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Self: Focus funds on major roads
BY STEFANIE WHITE, McKinney Courier-Gazette
Collin County Judge Keith Self proposed on Tuesday morning that the county pay more attention to major highways than minor roads.
Currently, the county will go in 50/50 with the cities to help build or improve roads. Self said at Tuesday’s commissioners court meeting that the current bond process is focusing more on the minor roads in the county.
“The current bond process is not addressing the major roads in Collin County,” Self said. “The major highways will experience a traffic growth of almost 250 percent in the next 23 years. The county needs to take the lead in their improvement.”
Self proposed that the cities would instead take care of their roads so the county could focus on the major highways. “We would stop collecting taxes from city taxpayers that we then turn around and give back to the cities,” Self said. “The county will no longer be the middleman.”
Commissioner Phyllis Cole said she disagreed with Self, saying the current bond process is fine as it is. “We’ve always given a 50/50 match,” Cole said. “That’s been very successful in the past for Collin County.”
Cole said the county has always appointed a citizens committee when doing bonds, with each commissioner and the county judge getting an equal number of appointments to the committee.
“That gives us a geographic representation across the county of the citizens,” Cole said. “Those citizens work with our engineering department, our transportation to determine what projects go to the commissioners court.”
Commissioner Joe Jaynes said he could see both sides of Self’s proposal and the current bond process.
“Mixed emotions. He makes a good argument,” Jaynes said.
Jaynes said he is concerned that the cities, especially the smaller cities, would suffer from the county not helping out. “I’m concerned some of our cities wouldn’t be able to do their roads without county participation,” Jaynes said. “They [small cities] really would not be able to complete some of their road projects.”
Jaynes said the county is putting together a bond package with the county still matching 50 percent.
As for Self’s proposal to concentrate more on the major highways, Jaynes said it is something he would like to look into for the future. “I’d like to give it some more thought,” Jaynes said.
While there was no vote taken on the discussion, Self said it was a good way to start looking ahead for the future. “This started the process of examining how we do this,” he said.
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