Megan Navarro
DRIPPING SPRINGS — Following much discussion across the dais, Dripping Springs City Council approved a request, with some conditions, from Dripping Springs ISD for the removal of heritage trees at the future site of the second high school during its meeting held Tuesday, Jan. 20.
History
The item comes to council as an appeal to a Development Review Committee (DRC) decision for the denial of a waiver to remove several heritage trees for Dripping Springs ISD High School No. 2, to be located at 11091 Darden Hill Road, with an opening in the fall of 2028. The committee denied the request with the direction to explore options to adjust the site to potentially save additional heritage trees and to provide methods for mitigation.
The overall property — also including Cypress Springs Elementary School — is approximately 155.74 acres, according to city planning director Tory Carpenter.
Proposed additions to the site include the following: the two-story, 482,844 square-foot high school that will serve 2,500 students; six outbuildings; 1,467 parking spaces; and 32.5% impervious cover.
Previously, DSISD has received other approvals related to the site, Carpenter explained, including deferral of fee payments.
“It includes a fee deferral, so there is an application fee for this. At the same time, the district has been initiating the process of negotiating an interlocal agreement, which may impact the fees,” he said. “Representatives from the district came to council Nov. 4 and I’ll say were granted a deferral of those payments and that really allowed staff to continue the review of the site development permit, pending negotiations and finalization of the interlocal agreement.”
Since then, the city also issued a limited grading permit, which includes primarily where the parking area is at the school, but not all the way down to the south where there is a detention pond, that avoids all heritage trees, Carpenter said. A request was also approved to be able to trench on-site utilities, allowing the district to continue to make headway on the project as the city reviews the plans.
Waiver
In the council item, Carpenter explained that it’s actually for two waivers, with the first and more urgent request being for an area around the detention pond for the removal of 14 heritage trees — 13 oak and one cedar elm. The total number of inches requested to be removed for this specific request is 316 inches.
“The request really stems from avoiding them to continue to operate and maintain a temporary sediment pond, which just adds additional cost to the project. It would allow them to construct their permanent facilities, while they continue to work on this site and grade on the site,” Carpenter said.
The second request is a tree removal waiver for the entire site. In the report that the city received, Carpenter noted that there are a total of 158 heritage trees on the site, with 85 — at 1,915.5 inches — proposed to be removed and 73 — at 1,639.5 — to be preserved. There are also eight that have been deemed dead, so they can be removed without additional mitigation, he said.
“There’s different ways to receive credit whenever you are mitigating. That can either be: exceeding the maximum amount of standard trees; you can remove up to 60% of standard trees on the site — that’s the eight to 18 inches; and there’s also trees that you can get credit for that you keep that aren’t normally protected,” Carpenter said. “So, those may be smaller ash, junipers, cedar trees or other trees that you're allowed to remove, but if you keep those, you can get a partial credit for those, as well. I'll say the smaller scope of the detention pond area, there's really not a good way to look at the credit trees for that area because you're essentially taking the scope of the site and limiting it down to a certain area. There may not be overall credit for the whole site, even if there's some immediately adjacent to that area.”
The planning director highlighted that there’s about 1,600 inches of heritage trees that would need to be mitigated with this request and that mitigation per code is a three to one ratio, making the mitigated inches about 5,746 each. There is a deficit left in terms of the preserved trees at about 4,000 inches, as the standard trees preserved is right on the edge of how many DSISD is allowed to remove, as well as the number of credit trees, like the smaller ash junipers that are onsite.
This is a unique request as DSISD is under a tight deadline to get a school open in a certain amount of time, Carpenter said, adding that the district wanted to go ahead and initiate the appeal process to city council to get the formal decision sooner. This led to the request coming to council during its Jan. 20 meeting for the potential to appeal the DRC’s decision.
In the district’s presentation to council, chief operations officer Scott Berry stated that DSISD understands and shares the community’s strong commitment to tree preservation, leading them to make "significant efforts” to minimize tree removal and exceed mitigation requirements where possible.
“As designed, the [Texas Commission on Environmental Quality] compliant [detention] pond requires the removal of 316 inches of heritage trees. Under the city's tree mitigation ordinances, the proposed site plan already yields close to 1,700 inches of tree credits from existing on-site trees. Additional trees will be planted as part of High School No. 2 construction, further enhancing the tree canopy and overall environmental benefit. The district also plans to pursue a Chapter 210 water reuse permit which will further reduce tree removal and support long-term sustainability goals,” Berry said.
He continued that the district has worked collaboratively with the city since its initial fee deferral approval Nov. 3, as well as other permits that came later, which allowed the project to remain on schedule. However, now, Berry said, the approval of the tree removal application is essential.
“Earlier this month, we received notification that the council requested moving the detention pond. The project has been through three rounds of review comments concerning the site. In none of the rounds of review was relocating the pond mentioned,” he said. “Per our engineer, this would not be the most effective drainage solution and it would also require new TCEQ permitting, which is not guaranteed to be approved, thereby delaying the construction timeline and pushing the opening of high school number two from August 2028 out another year.”
Superintendent Dr. Holly Morris-Kuentz said that they are at the point where any delay in the permitting approval would result in pushing the school’s opening date back.
“We've had ongoing conversations with city staff about this project since 2024 and, as you can see, we've reached a crossroads in timing. We've continued to receive different messages from the city requiring changes as recently as today, now adding changes to the tennis courts and the parking lots. What was previously approved in today's letters is no longer acceptable from previous grading that we had been doing,” she said. “Our goal is to work cooperatively, but we can't further delay without costing taxpayers money. With these continued changes from the city, our contractors can't continue to work. Demobilization would cost additional taxpayer dollars and delay our opening of a school that was passed by our voters at 73%. We need your support to help us ensure this critical community project continues to move forward efficiently, responsibly and in compliance with city requirements.”
Council discussion
Moving into discussion and questions from the dais, council member Taline Manassian asked if there would be any future requests for tree removal.
Berry explained that the district is working to get a Chapter 210 wastewater permit to be able to provide its own wastewater at the site. They have been able to work around most of the trees there, but there are three trees that may come up later.
“We are planning drip irrigation. It will allow us to divert some of the flow to our landscape and let us irrigate with that, rather than creating a drip field,” Berry responded to Mayor Bill Foulds’ question about why the permit is needed to save the trees. “We can take it to our planned beds, our planned trees, those kinds of things and use it to irritate and it counts towards the flow requirements that we are doing to have to treat.”
Manassian asked for clarification on the temporary versus the permanent ponds that were mentioned in Carpenter’s earlier presentation. Berry explained that if the tree removal request was approved, then the district would not have to create a temporary pond, which would be in an area that does not have heritage trees.
“It would cost a significant amount. It would also delay, just not as much of a delay. They would basically build a pond twice. They would dig it, they would fill it back in whenever we weren't using it, but at the end of the day, you would still be asking to put the pond where it is right now,” Berry said, based on the recommendation DSISD has received from the engineer.
Knowing that this is a difficult conversation with the possible delay in having a second high school built looming, council member Travis Crow stated, “I don't like being here. You don't like being here. I don't know how we got here, whether we gave comments and y'all didn't respond in a timely manner or not, but none of us like being here. This is an uncomfortable topic and it's going to divide this community, whatever we do. We're not here, or I'm not here, to divide the community. You're not here to divide the community. But an ordinance was set in place to figure this out. We always say we have ordinances, but what's the point of an ordinance if you don't enforce it … I don't want to divide this community up, but I want to save trees and I don't know what we do.”
“We are going to be the bad apple in the orchard if we delay this thing. I’m sure we need the high school. I’m sure your engineer says that’s the right thing to do,” said council member Wade King, alluding to the location of the detention pond. “If we had a $45,000 price on every one of them trees, your engineer would have figured out a better way to do this from the get-go, but we didn't give you that information because we didn't have that in place before this.”
Later, Foulds asked for clarity on the mitigation of the trees.
According to Carpenter, it is required to mitigate or make up for the inches on the site three to one — part of that can be done by preserving additional trees that could have been removed, as well as planting trees on the site. If all of those options have been exhausted, then a fee-in-lieu can be arranged.
Following more discussion and executive session, council voted 4-1 — with Manassian dissenting — to approve DSISD’s waiver requests to remove the additional heritage trees, subject to the performance of mitigation measures. The mitigation fees — $150 per caliper inch of trees removed, with credit for trees preserved — will be $594,420, unless otherwise approved in an interlocal agreement between the city and the district no later than May 1. Without an agreement in place, the maximum value of mitigation fees shall become immediately due and payable.
To listen to the full discussion, visit www.drippingsprings-tx.municodemeetings.com.
