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| Gus Khankarli, TxDOT Director of Transportation, Planning and Development and Justin Willis, City Commissioner of Dumas, Texas |
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| Joint Commission Meeting between County Commissioners and City Commissioners with TxDot representives. |
City Commissioners and County Commissioners met in a Joint
Commission meeting at the Moore County Courthouse on Tuesday, May 26, 2015.
$5.4 million dollars was set aside by the Federal Government
in 2005 to do an environment study on where a relief route would work the best. This money is earmark for Dumas only and will
not be used anywhere else unless an act of Congress moves it. The buying power of $5.4 million dollars in
today world is not as much as it was in 2005.
If the community decides to do the study then TxDot has to come up with
more money to do the study. If the
community doesn’t want the study the $5.4 million dollars stays on the books
and doesn’t go anywhere. The catch here
is once these funds are activated then the relief route will happen. TxDot will have to answer to Austin as to
what is being done on the project.
TxDot wants to try to work with this community on their
prefer location of a relief route. The
study will look at the community preferred option along with other options that
TxDot thinks will work. If the community
option works the best they will go with the community’s choice.
Gus Khankarli emphasized repeatedly that this project is up
to the community to decide. He also
repeatedly stated that this is a Federal fund that has been earmarked for Dumas
only and that TxDot is willing to work with us on a preferred exit.
Mike Running, Dumas EDC Director, commented, “Something has got
to happen but at the same token we don’t have to do anything today.” “At least today start something were we can
start saying, we better start pocketing half our sales tax revenues at today
and any excess over that point let’s start putting aside, so that we can start acquiring
property saving for utility infrastructure, planning growth, determining where
that growth is going to be. That takes
time. But to simply say lets launch this
thing. In three years we’re done with
the study and then we go with portion of the construction and then they sat
there because they don’t have funding and we have to wait for more
funding. That doesn’t help us in
determining where we need to go. We will
not have the money in five years to do this stuff to accommodate development.” Mike went on to say that we can say we want
exits here and here but the job of TxDot is to do the study to see if that is
possible. What will be the answer once
the study is done? It may not be where
the community wants it to be because the job of TxDot is to make sure traffic
flows without impediment.
This meeting was a fact finding meeting and no action was
taken. There are still questions and
there is a group of leaders that will visit further with Austin.
