April 13, 2006

The Dirt is Flying
By Jack D. McNamara

We got a telephone call Friday, March 31. A local contractor was digging a large hole over the city of Alpine’s Musquiz water line two miles north of the city limits and the conduit for 65% of Alpine’s water, said the caller.

It is spring in the Big Bend and business is good. Sales tax receipts are up. Restaurants and motels are full. All around town the dirt is flying for new construction. We have projects north and west.

But we had never heard of plans for any renovations to our principal source of water so we hopped into the pickup to take a look. Sure enough, Paragon Construction had opened a large hole directly over the water line in the Texas Highway 118 right-of-way on the west side of the road. The hole was about 10 feet in diameter and 6 feet deep. There was no sign of any city crews or supervisors.

So we quickly emailed Alpine City Manager Chuy Garcia who just as quickly emailed back that the city was not involved in the excavation and had not been notified.

The hole was later closed within a couple of days.

Signs of digging around the city’s water and sewer lines have become a sore point since last summer. Twice members of the city council discovered signs of excavations west of Alpine. Both turned out to be bores under Highway 90 for private businesses to hook into Alpine’s notorious west side water line.

In heated exchanges on June 21, 2005 former city manager Karen Philippi first asserted that the bores were “private” projects outside the city limits, an assertion echoed by the contractor, Joey DeHart, who also directs Paragon Construction.

But the agenda included a request for payment of $10,214 to DeHart for one of the bores. Over the next months the council and the public discovered that Philippi had applied to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDoT) for the permit and months later we discovered that Philippi had even made financial commitments to contractor DeHart.

Philippi had no authority to contract these arrangements on her own. Private businesses outside the city limits were allowed to tap into the city’s million-plus west side water line and the city shared the costs as well as sponsored the digging. Thousands of dollars were obligated which were not budgeted nor was the council notified until after the bore was completed.

After these shocking revelations the city council further restricted the authority of the city manager to spend money, an authority of the council which was expanded and explicitly authorized in a charter amendment voted in May 2005.

The barn door was closed … wasn’t it?

Flash forward to the Alpine City Council meeting last week, April 4.

For the first time a request for “outside city limits services” for “Pecos County L.L.C. (Hampton Inn) west of town” was on the agenda. Mayor Mickey Clouse moved the item up early in the meeting in order to be accommodating to Martin Ross, a local businessman who was there to present the request.

Ross said he was in a hurry because his client wanted to close in mid-April. But Ross just wanted a letter from the council making the city commitments for utilities and annexation. No need for any certification by the city’s engineer, said Mayor Clouse, the utilities were “right there.”

Councilman Bob Brewer objected to the “hurry up” demands and recalled the dubious “funny stuff” from last summer’s embarrassment. Ross retorted that he had been in contact with Mayor Clouse and City Manager Chuy Garcia for “more than 60 days.”

We wrote to the city two days later inquiring into the mayor’s and the city manager’s role in this deal, specifying Ross’s assertion of lengthy prior contacts. City Manger Chuy Garcia emailed back immediately that he received Ross’s letter March 17, a telephone call a week later and he therefore put the matter on the agenda for April 4.

Mayor Clouse did not reply. According to the 1993 City Charter the mayor has no authority to make deals; “The Mayor shall preside at meetings of the Council and shall be recognized as head of the City government for all ceremonial purposes and by the Governor for purposes of military law, but shall have no administrative duties.” (Section 3.03 [A]).

While the discussion of the west side project was taking place at city council on April 4, we had the opportunity to ask contractor Joey DeHart about the hole over the water line north of town March 31.

DeHart said the hole was for a bore underneath Highway 118 to the east side and the Tom Beard development there, McElroy Ranch. He also said he had notified the city and that the bore is to connect with a well on the west side of the highway. On April 9, the local TxDot office confirmed the bore was requested by Beard, who owns land on both sides of the highway.

Tom Beard is chairperson of the Brewster County Groundwater Control District and also chairperson of the Far West Texas Water Planning Group.

Back to the west side and the Hampton Inn — the council voted over Brewer’s objection to approve services and annexation but only after the engineers review the deal.

So development on the west side continues with incremental flurries of public assets being delivered to private businesses.

On the north side there are no demands for a public subsidy from Tom Beard. Presumably the hole in the right-of-way was not for the purpose of connecting to the city’s (raw) water line but instead to get to the other side of the highway. But there are several city ordinances and state regulations which control one water line (Beard’s) passing another (Alpine’s) according to Bob Brewer and Avinash Rangra.

The city of Alpine cannot ignore the hole over our water line.

The rumors of a new motel coming to Alpine were about for several weeks. But the rumors were that the motel would locate on the EAST side of town. When challenged on this point by Brewer, Ross said the Hampton Inn might have located on the east side but there was no sewer.

Indeed. The council has recently discussed something called the southeast interceptor line, which is a plan for a new sewer crossing the east side and across the prairie to east of Hancock Hill to the sewage treatment plant. It is estimated that it will cost $1.5 million dollars and the line was first recommended by a city study in 1967 (no, that is not a typographical error — 1967).

We constantly remind our readers that here in Alpine these political struggles are the signs of growth. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Though governments have no duty to promote growth, growth may be to the advantage of the community in the form of jobs and increased tax revenues. But to subsidize insiders with secret deals is repulsive and corrupt.

END