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Drive out toward Manor on US Highway 290 East and the earthworks appear. The chalky swath cuts through farmland to the horizon.

Yes, this is State Highway 130, the commuter and NAFTA corridor alternative to Interstate Highway 35 that we've been hearing about for twenty years.

The highway stretches from I-35 north of Georgetown to US Highway 183 southeast of Austin, passing through Williamson and Travis counties.

But hold that thought.

Now picture, if you will, a spectacular landscape from the best western movie you can imagine. A river runs through it. (The Pedernales, actually.) It's a real place, near the county's southwest tip, by Hamilton Pool Road, where the buffalo don't roam any more but the cattle and white tail deer still do. Somewhere in this setting, in a canyon, in a cavern…well, more of a grotto glistening with wet flowstone and feathered with Maidenhair ferns…somewhere in this friendly dragon's lair a human climber has attached himself like Spiderman to the rock ceiling.

These are two scenes to remember about the $151 million bond proposal you'll be asked to consider in a November 8 election.

The Travis County Commissioners Court and Sheriff's Department, the "green groups," the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce and real estate developers hope you vote for this package. The fact is, it's hard to find anyone with a negative word to say about it.

The bond money would go for building major lateral roads connecting to SH 130 in the county's northeast quadrant and pay for new jail construction demanded by the state at the Travis County Correctional Complex in Del Valle. The money also would buy land for open space and parks-most stupendously, Reimers Ranch in rugged southwest Travis County, where outdoor recreation folk reverently convene and limestone cliffs afford a view of The Alamomovie set.

The bonds would pay for park improvements throughout the county, shore up an eroding county road in Garfield, and move people out of flood-prone areas in the county's east and southeast.

The bonds would add a few extra dollars to each property owner's annual tax bill. For the statistical "average" home in Travis County valued at $203,525, the increase would be $5.86 per year. Or to put it in Austin terms, the bonds would cost a taxpayer the price of a large Thundercloud Sub sandwich.

Here is what will be on the ballot, according to the election order the Commissioners Court unanimously passed August 30:

Proposition One-$65.225 million for road projects.
Proposition Two-$62.15 million for parks and the purchase of park land and open land.
Proposition Three-$23.5 million for jail facility construction.

Getting there from here

Let's return to the northeast quadrant where the bulldozers are busily cranking away. SH 130 will change the landscape and the very texture of life in northeast Travis County. But voters aren't being asked to vote to borrow money for it in this election.

They already did that in the 2000 county bond election, when they approved a whopping $100 million for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). That was the county's share for the Central Texas Turnpike Project, a system of three interconnected toll roads in the Greater Austin area.

Residents will continue to pay for this fast-tracked, bond-driven regional highway project every time they drop coins or get their tags scanned at the tollbooths that will be strategically placed along the new SH I30, SH 45 North and North MoPac (Loop 1) extension, when these roads are completed.

But in this November 8 election, voters will be asked to approve spending for the county roads to reach SH 130.

These are roads and a road system that Precinct One Commissioner Ron Davis has called the "pivot for the economic opportunities that have not been available to areas east of I-35."

Promoting development east of I-35 dovetails with the City of Austin's goals for the part of the city east of MoPac Expressway, an area designated by the city as the Desired Development Zone. Many of these roads will be new, stretching across virgin land. The economic opportunities may be hatching as we speak.

"There are twenty thousand lots already platted in east Travis County," Manor area landowner and developer Pete Dwyer said at an August 16 commissioners court meeting. "You could pack up the entire population of Temple, Texas, and put it there in eight to twelve years."

Temple-a city with a population of more than fifty-one thousand, according to the 2000 census-in Precinct One?

Really?

Who knows?

"Everybody's a little hyped up because of SH 130 and because the housing market is so strong," says Joe Gieselman, the county's executive director of Transportation and Natural Resources. But the county knows it must address getting vehicles to SH 130. The highway is a rebar reality and not a hypothetical scenario anymore. (For the facts on the county's long list of road projects to be funded with this bond money, see accompanying article, "Roads East.")

A regional jewel of a park

Let us leave the roads now for a moment and take a leisurely stroll…I mean a wilderness safari trek through Jurassic Park, or Middle Earth, or what the county calls "Southwest Metro Park" (their working title).

At present, it's Reimers Ranch, a private park and a real cattle ranch.

"Reimers Ranch is one of the most incredible canyons I've ever seen in my life," said Valerie Bristol, external affairs director of the Nature Conservancy of Texas and a former Travis County commissioner. The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit foundation, plays a role with the county in the proposed land transaction. Bristol spoke at a public hearing held by the Commissioners Court August 23.

Next to Reimers Ranch lies land historically known as the Pogue Hollow tract, distinguished by its caves and rock walls and spring-fed pools. Reimer family members once owned the tract but sold it to John Hogge, who eventually offered to sell it to the county.

"The water here is so clear that if you didn't see the ripples, you wouldn't know it was water," Bristol told commissioners. "We have to protect the water as well as the land," she said.

In a follow-up interview, Bristol said, "Pogue Hollow is one of those really important water supply places that cleans and sends water into the Pedernales." The Pedernales River, like the Colorado River, flows into Lake Travis. Water released from Lake Travis fills Lake Austin, the primary source for the City of Austin's utility customers.

"The water filters down through the sands as it comes toward the canyon and enters the canyon and drops on down to the river and it creates these beautiful springs and 'blue holes' everywhere. Water is just coming out everywhere," Bristol said.

She alludes to the wet season, like the spring when the white bass are biting in the Pedernales. The Good Life's reporter-photographer team found Pogue Hollow to be a bright green world on September 1, with water enough to soak your shoes if you didn't watch your step.

Silence and wildflowers abound on the tract. Pastures crowded with cactus and live oaks lead down into primeval hollows. Visitors given special permission to view this property, which is not normally open to the public, hike under yawning cliffs with calcite-frosted nooks, towering cypress, and saw palmettos.

At Reimers Ranch, visitors drive down one dusty, caliche road to the Pedernales River shore to meet a great, calming expanse of water with its concomitant sand, rocks and cliffs.

In their sheer antediluvian ambiance the Reimers and Pogue Hollow tracts have everything but the dinosaurs. And the hobbits, unless you include in that set the fishermen, climbers and mountain bikers who have been hanging out here for years and for some, generations.

Travis County Parks Director Charles Bergh says, "We were looking down from a helicopter and saw all these zigzagging trails winding this way and that and we thought, 'What kind of cow trails are these?'" Staffers soon realized that these were mountain bike trails, engineered by cyclists. The trails are arrayed and labeled by level of difficulty, like ski slopes. The bikers have been acting almost as stewards of the ranch, working closely with landowner Milton Reimer. Bergh expects the same relationship with cyclists to continue with his staff.

Scott Isgitt, local climber, owner of the two Austin Rock Gyms, and a leader of the Central Texas Mountaineers, says the climbers and boulderers (people who climb on boulders without rope or gear) are by far the biggest users of this private park.

"Austin has twenty good places to climb but none comes close to Reimers Ranch and Pogue Hollow," Isgitt says. "With their cliffs and sinkholes that caved in millions of years ago and lay open to the air, they are like nothing else in Central Texas. In fact, the next public place you can go to see these features is south of Monterrey, Mexico. The next place is in Cuba, which you know is not exactly easy to get to, and the next place is Thailand, and these places are known to climbers throughout the world."

Austin was rated fourth among the best climbing communities in America by Climbing magazine, Isgitt says, and Reimers Ranch and Pogue Hollow certainly figured into that high ranking.

The county has always wanted a southwest park. A 2001 bond election provided $7.1 million for land acquisition and development. But the county had not picked a site yet.

"We looked at fifteen to twenty tracts, and got close on several pieces, but for various reasons they didn't work. Then we talked to John Hogge," Bergh says.

The beauty of the Pogue Hollow tract was undeniable, but county staffers worried that the "access is challenging," Bergh says. "We started to get a grander vision and we thought, let's look at the Reimer tract."

Meanwhile, spurred development activity in the Hill County was pressuring the county to act. One day after a hard rain, a retention pond in an adjacent new subdivision, West Cypress Hills, overflowed, sending storm runoff into the Pedernales tributary Lick Creek. That incident set off a storm of its own between the creek's protectors and area residents and West Cypress Hills developer Rusty Parker. To address controversies like this, Precinct Three Commissioner Gerald Daugherty initiated the Southwest Growth Dialogue Plan to hash out rules for development and creek protection in the Hill Country.

By now the Nature Conservancy had taken an interest in the county's ambitions for a southwest park.

Today real estate broker Michael Luigs, working closely with the Nature Conservancy, owns the option to buy Reimers Ranch and Pogue Hollow. Luigs seeks to simultaneously close with Travis County.

The country would use money from the earlier park bonds (at least $5 million) plus $25 million from the proposed November bond package, to buy eleven hundred fifty acres of the Pogue Hollow tract and twelve hundred forty acres of Reimers Ranch. (If you do the math, that works out to a bit more than twelve thousand five hundred dollars per acre.)

The portions of both tracts that front the Pedernales River would become "Southwest Metro Park" (again, name subject to change). The park would include about five hundred acres of Reimers property-the private park that exists now, with the bike trails, climbing cliffs and fishing camp-and five hundred acres of the Pogue Hollow tract with its spectacular, but hard to get to, features. "We're cherry-picking the best land," Bergh says.

The remaining thirteen hundred and ninety acres of both tracts that front Hamilton Pool Road would be "open space." Some of this eventually could be broken up into large lots and sold for limited residential development, with proceeds going to purchase higher quality open space elsewhere in Travis County. (Yes, the county can be a real estate investor.)

The first goal, when the bonds pass, is deciding how to make the scenic thousand acres work best as a public park. The county will continue to serve existing activities such as fishing, rock climbing, mountain biking, picnicking and nature studies. (Camping might be nixed because it requires costly twenty-four-hour staffing, to cite one reason.)

Initially the county will use the existing caliche road to access the park. Eventually a paved road may be built in a new location. The county is evaluating pedestrian access to the Pogue Hollow tract.

The fragile cavern features of Pogue Hollow-the stalactites and stalagmites that took eons to form-would have to be guarded somehow. Guided tours may do the trick.

"We want to let the public see it and marvel at it," Bergh says. "We're in the public access business."

On the day of The Good Life's visit to the ranch, Milton Reimer sat in front of his modest home on the property he grew up on, recalling how his great-grandfather first opened the ranch to fishermen forty-five years ago.

"We had opportunity to sell it time and time again. But we wanted it to benefit more people," Reimer said.

And still more for parks

The purchase of Reimers Ranch and Pogue Hollow and open space lands in Precinct Three ($26.21 million from this bond issue, plus another $5 million to $7 million from the earlier bonds) would leave $35.94 million from Proposition Two for parks for the rest of the county.

Northeast-Some of this would go to Northeast Metro Park off Pecan Street (FM 1825) east of Pflugerville, a facility known for its fabulous soccer fields. An estimated $4 million would build a skate park, an outdoor concrete bowl that could be used by skateboarders, in-line skaters and BMX bicyclists. It would also pay to construct picnic pavilions, restrooms, and parking infrastructure with sidewalks.

East-Nearly $9 million would go to East Metro Park, which is southeast of Manor off Precinct One's Blake Manor Road, for the completion of a soccer and multi-use ball field complex, a pavilion overlooking a pond, and a water distribution and irrigation system.

Southeast-Finally $16.6 million would go to buy park land and open space in southeast Travis County, including land along Onion Creek for the relatively new Southeast Metro Park off SH 71 east of Del Valle. That would provide for a greenbelt connecting the park to the confluence of Onion Creek and the Colorado River.

"By buying open space for Southeast Metro Park, we're able to control that flooding a little better," says Precinct Four Commissioner Margaret Gomez.

"Onion Creek is a creek that needs to be respected. It floods quite a bit, from Richard Moya Park off Burleson Road, below the airport, to Southeast Metro Park. If the parks and open space flood, it's a lot easier to repair trails than it is to handle the people (who might otherwise live there) who are in danger of flooding," Gomez says.

A small portion of the funds would pay to add park amenities to a ninety acre parcel to be dedicated as parkland by a development adjacent to the county's Southeast Metro Park. "We're getting funds for a playscape, a canoe launch, primitive hiking trails and the related infrastructure and amenities," says Wendy Scaperotta, senior planner with the county's Transportation and Natural Resources Division.

Of jail cells and floodwaters

In the early nineteen-nineties, the county threw up temporary barracks to house a swelling population of prisoners at the correctional facility at Del Valle. Today nineteen separate buildings sprawl over the campus of one hundred thirty-five acres. They are worn out and there aren't enough of them.

The county would apply $23.5 million from this bond election and an additional $40 million in certificates of obligation authorized by the Commissioners Court to take down these dorms and build "one great new facility," in the words of Major David Balagia, who heads the Sheriff's Department Corrections Bureau.

This consolidation would save on heating and air conditioning and other utility costs, and on the sheriff's manpower costs. It also will be safer for jailers, Balagia says.

And it will get the county one step closer to compliance with the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, which has been making exceptions for the county for years. "We've been operating with 'variance beds,'" Balagia says. "If you get a variance, (the Texas Commission on Jail Standards) allows you to put an extra bunk in a space not designed for it."

More than seven hundred of the county's twenty-five hundred or so prisoners sleep on "variance" beds.

Balagia and his team were able to slash $5 million from the total estimated project cost by eliminating single cells and making them all multi-cells. Design and construction of the facility would be contracted out to a company yet to be determined, and completed by the end of 2007. The new jail would not add any additional beds but would address the issue of variance beds by providing fourteen hundred and sixty new authorized beds, in addition to the twelve hundred and ninety authorized beds in other buildings at the complex.

More than sixty-seven hundred structures lie within flood plains in Travis County, and this bond package addresses some of that problem, with expenditures of $9.7 million.

The most expensive item on the list is the buyout of the Timber Creek subdivision, where about sixty manufactured homes lie on the floodway of Onion Creek, at the southeast edge of the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. "It's a pretty scary place when Onion Creek is flooding," says County Flood Plain Administrator Stacey Scheffel.

The bond allocates $3.3 million to buy the properties of the last residents living in the subdivision. Everyone must go. The county will share the costs of the buyout with the federal government.

For almost $2 million, the county would replace a culvert crossing over Elm Creek on Imperial Drive, north of FM 969, in east Travis County. The culvert is a "frequent overtopper," Scheffel says.

Along Quiette Drive, which meanders beside Walnut Creek near Springdale Road and US Highway 290 East, the county would spend $1.8 million to buy six homes in danger of falling into the creek due to severe erosion.

The county would spend $1.4 million to buy out a dozen duplexes that are "frequent flooders" at the Thoroughbred Farms subdivision off FM 973 way out in Del Valle.

Along the banks of Onion Creek near the Hays-Travis county line west of I-35, the county would buy four homes for $600,000 in a joint flood control project with the US Corps of Engineers.

At the other end of the county near the Bastrop County line, the county would spend half a million dollars to shore up crumbling Caldwell Lane, which is eroding into the Colorado River. "Every time it rains, we worry that Caldwell Lane could be gone," says Precinct Four Commissioner Margaret Gomez. The lane is the only route home for two hundred property owners.

So there's the county's bond package. Complicated, yes. But the basics are those two big scenes:

In the northeast flying dirt heralds the arrival of a long awaited regional highway. The county must link up to it with its own roads.

In the southwest a pristine river canyon, soon to be a major county park, sends out the call of the wild.

Think on these, on Travis County's special future in your hands.

Then go have a Thundercloud Sub.

Mark Mitchell is the author-illustrator of Raising La Belle, a children's book about the 1686 "La Salle shipwreck" that archeologists recovered in Matagorda Bay, where the Texas Colorado River empties into the Gulf. You may e-mail Mark at mgmitchell@goodlifemag.com.

Roads East

Part of the solution to moving traffic to SH 130 is fattening the roads that already shoot into its path. Round Rock's Gattis School Road and Pflugerville's Pecan Street and Gregg Lane are such roads. They also connect to I-35, which makes them hefty contenders on the Travis County grid.

The plan would upgrade Gattis School Road to a four-lane arterial with bike lanes and sidewalks between County Road 122 and the Huntington Trails subdivision. Travis County would pay a $6.7 million share. Williamson County would pay the rest.

Gregg Lane (east of the Harris Ridge subdivision) would be widened from its present two lanes to four lanes, then six lanes as it runs its course from Dessau Road to Cameron Road. The road's name would be changed to Howard Lane. The county would pay $13.9 million. The City of Austin would pick up the rest.

Pecan Street (FM 1825) would be upgraded to four lanes from the Pflugerville city limits to SH-130 at the county's cost of $3.7 million. Landowner Tim Timmerman and the City of Pflugerville would share the remaining costs.

Private-sector partners

Most of the SH 130 tie-ons will be new thoroughfares.

"These are the projects where we see grain fields today, where there are no existing roads," says Travis County transportation chief Joe Gieselman. The county doesn't build a lot of new roads, but mostly maintains its twelve-hundred miles of existing roads, he says. SH 130 demands east-west laterals in a precinct not celebrated for ample infrastructure. So the roads would be built in "public-private partnership agreements"-contracts, really-between the county and landowner-developers.

"We don't usually build these type of roadways ourselves," Gieselman says. "Roads are built by developers when they subdivide their property. But to just let the developers pay for roadways like we once did just gets you a piecemeal road system. So instead we want public roadways that everybody can use and we'd like them sooner rather than later." (The partnership agreements) create the incentive for the developers."

In other words, the county wants to direct the design and the pace of construction so the work can begin to mesh with SH 130 and platted developments as they sprout up along the different paths to the highway. "SH 130 will be finished by 2007 and some of these roads will be done by then, but not most of them, because we just don't have the debt capacity," Gieselman says. But it would be a good start and the county, developers, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and other government entities would all be looking at the same page of master plans.

The public-private partnership agreements must be locked down by December 31, 2006. Not one has been signed or really negotiated yet. But basically, private-sector partners would be required to donate all the rights of way and drainage easements to the county and share the cost of design and construction proportionate to the traffic that their development would place on the new road. If a developer fails to meet any timetable for signatures on agreements or money on the table, the project could be taken off the list and the county's money dumped into the bucket for other road projects in the bond package.

But this is a fluid, negotiable and ultimately **political process between the Travis County Commissioners Court and developers, who after all need each other for the creation of infrastructure. "A lot of the mechanism will turn on their (the developers') need and how they want to develop their tracts," says Roger Schucke, project engineer for the Travis County Transportation and Natural Resources Division. "The timelines on these roads will be based on mutual agreement between the county and the developer through the bond cycle." If the bonds pass, the money from their sale would flow in over the next six years, in varying amounts, through 2011. The developers, meanwhile, will be trying to pull together their shares of the costs.

True project costs and their allocations remain to be negotiated and this process could take years. In the meantime, the county has prepared estimates for its share of costs for the bond package and general budgeting purposes. Factored into these costs are administrative overhead, including the costs of selling bonds on Wall Street.

Braker and Parmer Lanes-The Braker Lane South and Parmer Lane projects lie within the City of Austin's extraterritorial jurisdiction on land owned by one landowner-developer. Pete Dwyer has received the city's approval for his two thousand fifty-five acre Wildhorse Ranch development, a Planned Utility District (PUD) fronting US Highway 290 East. "In …Braker and Parmer the right of way value is at least $4 million, and you'd get it from one guy-me," he told commissioners at the August 30 meeting. The commissioners had not yet agreed to include the projects in the bond package. Later the court voted to include the projects as part of the $15 million in additional mobility projects added to the package. (See accompanying article, "How the County Bond Stew Was Made.")

The new Braker Lane South would connect US Highway 290 East to the future Parmer Lane East. To build these important new roads, the county would put up $4.9 million for its share of extending Braker Lane and $3.7 million for its share of extending Parmer. Dwyer is expected to put in roughly the same amounts, since the two roadways would lie within his project fronting US Highway 290 East. The city would kick in a third of the total costs for the Parmer Lane work, and would eventually annex Wildhorse Ranch PUD.

Howard Lane-Another potential partnership would build a new roadway eastward from where the proposed Howard Lane-Gregg Lane extension would end at Cameron Road. The four- to six-lane arterial (called Howard Lane) would stretch less than a mile, from Cameron Road at the Harris Ridge subdivision, and connect to SH 130. The county would contribute $6.7 million. Three area landowners and the City of Austin would pick up the remaining costs.

Wells Branch Parkway-In another possible partnership, Wells Branch Parkway would be extended as a four-lane highway eastward from the Boulder Ridge (manufactured home) subdivision to Cameron Road. The county's share would be $2.78 million. An Austin investor group, Limestone Springs Partners, that owns a vacant tract at the corner of Cameron Road and Killingsworth Lane, would face the balance of the road building costs.

Decker Lake Road-Another partnership would pay for extending Decker Lake Road to SH 130 from where it now ends at FM 973 on the south end of Lake Walter E. Long Memorial Park. The county's share: $1.5 million. Footing the rest of the total project bill would be the City of Austin and developer Larry Beard, via his two hundred forty acre commercial development Indian Hills. (Beard has estimated that his development could add $200 million to the county's tax base.)

Slaughter Lane-In a pending partnership in Precinct Four, the county may partner up with landowner Dean Goodnight and Austin developer Terry Mitchell and their 700 acre Goodnight Ranch PUD at the junction of Slaughter Lane and Old Lockhart Highway (Bluff Springs Road). The development proposes homes, apartments, office and retail two miles east of I-35. The new roadway would extend Slaughter Lane from the Goodnight Ranch PUD to McKinney Falls Parkway at a county price tag of $6.235 million. Long-range plans envision extending Slaughter Lane all the way to SH 130.

Other mobility projects

In the county's far eastern Precinct One hinterlands, $3.24 million would build a new two-lane low-water crossing on Parsons Road, replacing an old low-water crossing that "bridges" Wilbarger Creek. A new alignment in the project design could bring together Parsons Road and Kimbro Roads, says Charlie Watts of the county's Transportation and Natural Resources Division. Parsons Road and Kimbro Road both connect to Littig Road, just north of the Wilbarger Creek crossing, and nearly meet each other on Littig Road.

In Precinct Two, a new $1.83 million bridge over the Wilbarger Creek tributary between Weiss Lane and Cameron Road would replace the structurally deficient Jesse Bohls Road Bridge.

In Precinct Three, $1.825 million would be spent for road designs for an improved Hamilton Pool Road from RR 12 to the Pedernales River, and for preliminary designs for a reopened Reimers Peacock Road from Hamilton Pool Road to the Pedernales River and from Hamilton Pool Road to a new spot on SH 71.

Finally, the county must purchase $775,000 worth of rights of way for TxDOT for state roads FM 1431, FM 1626, FM 1826 (Camp Ben McCulloch Road), and FM 2244 (Bee Caves Road).

-Mark G. Mitchell

Recreation at Reimers Ranch

Reimers Ranch, whose entrance is at 23610 Hamilton Pool Road in far southwest Travis County, is still open to the public, four days a week, Thursday through Sunday. Fishing, swimming, rock climbing, and mountain biking are allowed. Admission to the private park is five dollars per carload and the gate closes before sundown. For trail conditions, call 512-264-1923.

For an excellent overview of the facilities at Reimers Ranch, view the video clip produced by Austin Now, which is available on-line at www.klru.org/austinnow/archives/reimers/reimers.asp.

For now the Pogue property is still private property and not open to the public.

-Mark G. Mitchell

How the County Bond Stew Was Made

Exactly what would go on the November 8 bond ballot remained a work-in-progress with ingredients shifting until August 30, when the Travis County Commissioners Court voted unanimously to call the election for a $151 million bond proposal.

The recipe calls for road building in the northeast part of the county and a big new facility at the Travis County Correctional Complex. It buys properties in flood-prone areas along Walnut Creek and Onion Creek. It asks for $62.15 million in park bonds.

A large group of people from inside and outside Travis County government worked on the bonds. Information was shared, massaged and debated over in meetings, field trips and public hearings.

For seven months, fifteen members of a citizens bond advisory committee led by former commissioner Richard Moya listened to county staffers, interest groups, residents, and each other as they whittled an initial list of $450 million in project spending down to a nice pointed $119 million-the limit that had been set by the commissioners court.

Then they added a treat.

"We decided early on that we were open to putting a stand-alone initiative on the ballot that would let voters decide if they wanted to preserve natural areas," says the committee's vice chairman Perry Lorenz, an Austin developer and real estate investor.

A professional poll conducted over the summer by the firm Opinion Analysts Inc. included phone interviews of five hundred twenty-five registered Travis County voters. The poll showed decisive majority public support for the county to buy natural areas for preservation-even if it meant adding taxes.

Three nonprofit land trusts, The Nature Conservancy of Texas, The Trust for Public Land, and the Hill Country Conservancy, commissioned the poll. Dozens of area "green groups" rallied around its results.

And the poll kind of set the agenda for the "big picture" discussions on the bonds from then on. The poll had contained a hypothetical $60 million for open-space purchases. It would cost taxpayers less than a penny per hundred dollars of valuation per year. Supporters later described its tax implication for the average property owner as the "price of a pizza" per Travis County household, per year.

The $60 million figure wound up in the committee's final recommendations for the bond package. Committee member Glen Coleman summed up the sentiment at the committee's final meeting: "We go to the voters and say, 'Here's what we have to have: the jail, public safety, transportation, drainage. And here's dessert: a treasure, a benefit of living in Travis County."

Package presented August 16

Chairman Moya presented the committee's recommendations to the court at its August 16 meeting, and over the next two weeks commissioners heard from the same citizens and groups who'd been parading before the committee. This included the residents of neighborhoods near the landfill in Precinct One, developers, business leaders, the nonprofit land trusts; environmental groups including the Save Our Springs Alliance, Hill Country Alliance, Hamilton Pool Road Scenic Corridor Coalition, Central Texas Trail Tamers, Friends of Enchanted Rock, Guardians of Wood Creek, and Guardians of Lick Creek; and outdoor recreation groups including the Central Texas Mountaineers and Austin Ridge Riders (mountain bike group).

The Central Texas Mountaineers had submitted to the Citizens Bond Advisory Committee and county parks director Charles Bergh a petition with more than five thousand signatures supporting the county's purchase of land at Reimers Ranch and Pogue Hollow. The names were collected in May and June in front of REI sporting goods stores, Scott Isgitt's Austin Rock Gyms, Hill Abell's Bicycle Sport Shop locations and other bike stores.

The topic of economic development surfaced quickly. Was the bond package top heavy in its attention to open space and natural preservation at the expense of transportation infrastructure on the eastside?

The package needed more spending for mobility, "an additional $60 million, **at least," said Bruce Byron, executive director of the Capital Area Transportation Coalition, a group representing area employers.

"Let the voters have the opportunity to choose their priorities. Congestion is our top priority," said Dominic Chavez of the Real Estate Council of Austin. "Let's look at the bigger picture of mobility needs that have been thrown upon us by SH 130."

Precinct One Commissioner Ron Davis, while always careful to express his support for open space, pressed the need for investment in east Travis County.

"I don't ever want to pit east versus west, but our precinct is economically deprived and we need mobility projects," Davis said. "There needs to be additional roads. In Webberville and Manor, we've got to have infrastructure. We need $60 million open-ended for roads."

Precinct Three Commissioner Gerald Daugherty wanted road solutions, too, for the southwestern quadrant of the county. "I want you to know that I am supportive of putting an open space line item on referendum. If you're willing to buy people's properties then I'm willing to go to them say, 'Are you willing to sell?' But the traffic out there is absolutely deplorable. I got five phone calls this morning from people exasperated with traffic on (state and farm to market highways) 620, 71 and 2244. But I can't go in there and do one road without opposition (from environmental groups like the Save Our Springs Alliance)," he said.

Court debates August 23

On August 23 Precinct Two Commissioner Karen Sonleitner presented a package that she and Daugherty had worked out that eliminated the $60 million open space proposition. Sonleitner was concerned about a planning and budget office report that indicated borrowing more than $119 million could strain the county's capacity for any more debt and possibly tarnish the county's superb Triple A bond rating.

"Let's take that $119 million and try to maximize open space in areas that are really begging for it," Sonleitner said. "In four years we can do this again. In the meantime we've got $25.5 million for the open space (including the Reimers and Pogue tracts) in the southwest."

Preserving natural spaces, pulling land out of play in southwest Travis County, was the goal of the land trusts and environmental groups worried about big development communities circling the panoramic Hill Country along the Hays-Travis county line.

"We need more mobility than we have here (in the plan) now," Davis said.

County Judge Sam Biscoe agreed. "I've got hundreds of e-mails for open space and mobility."

A flurry of motions made by Davis, then Biscoe, proposed that $60 million, then $40 million, then $30 million, for mobility projects be added to the bond package as a separate proposition. All died for lack of a second.

"How about $20 million for open space and $20 million for roads?" ventured Daugherty.

"Open-ended, with unspecified road projects? That is a recipe for disaster," Sonleitner said. "The staff needs to come to us with stuff that's ready to go."

Daugherty withdrew his motion.

"Let's examine that $60 million for open space," Sonleitner said. "On a $203,000 house, that's (an additional tax of) $11.86. But we have the school district, the City of Austin, hospital districts, all of whom may be coming out with bond proposals and/or tax increases in the coming year. There's an affordability issue. We need to begin to be sensitive to the cost of living in this town." (In fact, three weeks later the commissioners proposed a hike in the Travis County tax rate of about 1.2 cents per hundred dollars of property valuation to bring into the county coffers an additional $17.8 million for such tied-to-growth operations as law enforcement officers, jails, emergency medical services, courts and social services. The proposed new tax rate was $0.4993, up from the current rate of $0.4872. That would mean a tax hike of forty-two dollars per year for the statistically average Travis County appraised home value of $203,525, after the county deducts its homestead exemption of twenty percent. If the county bond package passes in November, the tax increase for the bonds-$5.86 for the average home-would not be reflected in tax bills until 2007, according to Christian Smith, executive manager of the county's Planning and Budget Office.)

Daugherty and Sonleitner's plain vanilla $119 million bond package carried the day on a vote of three to two, with Precinct Four Commissioner Margaret Gómez voting with them.

Commissioners decide August 30

The following week, at the August 30 meeting, the same groups and residents appeared before commissioners again to restate their cases for the last time.

Ted Siff, a citizen, consultant, and the former Texas field office director of the Trust for Public Land, submitted a proposal that added $10 million worth of eastside road projects to the package. These included Braker Lane, Parmer Lane and Decker Lake Road, projects that had been looked at by the advisory committee but left out of the final recommendations.

Siff's proposal also added $8.6 million worth of open space purchases of Onion Creek greenbelt on the county's southeast.

The additions would mean a tax increase, but no more than the cost of a small Thundercloud sub sandwich per household, Siff said.

The energy of the court suddenly changed. Judge Biscoe rounded Siff's numbers up to $15 million for mobility projects and $15 million for more open space, boosting the tax increase to a **large Thundercloud sub.

Davis and Gómez voted with Biscoe for his motion.

At the end of the day, commissioners voted unanimously for this $151 million package to be put on the ballot in November.

"I changed my vote. I was maintaining an open mind," Gómez said. "I knew we had a couple of weeks to work on the proposal."

"I'm thrilled, just thrilled," she said of her feelings for the final package, which addresses a top priority for her: flood mitigation in the southeast. She describes Precinct 4 as the end of a funnel, where all the water ultimately drains to.

Sonleitner, too, said she's happy with the proposals.

Though it busts the $119 million limit, asks voters to consider a small tax increase, and puts a slight squeeze on the county's ability to borrow in the near future, she called the package, "worth the extra dollars."

"It's putting a size twelve into the size eight jeans. So okay, lie down on the bed. Make it work. Is it as comfortable as it could be? No, but can you make it work? Yes. We're not talking about putting a size twelve in a size two," Sonleitner said.

Campaign ahead

Mike Blizzard's political consulting firm, Grass Roots Solutions, will manage the campaign for the bond's passage. Blizzard was hired not by the county, but by the three nonprofit organizations that got all this talk for open space started in the first place-The Hill Country Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy, and Trust for Public Lands-the ones who initiated the public opinion poll. Blizzard, a veteran politico, previously managed the campaign that in May 1998 won voter approval for the City of Austin's first $65 million in bonds to buy land and conservation easements for some fifteen thousand acres over the Edwards Aquifer for water protection.

"We plan on raising a significant amount of money to sell these bond proposals. It's the best, most progressive bond package the county has ever put forward," Blizzard said.

Meanwhile the City of Austin is thinking of asking for $78 million for city parks improvements in a bond package the city council plans to put before voters in an election next May. The city's citizens bond advisory committee is up and running and it is said to be mulling a $50 million "placeholder" in the bond package for open-space purchases. The committee's purpose, roster of members and calendar of meetings are posted on the city's web site at www.ci.austin.tx.us/budget/beac.htm.

- Mark G. Mitchell