Friday, February 1, 2008

Cedar Hill town meeting gives latest on Loop 9, student employment, etc.

By Steve Snyder of TODAY Newspapers

Transportation was the primary issue at a Jan. 24 town hall meeting in Cedar Hill, but that didn't keep other items from being discussed by State Sen. Royce West and County Commissioner John Wiley Price.

West discusses student summer employment.

West didn't sugarcoat one matter near and dear to him - summertime youth employment.

He directly told Mayor Rob Franke, near the start of the meeting at Cedar Hill High School, that the city needed to do better this summer in hiring high school students.

West organized and shepherded a summer jobs program, It's About Our Community, with the city councils and school districts of Cedar Hill and the other Best Southwest cities of DeSoto, Duncanville and Lancaster two years ago.

“You don't have a very good report card,” West told Franke and other local officials.

According to numbers West provided, in summer 2006, about 100 Cedar Hill students had summer employment in the city, either with the city of Cedar Hill and Cedar Hill Independent School District, or else with private employers.

But, in 2007, only about five students had such employment.

While Cedar Hill fell off from 100 to 5 students employed, it wasn't alone in that regard. West's figures showed Duncanville with a bigger dropoff, from 120 to 4, and DeSoto falling from 84 to 11. Lancaster dropped much less, according to West, from 120 to 70.

“We need everyone's partnership,” West said.

Franke talked further about the issue after the meeting.

“I think it's an excellent program, and I was surprised the numbers fell off,” he said. “We're trying to get all the folks together (on this) - the city and school district.”

Franke did add that he wasn't sure how much of the numbers might reflect an actual decline in students in summer jobs and much it might reflect less detailed reporting in 2007 versus 2006.

The town hall was co-sponsored by West and County Commissioner John Wiley Price. State Rep. Helen Giddings was also at the podium to speak briefly. CHISD Superintendent Horace Williams was on the stage with Franke to answer questions from the audience, along with the others.

Price gives Loop 9 background

“I'm not here to talk about all the various projects in Cedar Hill,” Price began.

Price then jumped right into transportation issues, specifically Loop 9, the long-planned beltway to go around the southern side of Cedar Hill and other Best Southwest cities. Price noted that Bill Hale, district director of the Texas Department of Transportation, was in attendance to discuss Loop 9 further.

Speaking of the importance of the project, Price said: “I'm tired of the southern sector being treated like bread pudding,” he said.

“This was identified in 1957, but not until 1991 did Dallas County voters approve $900,000 for the project,” he said.

Price then went into more detail about the history of the Loop 9 project.

Franke and Williams speak

Franke then spoke to the crowd of about 150 people.

He spoke about Cedar Hill's goal to be a premier city.

“We're able to look at issues of growth and racial issues in a positive way. It's about people giving back to this town,” he said.

Franke said he appreciated the value of higher education, and thanked West for his push to get the University of North Texas' Dallas campus established. He also thanked Price for his approachability on a variety of issues.

Superintendent Williams spoke next. He noted the district was one of only seven in the state to get a grant from the Texas Education Agency to start an early college program.

“We want students when they get their diploma to also (have the opportunity) to get an associate's degree. That will be in partnership with Cedar Valley College,” he said.

Something else new in the 2008-09 school year will be fitness testing of students.

Williams then said he appreciated being able to talk to Price about physical and mental health issues.

Similar to the city striving to be a premier city, Williams said school officials were working to achieve a world-class school district.

Highway construction in detail

Finally, TxDOT's Bill Hale addressed the audience.

“We have a lot of congestion in this area that has to be addressed,” Hale began. “It's the fourth-largest area in the nation with the fourth-largest congestion problem.”

He said, up to this point, funding for new transportation projects had been a problem, but last year's Texas Legislature had addressed that.

Hale said the legislature exempted the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex from a moratorium on toll road projects. That had allowed Texas 161 work through Grand Prairie to continue, as well as planning for Loop 9.

“The area is now the only area that has mobility money, not just maintenance (money),” he said. “I'm looking for the next legislature to improve that even more.”

Hale, describing how Loop 9 would be a toll road, talked about “public-private partnerships” in highway construction. Later, West said most new highway construction in the country was at least considering toll roads.

He said future highway development in the Best Southwest dependent on a domino effect from downtown Dallas and the Trinity Tollway. Next would be the Southern Gateway project, widening U.S.67 and I-35 from downtown Dallas to the south; the 67 project is scheduled to run as far south as FM 1382, with a second highway project, Southern Horizon, extending improvements of 67 to the U.S. 287 intersection in Midlothian.

“The idea is to build this all at one time,” Hale said. “This will have HOV lanes and intersections will be taken care of.”

He then explained further how highway projects interlocked with each other.

“The Hwy. 161 project will help fund this project,” Hale said.

Hale then further detailed both how construction of different highways in the Metroplex are interconnected and how money has been tight. He said an I-35/Loop 12 project in southern Dallas had been approved since 2002, but money had just become available for it.

He then talked further about Loop 9, including how highway officials and local governments had been able to preserve land for a Loop 9 corridor.

“We've got it narrowed down to two alternatives,” he said.

He said an environmental impact statement for construction of the highway should be done by the end of this year.

“We have a ready-for-development letter from Cintra-Zachry,” he said. “Dallas County has worked hard to get this project to where it is.”

Questions

Michelle Knox asked Williams for more detail about the early college program. He said a committee was working on academic criteria. The grant had other criteria, he said, including that the first 75 students had to come from families where nobody had ever completed college before.

“We will probably extend that to 150 students,” he said.

Fridays would involve students going to Cedar Valley College, he said. He also said the district planned to have more detailed information to present to parents in March.

Andre Carr asked about toll roads and transportation. He asked if HOV lanes might be open to single drivers, and if Texas 360 would be a toll road.

Hale said 360 would be a toll road south of I-20, and that the HOV lanes would soon become “managed lanes,” with varied fees based on overall traffic levels. Hale, in response to a follow-up question, said the state of Texas still owned toll roads, not the Spanish company Cintra.

Some opponents of the main Trans Texas Corridor highways, a proposed new freeway parallel to I-35 and another in East Texas, believe that Cintra could get ownership of the toll roads through contracts to operate them.

Per a summary of the TTC on Wikipedia, while Cintra and its partner, San Antonio-based Zachry Construction, may not have outright ownership, they will be making an upfront investment that they will hugely recoup off tolls.

According to the Cintra-Zachry Preliminary Financial Plan 22 percent of the initial infrastructure costs are shown to be funded with equity provided by Cintra-Zachry, Wikipedia says. Cintra-Zachry would obtain bank loans or issue bonds for the other 78 percent; any bonds would be tax exempt according to current federal regulations.

Referring to an article in The Nation, Wikipedia says usual bond financing has is a 3:1 ratio between total fees collected and value of capital infrastructure built, but the I-35 parallel main TTC line would have a 13:1 ratio. In dollar amounts, Cintra-Zachry would to collect as much as $114 billion in toll revenues on an $8 investment, a figure confirmed by the Texas Auditor's office.

Residential developer Wes Pool had a question for West and Giddings. He said he wanted more information about the potential future of light rail for Cedar Hill, given that it was not part of Dallas Area Rapid Transit, that DART was short on money and that, in his opinion, DART didn't have much credibility, plus even long-term member suburbs such as Carrollton still didn't have light rail.

Pool said the Metroplex couldn't, in his opinion, solve transportation problems just by building highways.

Giddings said it was a matter of changing the law to let non-DART cities adopt a half-cent mass transit sales tax, after a voter referendum.

Giddings agreed that it was “a serious problem.” West admitted that wasn't as high a priority for him as an additional half-cent tax for higher education districts. He added that many businesses were against any increase in the sales tax for any purpose.

Lawson asked Franke what the city was doing to get industrial development as well as retail in the city. Franke admitted that industry hadn't kept up as well; he also said that Lancaster, with its construction of business-warehouse parks, was in a better spot for industrial development.

“Where you will see more development in Cedar Hill is in office space,” he said.

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Comments

Michael Davis Verified

Isn't Cedar Hill in Commissioner District 4, represented by Ken Mayfield and not Price?

6 months, 1 week ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )