Collin County holds bond funding for paving payments

Collin County's asphalt program, operational since 2005, is scheduled for completion in 2014.

The Collin County Commissioners Court decided to hold off on releasing open space funding for several towns at its regular meeting on Monday until the court has a chance to determine how the towns will chip in on its mutual boundary road paving projects.

The inaction was the result of the court's decision at its Nov. 21 meeting to make a second attempt at gaining financial support from local municipalities for the purpose of paving 86 miles of county rock roads.

The projects are part of a $17 million 2007 Parks and Open Space bond and include providing land for an additional park and an extension of the North Slayter Creek Trail in Anna. Other interlocal agreements put on hold at the meeting included funding for the acquisition of land for a new park in New Hope and improvements to the New Lucas Community Park in Lucas.

With 79 individual projects of mutual boundary roads left to pave and not wanting to shoulder 100 percent of the cost, commissioners considered withholding the bond money as a way for the cities to pay off what they owe.

"We are going to have to decide at some point what we are going to do and what our priorities are," County Judge Keith Self said. "If the city has bond money of any kind we may have to start a tally. We need to continue to try to figure out how to pay for these things before we get too far down the path."

The court began reviewing payment alternatives back in September, which included absorbing the cost of the improvements to upgrade only those road segments within county jurisdiction, or paying for all of the improvements and requesting bordering municipalities pay all future maintenance costs associated with the road moving forward.

At the court's request, Jon Kleinheksel, the county's public works director, met with city managers and councils to discuss annual payback proposals, to which he received very little, if any, common ground, he said during the Nov. 21 court meeting.

Commissioner Joe Jaynes made a motion to approve the release of the funds on Monday since they were approved in September and before the court discussed withholding the bonds. Jaynes had plans to meet with the city of Anna later in the week to relay the court's discussions and said he did not feel comfortable holding the funds until the cities were fully informed of the county's payment plan.

"These were approved before the fact," Jaynes said. "We didn't decide this until two months later. I say we approve these because back when they applied for these, what we talked about wasn't even brought up and we'll have other grants coming in. Now that [the cities] will be put on notice officially then we can deal with it them. These were in the process long before we started this discussion."

Without a second to Jaynes's motion on Monday, the court decided to hold the agenda items until the county has had a chance to discuss its proposed payback plan to each of the municipalities on the paving list.

Collin County's asphalt program, operational since 2005, is scheduled for completion in 2014 and will transform miles of rock roads with asphalt overlay. So far, 239 of 473 miles have been completed.

Last year, the public works department spent $320,955 to oil rock roads and to control dust. The department also placed tons of rock costing $633,712 to replace material lost through erosion. Jaynes contended that paving the roads will save money spent in maintenance, saving the county money in the long run.

Anna is one such municipality with joint jurisdiction that is unable to participate to cover several such mutual boundary road projects, facing a $295,962 tab the county would charge Anna to pave the mutual border segments of the roads, or $1.5 million to pave both the shared segments and the portion Anna exclusively owns and maintains. Other cities on the list are Celina, McKinney, Wylie, Garland, and Frisco.