Jacob Cottingham

The Water and Wastewater Commission voted 6-1 last night to recommend extending water and wastewater service to a controversial development on Vaught Ranch Road. The property owner proposes a development that would include a gas station and underground tanks on a lot that sits in Austin’s Extraterritorial Jurisdiction and in the Drinking Water Protection Zone. […]

Hays County Commissioners are at odds over how to spend the remaining funds from the 2007 park bond money. At its most recent meeting, the court upheld a moratorium on some of the remaining park bond money, much to the consternation of citizens belonging to Swimberley, a recreational sports group from Wimberley.   Over the […]

Hays County voters followed the conventional wisdom on Tuesday night, returning two incumbent County Commissioners and approving a heavily publicized road bond.   Voters resoundingly supported the re-worked road bond, enabling the county to capitalize on a TxDOT reimbursement deal, which many commissioners have described as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to update the infrastructure of the […]

Hays County Commissioners last week unanimously agreed to negotiate a contract for a countywide Water and Wastewater Facilities Planning Study with HDR, an Omaha-based firm with offices in Central Texas. The seven applicants to the RFQ had been whittled down to HDR and K Friese & Associates by a county review committee of four chaired […]

Members of the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District Board are concerned over the low attendance at last week’s Town Hall meeting in Bee Cave. The meeting was intended to engage residents of western Travis County on a potential annexation of the area into the BSEACD.             Only nine people attended, not including media, district […]

Stretching from the southern tip of the county along the I-35 corridor, and bordering Buda, the smallest and most dense precinct has been represented by Democrat Debbie Ingalsbe for the last 12 years. The first woman to sit on the court and the only current Hispanic, Ingalsbe has had a fairly resilient and restrained political […]

Hays County’s Precinct 3 stretches across the western portion of the county, from west San Marcos across the Wimberley Valley. The current incumbent, Will Conley, is the lone Republican on the Hays County Commissioners Court. Democratic challenger Steve Klepfer is counting on support from Wimberley, where he was mayor from 2003 to 2006, to carry him […]

The Barton Spring Edwards Aquifer Conservation District Board voted unanimously last week to pledge $500 and support to the Texas Alliance of Groundwater Districts in a case that pits the authority of groundwater districts against the sovereign immunity claimed by cities.   On the surface, the case is about whether groundwater conservation districts retain the […]

A divided Hays County Commissioners Court voted 3-2 Tuesday to approve a variance for 10.66 acres near Dripping Springs, allowing what was essentially an illegal subdivision to become normalized and re-opening a contentious debate about the court’s power of intervention.             Hurlbut Ranch West Tract 23 is located at 680 Lukas Trail in Precinct 4. […]

When Hays County Commissioners took up an agenda item to change language in the county’s flood damage prevention order last week, it provided an opening for a resident of Regal Oaks and a Verizon attorney to exchange words over a proposed cell phone tower in the subdivision.   Located in Austin’s extraterritorial jurisdiction but within […]

Some hydrologists say that the 2,400 acres of Hays County’s Dahlstrom Ranch – with its system of caves, sinkholes and Karst features – is the primary drain through which much of the water in the Barton Springs segment of the Edwards Aquifer enters. And the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District,  as part of its […]

The Dripping Springs Youth Sports Association received $266,000 from Hays County on Tuesday, effectively lifting a moratorium on parks projects in the county. A moratorium had been in place on all new parks projects until the Citizens Parks Advisory Committee was able to reformulate how it judges recreational proposal   After a debate about procedure, […]