It's time to reform wasteful county public works spending

Nigel Christopher is one of the people collecting petition signatures for the Unit Road System.

A bipartisan group of Titus County Republicans and Democrats who want better local government have launched a petition drive to get the Unit Road System put on the ballot for the November general election.

Section 252.301 of the Texas Transportation Code is applicable. Under this, they need to collect signatures equal to 10% of the number of people that voted in Titus County in the last Governors election, which was in Nov. 2014 when 5,162 people voted. They need 517 signatures but are shooting for at least 700.

They plan to get the petition turned in by July 22, which give the county commissioners 30 days to put it on the ballot before August 22nd, which is the last day to call for election on a measure per the Secretary of State's website.

The commissioners do not get to decide on whether to put it forward as Section 252.301 para (b) uses 'shall' in two places.

The Texas Transportation Code Chapter 252 allows four different ways of organizing county roads. Of these, only two are allowed for a county the size of Titus.

Titus County uses the traditional Ex Officio Road Commissioner System and has for many years. Under this system each of the four Commissioners is directly responsible for the maintenance of the roads in his precinct. This made sense 100 years ago when most transportation was by horse and the road commissioner needed to be out in the area he was responsible for.

Over 60 Texas Counties (and growing) now use the County Road System (also known as the Unit Road System). Under this the Commissioners hire a County Road Engineer and that individual is then responsible for all County road maintenance and improvements including managing the resources needed. To adopt this system, county voters need to approve it, once a successful petition gets it put on the ballot.

Titus County taxpayers are not getting good value out of the current system. The four
Commissioners Road & Bridge Funds spend slightly over $2 million each year to maintain approximately 360 miles (after recent City annexations) of county roads. Most people would agree that the County roads are not in good condition.

In contrast, the City of Mount Pleasant does an excellent job of maintaining the 110 miles of city streets and much more cost effectively. Given that most city streets are considerably wider than county roads, the surface area of the city streets is in the range of 50-60% of the county road surface area.

A key reason why the city streets are in such good shape is that for many years, every summer, the City has several miles of city streets professionally resealed and chip coated. The annual expenditure on the resealing program is about $1/2 million.

Titus County needs to get the Commissioners out of the road business and hire a professional who can help take the Titus County roads to a new level by:
• Surveying all the county roads and developing an improvement plan.
• Starting a regular resealing and chip program for county roads. (The county has most of the equipment needed but has not used it in 10+ years).
• Identifying roads for improvements such as leveling, straightening, widening and better drainage.
• Optimizing use of the millions of dollars of County equipment, much of which is little used.

Please sign the petition to give Titus County taxpayers the opportunity to vote in November for a better road system that will be safer, encourage development throughout the county, provide quicker emergency response times and much better value than the current system.

If you haven’t and want to add your name to the petition to insure Titus County voters have a chance to vote for this in November, call Nigel Christopher at 903-286-4591 by Friday.