-of-way, we are going to be working on behalf of TxDOT. It’s the responsibility of the entities — utilities — if they put them in public right-of-way, which they are allowed to do, to relocate those utilities to accommodate for the improvements and TxDOT has to approve those improvements.”
• “We reach out to the entity — it could be the city, it could be a fiber optic line, it could be cable [or] it could be power — and say, ‘Okay, we have a project. Your utilities are located in the public right-of-way. They need to be relocated in order for these improvements to be made.’ Sometimes, that entity can take that on on their own. We usually like to start utility relocation early because it takes a long time, but we don’t have to joint bid the project. It’s more efficient to joint bid all of the improvements, but in some cases, a utility might say, ‘Okay, we’ll go move our utilities.’ They go do that on their own, however they do that; they procure those services, they go do it and get their utilities out of the way. We come in later, bid the project and go build the improvements.”
• “In this case, we joint bid for something this relatively small of a utility conflict. We joint bid it, that way the county takes the responsibility. It’s in our bid package when it goes out to the street, we take the bids, we pick the low bid … that estimate of $2,500 was put in there several years ago. Once we get the bids back, we go, ‘Okay, there’s some conflicts here.’ In some cases, we will reject bids if something is extremely out of the ordinary and break them up if we think that’s a better way to do it. In this case, we said, ‘Okay, we will work around this.’ We take that joint bid. We have the work, we procure the work and per the ILA, we then let the city know what those actual costs are.”
• “But it is the city’s responsibility. It’s their utility and it’s placed in [the] public right-ofway. If it wasn’t in [the] public right-of-way, then that would be different. If it was, like, an easement outside of [the] public right-of-way, then that would not be the responsibility of the city because the city actually owns the rights where that utility is placed. Then it would be the opposite. We would be negotiating with the city to pay the city to move their utility into a new easement.”
Wimberley City Council meets next at 6 p.m. on Jan. 2, 2025.
