We have been busy enough with the cleaning of our road ditches that the utility marking companies are getting a little testy about our calls to Dig-Tess. We have worked so far CR1200, CR1135, CR1605, CR1612, CR1123, CR 1330. We previously had done CR1607, CR 1609, CR 1332, CR1333, and CR1335. We are focusing on the residential areas that have had culverts but that are partially or fully filled in. I have put another crew on doing some digging out of soft spots and then patching the rest of the precinct. Greenhill Cemetary wrote me a request for some help around their property before their decoration event on May the 1st and we completed those tasks. The bad storm of April 24th also caused us to work some over-time to cut up approximately 14 trees that had fallen across the road and haul them off.

Here in Precinct #1, we have made March and April our "Ditch Months"! We may also make May part of that as well. We have been using our small excavator to clean out some ditches that have been needing attention such as CR 1607, CR1609, CR 1332, CR 1333, and CR 1335. These are small residential areas that have culverts but were mostly filled in with silt. We also have been busy putting in culverts for several residents on CR 1345, CR1357, CR1455 and CR 1200. We think that a free flowing ditch and culverts are a necessity to maintain our roads in an efficient manner. When the existing ditches dry out this Spring( if they ever do!), our plans are to use the motor grader to pull long stretches of the least populated roads to acheive that goal. We also have been trying to patch the holes after each rain to keep up with our repairs. Hopefully we'll get some warmer weather soon so that we can do some larger road maintenance. One day was spent with a tree service cutting some large trees that had been damaged during the Winter.

We have been taking every opportunity to get our patching done. I can't say were are 100% but we are close. Some spots with bad drainage have been patched so much that we have overlaid the surface. The roads addressed are CRs 1695,1620, 1770, 1905, 1680, 1683, 1362, and 1360. We also have been riding the precinct during these rain storms to pick up limbs that have fallen in or beside the roads. We also have been adding material to the holes around the precinct mail-boxes so the mail carriers can more easily get up to them.

The weather continues to be a problem. As we patch and repair the damage to our roads from all the rain, another system passes through before our material hardens and is washed out . But we continue to do what we can to keep up. We now have all of your equipment under roof and out of the weather. The whole project, the all weather materials bunk with concrete walls, the double shed here at the barn, and the single shed at the mixing field, in all cost less than $9,000.00, thanks to our guys who did the construction. In my opinion, dollars well spent. We were able to do some badly needed ditch work on CR 1340 for Mr. Newman. We also installed a culvert for Mr. Robles on CR 1435. Almost all the existing crossroad culverts have been checked and many have been cleaned out or unclogged. We have a fairly large list of projects to complete, such as the drainage ditches in our residential areas, but we will continue to try to keep up with the patching until we get some extended clear weather.

We've started the new year with some basic chores. Patching of roads after all the rain and hard freezing temperatures was one of our priorities. The entire precinct was traveled and some areas required extensive repairs and some areas were just patched. We are assessing our road repair and resufacing needs for the year and hope that these efforts to keep up with our "chores" will allow us more time and money to do some extra resurfacing during the summer. At least we will not have the pipeline to worry about. Culverts! We have been repairing and replacing several in the precinct and they are badly needed in some locations. Also, we have begun erecting two simple sheds, one at the barn and one at our oil-dirt mixing field, so that ,when we get through, we will have every piece of your, the precinct tax-payers, equipment under a roof!

We hope everyone reading our blog had a merry and safe Christmas. The past three weeks have been spent trying to get everyones vacation time in while the weather was too bad and wet to get much road work done. We did however get the all-weather materials bunk completed and loaded with iron ore and oil sand. We will begin soon on some simple sheds to park additional equipment under. I have a "thing" about equipment being left out in the weather. We installed some culverts for four of our taxpayers during the interim. We also got some patching done on part of the precinct and did some badly needed scabbing on CR 1250.
Recently in Commissioner's Court, I voted against the other commissioners on an issue that I feel strongly about. We have a very good health insurance policy that we provide as a benefit to our employees. It has been well administered by Health First TPA in the past. However, the agent that we deal with represents Health First and their company is owned by East Texas Medical Center. I feel that is a potential conflict of interest and I would prefer an independent agent that represents "only" our interests. The court has recently been sensitive to making local health care providers accessible to our employees through this plan and that will go a long way to helping my reservations.

We have officially started on our all-weather materials bunk. Despite the weather, we have cut our grade, installed our pole supports(2 7/8 drill stem), run our roof supports and welded our purling. We are working on running the rebar for our concrete bunks and ditching the perimeter for our concrete forms. We may have to sub-contract our forms and the concrete pour due to our lack of experience, however by doing the rest of the work ourselves, we can afford that to prevent the possibility of an expensive mistake with concrete.
During the intermittent good weather, the crew has been able to scab a portion of CR1616 and ditch a portion of CR1612. We were also able to due some culvert repair and drainage work for Mr. Whitfield on CR 1430. Mr. Huffman on CR 1345 needed some culvert repair where a large truck had turned around in his driveway and broke the end off the tile. We also "tried" to do some badly needed mowing and trimming, but we got so stuck, that we were afraid the precinct would end up looking like the job on the interstate by the state crews. One day we also cut some trees on CR1612, CR 1635 and west of Lake Tankersly. Center stripes were also repainted on several blind hills and curves.