Welcome to Brazos Matters.

I'm Jay Socol.

you might have caught our last episode when we had Brazos County Judge Duane Peters in the studio, and the judge talked about three big projects underway, one of which is a proposed TXDOT Inner Loop East project that could someday connect Harvey Mitchell Parkway in North Brian with W.D.

Fitch Parkway and South College Station.

So it would be an alternate North-South highway that would take traffic through a number of private properties that are located well east of Highway six and Highway 30.

It is a controversial project and it has well-organized opposition from landowners, and we wanted to devote the first half of today's show to hearing from them.

So Beverly and Kyle Greenwood join me.

They represent on Facebook, at least the group is called No East Loop Community Against Roadway Expansion.

So Beverly and Kyle, thank you very much for joining me.

Thank you very much for having us.

Thanks for having us.

Sure.

So I'll say straight away that this can be a very confusing project in terms of how it came to be.

And we don't have enough time here to untangle all the people, the authorities, the dollars and so on.

But maybe we start with this.

We have heard about this from the county judge.

What else should we know?

Big question to start with.

Well, I think I'll get straight to the point and say that we believe that we as residents and taxpayers have all been deceived about this project.

From the very beginning.

We had a bond package that was sold to everybody back in 2022 that was advertised by a lobbyist and a PAC.

He's a consultant, but really he's a lobbyist.

And our elected officials, I don't believe, did their job in informing the public about what was in the bond package.

If you ask them, they'll put forward a list of projects that was advertised at the time.

And the only place we've been able to find that is on the radio station website and you pull that up and the very first project listed on that list is the Inner East Loop and then seven or eight other projects.

And if you go back and you review all the news coverage leading up to the election, the judge as well as another commissioner are on record or on TV and in the news talking about every one of those projects except the inner East Loop and frequently discussing them or describing them as projects we're all familiar with.

And at this point, you guys are not familiar with this.

Correct.

And in addition, when when the media was talking about this, various projects, we even noted that the media was confused because many times they would include that the money was going to go towards improvements on highway six and that's not the case.

It was never about it was never for Highway six.

That money wasn't for Highway six.

However, that was reported by the media.

I'm not saying it's the media's fault.

My point is there was that much confusion to what the bond package would actually pay for.

And in hindsight, in a meeting that we had with Quiddity, the engineering firm that's been awarded $11.2 million to do the study on this entire project act, they have said they could do anything they want with that money.

And that in itself is disturbing that a bond package can be that un-descriptive and be used for anything in the county, essentially.

Yeah.

So from an awareness standpoint, you feel like it fell short.

Access to information, I am assuming, was not what you felt it needed to be.

No, because that that road was was drawn on our property back in 2017, but they never called us and told us it went on our property.

Who how were you supposed to know?

Unless you took forward a plat for development to the city, to the Planning and Zoning Commission, how else does one find out that they have plans to draw a road across your property?

Well, you don't unless they tell you.

And they never told anyone over here that that was happening.

Yeah, well, I have more than 20 years experience with different local governments and there are notification requirements in certain cases and it's very specific to where a property owner must be notified.

But does a jurisdiction go beyond that as a courtesy to potentially affected people in an area?

And so I know that you guys are probably along the way trying to determine, okay, what was legally required versus what would have been a nice courtesy to us.

Absolutely.

And in fact, we've we've done a lot of a lot of digging and a lot of research.

And we've pulled the ballot language that was on the actual ballot in 2022.

And in fact, it's written in such a way that the funds from the tripp bond can literally be used for anything the county decides they want to use it for, and not just those items that were advertised.

Okay.

In fact, if the county so decided that they could use $100 million of the $100 million bond to redo all of the streets in the North Oakwood neighborhood, they could they could devote $100 million, 100% of the money to that.

And they can technically say we're within the we're within the bounds of what the ballot language said and the ballot was approved by the citizens.

And you often will hear the judge say that the ballot was approved by 70% of the public.

No.

In fact, it was actually only 29% of the voting population that approved the ballot.

And so what we're saying is there's there's never been any public discussion about the inner east loop prior to the announcement that, hey, we're putting this in and here's here's a postcard that your property may be affected.

Yeah.

So there's never been any consensus built with anybody in the public about whether or not we need this or we want this.

And I know what you're talking about when you when you talk about meeting the requirements of notification, but meeting the minimum statutory requirements, they may keep themselves out of hot water.

But is that really serving the public?

Is that really serving your constituents and making sure that the public knows what's going on?

So I would say no, that's problem.

So circumstances being what they are and you're seeing where this proposed route could go, what do you and your neighbors do now?

Well, that's a great question.

It was really shocking back in November when the alignments first came out and everyone found out exactly where the road was going to be, some people said, I knew eventually they were going to put a a loop out here, but we didn't know exactly where it would be.

So that was the first time that we actually got to see exactly what they were proposing.

And so a lot of people were shocked.

The first thing that we did, we actually couldn't make it to that meeting, so we didn't see it.

But a neighbor told us exactly where the road was going.

The first thing we did is come home and build a website.

We knew that immediately we had to start getting the news out there.

We held a town hall.

It had a lot of people there, over 350 people showed up at the town hall, including state representatives.

So getting the word out was vital for us that everybody knows that we know what's going on.

We're all aware and then unpacking how we got here, because there's no way that you can fight a fight like this unless you're educated.

And we've really tried to educate the people through the website, through the movie that we made.

We have monthly barbecue socials that we're meeting.

Last Saturday, we had a barbecue social and we had an eminent domain law firm come to town, explained to us the process, told us what to be wary of, what to watch out for, because this is a very, very common practice in the state of Texas with as much economic development, which to me that's almost becoming a dirty word with as much economic development as we have going on.

Even our own county, our own chamber of commerce, everything is surrounded, economic development.

And so with that comes a lot of people and a lot of growth.

But while we're busy planning for all of those, all that growth and all those people, I feel like we have forgotten the people that are here that built Brazos County, that made Brazos County what it is today.

And so our biggest plan has been to educate, to unite them and to speak out with one voice.

And if that means come next March, we have to put up a really great candidate to primary, both the judge and our our precinct two commissioner.

And that's what we're going to do.

And we've got just to let you guys know, my clock shows about three and a half minutes left for us.

But do you have options, though, besides?

Well, let's look ahead to the ballot box and let's make sure we are educated.

Like, do you have options as a property owner with your property related to this project?

Or it kind of is what it is?

You know, actually, I just watched a video of one of the transportation commissioners from TXDOT where he talked about building public consensus.

And the public does have a voice in what goes on.

And for that reason, we've continued to ask the judge and the commissioners court to open this up, to make it an agenda item on the court or maybe to pause the contract.

And let's have some public discussion and public debate and and let's determine whether or not there is consensus to support this project.

So we've really been trying to educate the public and get people motivated and activated because we believe that if the public truly knew what they were voting for back in 2022, this project would not have passed.

And so I bring back to the original point, as I believe we've all been deceived because we weren't fully educated about what we were voting for.

And if we had known, I'd say there's a high likelihood that bond package wouldn't have passed.

And so we're trying to raise awareness of the issue with as many people as possible and get them to speak out and voice their opinion and their objection to the project.

And I would encourage everyone to go to our website, No East Loop dot com.

We have a movie on there.

It takes an hour.

This is a long fight.

It's going to take many years.

So one hour is actually a really condensed version of what's happened over the past ten years in Brazos County working towards all these highways.

So get educated.

That's the biggest thing.

And then stand up and go go to county commissioner meetings, go to city council meetings, go to the MPO meetings and voice.

We need to voice our opinion as a county and I guess as voters, we need to pay pretty close attention to the language on the ballot.

I'm I'm guilty of skimming too quickly and I guess sometimes, yeah.

So this would be sort of a reminder to everybody, make sure you know exactly what is on the ballot, what you're being asked to do.

Yeah.

Give that any final thoughts as we start winding down our time here?

Beverly and Kyle, I would say as we decide what we need for the county, let's really taken to consideration the current needs, which as we know are expansion of Highway six and, and working on improving the east west thoroughfares to bring people from the rural parts of the county into the center of the county.

But also to consider, we really have to bring into account the bigger picture things like the 36A project that's going to bring transport traffic up out of Freeport, headed up to the Fort Worth area and I-14 and 214, because we're not just doing that in one loop, we're doing two.

So the bypass is a bypass of high of Texas Avenue.

Now we're going to bypass the bypass through the inner East Loop, and then we're going to bypass the bypass of the bypass with I-214.

And is that really what we want for Brazos County is nothing but concrete?

I don't think so.

And so consider all of these things as we decide what we really do want to spend our money on, because this bond is essentially a loan that we all as taxpayers are going to have to pay back.

And did we really want to borrow $11 million to evaluate what it would cost to open up this eastern part of the county for new home developments?

So NoEastLoop.com, is that correct?

For the website that is that is correct.

Okay.

Beverly and Kyle Greenwood, thank you so much for the talk.

We wish you and your family, your neighbors, the very best.

Thank you, Jay.

Thanks, Jay.