Westhoff ISD thank Commissioners

Virginia S. Gilstrap, editor/ managing editor Westhoff ISD officials brought special gold shovels, signed by their students, to the regular meeting of the Commissioner’s Court Monday as a thank you for the future re-routing of FM 240 away from campus.

Since the court approved the expenditure of $687,370 last month to meet its share of the funding agreement with TXDOT, construction on the re-routing will begin after bids are received in June.

The current route of FM 240 runs past the Westhoff school campus and has a lot of 18-wheeler traffic.

Delays on the project, according to Judge Fowler, were due to engineering cost increases and Westhoff having “ill-defined” boundaries that TXDOT insisted upon clarifying.

Also on the agenda, commissioners awarded the Cuero Livestock Show a donation of $25,000 for operational costs of the Ag Friar complex. Livestock Show President Greg Gossett said the donation will be a “big help maintaining a lot of square footage,” and thanked the commissioners for looking at it.

AgriLife Extension Agent Anthony Netardus also thanked the court, describing unexpected repairs such as water heater replacement and leaks.

Fowler commented that he hopes the county continues the donation in perpetuity because the building has become a venue for many groups to gather in Cuero. Funding of the donation comes from the payments from the unclaimed rural electric cooperative allocation from the state comptroller's office.

In regard to a previous Taylor Road lowering of the speed limit from 40 to 25 MPH, Jeff Smith brought a petition signed by 10 of the 12 residents requesting that the speed limit be raised higher than 25 MPH.

Smith said the complaints of speeding traffic were probably due to his youngest son driving too fast down the road. He said that problem had been taken care of and other residents agreed that the 25 MPH limit was too slow. The commissioners agreed to raise the speed limit back.

In Precinct 2, due to road work Old Yoakum Road will have some closure starting in May.

Also, Fowler shared the estimated real property value for the county as $1,817,566,572. More information on the new tax estimates will follow next week.