TEXAS TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION MEETING

International Cultural Center
601 Indiana Avenue
Lubbock, Texas

9:00 a.m. Thursday, July 27, 2000

COMMISSION MEMBERS:

JOHN W. JOHNSON, Chair
ROBERT L. NICHOLS
DAVID M. LANEY

DEPARTMENT STAFF:

CHARLES W. HEALD, Executive Director
HELEN HAVELKA, Executive Assistant, Engineering Operations

PROCEEDINGS

MR. JOHNSON: Good morning. It is 9:05 a.m., and I would like to call this meeting of the Texas Transportation commission to order. I want to welcome you to our July the 27th meeting here in Lubbock. It's a pleasure to have you here today.

I will note for the record that public notice of this meeting containing all items of the agenda was filed with the Office of the Secretary of State at 8:08 a.m. on July the 19th.

We are happy to be here in Lubbock. As you know, the commission holds some of its monthly meetings outside of Austin.  By having these meetings at different locations the state, we acquaint ourselves with the interests, challenges, and people of the various regions of Texas.

I am sure, by the time our visit is over, we will be better informed about the needs in the Lubbock area.  Hopefully our visits and meetings also give you a sense of how we conduct the state business in transportation.

I would be very remiss if I did not thank everyone who played such a large part in the super hospitality that has been shown the commission and also the staff from Austin.   And surely as I get into names and organizations, I will probably forget to mention one or two, and you have my apologies for that.

But first of all, the people responsible for the reception yesterday, I know the City of Lubbock, the chamber of commerce were involved, and we were most grateful. There were many corporate sponsors, our friends at Good Roads who feed us so well and amply on the morning of these meetings.

We're grateful for the wonderful breakfast buffet that you have put out for everyone. To Chancellor Montford and the staff here at this great educational university. We're grateful for the hospitality that you have shown us.

Likewise, to the offices and individual efforts of Senator Duncan and Representative Isett and Representative Jones who have extended a West Texas greeting of hospitality, we're also grateful.

And, lastly, Carl Utley and the tremendous group that he has assembled in the Lubbock District.  They hosted this last night, and they've shown us a wonderful time, and thank you so much for what you do for this community and -- and our state, and we are most grateful to each of you.
 

It is a pleasure having former Governor Preston Smith here.  I think it shows when you get a little bit of this state in your bloodstream, it doesn't go away very easily. And Governor Smith, thank you so much for being here this morning. I think it shows how important transportation is to this area, but I think it also shows how much love and admiration you have for not only the high plains of West Texas but also this great state.   So thank you for being here.
 

At this time I would offer the podium to either of my colleagues to see if they have anything they would like to say. Robert, do you want to --

MR. NICHOLS: Sure. I would just like to thank the City of Lubbock and the community for a warm reception. We received that great reception last night, had an opportunity to visit a lot of the members of the community. We had a nice employee dinner last night, a good opportunity to meet the employees and their spouses who provide the services in the area.

And it's good to be on this campus. I've got a lot of kids in my hometown that go to school here that I've helped raised, and I see Lubbock on my phone bill quite often.   It's good to be here. So, thank you.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you.

David?

MR. LANEY: I was the late arrival yesterday and 19 missed the reception, but had the great opportunity and good 20 fortune to eat more than I've eaten in the last month in one night last night with our employees at our district office. And it was terrific food, terrific hospitality. And I'm sure glad I didn't miss the reception this morning.

It's always a pleasure to be up here. Over the last number of years it has become a relatively regular visit for me, and a lot of familiar faces and places, and the same usual hospitality. We're glad to be up here again. I particularly am. Thanks.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you. Let me also take a minute to introduce some of the members of our TxDOT administration who are with us today. Wes Heald is our executive director. Also here are Kirby Pickett, our deputy executive director, and Mike Behrens, our assistant executive director for engineering operations. Cathy Williams, our assistant executive director for support operations is still in Austin.

The first item we have are the appearance of delegations. In this case, it's a local delegation, and I believe Senator Robert Duncan is going to lead the delegation. Senator Duncan, you have been a huge supporter, not only of this department, but transportation in general, and we're grateful to be in your neighborhood, and thank you once 18 again for your hospitality, and thank you for what you're doing for this state. The floor is yours.

SENATOR DUNCAN: I was actually reading my speech and you said my name and it kind of woke me up. Appreciate that.

First of all, welcome to Lubbock, Texas. On behalf of Representative Jones and Representative Isett, myself, our tech -- our local delegation, we all want to say thank you for being here, welcome to Lubbock. The weather is like this every day. I don't know. I hear stories otherwise, but this is the way it is every day. We're real proud of that.

I want to also say thank you for the responsiveness of the commission to West Texas and the needs of West Texas on transportation. I have always found each and every one of you, Wes, as well, to be very responsive to the needs that we have out here, and I think -- I want the people of West Texas to know that because we have a tendency in West 11 Texas always to believe that we're kind of west of 1-35 and 12 we're kind of out of the population stream.

But I do know that the needs of West Texas in transportation are being meet, and they're being met because you are responsive. You come here and you see what we have, as evidenced today, but also by your individual trips that you've made out here several times to see what the needs are.

So, on behalf of Lubbock and, I think, all of West Texas, we have an Odessa delegation here today as well that will be talking to you, I'm sure, and so, we're real pleased to have you here.

Briefly -- And I do want to introduce the Lubbock presentation today with regard to the East-West Freeway. This freeway will serve the regional needs for access to the medical district, Texas Tech, community sporting entertainment events at the new United Spirit Arena and two other venues served by the freeway.

I'm sure you've taken the tour and you've seen that the project that is being requested for funding at this point in time is right at the heart of what happens in Lubbock, where all of the population and the density of population converges for events like Texas Tech basketball games, hockey, the -- and most importantly, though, the medical community is all centered in this location and will be served by the intersection that is to be developed in this project. So, it's very important.

The other aspect of this is, this freeway is something that has been started and our goal is to keep this thing moving. And you have been very generous in helping us in the past with different projects. And this one is, I think, one of the key projects that needs to be on the funding schedule as quickly as possible, and that's why we're asking to put this as a priority.

To explain that in more detail, I would like to introduce to you the next person who will be in our program for Lubbock, Mayor Windy Sitton, who is right behind me, I guess. And, Mayor Sitton has done an outstanding job for a lot of us here in Lubbock, and I'm real proud to introduce her to you today and let her talk about some of the needs.

MAYOR SITTON: Thank you, Senator Duncan. I, too, would like to welcome you all to Lubbock and thank you for coming. And on behalf of our city council, we have many present today. I wish all the city council would stand. We had a city council meeting starting at 7:30 this morning, but we delayed it because we wanted to personally come and welcome each of you.

As you all know, the East-West Freeway project is a very important project for us. This project truly has withstood time. I was told yesterday that this project has lasted through three complete commissions, and, so -- and each time a little bit is funded. We are at the point now that we would like to request $20 million to complete another segment. TxDOT asked us to divide this into phases, which we certainly have done, understanding that that's the way we get long-term projects and big projects is to divide it into smaller, and we have done that.

The things that we're asking to be funded now, for our audience, is in the green. It will be a portion from Salem Avenue to Memphis Avenue and also the turnarounds there at that particular intersection.

In thinking about the importance of completing this project, something came to my mind. I own a construction company, and I mainly restore and remodel older historic homes. And when I buy a home and when I gut it, it's not worth very much. And then as I go about trying to refurbish it and renovate it, it becomes more valuable as the project is nearing completion.

That same sentiment, in my view, can be applied to this East-West Freeway. Lubbock now has gutted our community in that part of town, and we can't begin to put it back together again until we restore that freeway. Not until then will we see the exponential value that this project can actually bring to our community. Lubbock is like a gutted home stuck in a state of disrepair; and, the longer we wait, the more the deterioration of that area will occur.

We feel that Lubbock has become a master at the tearing down and the gutting process. Now we would like to become masters in building it back up and masters of the renovating process.

From an economic development standpoint, Lubbock needs to move ahead with this project so that it does not continue to drain our economy. This project is a disruption to the businesses along this route, and I feel we need to move forward very quickly so that we can aid these businesses in their moving and in their relocation and in establishing their new customer base.

The City of Lubbock is very proud to report to you that we have spent approximately $14.8 million. We have completed the acquisition of the railway and will be in the process of moving that. So, we -- we have done that, and we are now having the attitude that it's time to see that our planning is coming to fruition.

Good planning from our Lubbock's forefathers has resulted in good streets. And because of that, we really don't have the congestion that some of the other major cities have. But with this in mind, we want to now plan for our future growth and the impact that the East-West Freeway can have and will have on developing the economy in that particular area.

As Senator Duncan said, I would like to reiterate that there have been a lot of major, major investments of very large facilities that will depend on good ingress and egress with the completion of the East-West Freeway.

Another point I would like to add is, I know you all, and so are we, are very concerned about safety. And with so many hundreds of thousands of people operating in that small area, we feel like that the completion of the East-West Freeway will certainly add to safety of our citizens and for people who visit the Hub of the Plains from a lot of other surrounding cities.

Lubbock has been very proactive in addressing its future transportation needs, and we certainly appreciate the Texas Department of Transportation and certainly the commission for your support in our efforts. We would ask that you would continue to support us and that you would see fit to fund the  $20 million to complete this segment of the East-West Freeway.

Again, thank you for coming to Lubbock. We're glad you've enjoyed our warm hospitality. Now I would like to introduce to you Mr. Jim Courtney, who is the C.E.O. of University Medical Center. As Senator Duncan mentioned to you earlier, we have a very, very large medical community here that depends on good ingress and egress, and so Jim Courtney would like to address that. Thank you very much.

MR. COURTNEY: Thank you, Mayor Sitton. Mr. Chairman, members of the commission, also welcome to Lubbock and good morning. Although, as Mayor Sitton indicated, I'm the president of the University Medical Center, I've been asked to speak to you this morning on behalf of the entire Lubbock medical community.

Lubbock, Texas, is the largest medical industry and the largest medical complex for a very large area, actually between Dallas, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona. The hospitals and physicians in the Lubbock medical industry provide specialty and subspecialty care to patients from throughout West Texas and Eastern New Mexico and even as far away as Western Oklahoma and Southeastern Colorado.

By way of example, last year Lubbock's two major medical centers admitted over 50,000 patients here in Lubbock alone, and over half of the patients admitted to our facilities came from outside of Lubbock County.

Over the past ten years alone, Lubbock's medical industry has invested several hundred million dollars in facilities and manpower to provide expanded medical services to the region. For instance, the Covenant Health System provides state of the art cardiovascular services that, in my opinion, are unsurpassed in the state of Texas.

University Medical Center operates one of only five Level I trauma centers, so designated by the state, in the entire state of Texas and the only such center that exists west of I-25. UMC also operates the only burn intensive care unit in all of West Texas. And both health systems provide pediatric subspecialty care that is not available elsewhere in the region.

Because of the large number of critically ill patients that Lubbock serves and because many of these patients come to Lubbock from significant distances, rapid and uncongested access to Lubbock's medical complex is an essential matter of public safety. Simply put, rapid access to the medical services provided in Lubbock is for many patients a matter of life and death.

The Lubbock medical community strongly endorses the rapid completion of the East-West Freeway because it will substantially improve timely access to the heart of Lubbock's medical complex. As can be seen on the map, the East-West Freeway passes through the center of Lubbock's major medical institutions, and hopefully you can see.

Let me just point those out. Covenant Lakeside and Covenant Medical Center to the south of the area in question, University Medical Center to the north. And although it's not on the map, we serve as the primary teaching hospital for the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center and the School of Medicine. We're partners in health care. And, so, where you see University Medical Center, Texas Tech is also right there, as well. And, of course, that's where many of the specialty and subspecialty physicians that operate within our system practice.

Also, I believe, is important is the Carillon Retirement Community. That's an extremely large and expanding retirement community. And, of course, if you have folks that are elderly, they are the individuals that many times require emergency health care. And, so, once again, if you take a look at where the East-West Freeway would pass, it goes through the heart of our medical community.

If you'll indulge me for a moment, I would like to perhaps share a story with you, and it certainly is not unusual, as a matter of fact, it's perhaps more common than any of us would like for it to be. There was a young lady, a Texas Tech student, who was involved in a very serious accident here about three weeks ago. She was actually standing outside of  her car, and another car was hit, ran into her and pinned her against her vehicle, a very serious accident.

And as a consequence of that accident, this young lady actually lost the lower portion of both of her legs. However, as tragic as that is, we are lucky, I think, in a couple of ways. University Medical Center operates the E.M.S. service for the City of Lubbock. And as it happens, one of our ambulances happened to be driving by just as the accident occurred, so we were able to offer quick stabilization at the scene.

The other thing that is fortunate is, it happened late enough at night that the congestion that you typically see in the East-West Freeway or in this area along some of the interchanges, it was late enough at night that that congestion did not occur, so we were able to get her to our trauma center very quickly. Of course, the Texas Tech faculty, they have surgeons in-house 24 hours a day and all other specialists.

And even though it was a tragic accident, what I believe would in most circumstances have been a situation where this young lady lost her life, her life was saved. Obviously, she has a long road to recovery.

But it is just one example, I believe, of the absolute necessity and the essential nature of being able to get folks who are critically injured or ill to medical facilities and provide care as quickly as possible.

The East-West Freeway is extremely important to Lubbock and to the patients served by the medical industry. For these reasons, we appreciate your serious consideration of funding this project in as rapid a manner as can be accomplished.

I appreciate your attention this morning. It is now my pleasure to introduce to you Mr. Alan Henry. Mr. Henry is a former mayor of Lubbock and currently serves as chairman of the board of the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce. Thank you.

MR. HENRY: Mr. Chairman, members of the commission, Mr. Heald, thanks again for being here. On behalf of the business community of the city of Lubbock, I want to tell you how very, very much we appreciate your attention to our needs. You've been very attentive for many, many years, and we continue to appreciate it.

You know, the chamber of commerce has been involved in transportation in Lubbock for almost 100 years. The very first committee that was formed by the chamber of commerce was a transportation committee. Now, back in those days it was the railroad committee. We got the railroad, and now we need a highway.

The East-West Freeway concept has been one that has been involved in the city of Lubbock for almost half of its 90-year history. As a matter of fact, it makes me feel old, but I appeared before this commission - It was your predecessors, not you, incidentally - about 20 years ago when I was mayor of the City of Lubbock, and we were talking about a concept called an East-West Freeway.

Well, we've come a long way since then thanks to you and your dedication, thanks to our local officials and their dedication. But we need your help now on a very, very important segment of this particular freeway, and that has to do with the 19th and Brownfield Highway intersection.

From the standpoint of business, convenience, and safety, this particular intersection, in my opinion, in many ways, is the most crucial of the entire route. You've heard from our officials today who have already told you the safety problems that we have and some of the many inconveniences that our citizens throughout the area, not just Lubbock, are having as far as medical and as far as attending Texas Tech.

You know, the project that we have had at this point has been and continues to be a partnership, and I think that's very, very important. You've heard the mayor mention today the amount of money that the City of Lubbock has spent. Our MPO has committed every penny of their available resources for this project. The private sector businesses are now ready to do their job.

You know, so many times we'll have a project like this, and we talk about all of the official and unofficial red tape and the requirements and all that sort of thing. I'm speaking today for the 48,000 employees of the members of the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce who don't know even what an MPO is.

But they do know that they can't get to work on time because of this particular intersection. They do know that it's very difficult for them to fund medical treatment that they need when they're coming in from Eastern New Mexico.

And, so, I think what I would like to just spend a couple of minutes today talking about are those individuals and the businesses that they represent. You know, the real key to any successful project is not what we can put in as public officials, but what will the private sector do? And I'm here today to tell you that the private sector of Lubbock, Texas, is ready and willing to do what is necessary to locate new businesses in our community, to expand businesses.

Hardly a week goes by that we don't get a call from some business person who is either wanting to move to Lubbock or wanting to expand, but they don't know what is happening as far as the East-West Freeway is concerned. And in my opinion, uncertainty is the enemy of progress.

The chamber hears from these folks, and we do our best to tell them what we know. Now, we understand completely the -- the problem that we all have and certainly the awesome responsibility that you have as far as the limited amount of funds that you have.

But I think the -- the point that we would like to make is this: That whatever the public sector puts in, the private sector, those men and women who are willing to go down to a bank and sign the note to borrow money to open a business or expand a business, they are more than willing to go -- to contribute what they need to in order to make this entire process work. And I think that is very, very important as far as a partnership is concerned.

Now, gentlemen, whatever action you take here today is going to send a message. You may not take it today. But in regard to this request, it will send a message. You have the discretion to send a message that when Lubbock and Texas take on a job, they complete it. That's the way we've always been in Texas, that's the way we've always been in Lubbock.

This is a long, long job, but we have come a long way thanks to you and thanks to your dedication, thanks to the private sector, and we have a long way to go. But this particular intersection is one that will make a tremendous amount of difference. It will make the difference of driving through a city and seeing activity which shows progress and driving through a city which shows inactivity and discouragement.

We hope very much that you will grant this request today so that the activity and the progress that has been seen so far in this project will continue, and we thank you very much.

MR. NEUGEBAUER: Good morning. I'm Randy Neugebauer, and I'm supposed to be batting cleanup this morning; but, gosh, I was going through my remarks here as the folks that spoke in front of me, I've marked off about half mine, which I'm sure you'll be glad of.

But I do want to again thank you for coming. I think it's good that you get to come out and see our community, and it's good for our community to see the commission.

And one of the things that I have an opportunity, in serving in a lot of different capacities, to see folks in service. And I would say that this commission is one of the most hands-on, hard-working commissions that I've seen around the state, and I commend you for that.

Mr. Heald, I appreciate your staff and the logistical problems that bring the commission out here to -- to Lubbock, and we appreciate those efforts and the staff's work there.

You've heard the speakers this morning talk about that these are the major economic engines of our community, Texas Tech and the health community, health care community, and we're very proud of those, and that's where we're experiencing a lot of expansion.

Chancellor Montford and his team are trying to turn Texas Tech into a Tier I university, research university, and well on their way to do that. The medical community has built an infrastructure here that is second to none.

And we talk a lot about region, but I know, in talking to some of the folks here, that we get patients really -- really from all over the country and sometimes from other places in the world, and so we're proud of that.

The other thing about the East-West Freeway and the interaction to that is, you've heard them say that's the gateway to those entities, and it would be like, you know, tearing up the -- the street to your house. It makes it more difficult to get there. And we're kind of in that transition period now where we're about to tear up the street to our house, and we need to get along making sure we get completed with that, which brings me to my next point that the project is ripe.

I think it was brought up three commissions, two or three administrations, as we've been working on this project, been working diligently, and I think we've made more progress probably in the last four or five years than previous. But we've got the right of way just about acquired. We're going to let the contractor move the railroad very quickly. So, all of those things are going to start happening very quickly.

I told you yesterday that 12-month notice will start to go out to a lot of the businesses that are along the East-West Freeway, and, so, some of those buildings are already vacant, some of them already have been torn down and many more will begin that process very quickly.

So, we're going to have the right of way acquired. We're going to have it cleared. We're going to have a big void going through our community, and we're anxious to get about getting that void put back into place.

The project has been given your backup, it's 28 million. It's really the lanes and the interchange. We broke that up into two projects really for one reason. One is that we could let them compete for 3-A money and hopefully maybe one of those projects would compete more favorably than another, so it would give us an opportunity to look at other funding sources.

The other reason we did it was that in the past when we would come before the commission, we have divided those projects up. Probably the primary reason for dividing it up in this one was just to see if we could make those projects compete. Because this is really one of those projects that both of those need to be done at the same time because of the reasons given by the folks who have spoken to you today.

The -- To date we have programmed about, I believe it's $74 million for construction of the East-West Freeway. 30 million of that -- A little less than 30 million of that has come from Category 12, the other 40 some odd million has come from our using our 4-D money, and we went to Congress and got a demonstration project to help augment that funding. We worked with Carl Utley and his district. He was able to kick in some discretionary money from the district.

So we have literally tried to pick every pocket we could get our hands in because this is a very important project to our community. And, so, we were disappointed when we -- when the UTP came out for 2004 and this project was not on there.

Even probably more disappointing to me was that -- that we had reduced the funding from the previous year, almost $87 million. And that really kind of hurts projects like the East-West Freeway because that is our pot of money where we don't have to compete against some of the projects that score higher.

We -- I got the UTP, and I have to confess I haven't read the whole thing yet. It's only 500 and, what, 85 pages? But we'll have some more comments about that later. But I'm going to take that some weekend and -- and try to go through that and make some additional comments on it.

But I would -- I think the things we would ask you today to consider is, secondly is -- first is, how important this project is to the community, how vital it is that we get a good stream of funding to complete this project because we've just about got this -- as the mayor said, we've about got the tearing down, the tearing up completed.

Also, in this 45-day period you have to get comments on the UTP for 2001, ask you to give serious consideration about the allocation, a reduction in allocation of the Category 12 money, because that's very vital to not only Lubbock, but other communities just like it.

And I know there are other needs around the state and you're balance -- trying to balance a very delicate situation there, but that was a fairly major reduction in that fund and probably had a lot to do with the reason that we weren't on this particular funding for 2004.

But, again, I want to thank you for -- for coming. Thank you for your -- your listening. We -- That kind of concludes the East-West Freeway portion.

We would like to have Sid Cauthorn, who is vice-chairman of the Ports to Plains Initiative, come forward and give you just a little bit of update on what is going on there. Thank you.

MR. CAUTHORN: Thank you, Randy. Good morning, gentlemen. Appreciate you all being here this morning, and we also appreciate -- or I appreciate the opportunity to visit with you a little bit this morning.

Ports to Plains is, we believe, an important and integral part for the entire western half of Texas. I know where I come from down in Del Rio, the folks of Lubbock were nice enough to invite me to -- to join them this morning. The southern part of Texas down around Del Rio, you can see the yellow stripe there that covers Highway 277, where I come from.

The city council and all the commissioners have expressed unanimous support for the Ports to Plains Program. I know there are a number of communities along the route who have expressed the same level of support, that being unanimous.

Primary for the southern part of the route -- There are three primary items. One is economic reasons, another is the local commitment that communities along the route have made, and finally, and I know probably most important in our eyes and certainly in yours, is safety.

Down around Southwest Texas we have the highest unemployment rate and we have the lowest median income, and we feel like the Ports to Plains Program is certainly a great opportunity to improve the economic stability of the southwest border region and believe that this route spells tremendous economic opportunity for the southwest border region.

The City of Del Rio has also begun planning to add a second bridge, an international bridge for port of entry into Mexico. And the primary reason for that is an increase in truck traffic and the congestion -- that that's related to -- to that international port of entry. That's part of our commitment to increase, and we certainly hope that -- that you see fit to -- to do the same along the route.

Finally, and as I mentioned, most importantly, safety is a very important aspect for us. I will just share a story with you regarding safety. Yesterday I drove up from Del Rio, and I was driving 277. For those of you who haven't traveled 277, it's a very winding road between Del Rio and Sonora.

And I was making -- coming around a turn, and I looked up, and there were two high-pressure gas trucks about a third of the way into my lane. I don't know how fast they were going. They were -- They were making -- moving at a pretty good clip, and this was on a pretty good stretch of two-lane road.

I think creating a four-lane divided section down through that wind area would certainly, certainly be beneficial and helpful and certainly much more safe than the current conditions.

Now I would like to introduce Gaynelle Riffe who is also a board member of the Ports to Plains Corporation. Gaynelle?

MS. RIFFE: Thank you, Sid. And I appreciate this opportunity to speak to the commission. I am from Stratford, and -- and I'm at the very tip-top of that map, tip-top town in the Panhandle, the gateway to Texas, or as Mr. Johnson might say, where the midwest peters out.

We appreciate the opportunity to reacquaint you with Highway 287, the North Texas port to the Ports to Plains Corridor. Highway 287 has long been the preferred route of commercial traffic to I-70, Denver and the north. We are just lately finding that it is a route for the RVs that are traveling to South Texas in the winter and to the mountains in the summer.

It is a wide open, gentle climb to the mile high city, avoiding mountain passes, the wind, and weather associated with the mountains and the congestion on the interstate between Pueblo and Denver. The west side of Texas and Oklahoma and the eastern side of Colorado will not be plagued with nonattainment air quality.

When the trunk system was proposed to complete the four-lane corridors to the borders, we met with TxDOT many times to assure the remaining 18 miles to the Oklahoma border would be considered. It was considered, advertised in the newspaper as phase one route, and so we felt like our -- our work had been -- would bear fruit.

However, later -- a couple of months later the route was changed. And, so, we found that we had not been talking to the decision-makers.

We are very excited that Lubbock is taking the stand that they are for Ports to Plains and including us. We support the whole route to completion. Stratford's MPO also looks after the streets, sewer, and water. So, we are very appreciative of a larger city that has those opportunities for us. We thank Lubbock, and we are proud to be associated with the Ports to Plains effort.

As the decision-makers, we are mindful of your monumental task. We are -- We ask your consideration of the completion of 18 miles, four-lane, divided of 287 to meet with the improved super-two, wide-shoulder, passing lanes in Oklahoma and Colorado.

I appreciate this opportunity and now would like to introduce Tommy Gonzales, the Ports to Plains president. Thank you.

MR. GONZALES: Thank you, Gaynelle. Good morning, Commissioners, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Heald.

I would like to point out that the two presentations before me pointed out some things that you already have in your program. The northern part of the trunk system, the Stratford part, is already on your trunk system. It's just not on the phase two, which you will be, I think, considering in the fall or next year.

The southern portion of it, again, is also on your overall trunk system. It just didn't make the phase one portion of it. So, it's a part of your program that we feel like has demonstrated great leadership and vision for the state of Texas.

As Gaynelle mentioned, I am the president of the Ports to Plains Corporation and also a member of the TEX-21 group which is composed of Texas cities throughout the state of Texas and which you've attended meetings throughout the state, as well.

We support alternative revenue ideas like bond financing and those kinds of ideas that are bearing fruit from the Tex-21 group and other coalitions throughout the state. We feel this is a viable method of accelerating the speed in which projects are completed.

But if the method of distribution remains the same based on existing formulas, places like West Texas, Eagle Pass, Del Rio, and the Northern Panhandle will be left out and won't be able to benefit from those kinds of new revenue streams that might become available due to these bond financing methods.

Under bond financing, there is a way of distributing the wealth as there is more wealth created by utilizing this method. An example, instead of allocating $300 million on a pay-as-you-go system like you would on any project, you could pay $30 million a year for the next 20 years and get the same project done.

I won't -- I won't discuss the merits or the benefits of bond financing because you already know them. I just wanted to give that one example of how you could exponentially grow projects throughout the state. And I know that's something that the legislature has to consider in the spring, but I wanted you to be aware that the coalitions throughout the state are very supportive of that idea, and we would be very supportive of that with our legislatures at the state level.

The commission's idea, as I mentioned, of connecting rural Texas to other parts of the state is an idea of great vision, as I mentioned. This connectivity idea is called the trunk system. For those people in the audience that aren't familiar with the trunk system, that goes -- that makes highways from two lane to four-lane highway divided, and this is an idea that this commission has been doing great work in, connects us to other parts of the state and opens up opportunities for us.

We know that the needs of the congestive corridors throughout the state are great, and we very much appreciate your patience and understanding in dealing with all different cities and counties throughout the state of Texas, because we know you only have a limited supply. That's why we think that the bond financing method would open up the door for other opportunities to be able to complete projects that are either in progress or at other projects.

So, we think what the trunk system needs is bypasses also. We feel that the trunk system with -- with bypasses offers an opportunity to fully develop the trunk corridors, thereby enhancing our economic development opportunities as well as our access to other major markets throughout the state. This, we feel, will achieve more balanced growth throughout the state of Texas.

And I thank you for your time. And, again, we very much appreciate you coming to Lubbock and all the work that you do as volunteers for the commission.

Next, I'll be followed by Betsy Triplett-Hurt who is the MOTRAN -- MOTRAN chairman. And before I introduce her, I just want to also share with you that we work very closely with MOTRAN. We feel like we have a very good relationship, and I think that further demonstrates our commitment to work as coalitions to get things accomplished.

We know as one city we can't do that. We know even as a coalition of many cities you can't do that. We know that you have to coalesce with other states and other coalitions that are in existence and try to all work for the common goal of improving transportation for our great state and other states that connect us.

MS. HURT: Thank you, Tommy. Good morning. I am Betsy Triplett-Hurt from Odessa, Texas, and I'm the chair of the Midland-Odessa Transportation Alliance.

When we heard that our good friends in Lubbock were going to be hosting the highway commissioners - you know, West Texans are passionate about pavement. We love to see it poured and we -- almost as much as we love to drive over it - so, we thought that this was a wonderful opportunity to drive over 120 something miles from Odessa up to Lubbock to come see you.

The people who joined me today in that journey, I would like to give them recognition. Please stand. These are our MOTRAN delegations. We have former chair Charles Perry and we also have our city manager from Odessa, Jerry McGuire.

We, at MOTRAN, have studied the proposed cross-town freeway here in Lubbock, and we believe this is a very vital project and we support it as we support all highway improvement to any project in West Texas.

Tommy, thank you for stealing my comments about working with Ports to Plains. We think coalitions are very vital, especially to everyone in West Texas, and therefore in the state of Texas.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

MR. GONZALES: At this time I would like to ask the senator to come back up to the podium.

SENATOR DUNCAN: Thank you. You've heard our presentation. We appreciate your attention. And all the help we can get, we appreciate it.

MR. JOHNSON: Well, thank each of you who participated in the presentations. Those were most enlightening and informative.

I'm certain that many of you are aware that decisions of this nature are not made on the day of the presentation, but they plant seeds for future actions of the commission. And I'm very optimistic that we'll find a way to do these very necessary projects. We do have funding limitations that we're trying to work on also, so it's a matter of inadequate resources meeting the great needs and challenges that we have statewide.

Gaynelle, I had an observation for your comment. The observation is that no good deed goes unpunished, and I was not the author of that statement, and I want the record to reflect that.

I do think that Randy Neugebauer's observation about the difference in the amount of funds and strategic priority categories is very accurate, and it's one that we are having to work with, and unable we -- we were just unable to stretch the funds that we did have in the strategic priority to meet all the projects that we wanted to get done. But, you know, hopefully that will change, but it didn't happen in this UTP, unfortunately.

Do either of you gentlemen have any observations or questions?

MR. NICHOLS: I appreciate the presentation. I think it's good coverage, and I think one of the things I saw from most everybody that spoke was the regional approach. I think everyone recognizes the fact that the connectivity does connect to the economic development and prosperity and jobs, things of that nature.

And you all have an unusual cooperation in the area or region which I would encourage you to continue. It is very helpful for us when you all can work as communities and determine priorities from a regional standpoint. You all do an excellent job of that.

I've never heard the term "passion for pavement".

MS. HURT: You may use it anytime.

MR. NICHOLS: I may steal it and use it.

MS. HURT: You need to hang around me more often. We talk about it a lot.

MR. NICHOLS: But I think that pretty much sums it up. Thank you.

MR. LANEY: I want to thank Senator Duncan for the tour of the East-West Freeway and the project this morning. It brought a lot of what you all were talking about to life, and particularly this intersection and interchange to be, I presume. It's a -- It's a challenge.

In a way, I'm sorry that -- despite the good weather, I'm sorry we're not seeing this in the middle of the school year, so we see the volume of traffic that I understand is occasionally on it. We're always skeptical when we hear these claims and don't see the traffic.

Can't tell you how many cities we've been in and told how bad the congestion is, and we look around and we try and try and try our best to find it, but on occasion failed. I don't doubt you in this situation. I know the Texas Tech volume of students and traffic that emerges sometime probably next month or in September is a real challenge for you all. I'm hopeful we can get it done.

I want to echo something that Robert said. It is a real pleasure to see the Lubbock delegation make a presentation and to find groups from elsewhere, Odessa, Del Rio, you name it. It is a treat to see the relationships between parts of the state that realize, like they didn't not that long ago, the interrelationship. And -- And it makes a big difference for us when we see that in terms of you all pulling together on these regional projects and corridor projects that are extraordinarily valuable if we stay with them.

It will be frustrating from time to time, as you mentioned, Randy, when we don't have the money to do exactly what we would like to do as well as what you would like us to do, but stay with it. The frustration and the persistence ultimately pay off, and I think you all have seen that.

We appreciate the presentation. Thanks.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you very much. We will now turn to our district engineer, Carl Utley, who is going to give us an overview of district activity. Carl, the floor is yours.

MR. UTLEY: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, commissioners, Wes, and the rest of the administration. It's a pleasure to have you all here in Lubbock and a privilege to be able to host this again. This is our second time around. I think we had the committee meeting here in August of 1994. So, we're proud to see that you chose to come back.

And I think, you know, you all have indicated the reason that the commission has taken these out to the communities is to get a better feel for the pulse of the community and the needs of the community and visit with the people there.

But I think there is one other thing that -- that it does for us, is when we have an event like this and attempt to put it together, it's very obvious how many friends we have in the community. It was very easy to put this session together due to the support of the people in this room, the chamber, the city, and it helps reinforce that there are a lot of friends of TxDOT in West Texas. And that's one thing that we, as a district, get out of this.

The last time we hosted this meeting there was a different commission, so I've put this presentation together to kind of help you put together the piece -- pieces of the district that as Commissioner Nichols said yesterday, what makes us tick, what our business is in this part of the state. And, hopefully, I'll be able to accomplish that.

Lubbock's estimated population is -- looks like it's going to go over 200,000. That changes some of the rules that we have to comply with, with regard to our MPO federal funding, and it does look like after this census that we will top that 200,000 number. So, we're kind of in a transition.

The Lubbock District is composed of 17 counties that stretches all the way up from Parmer County down to Gaines County and over to the New Mexico line. We have 5,131 -- 134 center line miles in this district. That's the largest number of center line miles of any district in the state.

And we also have - Something is happening - 11,907 lane miles. That was a bit of a surprise to me when I came up to Lubbock. I knew we had a large farm-to-market system and a large number of center line miles. But to have the largest number of lane miles in the state was a surprise to me when you look at the freeways and multi-lane highways in all the metropolitan areas. But we also have the highest number of lane miles.

We have 483 employees in the district, and we have nearly 370,000 registered vehicles. Our highway system is comprised of about 100 miles of interstate. The interstate runs from Lubbock up to Amarillo. We have 905 miles of US highways, of which most of those are four-lane, divided, probably 75 percent of them are four-lane, divided, and we have 631 miles of state highway.

The largest part of our system is our farm-to-market system. We have 3,342 miles of farm-to-market roadway. I don't think any other district in the state has anywhere near the farm-to-market system that we do, and that's 65 percent of our total land miles. So we're primarily a rural roadway district.

We handle our business out of five area offices. There is one in Littlefield, Plainview, and Brownfield. That's our rural offices. There are two offices here in Lubbock. One of them is actually a rural office, and the other office handles the Lubbock County area.

As far as our climate is concerned, we're at an elevation here in Lubbock of about 3,241 feet. The highest part of the district is up in the northwest corner, and it exceeds 4,000 feet. So, we do have -- Our average temperature in January is about 38 degrees and the average temperature in July is about 80 degrees. We get about 9.6 inches of snow a year.

And this doesn't happen real frequently or hasn't since I've been up here; but, when it snows, it can get bad, especially if the wind is blowing. And that's a major operation for our maintenance employees. It's not uncommon for our guys to have to work three or four days straight, day and night, that they clear the roadways and keep them open.

When it rains, it pours in Lubbock. This happened not this last June, but year before last, but it's not uncommon. We get 17.7 inches of rain a year, but most of that comes at one time. And May and June is our heaviest rainfall.

We had heavy rains again this June, but after this occurred right here, there was quite an uproar from the citizens in Lubbock to control some of the flooding. And we have worked with the City of Lubbock. The City of Lubbock has installed some -- some pipeline where they're pumping down the playa lakes in this area of town and draining that into the storm sewer system of the interstate which drains on down to the canyon.

And we worked with them and gave them permission to do that. And this year, when we had our rains, we did not have flooding that occurred like that, and I think that can be attributed to that effort.

A little chamber of commerce stuff, and then also some things that generate our traffic up in this area. Of course, most important crop in the area is cotton, and it generates anywhere from three-and-a-half to four million dollars a year and generates a lot of our -- our rural traffic.

Grain sorghum, cattle, and wineries are a big part of this. The grain sorghum is used mostly to feed the cattle in the feedlots. There is a lot of feedlots in this area. There is -- 70 percent of the cattle fed in feedlots are fed on the South Plains and the Panhandle area. The economic impact of the cattle feeding is $14 billion.

And then West Texas also has three excellent wineries here around town, which I think you all got to taste a little of that yesterday.

Texas Tech University is a major player here in Lubbock, and then also the medical facilities generate a lot of traffic in this area.

You've heard quite a bit about the East-West Freeway. I've thrown a little bit of this into this presentation just to kind of give you an overview.

We -- Right now we have $73.8 million that is set aside for construction of the freeway. Our plan is to start that construction in the spring of 2002, and that is using some commission distributed money. That was the first money we were awarded for this project.

The intersection that has been mentioned, this is 19th Street, and we didn't necessarily go out there and pick a day that there was a wreck or something out there. But this is commonly the way this intersection looks when school is in session. This is probably in rush hour, probably between 4 and 5:30 or something, but it is an everyday occurrence, and traffic does stack up significantly there.

It's not uncommon during the rush hour to have to sit through six or seven cycles of the traffic signal there to get through that intersection. So, it is a significant problem and -- Well, there we go.

Projects funded, this is probably already common knowledge to you. But we were given some money in fiscal year 2002. But the point of this slide is, as you can see, there is Category 12 money on there, but there is also several other categories of money.

And then I just wanted to point out that we're using every source of available funding that we can possibly use to try to get this thing moving. We're using 4-D funds from the MPO. There is some district discretionary money that has been put into this project and then also some federal demonstration money.

This is a slide similar to the chart that -- that Randy and the mayor had up there that they were using. And, again, it just simply shows what we have funded and what we don't have funded. One of the things -- I may have another chart here.

But one of the things that we attempted to do, we knew that we would not compete real well on a formula basis with the metropolitan areas for funding for this freeway, and we knew we would have to rely on commission strategic priority money, so we tried to break the project down into small enough bites that we felt like we would be successful in getting Category 12 money for it.

And we -- I guess the first time we came to the commission, we felt like we got some indication of the level that the commission might be able to fund it at. So, we went in and we broke the project down into bites of about that size. And -- Well, I've moved on.

But basically what we did is, we broke it down into about $20 million chunks where the commission would provide part of that money and then we would be able to have the matching funds from the MPO. That was another thing that kind of indicated the size of projects we broke it down into is we knew about how much matching funds that we would have available. So, that's how we broke that project down.

And the -- Of course, the first project that we had funded was in fiscal year 2001. And if we progress this through to where we were successful in getting funding from the commission every year, our last project would be funded with fiscal year 2007 dollars. So, we were hoping to -- to be able to progress this thing year by year and -- and finish it by the year -- if we get that money in fiscal year 2007, probably finish the freeway in 2010 or something like that.

Other new construction in the district, moving on to other areas, we -- this fiscal year we will let about $100 million for rehabilitation, new construction, and expansion work. There is not any freeway projects in there. Our letting volume this year is about $100 million.

Over the last four or five years, our obligation authority has continuously grown. And we started out in '98, and our obligation authority was about 39.6 million. This year our obligation authority was 72.3 million.

What we're actually letting is we're exceeding our obligation authority each year, and that has progressively climbed. This -- This fiscal year our obligation authority was $67 million, and we're going to let $100 million.

As we get those projects ready, we've been requesting approval from Austin to let these projects, and we've been able to get them authorized. So, we are putting out quite a bit of work.

This is one of our recently completed projects, just an example of some of the work that we're doing with this type of money. This was a complete rebuild of US 84 south of Post down toward the Scurry County line, $18 million project.

This is the project that's under way out in Wolfforth. It's -- We've built a couple of overpasses out there to take care of some trouble intersections that we were having some accident problems with.

The retaining walls, we're trying in each of these overpasses trying to do some aesthetic treatments that will be pleasing to the community. And it's a little hard to pick up on there, but that's a real nice looking retaining wall.

This is the project on the South Loop. It's primarily a mobility-type job. We're adding turnarounds at Indiana and Quaker Avenue to help traffic circulation there and also adding a couple of lanes to the frontage roads to have mobility in that area.

This is an artist's rendition of what the appearance of it will look like when we get through. And we have a partnership with the city and also the business community of that area to do some higher level landscaping and architectural treatment.

We worked out an agreement that we would install this vegetation and -- and work in the city would maintain it. We have an agreement with the city for them to maintain it, I think to the tune of about $250,000 a year in this particular area. And the funding has been provided by the businesses along this corridor.

This is an enhancement project that we did through downtown Lubbock, Broadway Street, that we just recently completed. It turned out real nice. We've had a lot of compliments from the city as to kind of enhance the downtown area and to help redevelop that area.

Just another example of some of the work that we've got going on just south of town on US 87, a complete reconstruction of US 87, about a $12 million job.

We also have a program going on, on our rural FM roadways. We call it Bomag projects. Basically what we're doing is we're recycling those FM roadways that don't have any shoulders, many of them are 18-feet wide, we're rehabilitating them to the 24-foot width with shoulders, adding a little bit of base material and stabilizing them with fly-ash, and we've made quite a bit of progress.

We started in '97. We spent $5.3 million, but the mileage is also listed there that we're rehabilitating. The peak there early on was due to the supplemental rehab program in those years, and then we had -- and then it dropped off on us for a couple of years. But we've had an increase in our -- our rehab money and PM money, and we've been able to increase that over the next few years.

But we do have an increase in 2002 and 2003. This has been a good process for us. We've got some good work out of it and the -- the roadways have been performing real well. We can do this work for about $125,000 a mile. To completely rebuild an FM roadway with new material is costing us about $300,000 a mile. So, it has been a good program for us.

MR. NICHOLS: Is that lane miles or center line?

MR. UTLEY: That's center line miles.

Our life blood in this district with our rural system is our seal coat program. This fiscal year we're doing about $8.8 million worth of contract seal coat. The contract seal coat program, in '96 we were doing about 156 miles a year, and this fiscal year we're going to do 402 miles per year.

We've increased that program substantially because our -- our PM allocation has -- has doubled, and we were able to put more money into that early on in '96, '97.

We took a look at it in 1999, and what we were able to accomplish put us on about a 25-year cycle on seal coating our roadways, and we knew we had to improve that, and we increased that program substantially.

And in 2000, we're able to do 402 miles, and we're just about on a ten-year cycle right now, and that's about the -- probably the best that we're going to be able to do. Now, of course, there is some other work that goes on, the rehab-type work, that might knock that down a little bit, but we feel like we're in pretty good shape right now.

We do have an in-house seal coat program that supplements our contract seal coat program. As you can see, it has varied from year to year, but we do anywhere from two to three hundred miles of in-house seal coat each year. In 1999, it jumped up to -- we did 335 miles, but that was because we were getting behind, we felt like, on our seal coat program, and we put quite a bit of emphasis on it.

By increasing the seal coat program in the fiscal year 2000, we were able to drop back with our in-house program to about 177 miles, $1.4 million.

This gives you kind of an idea of the amount of roadways that we're able to cover in one year. This is our fiscal year 2000 seal coat program. The red is the contract sealed, district wide contract sealed. The green is another contract that we have that just covers Lubbock County, and then the blue is what we're doing with our in-house seal coat.

So, we're covering a pretty good geographical area, and we're pretty happy with our seal coat program right now. It's moving along real well.

These are a few of the fellows that work on our contract -- our in-house seal coat program. And I've just thrown this slide up here basically to say the same thing that you all have tried to send a message to our employees last night.

This is the lifeblood of our district. These are the guys that get our work done, and they are a big part of the communities that they live in. We do have maintenance sections in each one of our counties. We feel like that's the way we need to operate in this part of the country. We have large counties. We can respond timely, and we can be very responsive to the public.

In these small West Texas towns, I guarantee you everybody that lives in that town knows these fellows work for the highway department. And if they have a problem with our facilities or something not going on, they're going to hear from them, and I think that's one reason that they take a lot of pride in their work.

But in West Texas, there is -- there is no doubt that these fellows are a big part of their communities and a vital part of that community, and we're very proud of the work that they do.

I think that pretty well concludes my presentation. If there are any questions, I would be glad to field those. Thank you for the opportunity.

MR. JOHNSON: Carl, on the East-West Freeway, what is the first construction project that you will let? Will it be the frontage roads from 27?

MR. UTLEY: No, sir. The first construction project and the first construction money we have is out on the Southwest Loop, and that will begin in the spring of 2002. That's fiscal year 2001 money. But that's to reconfigure the Southwest Loop to accommodate the freeway going underneath it. And that was our first project.

And the reason we focused on that project first is that is where the majority of the traffic is. We felt like we could do more good. There is -- In that redesign of that interchange, there is some of the city thoroughfares. 50th Street, there will be a bridge there that we're cutting through, that's where all the development is, and it will help the mobility in that area substantially. But that's our first project.

MR. JOHNSON: Then after that one?

MR. UTLEY: Then we move back into the Texas Tech campus, and that's where we have the federal demonstration money and the depression. That project will include everything in the Texas Tech campus to University Drive and those frontage roads east to I-27.

MR. JOHNSON: So, all of that will be let at the same time?

MR. UTLEY: That's our intention at this point in time, yes, sir.

MR. JOHNSON: And when do you anticipate that happening?

MR. UTLEY: That was 2003, I believe. Let me flip for that map, but I think that's correct. Yes, that's fiscal year 2003. So, we'll let it in fiscal year 2003.

And then the proposed project that we had before the commission requesting the 2004 dollars, that was the 19th Street intersection, and that will follow that.

But the -- That -- That project through Texas Tech and those frontage roads will be a very large project, but we need to let those together because we need to get those frontage roads built from University east to I-27 to accommodate the embankment that comes out of the Tech campus so that we don't have to double handle that material.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions, Robert?

MR. NICHOLS: No questions. Excellent presentation.

MR. UTLEY: Thank you.

MR. NICHOLS: I was really tickled to see your seal coat program kicked back up. I know that's real important. Preventive maintenance keeps those things from deteriorating in the first place.

Get that to where it needs to be and keep it there, then we'll save a lot of dollars in the long run.

MR. UTLEY: We thank you all for that opportunity. Our -- Our allocation increases substantially and we were able to kick that program up.

MR. NICHOLS: And you feel very comfortable that you're on, what, a ten-year cycle?

MR. UTLEY: We're much better off. We were on a 25-year cycle, and we've been able to increase that to a 10. We would like to do a little better than that, but -- but I think that in this part of the country, with our rainfall and with our climate, I think that ten years serves us pretty well.

MR. JOHNSON: Is this part of the passion for pavement?

David, any observations?

MR. LANEY: No. Compliments for the work you all are doing.

MR. UTLEY: Thank you very much.

MR. JOHNSON: Carl, thank you for the presentation. Again, most informative, and thank you so much for the opportunity to visit with your people last night. That's always one of the highlights of any visit that we make.

MR. UTLEY: I think our employees enjoyed it very much.

MR. JOHNSON: Great. We will now adjourn for about -- take a five-minute recess so those of you who need to get back to commerce and industry may do so. We thank you for your presence.

We will reconvene with the more mundane and housekeeping monthly agenda that we have. So we'll stand in recess for about five minutes.

(Recess had.)

MR. JOHNSON: We will now proceed with our regular meeting. I would like to remind anyone here who wants to address the commission to fill out a card at the registration table. If you would like to comment on an agenda item, please fill out a yellow card; and, if it is not an agenda item, we will take your comments during the open comment period at the end of the meeting. And for that, we would ask that you fill out a blue card.

We will begin with the approval of the minutes including revisions to our May 25th meeting also approving the minutes of the joint briefing with the Texas Natural Resource Conversation Commission on June the 26th and our regular meeting on June the 29th.

As far as the revisions of our May 25th meeting, on that date we had a delegation to appear, and immediately after their presentation, we moved an agenda item out of order up to the conclusion of that delegation's presentation. And in the minutes, part of the minute order was reflected at that point, and then part of the minute order was reflected at its appropriate part of the agenda. And, so, we are merging the two, and thus there is a revision to our May 25th meeting which we will approve that revision in this motion.

Is there a motion to that effect?

MR. NICHOLS: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: There is a motion and second. All in favor please signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: The motion carries. Thank you.

We will now turn the housekeeping part of our agenda over to Wes Heald, our very capable executive director. Wes, thank you.

MR. HEALD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before we go into our business part of the meeting, I would like to -- I know Carl had made an excellent presentation this morning. But, Carl, would you have all your district employees to stand so we can just see? I know they're here to learn and observe. Okay. Okay. Thank you all.

And also I would like to introduce some other district engineers we have here. I don't know whether they're here because they're concerned about the commission giving all the money to Lubbock or what.

Lauren Garduno from the Odessa District. Lauren, if you would just stand and maybe any of your staff that's with you.

MR. GARDUNO: Yes. Wes, thank you. I have my public information officer, Glen Larum with me today.

MR. HEALD: Okay. Thank you. Joe Nelson from the Wichita Falls District?

MR. NELSON: Wes, thank you. I brought public information officer, Adele Lewis Calhoun; Tim Hertel, director of operations; and Joe Anderson, director of construction.

MR. HEALD: Okay. Thank you.

And Mark Tomlinson, Amarillo District?

MR. TOMLINSON: Yes, sir. I brought Tonya Detten, our public information officer.

MR. HEALD: Bill Hale, Abilene?

MR. HALE: I brought Mary Beth Kilgore, my public information officer.

MR. HEALD: Walter McCullough, San Angelo.

MR. McCULLOUGH: Wes, I'm here by myself.

MR. HEALD: Okay. And then we have the Childress District representative, Terry Keener.

MR. KEENER: Thank you, Wes. Vicky McBride, director of operations -- director of administration, excuse me.

MR. HEALD: Thank you. And have I overlooked anyone? Okay. I think, commissioners, this tells you how West Texas people stick together, or perhaps it's that passion to drive on the roads. I don't know.

All right. We'll move into our business portion of our meeting starting with the administrative rules. This is agenda item 2-a-1 a and b. We have no proposal for adoption, but we have some final rules for adoption. Two minute orders having to do with the Off System Bridge Program, and Mary Lou Ralls.

MS. RALLS: Thank you. Good morning. I'm Mary Lou Ralls, director of the bridge division. The criteria contained in Title 43, Texas Administrative Code, requires local governments to provide 10 percent funding to participate in the Off System Bridge Rehabilitation and Replacement Program.

The minute order proposes that 10 percent of the original estimate of preliminary engineering costs be paid by the local government at the time the construction and maintenance agreement is signed, as is currently done. The remainder of its 10 percent participation will be based on the original estimate of total cost rather than the actual cost to be paid just prior to letting.

At the May commission meeting, you approved this proposed amendment to 15.52 to go to public comment. The time period for public comment has elapsed. No comments were received. We therefore recommend your approval of this amendment.

MR. JOHNSON: Is there a motion to that effect?

MR. LANEY: So moved.

MR. JOHNSON: Second?

MR. NICHOLS: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carried. Thank you.

MS. RALLS: Thank you. The criteria contained in Title 43, Texas Administrative Code, Section 15.55, requires local governments to provide 10 percent funding to participate in the Off System Bridge Rehabilitation and Replacement Program.

The minute order proposes that the local participation funding requirement be waived if the local government commits to using an equivalent amount of funding on other deficient or main lane in cross-drainage structures in its jurisdiction.

At the May commission meeting, you approved this proposed amendment to 15.55 to go to public comment. The time period for public comment has elapsed. No comments were received. We therefore recommend your approval of this amendment.

MR. JOHNSON: Is there a motion?

MR. NICHOLS: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries.

MS. RALLS: Thank you.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you.

MR. HEALD: Agenda item 2-a-2, again, that amended order for final adoption, Chapter 17, V.T.R., and Darrel Hunt, the deputy of that division will present.

MR. HUNT: Good morning. These rules establish procedures and requirements concerning the renewal of vehicle registration via the internet. They provide the basic framework for which the program will operate. The new section seeks to ensure unity throughout the state. The program will begin with a limited pilot program and gradually be expanded to serve the entire state.

We present these rules for final adoption.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions?

MR. NICHOLS: I'll move, but I had a question. Going from pilot to final, do you have any estimates from the transition, assuming the pilot works well, as to when we will be in the final?

MR. HUNT: We have several counties that have expressed interest to join after the pilot, and it would take them more than a month to add them on.

MR. NICHOLS: I mean, are we looking at 6 months or 12 months?

MR. HUNT: Well, not all the counties in the state want to participate at this time, so we figure we could do the ones that are interested within a month of when we settle the contract with Department of Information Resources.

MR. NICHOLS: The counties, are we talking about heavily populated counties that are interested in participating?

MR. HUNT: Both.

MR. NICHOLS: Okay. Okay. Thanks.

MR. JOHNSON: There is a motion. Is there a second?

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Thank you.

MR. HEALD: Agenda item 2-b under Rule Review, Richard Monroe.

MR. MONROE: For the record, my name is Richard Monroe. I am the General Counsel for the department. We would urge that the commission approve the minute order before you concerning Rule Review. This will allow us to, according to requirements of statute, file our rule review plan with the Secretary of State.

I would urge that the minute order be approved.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions? Is there a motion?

MR. NICHOLS: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Thank you.

MR. HEALD: Agenda Item 3, Traffic Operations, approval of the 2001 Highway Safety Plan, Carol Rawson.

MR. RAWSON: Good morning, commissioners and Mr. Heald. I'm Carol Rawson, the deputy director for the Traffic Operations Division.

The minute order before you seeks approval of the FY 2001 Highway Safety Plan. This plan attempts to reduce the number and the severity of traffic crashes by funding various enforcement, training, and education efforts.

The FY 2001 Highway Safety Plan contains a total budget of approximately $96 million. Last year's highway safety plan totaled approximately 36 million. We have had a significant increase in funding for -- for three reasons.

First, because legislation was not passed for repeat DWI offender and for open container, approximately $48 million will be transferred from the construction funds to the Traffic Safety Program. $35 million of these funds will be used in the hazard elimination or the HES program for installation of approximately 1,700 miles of textured shoulders, 37 miles of concrete median barrier, and an additional 75 HES projects.

These projects came about as a result of an annual program call in which the districts submitted projects that competed against each other. The majority of this work will be let within a year. The remaining $13 million will be included in the Traffic Safety Program and will be used for anti-DWI efforts.

Secondly, because Texas passed a point 08 BAC law, we will receive approximately $13.8 million in incentive funding by October of this year. $5 million will be used for the Federal Railroad Signal Program, $5 million will go to the Texas Department of Health as required by law, and $3.8 million will be included in the Traffic Safety Program for additional enforcement efforts. The remaining increase in funding can be attributed also to several traffic safety initiative programs that Texas applied for and was awarded.

At this time, we recommend approval of this minute order.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions?

MR. NICHOLS: I had two things. One is an observation I would like you to comment on, and it has to do with the incentive, you might say, or penalty that the federal government put on our funding related to our legislature on the DWI repeat offender and open container thing that did not pass.

MS. RAWSON: Correct.

MR. NICHOLS: The large amount of money that was pulled out of the construction into this program, if the next session that does not pass, the amount doubles or something like that? What is the penalty?

MS. RAWSON: What it will be, is it will be -- next year we will probably get equivalent to this amount. That's what they're saying. But the following year will actually be a double of that amount.

MR. NICHOLS: Because there are some staff legislators here, I think it's important that they realize we're looking at two years from now if this doesn't pass.

MS. RAWSON: This is what is going to happen.

MR. NICHOLS: Not only will this amount be pulled from construction, it will actually double?

MS. RAWSON: Exactly. Correct.

MR. NICHOLS: So, it's a pretty -- I know it's a sensitive issue and there is a lot of problems in getting it resolved, but it's a very important issue for the state to look at.

MS. RAWSON: Yes.

MR. NICHOLS: The second thing, I had a question on the minute order, on the very tail end of the minute order with regards to the executive director designee being authorized to increase this highway safety plan, I think, up to 50 percent.

MS. RAWSON: Correct.

MR. NICHOLS: That it is the intent, at least I would like to make sure it's on the record, --

MS. RAWSON: Yes.

MR. NICHOLS: -- that the intent of that is not so much to pull money from other funds to increase it 50 percent; but, if new federal funds become available, that we have the authorization to utilize that.

MS. RAWSON: That's exactly -- Because the federal funds -- a lot of these federal funds we don't receive until October of the year, and now we're putting forward a plan, a lot of that money hasn't been locked down. These are estimates, and it might be that we actually get more money. And in getting more money, we like to see that in place in the plan so that we can actually physically use it.

MR. NICHOLS: With that in mind, and I'm not going to suggest that we change the minute order to show that, I would encourage us next year, since this is an annual plan, to clarify that that is what the intent of that is, so it more appropriately shows what the intent is.

And with that, I move to accept it.

MR. LANEY: Could it possibly increase more than 50 percent?

MS. RAWSON: We would have to get a lot of federal -- different federal funding. I wouldn't -- I wouldn't imagine so. I think that our numbers that we're looking at right now are pretty close. From -- From talking to our fed partners and NHTSA and FHWA, I think the numbers that we're getting and what we're seeing and looking out into the future, they look good. I don't think we're going to see large increases, maybe small.

MR. LANEY: My only suggestion is I would just as soon go ahead and take care of the language in the last line of the minute order to comport with what Robert was saying and what you've basically agreed to as to the intent. Basically, should additional revenue become available, then up to the level of that additional revenue.

MS. RAWSON: Does that cover that in the first line? I was just looking at the first line. "It is further ordered that should additional funds become available..." Does that clarify that in your -- in your mind? Because that's really truthful, you know, additional federal funds.

If you would like that, that could be put in there, too. Because, really, that's what we're looking at.

MR. LANEY: Yeah, at the last line, you might want to say "up to 50 percent of total approved budget or to the extent of the additional federal funds." That way you don't have to fiddle with it again either now or whenever it comes up again.

MR. RAWSON: Okay.

MR. JOHNSON: Mr. Monroe, can we amend on site a minute order?

MR. MONROE: Sure.

MR. JOHNSON: We may?

MR. MONROE: Yes, sir. Let me make sure. We're going to amend the first line to say that "should additional federal funds"?

MS. RAWSON: Okay.

MR. JOHNSON: "Become available".

MR. MONROE: And then the last line, instead of a period after "budget", comma, "or to the extent of the federal funds"?

MR. LANEY: Or just "to the extent of the additional federal funds".

MR. MONROE: Okay.

MR. JOHNSON: Robert, will you --

MR. NICHOLS: That's fine.

MR. JOHNSON: Amended motion?

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: Second. All in favor signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Carol, thank you so much --

MS. RAWSON: Sure.

MR. JOHNSON: -- for your explanations.

MR. HEALD: Commissioners, before I get started, I might tell you, this is a great program, and the district engineer -- For some reason, we're having an unusual number of across-the-median kind of accidents, many times resulting in a head-on.

The division has been very proactive in trying to promote an additional concrete median barrier. I think it's going to save a lot of lives.

In addition to that, the run-off-the-road accidents, the shoulder texturing, many miles are -- are going to be textured. It's a great program. We're very proud, I have to tell you.

Moving along, Transportation Planning. This is agenda item 4-a, b, c, and d.

And, Al, I don't know whether you've heard. We're going to defer 4-c.

MR. LUEDECKE: Yes.

MR. HEALD: Okay.

MR. LUEDECKE: I'm aware of that.

MR. HEALD: Go ahead.

MR. LUEDECKE: For the record, my name is Al Luedecke. I'm director of the Transportation Planning and Programming Division. Chapter 51 of the Transportation Code requires the commission, acting through the department, to administer the state's responsibility as a nonfederal sponsor of the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway, including cooperating with the US Army Corps of Engineers in the Corps' maintenance of the waterway.

Section 51.009 of the Transportation Code also authorizes the commission, through the department, to enter into an agreement with the Corps to participate in the cost of a project to beneficially use dredged material from the waterway.

The minute order we're bringing to you today authorizes the department to expend up to $125,000 to participate in the cost of a beneficial project with the Corps of Engineers. The purpose of this project is to restore the dredge material berm that protects the existing West Galveston Bay barge facility along the waterway in Brazoria County. This project will also protect the shoreline of the upland disposal facility located across from the mooring facility.

The former barrier island that protected these facilities has eroded away due to wave action in Galveston Bay. Utilizing geo-tubes filled with dredged materials, this project will create a barrier to protect the mooring facility, provide a confinement structure to contain material dredged from this stretch of the waterway.

On completion of the project, the confinement area will be planted with a smooth core of grass to establish a marsh habitat, and this activity will also protect the shoreline of the existing upland disposal areas, provide placement for dredged materials, and thus prolong the life cycle of the disposal sites.

I would comment right now that we have two representatives from the Corps of Engineers who have come here today to answer any questions you might have. Mr. Joe Ramentiz and Mr. Rob Hawk out of the Galveston Corps office are here, and they'll answer any questions.

And with that, we would recommend that you approve this minute order.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions?

MR. LANEY: No.

MR. JOHNSON: Is there a motion?

MR. NICHOLS: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. I think this is a marvelous project, and it's nice to once again see our partnering with other state agencies on very, very significant worthwhile projects.

MR. LUEDECKE: We've had a long-time good relationship with the Corps in the waterway area.

MR. JOHNSON: Great.

MR. LUEDECKE: On 4-b, Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century set aside discretionary funds under Section 11-18 and 11-19 for the National Corridor Planning and Development Program and Coordinated Border Infrastructure Program.

Section 11-18 is for the coordinated planning, design, and construction of corridors of national significance, economic growth, and international or interregional trade. Section 11-19 is for projects to improve the safety movement of goods at or across the border between the United States and Canada and the border between the United States and Mexico.

The minute order presented for your consideration today authorizes the Fiscal Year 2000 Border-to-Corridor Discretionary Program for a total of $8,925,000 as approved by the Federal Highway Administration. This total includes three projects approved in the 1999 Texas allocation that were inadvertently not programmed.

These funds will be used specifically for the development of the projects listed in Exhibit A of your minute order, and we recommend your approval of this minute order.

MR. NICHOLS: So moved.

MR. LANEY: So moved.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Thank you.

MR. LUEDECKE: Moving on to 4-d, this minute order authorizes the Department to submit proposed project applications to the Federal Highway Administration for the Fiscal Year 2001 Border-to-Corridor Discretionary Program. Program selection criteria has been developed by the Federal Highway Administration, and solicitation for program applications have been issued for fiscal year 2001.

One of the requirements of the program's consideration is for each state to submit a prioritized list of candidate projects to the Federal Highway Administration by August 15th, 2000. With your approval of this minute order, the list of prioritized projects shown in Exhibit A will be submitted to the Federal Highway Administration for further consideration, and we recommend approval.

MR. NICHOLS: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you. Your motion carries.

MR. HEALD: Item number five, James Bass will explain a state infrastructure bank loan.

MR. BASS: Good morning. For the record, I am James Bass, director of TxDOT's Finance Division.

Agenda Item 5 seeks final approval of a loan to the Round Rock Transportation System Development Corporation in the amount of $16 million to fund the acquisition of right of way and the relocation of utilities within the Round Rock city limits to construct State Highway 45.

Interest will accrue from the date funds are transferred from the city at a rate of 4.6 percent, with payments being made over a period of 15 years.

Staff recommends your approval.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions?

MR. NICHOLS: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Thank you.

MR. HEALD: James will also handle item six setting the funding level for the 2001 budget.

MR. BASS: This minute order requests approval of TxDOT's fiscal year 2001 operating budget in the amount of just over $4.26 billion. This is in exact accordance with the appropriations bill that was passed during the last legislative session.

This staff recommends your approval.

MR. LANEY: So moved.

MR. NICHOLS: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor of the motion signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. James, thank you.

MR. HEALD: And Item No. 7, a legislative appropriations request. James?

MR. BASS: Item 7 requests approval of TxDOT's appropriations request for the years 2002 and 2003, and is in the total amount of just over 10.295 billion for the biennium.

We make -- recommend your approval so that we may submit the budget to the legislative budget board on August 25th.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions?

MR. NICHOLS: I have a comment on it. I think it's important to point out in this that we -- as our revenue estimates come in, I guess from the comptroller's office, between now and January, probably closer to January, these numbers will change and what will be finally adopted by the legislature will probably be different from this; is that correct?

MR. BASS: Correct. We are required to submit our appropriation request on August 25th, as I mentioned, and in our appropriation request, we have to have an estimated revenue schedule for the state highway fund.

The legislature, once they convene, the comptroller will issue an official biennial revenue estimate for all state funds including the state highway fund, and the appropriations made by the legislature will be determined by the estimate made from the comptroller's office.

More times than not, we are not in exact agreement with the comptroller on our estimates for the state highway fund, and the official one will be from the comptroller.

MR. NICHOLS: With that, I move we accept.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. James, thank you so much.

MR. BASS: Thank you.

MR. HEALD: Item No. 8, contracts, award or rejection of highway improvement contracts, first maintenance, then highway, Elizabeth Boswell. And Elizabeth is the deputy director. And is this your first appearance?

MS. BOSWELL: No, sir.

MR. HEALD: Okay.

MS. BOSWELL: This is my second appearance.

MR. HEALD: Second, okay.

MS. BOSWELL: And you've promoted me twice.

MR. HEALD: All right.

MS. BOSWELL: I'm going to tell Thomas when he gets back from Washington that. As Mr. Heald said, I'm Elizabeth Boswell. I work in the Construction Division. I actually serve as the construction section director within that division, and I'm here today representing Mr. Thomas Bohuslav, who is our division director.

With regards to Item 8.1, authorization of this minute order will provide for the award or rejection of highway maintenance contracts let on July 11th and July 12th whose engineers estimated costs are 300,000 or more.

Staff recommends award of all projects as shown in Exhibit A.

MR. JOHNSON: Is there a motion?

MR. NICHOLS: So moved.

MR. LANEY: So moved.

MR. NICHOLS: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you. The motion carries.

MS. BOSWELL: With regard to Item 8.2, authorization of this minute order will provide for the award or rejection of highway construction and building contracts let on July 11th and 12th, 2000, as shown in Exhibit A.

Staff recommends rejection of three contracts as follows: The first project recommended for rejection is located in Grayson County. Staff recommends this contract be rejected as the apparent low bid is approximately 52 percent over the engineers' estimate, and the third party associated with this contract, the City of Howe, is not able to participate in the overrun at this time.

The second project recommended for rejection is located in Henderson County. Staff recommends this contract be rejected as a plan error discovered prior to letting was only communicated to one bidder, thus giving this bidder an advantage with regard to bid submission.

The third project recommended for rejection is located in Stonewall County. Staff recommends rejection of this contract due to confusion with regard to addendum acknowledgment requirements.

Staff further recommends award of all remaining contracts as shown in Exhibit A while acknowledging that J.D. Abrams, Inc., is the apparent low bidder for two of the highway improvement contracts and currently employs Mr. William G. Burnett who served as executive director of the department within the previous four years.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions?

MR. LANEY: I've got a couple. There seem to be more than the usual number of single bidder and fairly significantly over-the-estimate bids that we're still awarding. And, also, I can't find the Grayson County budget.

MR. JOHNSON: The wording is on No. 1 on the list I got, just right at the beginning.

MR. LANEY: Is there -- Is there any concern that you -- For instance, looking at page 19, there are two projects, each of fairly significant size dollar-wise, each only having one bidder and ranging between 43 and 50 percent over the estimates.

MS. BOSWELL: We -- We discuss the -- the bids that are received from the districts subsequent to letting to ensure in our mind that it would be of benefit to award these projects considering the increased cost that we're experiencing in construction materials and labors and also considering that reletting the project, we do not feel that we would potentially receive any additional bidders or any significant decrease in the bid price.

MR. LANEY: Okay. Just a red flag. I think that's an area of concern when you have a single bidder when you're that high over the bid. It's rare in my -- just in the pattern that I recall, that we've accepted something like that. Other than that, that's all.

MR. JOHNSON: Elizabeth, I had two questions on the executive -- or recommendation for executive bids.

MS. BOSWELL: Yes, sir.

MR. JOHNSON: The one in Henderson County where we did not adequately inform but one of the bidders as to a change, why were we unable to notify everyone involved of the change?

MS. BOSWELL: What actually happened is, one of the bidders on the project contacted the area office the day prior to letting and discussed an issue with a pavement marking item that was included in our contract documents and it was included as an error.

And the area office actually confirmed that, yes, this was indeed an error; and, that bidder subsequently bid a penny on the job. The other two bidders on the job were not privy to this information. I would attribute it to possibly inexperience on the part of the personnel not knowing that if they had provided that information to one bidder, it was necessary to provide the -- the information to all bidders to, you know, protect the integrity of our bidding process.

And -- And the district felt in this situation, based upon the fact that this bidder who bid a penny on this item and was actually the apparent low bidder, he did have an advantage. And they felt in all good faith that the right thing to do would just be to reject all the projects, all the contracts on that project. So, that was the circumstances around that decision.

MR. JOHNSON: I just -- You know, my observation is the dissemination of information, you know, is critical --

MS. BOSWELL: Absolutely.

MR. JOHNSON: -- in this sort of thing, and we need to make sure that everybody is dealing with the same information.

MS. BOSWELL: That is correct.

MR. JOHNSON: The other question I had was on the Grayson County rejection -- or recommended rejection. And in the wording of the explanation here, the numbers are not the same as you mentioned, says the apparent low bid was 133,000 and some change.

MS. BOSWELL: Right. That -- That --

MR. JOHNSON: And the engineers' estimate was 131,000, so there is a...

MS. BOSWELL: I believe that was a typographical error. Yes, it was marked through on my copy. Someone corrected it.

MR. JOHNSON: Okay. Thank you. Any other questions or observations? Motion for approval?

MR. LANEY: Moved.

MR. NICHOLS: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Thank you.

Elizabeth, you did a marvelous job filling in for Mr. Bohuslav. Thank you.

MR. LANEY: And being promoted.

MR. HEALD: After that, you deserve to be promoted.

Okay. Item No. 9, routine minute orders. And as usual, I will go through these and try to answer your questions, but you can handle them all in one approval if you would like.

First of all, 9-a, speed zones, establish or alter regulatory and construction speed zones on various section of highways in the state.

9-b, load zones, revision of load restrictions on various roads and bridges on state highway system.

9-c, highway designations in McCulloch County, designate a new farm-to-market road along County Road 400 from FM 714 northeast to US 190 near Brady.

And then 9-d, under right of way disposition, purchase and lease, starting in Collin County, State Highway 289, west side, north of State Highway 121 in Frisco, and this is to consider the exchange of right of way.

d-2, in Dallam County, US 87, east side of Dalhart, near Hartley County line, consider the sale of surplus maintenance site and improvements.

d-3, Lamar County, US 82/271, north side near 31st Street in Paris, consider the sale of a surface drainage easement.

d-4, in Mason County, State Highway 29, at Hackberry Street in Mason, consider the sale of a surplus maintenance site and improvements to -- and improvements in Mason.

d-5, Tarrant County, IH-820/State Highway 199, southwest corner in Lake Worth, consider the exchange of drainage easement.

d-6, Travis County, RM 620, one mile north of State Highway 71 near Bee Cave, consider the sale of two tracts of surface right of way to the abutting landowners.

d-7, Travis County, RM 2244, at Weston Lane, consider the sale of surplus right of way to the abutting landowner.

Then 9-e, eminent domain proceeding -- proceedings, request for eminent domain proceedings on noncontrolled and controlled access highway, and there is an itemized list for you to view.

And that completes that part of our business meeting, Mr. Chairman.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions or comments on these items?

MR. NICHOLS: So move.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carried.

MR. HEALD: Thank you. We have -- We will not have an executive session today, and I have some cards here. We have some speakers under the open comment period.

MR. JOHNSON: We will now enter the open comment portion of our agenda. Please let me remind our speakers that before you begin your remarks, if you would please state your name for the record, and I would also urge you to be considerate of time and not take an extended length of time.

The first speaker to speak on utility line relocation and other state projects is John Berry. John?

MR. BERRY: John Berry, director of public works for the City of Plainview. First, I would like to thank the commission for providing this opportunity for the city to comment on pressing issues of importance for small communities.

Small communities must plan well in advance for replacement of the utilities, and this is primarily because of budget restraint. A large part of municipal funds are dedicated years in advance.

TxDOT's policy not allowing utilities under the roadway can cause the city to lose funded projects. If the city does not have funds available at the time the road project is let, this may cause the project to be delayed or cancelled. The state and the city would both lose in this area.

Any project in the city benefits both the city and the state, and I believe that other cities in agreement -- are in agreement that utility line relocation should be a part of the funded project and paid for by the state with participation from the city. Also, there should be provisions for some lines to remain under the roadway. The lines that need to remain would be sewer lines and lines where existing right of way or conditions will not allow line relocation.

I have questioned the wisdom of having to relocate a sewer line which may be 15 feet beneath the roadway. State funding would allow TxDOT to continue their project without relying on any other entities.

The City of Plainview has already lost one project because of the line relocation. The majority of our lines are located under the roadway; and, in these places, it is where the state has taken over existing streets or roads or has widened their roadway.

The City of Plainview is in agreement with the state that the right of way should be maintained and, where possible, beautification projects implemented. Plainview has benefited from several beautification projects completed by the state. The city would like to participate in additional beautification projects in cooperation with the state.

The City of Plainview is interested in projects with the state, and we are appreciative with the cooperation that we have been receiving from our local and district offices. The City of Plainview and the state will be involved in cooperative projects in the near future.

The Plainview mobility study being developed by the district office will help identify these future projects. The City of Plainview, as a member of the Ports to Plains Coalition, asks that you continue your support to this important project.

There is an additional item I would like to mention. The City of Plainview has a good working relationship with the local office, and in the past we have been able to share joint resources. And we would like to continue this and work with our local offices without having to go through Austin, because some -- most of our work requires working off the state right of way.

We would like to thank you for providing this platform for us to discuss our concerns.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you.

Robert?

MR. NICHOLS: On your first part about having the funds -- having the funds available, because I understand, in a small community, a project like that hits -- particularly on a relocation or a right of way, you've got to come up with a lot of funds --

MR. BERRY: Yes, sir.

MR. NICHOLS: -- with a small budget.

We, the legislature, two sessions ago passed, and the federal law allowed, a state infrastructure bank. We just approved an application from Round Rock earlier.

But we are in a position on a relocation or right of way or something like that, we can -- you can apply and we can loan -- the Department of Transportation can loan the community the money at a low interest rate, allowing you to spread that out so that it doesn't destroy your budget all in one year.

I don't know if you were aware of that.

MR. BERRY: Yes, sir, we are.

MR. NICHOLS: All right.

MR. JOHNSON: John, thank you for your observations.

David, did you have anything else?

It would be helpful, I think, if somebody in Plainview, perhaps yourself, --

MR. BERRY: Uh-huh.

MR. JOHNSON: -- might write us a letter where we have more formally your observations and concerns and we can be more responsive that way.

MR. BERRY: Yes, sir.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you so much for being here.

The next speaker is Sam Cartwright, who is representing the US Highway 54 SPIRIT Organization. Sam, I saw you a little earlier.

MR. CARTWRIGHT: Mr. Commissioner, I would like to defer first to Ms. Kristine Olsen, if that's all right with your agenda.

MR. JOHNSON: We can probably manage that.

MR. CARTWRIGHT: Okay. Thank you.

MR. JOHNSON: Kristine Olsen, SPIRIT 54. Kristine, it's nice to have you here. And if you will state your name for the record.

MS. OLSEN: My name is Kristine Olsen, and I am with the Sherman County Development Committee out of Stratford, and I'm here representing SPIRIT 54.

We have put together a presentation for you today with members and representatives from SPIRIT of different states that are part of our coalition. We would like to thank you for the opportunity to be here today. We would also like to express our appreciate to the Lubbock District TxDOT office for allowing us to make our presentation today.

We would like to welcome you to the South Plains of Texas which is the doorway to the Panhandle. We appreciate the opportunity to visit with you a little closer to home, realizing that where we are in Stratford, we are closer to five other state capitals than we are our own.

Expenses to Austin are often very costly, around $300 a trip per individual, and so this opportunity to share with you 54 is great for us, and we hope that we can give you some great information about what our coalition is doing.

If the representatives here that are here with SPIRIT would please stand so we can see. Some of these individuals will be sharing with you a little bit of information. They represent four different states that are part of the coalition.

We are -- The SPIRIT coalition is seeking your consideration to add Highway 54 to the Texas trunk system. Highway 54 is a part of the east-west trans-American national highway corridor.

At this time I would like to introduce Max Zimmerman. He is the chairman of SPIRIT, and he is going to tell you a little bit about our organization, and then we'll have an update from the different states.

MR. ZIMMERMAN: Thank you. I am Max Zimmerman, chairman of the Southwest Passage Initiative for Regional and Interstate Transportation, better known as SPIRIT. And it's a pleasure, gentlemen, commissioners, and Director Heald. It was a pleasure to meet you at the reception and thank the Lubbock people for a wonderful -- wonderful hospitality. Appreciate this opportunity.

The -- I'll give you a brief review of SPIRIT and then you will hear briefly from each state an update on construction of Highway 54. This, as Kristine said, is truly a four-state coalition, an advocacy group made up of the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and New Mexico.

Highway 54 is currently mostly a two-lane road. There are sections of four lane from Wichita to El Paso, but we're asking for a four-lane, divided highway construction on Highway 54 from El Paso to Wichita, Kansas. We know that's a large -- a large order.

We have resolutions of support from all the cities and counties, chambers, from El Paso to Wichita. Our newest member is Kansas City. The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce has seen the benefit of Highway 54 in feeding commerce and trade to that area from this part of the country.

The -- The -- The SPIRIT organization has been working at improving Highway 54 with all the segments, all the legislatures in various states, departments of transportation, and the Federal Highway Administration for the last five years, and we're excited about the possibilities. I think -- I think we will reach our goal.

This is a diagonal alignment, and you will see in your packets a map that looks something like this. You probably have seen this before. But it is a diagonal alignment that we're talking about from Wichita to El Paso.

To this part of the state -- or to this part of the country, it saves 110 road miles to the midwest to Wichita on through the Kansas City area versus going on existing interstates. It's truly a road that -- that -- that saves time and money for Texas, for Texans, and for the other adjoining states that are part of this coalition.

And it ties in real well with the Ports to Plains concept, in that the Ports to Plains feeds this highway at the point of Stratford where it intersects onto the north -- or onto the northeast, probably the reason that the Federal Highway Administration and the T.E.A. Transportation bill named this area from Wichita to Tucumcari on Highway 54 as part of the trans-America highway and provided the priority status for this road.

US 54 is the most heavily traveled two-lane highway in the United States, with 30 to 40 percent heavy commercial traffic. In places, over 4,000 trucks per day are counted on Highway 54.

You will hear the -- the construction status from the various states, and we're asking that you help us fill in the gaps by placing this corridor on your trunk system. We realize that's the first step, and we're asking that you highly consider that. This 90 miles to the Texas Panhandle is a critical length in the -- in this major trade corridor.

Now I would like to call on Jack Taylor to give you an update on the Kansas portion of the road. Jack Taylor from Liberal.

MR. TAYLOR: Thank you, Max. Thank you, gentlemen, for allowing us to appear today for a few minutes. I would like to tell you very briefly what Kansas is doing.

I am Jack Taylor from Liberal, Kansas, with the chamber of commerce, but I am affiliated with the SPIRIT group. I appeared before you in Amarillo a few months ago asking you to consider the same thing we're asking today.

In the state of Kansas, the comprehensive highway plan was approved last year. Our -- The rural areas will get $650 million for building new highways. We have applied for Highway 54 to be upgraded to four-lane status from Kingman where it ends the four lane coming south to Mullinville, which is about 77 miles. We've asked for other projects along the way.

Unfortunately, those announcements won't be made until next Friday, August the 4th, when our Department of Transportation and the governor have a news conference to announce whether we got those projects or not. I've made several calls, but I haven't been able to get a leak yet on whether we actually got that or not. So, we'll know next Friday. We were hoping to be able to tell you that today.

The federal government did give the State of Kansas enough money to do a feasibility study on that 77 miles from Kingman to Mullinville, and that study is in progress right now. There have already been three meetings held on that project.

The federal government also gave us enough money to do the four miles from our city limits to the Oklahoma state line and make that a four-lane section to join with the Oklahoma highway that's coming our direction right now.

We are very pleased that this kind of progress is going on. And we had mentioned Sam Cartwright. I would like to introduce him now from the state of Oklahoma to give you a little update on what they're doing.

MR. CARTWRIGHT: Thank you, Jack. Honorable Commissioners, Director Heald, and ladies and gentlemen, my name is Sam Cartwright. I am the executive director of the Panhandle Regional Economic Development Coalition, Incorporated, more commonly known as PREDCI, headquartered in Guymon, Oklahoma.

Our coalition covers parts of or all of 7 counties in 3 states, Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma. And US 54, US Highway 54, goes through 7 of the 13 communities we work with on a regular basis in those three states.

My reason for being here today is twofold, one to urge you to include the Texas portion of US 54 in the Texas trunk system; and, two, to bring you up to date on Oklahoma's progress on US highway 54.

Funding for improvements on US 54 was recently increased by $5.2 million to cover a shortage of funds from the original bond issue instituted approximately three years ago in the state of Oklahoma. This is good news coming from the Oklahoma Panhandle state representative Jack Begley.

Representative Begley is a strong advocate of finishing the four lane of US 54 from the Texas line to the Kansas border. Obviously, the four-laning of US 54 from El Paso to Wichita, Kansas, and beyond would greatly improve the efficiency and safety of the movement of goods, services, and people.

The route is already becoming a favorite for an alternative NAFTA trade route, especially for the maquiladoras in the Juarez, Mexico, area and reversibly from the northeast area of the United States. Thank you for your consideration of adding the Texas Panhandle portion of US 54 to the Texas trunk system.

At this time I would like to introduce Mr. P.J. Pronger, who is president of the Dalhart area Chamber of Commerce. Thank you.

MR. PRONGER: I am P.J. Pronger. I'm president of the Dalhart area Chamber of Commerce, also a SPIRIT board member. You just heard from Kansas, from Oklahoma, and you'll hear from New Mexico in a minute, but I'm a Texan, so you can relax for a second.

You know, I would also like to regress for just a second in comments that we've heard all the way from the beginning of this meeting about the job that you do as a commission. We are appreciative. And I would also like to add to that, for just a second if I may, I would like to communicate our feelings, our high regard for our district office in Amarillo and for Mark Tomlinson, our district engineer.

Not to take anything away from any of the other offices. We know they're all good. But those of us that work on the ground with Mark and his staff just think the world of him. We really, really like Mark Tomlinson, and the opportunity to tell someone like you, this is a good opportunity for us.

Highway 54, as you've heard, you know, goes from Wichita down to El Paso, and -- and I suppose it's easy to say from your standpoint, you look at the map, and it's only about this long. On Texas, there is not really very much there, so why is that so important to Texas?

Well, you've heard a lot of other stories from other people here today, so I thought I had better come up with my own analogy, one that would maybe kind of make this thing rememorable for you, if that's a word, and that's how I came up with the football analogy.

When I was in college we had a pretty good football team. And every year after spring practice, the alumni would come back and they would field a team and they would play the varsity and would -- you know, kind of off-spring/spring training. It was just kind of a fun deal.

Well, one of the plays that the old guys always ran, you could count on it every year, was a pass play. They would line up and the receiver was out there on the far right side of the field. As soon as the ball was snapped, he would just run off the field and disappear into a group of people on the sideline.

And way down there by the goal another receiver would run out of the group of people onto the field, and they would throw him the ball and it would be a touchdown, and it worked every time just like magic. It was great.

So, if you can envision Highway 54 -- No, this is going to work. If you can envision Highway 54 --

MR. JOHNSON: I was just wondering if Childress pulled this play against Jacksonville back in the sixties.

MR. PRONGER: Highway 54, you've got all these people in the Texas Panhandle, and then they disappear, you know, out of bounds for a minute in New Mexico, and all of a sudden they come back on the playing field in El Paso, and it's a touchdown for Texas because they've taken all their money down there.

So, the idea is, Highway 54 is -- I mean, it's a whole thing, and it takes -- it does, it takes the same spirit of cooperation and camaraderie that it takes to pull a football play like the one that I just described to you. So, our group is all about bringing that spirit of cooperation and camaraderie together. And, hopefully, with the assistance of people like you, you know, we'll be able to score a touchdown, and this will be a game that everybody can win. And our request is that you consider Highway 54 for the Texas Trunk System.

And I'm sure that's enough from me. I would like to introduce our friend and board member from New Mexico and mayor pro tem of Alamogordo, Mr. John Van Dorn.

MR. VAN DORN: Good morning, commissioners. I am John Van Dorn, mayor pro tem of Alamogordo and a SPIRIT member. I'm thankful for the opportunity to provide to you the improvements to the four laning of the Highway 54 in the state of New Mexico. You may want to follow through with -- with me, the map that is in your handout.

Following a bumpy road in order to get where we are at the present time, we've finally -- I can report to you that phase one is an eight-mile stretch from Alamogordo south to Dog Canyon. It's approximately, at the present time, 50 percent complete with some 150 days left on the contract.

Phase two is a 53-mile stretch from the Texas border north to the Orogrande, which will go out to bid in late fall of this year.

Phase three, a 13-mile stretch north of Orogrande, will go out to bid in late fall of this year, as well.

Phase four, the final stretch of 20 miles completing the four laning of Highway 54 from Alamogordo south to the Texas border will also go out to bid in late fall of this year. Completion of four-lane 54 -- of four laning 54 from Alamogordo to El Paso and the Bridge of Americas at the border with -- with Mexico is expected to be completed by the end of the year 2002.

The current total cost is projected to be $56 million. I understand that the bidding process will not be limited to bid approvals to three contractors, therefore one contractor, I presume, would be able to win all three contracts.

Highway 54 north of Alamogordo is currently four laned to Tularosa. Plans call for the four laning of 54 north of Tularosa to Carrizozo within the next two to three years. The transportation department is looking for ways to fund this endeavor at the present time.

However, pavement rehab and shoulder widening is currently taking place between Corona and Vaughn. Four laning Highway 54 north of Tucumcari is in what I'm told a serious discussion stage. I imagine you can come up with a number of definitions for what that could mean.

But, otherwise, the only part of dirt being moved is a bridge replacement in Logan. I certainly hope that this has provided you with some overall review of the progress of improvements to Highway 54 in the state of New Mexico, and I thank you for this opportunity.

MR. HAILE: Good morning, gentlemen. My name is Jack Haile. I'm sheriff of Sherman County in Stratford, Texas. Been sheriff there for almost 12 years.

My overall job as the sheriff of Sherman County is to protect the lives and property of people in Sherman County. That includes people that are passing through Sherman County. US 54 was designed to handle the traffic of the 19 and '50s and '60s. And, gentlemen, we're no longer in the 1950s and '60s. When you have a mix of semitractors and trailers, RVs, cars, trucks, farmers taking their grain into the elevator, that's a very volatile mix which often leads to tragedy. Unfortunately, I'm the person that gets to deal with those tragedies. I'm not only the first responder a good part of the time, I have to deal with the families and the aftermath of these tragedies.

Gentlemen, if you could drive that road -- We call them snow birds. They leave Illinois, Iowa, the corn belt, and they drive to Phoenix and Sun City, and everywhere else there, and they're in their RVs and everything, and it's very seasonal. It also happens to coincide with May's harvest and corn harvest, and there is a tremendous amount of traffic on that highway.

Gentlemen, I implore you, for the safety of the citizens of Texas and those people passing through our great state, to include this section of 54 that goes through Texas into the trunk system and to eventually four lane that road.

Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate your time.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, sheriff.

MS. OLSEN: Again, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to be here today. It has been our pleasure to be able to present what our organization, SPIRIT, is doing through four different states and give you an update on that information.

As part of the criteria and being added to the trunk system, one of the criteria on that is provide connectivity, and I think through our efforts in four different states, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, and adding 54 to the trunk system, we can meet that goal of connectivity on this state.

Thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

MR. JOHNSON: Did you have a question?

MR. NICHOLS: Yeah, I had a question and comment. I guess the first question has to do with New Mexico. Can you hear me okay?

MR. VAN DORN: Yes.

MR. NICHOLS: Mayor, the -- I think when we looked at New Mexico and the way they were funding some of their roads last year, two years ago, New Mexico - and I may be wrong - had identified 13 potential corridors of connectivity in New Mexico. Of those 13, I think they prioritized three or four.

Al, is that right?

MR. LUEDECKE: That's correct.

MR. NICHOLS: Do you know if Highway 54 was one of those that New Mexico had identified to fund?

MR. VAN DORN: I can't commit myself to saying yeah or nay regarding that, but I would -- if I had to make a guess, I'm confident that they -- that it was.

MR. NICHOLS: I have a feeling we'll be seeing you all again later, so we might -- be something to check into. I think our transportation people might check into it also. That's really the question I had.

And the comment -- comment I had was to the man -- gentleman from Dalhart. Now I guess I understand why Panhandle teams are beating the East Texas football teams. I'm passing that play on to our coach.

MR. PRONGER: It works.

MR. NICHOLS: That's all I had.

MR. JOHNSON: Any other?

MR. LANEY: I had a question. Sheriff, if I could ask you a question about the -- Where is the sheriff?

There he is.

MR. HAILE: Yes, sir.

MR. LANEY: Do you have any sense, on an annual basis, what you're seeing in terms of the volume of accident statistics or fatalities?

MR. HAILE: Not really statistics. I can get that from D.P.S. We --

MR. LANEY: That's all right. We can get it. I just didn't know if you knew off the top of your head.

MR. JOHNSON: I thought you thought he was here to serve you.

MR. LANEY: That's right.

MR. JOHNSON: Any other speakers to come before the open comment? Thank you, the SPIRIT group. Very informative and helpful.

If there are no other speakers for our open comment section and there is no other business to come before the commission, we will stand adjourned. And by my watch the record will show that it is 11:44 a.m.

Thank everyone for your attendance and your interest. This has been a great session, I know, for the commissioners and the other TxDOT people who have traveled from Austin and other points. Your interest in what goes on in this area and as Commissioner Nichols said about joining together on a regional basis is very uplifting and makes all the difference in the world.

Once again, thank you for your hospitality. We stand adjourned.

(Meeting adjourned.)

C E R T I F I C A T E

THE STATE OF TEXAS ) COUNTY OF LUBBOCK ) I, Joy Annette Goodman, a Certified Shorthand Reporter of the State of Texas, and notary public in and for the State of Texas, do hereby certify that the Commission Meeting was had on Thursday, July 27, 2000, and I further certify that the above and foregoing contains a true and correct transcription of the proceedings Witness my official hand, this the 9th day of August, A.D., 2000.

______________________________________

JOY ANNETTE GOODMAN, Texas C.S.R. 4741
Expiration Date: 12-31-00
709 Broadway, Lubbock, Texas 79401
(806) 744-7754 Fax: (806) 744-7965