Circle C Neighbors

The Oak Hill Association of Neighborhoods meets the 2nd Wednesday of every month. This month, on December 8th, 7:00 P.M. they will be meeting at the ACC pinnacle campus, room 108 (off the first floor lobby).

This group offically represents more than 10,000 homes in SW Austin, including apartments, condos, townhouse, renders, and home owners. They are responsible for hosting City Council debates to SW Austin, bringing sensible Mass Transportation, working for Park-N-Ride, challenging abusive overdevelopment (project like the Wal-Mart SuperCenter that wanted to build at Slaughter Lane), and for representing our best interests with CAMPO, CTRMA, and TxDOT with regard to the roads we need. SW Austin is the most overlooked and underrepresented corner of Austin, and OHAN is out there making our goverment agencies respond to our local needs and issues.



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This month they have 2 guest speakers with subjects of interest to us all.

1) Austin City Council member, Brewster McCracken, will speak and have a presentation on his proposed Commercial design standards ( He mentioned Context Design Standards, used in other cities to guide how new highways are designed to fit into neighborhoods, rather than run over them and starve off the local businesses - e.g. Ben White, Gateway, Hwy 183, etc.). This is important, because he hopes to convince TxDOT to build our newest highways to higher standards (lower noise, less obstruction, and better water quality).



2) Chris Hinchon, with Texas Associates will speak about insurance for HOA's.

This is a BIG deal for CCHOA - we are paying a huge sum for our D&O insurance and we don't get much for what we are spending. We may be able to get better rates working with other HOAs, too!


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We will also be discussing the upcoming CTRMA public hearing regarding the removal of the William Cannon bridge from the toll plan. (CAMPO is scheduled to vote on this change to their July 12th Mobility plan on Monday night at the LBJ Auditorium).

If you have been out of the country for a the last 6 months, you may have missed the biggest political hot potato in Central Texas - our local toll agency (for Hwy 45 and 130) has convinced CAMPO to let them roll out an agressive road building plan that will raise money by letting bonds, using taxes collected on Tolls they will place on all of the major highways leading in and out of Austin !!!

This is the GOP's newest way to raise revenue without calling it a tax, and of course, it's ''not tax deductable'' either.

Tolls have their place, but not where we have freeways!


Look out, you may be paying $3/day to commute to work as soon as next March !!!

McCracken on Toll Roads

Brewster McCracken changed the focus of his talk to Toll Roads, instead of Context Sensitive Design standards, as the Toll Road issues have quickly escalated to the level of a national debate. Just last week, the loft Texas Corridor plan was covered in a Time magazine article, too!

The Corridor plan was announced last year by Governor Perry, as a totally new grid of super highways, complete with integrated railroad and pipelines (WATER, oil, gas, etc.) that would network Texas, but 50 to 100 miles away from major cities, to releive congestion on the current Interstate system of roads and promote new growth in rural areas. That massive plan for just Texas alone would cost about as much as the Federal government has spent on the entire US Interstate system over the last 50 years. Incidently, that Interstate system is now complete.

The Toll road issues that Brewster reported were primarily centered on the concept of tolling existing roadways. Apparently, he said, CAMPO members were never told the truth about the TxDOT requirements for future funding. As you all must know by now, years and years of Austin bashing and underfunding have left our city without the road infrastructure that Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio all enjoy today. And now, with a shortfall of hiway funding, we are told to expect to have to pay tolls to use our highways in the future, and Austin surprised everyone one when CAMPO adopted what has turned out to be the MOST agressive move to Toll existing highways.

There are a number of factors for why this happened here in Austin, not the least of which is because CAMPO is composed of city, county , and local state elected officials who are all involved in the transportation issues, including Sen Mike Krusse who authored HB 3855 (which allows for tolling of state roads).

Long story short, no other city includes as many roads or highway miles in their own plans, and none suffered a loss of highway funding. CAMPO jumped the gun, based in large part, on bad information provided by Bob Daigh, our central Texas region TxDOT engineer.

It turns out, WE DON'T HAVE TO TOLL ANY exiting roads to qualify for our own share of the highway funds. And, perhaps in recognition of past underfunding, Austin actually got more than it asked for this year. A lot more.

There is no problem, Brewster said, with the Hwy 45 and 130 new highways being toll roads. There are other ways to finance local highway building, and frankly, he said, our biggest adversary in CAMPO is the Williamson county block of votes - they ALL supported Tolls on highways in Travis county (none of them were in Williamson county).

Better Dunkerly stopped by, too, adding support to Brewster and agreeing that south Austin is currently being forced to pay the lions share of the Tolls, and that's not fair.