The Collin County Observer

Almost since the first day after his election, County Judge Keith Self has tried to chart a new, more libertarian, populist course for the county commissioners court.

While the Collin County Observer has been generally critical of many of Judge Self's ideas, we have supported several of his initiatives, especially those relating to government transparency. From putting the county's checkbook online to broadcasting and recording county meetings, the Transparency Project has met its goal of making county government more accessible and accountable.

Self's efforts to rein in the cost of engineering contracts has also been supported by this blog. While we believe that it is not in the public interest to always go with the lowest bidder for road and bridge design, there has been too much of an 'insider' aspect to selecting engineering firms for large projects.

The scrutiny that resulted has reduced the cost of engineering service contracts to Collin County taxpayers.

However, far and away the most important issues facing the citizens of this county have to do with the growth of the county and the need for roads and more efficient transportation infrastructure. And on these issues, our County Judge is, well... nuttier than a Corsicana fruitcake
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Collin County is one of the fastest growing counties in the nation. Our highways are all too frequently gridlocked - limiting growth potential, costing taxpayers uncounted millions in lost productivity and adding tons of exhaust to our already filthy air.

Yet one of Self's first public stances after taking office was to oppose the 2007 County Bond Program.

Among local elected officials, he stood alone. All 4 commissioners campaigned in favor of the bonds, which were overwhelmingly approved (2 - 1) by the voters.

Self wanted the county to use "pass through financing" from TxDOT to finance large construction projects, leaving the cities to pay for their own smaller secondary road improvements. His plan was a bad idea then and was soon proven to be a very, very bad idea, when not long after the election, the state killed the whole "pass through" program.

The Dallas Morning News, in an editorial after the election wrote, "Rookie Collin County Judge Keith Self was selling nonsense with his campaign to defeat a ballot proposition for road building. Voters, to their credit, weren't buying."

Earlier this year, he took his libertarian anti-transportation message to Austin where he was roundly castigated by several Texas Senators, including some from his own party for misrepresenting the Local Option Transportation Tax bill. Fellow Republican Senator John Carona of Richardson told Self that, "it seems to me that you do a disservice to the community by sending out the missives you've sent out before you even knew or understood what the bill said.... It is especially tragic that in a progressive part of the state like Collin County that this [Self] would represent the future leadership of the county."

Once again, the Dallas Morning News editorialized on Self's performance, calling it the "Keith Self side show", the News wrote, "Collin County Judge Keith Self has opposed bond elections to build roads, accused regional leaders of socialism and made fighting a bill that would give people the right to vote on rail expansion his top legislative priority. This week, he took his mischaracterizations of a rail expansion plan directly to the source, testifying before a Senate panel."

Last week, Judge Self stunned commissioners and court watchers with 2 presentations - both carrying the message to STOP road planning and construction.

In the first presentation, which was at the County Toll Road Authority portion of the meeting, Judge Self, speaking of the proposed Outer Loop, told the court that they should not be in a hurry to proceed with a $563,000 engineering study for Segment 3 because, as he said, "there is no hurry". Commissioners Jaynes, Ward and Hoagland disagreed. Jaynes pointed out that delay would cost the taxpayers $90,000/day in increased costs on the entire $4 billion Outer Loop program.

After an hour long discussion of engineering contract costs, property values and traffic projections, the court over-ruled Self's objections, voting to approve the contract 3 - 2. Commissioner Matt Shaheen voted along with Keith Self not to approve.

Despite Keith Self's objections, the county will continue to try to expedite the construction of the Outer Loop.

Later, in a heated discussion over projects to be assigned to the county's new citizen's Efficiency Committee, Keith Self, again supported by Matt Shaheen, floated the idea to stop this year's rural road asphalting program at 50 miles.

In 2004, the county committed to paving all 763 miles of county-maintained dirt roads within 10 years. The year to year goal has been to asphalt at least 50 miles per year - and every year, the county has exceeded its goal. This year, the public works department is on track to complete 70 miles.

Judge Self wants the county to stop paving at 50 miles and to warehouse the inventory of asphalt aggregate for next year. His reasoning is that the county would save money next year, because it would not have to purchase as much road making aggregate next year, when budget crunches could be harder.

Once again, Judge Self wanted to stop road construction, saying "We want to be husbanding our assets for next year".

Jaynes retorted, "If stopped doing anything, we wouldn't spend anything!"

Shaheen went on to explain that the county had "excess" inventories of aggregate totaling about $1.5 to $2 million. If construction were to stop, these inventories would be carried over to next year, saving the need to purchase as much in FY 2010.

Jerry Hoagland pointed asked that if there were excess inventories, "why wouldn't we use it up now?".

Joe Jaynes reacted to Self's idea with shock and indignation exclaiming that, "To say that you're at 50 [miles] and you have to stop is just government control at its worst. We have 300 days of reserves. The sky is not falling. It's going to be tougher next year, quite probably in appraised value but its not like we're some county in West Texas. And to tell these guys to cap it at 50 [miles], when we can go further is just like some of this short-sightedness we are seeing in some of these other things. We're worried about today, and not looking at the future."

"Now is the time to be doing this", said Jaynes, "not stopping."

Later in the week, Jaynes sent an email to his supporters:

Subject: Upgrading our County Roads--Please Forward

Dear Friends,

In 2004, the Collin County Commissioners Court adopted a road asphalting policy which is to upgrade 50 miles of road from rock to asphalt annually. Since that time we have exceeded 50 miles almost every year. Some years we have asphalted up to 60-70 miles of county roads. Under this policy our Public Works budget has not increased and we have also lowered the tax rate.

Our county judge has placed on our September 28th agenda to discuss freezing the miles of roads to be asphalted at 50. In other words, even if we can upgrade 60-70 miles of roads per year we should stop at 50 and then go into a maintenance mode.

This new policy means that it will take several more years to have all of our county roads upgraded and it will also be more expensive to taxpayers as the price of materials continue to increase.

Please join me in convincing commissioners that we should continue to upgrade our county roads as efficiently as possible and that we do not need a cap on how many miles we can upgrade every year. Please send an email to commcourt@collincountytx.gov in support of the continued upgrading of our county roads.

Once all county roads are upgraded we can then save taxpayers almost $9 million annually in upgrade costs and have a very much improved quality of life for our rural citizens.

Thank you,
Joe Jaynes

Battle lines are being drawn.

Hoagland and Jaynes believe strongly that the future development of the county requires continued investment in the transportation infrastructure. So far Ward has voted with Jaynes and Hoagland.

Self, with some support from Matt Shaheen, has tried to slow or stop virtually every mobility project in the works.

As a leader of a county that desperately needs tens of billions of dollars for transportation investment, he seems nuttier than a Corsicana fruitcake.

Bill