After more than three years of using blogging to communicate with interested parties, I am moving my comments to my new Facebook page, "Commissioner Don Boggs". The page has already been well received with 450 friends after a week going live. I can reach many more people, especially residents of the precinct, more efficiently than with a blog. I already have received requests from constituants in the first week. So, please go to the page or send me a friend request. See ya there!

It's been two and a half months since I've updated this blog and I can't say anyone has missed anything exciting. I doesn't take long to become bored reading about cutting a jillion trees. We have made a significant purchase along with partners Precinct # 2 and Precinct # 3 of a bucket truck so that we can take down large trees in a smaller area much more safely. By comparison to a tree service, we paid for the cost of the used truck on the third day of use!
Once a month, we are sure to go through the entire precinct and shovel patch each road that shows damage from wear or the rain. Rain damage has decreased significantly after we became focused on the ditches two years ago. Our dig-outs have been few and far between and becoming more infrequent.
The rainy weather has created many calls about installing culverts. We have installed crossings for Mr Koeninger on CR 1540, for Mr. Whitehurst on CR 1432, and we are planning a large install of two, 48inch in diameter x 48 feet long culverts that are badly needed across CR 1362.
The rest of our time has been spent pulling ditches with the motor grader. For the last two years we have been using a leased excavator for this job, but the leasing company SOLD our excavator. How dare them! I guess it is all about the money. LOL The motor grader is doing a good job and we have already finished work on CR 1695, CR 1697, CR 1475, and CR 1670. Again, the Dig-tess marking contractor and ATT are not too fond of Precinct # 1. Oh, well.
By the way, I am itching to get out campaigning but since I don't have an election race until November, I have been advised by some of my supporters to let this primary determine my opponent before I begin. I always heard that only a fool ignores friendly advice.

The campaign season has begun and candidates have signed up to run for the commissioner of Precinct #1. I plan to keep things civil and just talk about my abilities and my accomplishments, not about any real or perceived shortcomings of my opponent. Also, I will use any quotes by my opponent only in the context for which they were intended. As for the road crew, we continue to cut trees. We were fortunate to partner with Kenny Hawkins at AEP and Greg Russell at Bowie-Cass on many trees that were close to or would involve power lines. Their contractors trimmed the trees under the lines and we would then take them to the ground. Many thanks to those who helped us get this done.
We installed a culvert for Mr. Marcentel on CR 1364 and installed a culvert on CR 1317 across the road, replacing a badly corroded one. Much time has been spent on small jobs as we try to negotiate the remaining vacation time for the employees. Maintenance of the equipment, straightening the shop, etc. have been done during December while the crew got in their deer hun.., I mean their vacation time in. We badly need to shovel patch next week if we get some dry weather. We did do some late season scabbing on CR 1360 and CR1361. CR 1695 also had some places that we scabbed due to heavy truck traffic. The rest of the time was spent doing what we've been doing since September; cutting Red Oaks and pine trees.

It's strangely comforting to have a couple of co-workers/ friends give me a hard time about up-dating my blog. You see, I type these blog reports and it seems as if they go out on the web and nobody reads them. I have not gotten many comments or interaction with followers, so, now I know, at least I have a few followers!
The time worked since my last blog has been busy but not very exciting. We finished our major projects this summer and we have been doing some spot scabbing some minor problem areas. We did some scabbing on CR 1345, CR 1468, CR 1450, CR 1465, and CR 1540. Those were all in the middle section of Precinct #1. We always have some scabbing to do on the Old Paris Rd, CR 1200. We also went to the east side of Tankersly on a very narrow road CR 1124 and scabbed a portion of the road for those residents. CR 1220 was also addressed after the gophers had a field day this summer under the pavement.
We always need to take a few days to a week to "shovel patch" the whole precinct. That was done from September 20 to the 23 and again from November 7 to the 10.
The entire rest of the last two and a half months has been spent cutting dead red oaks and pine trees in the precinct. We have cut no less that one hundred trees, some skinny saplings to behemoth oaks. Our burn pile will be photographed for posterity. It is huge!! As I said during court on Monday, if and when we light it, the space station will report a siting! As I sit here typing this blog, I'm hoping the forecasters are right about the large rainfall expected this evening.

Since we finished our effort to rebuild and/or clean out the ditches over all the precinct, we have really worked hard on resurfacing and scabbing our roads over the west and central sections of the precinct. We started off in June with a complete patching effort over the entire precinct so we could have the time to spend on needed projects this summer. We started on CR1475 where so much ditching had been done. From there we went to CR1362 and repaired several spots with scabs. That road has almost no base, as I have mentioned before, and what base it has is what we have put in during our repairs. Anyway, our work drew two thumbs up from Gayla Dodd, a resident on that road.
We then stopped and sprayed the grass and weeds at bridge railings, intersections and blind corners that we had cut down three weeks earlier and again this year, we got a 100% kill at those locations. Our biggest concerns in precinct one are the highly traveled roads like CR1200, CR 1905, CR 1670 and CR 1635. We began to extend the repairs to CR1200 made last year by a considerable amount, completing almost two miles of new pavement. I think that next year, we will have resurfaced all of the "haul road" portion of CR1200 and most of the other.
We started then on the overlay of the road that Luminant built and donated to the county. It was in serious disrepair after only one year and I asked Luminant for some financial assistance on the expense of an overlay. They agreed and we ran a continuous pavement for 1.4 miles from US271 Bus to FM 2152. It turned out very good, thanks to my talented and hard working crew, and Jeff Parchman at Gerhart Excavating even agreed to keep his dirt trucks off of the soft pavement for two or three weeks while the pavement cured. Unfortunately, somebody realized that we had built a fantastic drag-strip and scarred it up. Ugh!
We had a pretty bad wind storm about this time and spent a good deal of both daytime and night-time getting trees off the roads. But by the beginning of July, the heat was severe and a great time to use a cheap paving method we found in 2009. We take the recycled asphalt that we get from the state for their shared materials program, ie. free, windrow it down the road, let the sun heat it up to 100 deg or more, oil it and mix the heck out of it, then lay it down on the existing pavement as an overlay. Now, it not appropriate for our highly traveled roads but for out-of the-way places where traffic is light, we find that it works well and only costs us the price of the oil. We began on CR 1490, where only one house is at the end of the road. It hadn't been worked on in many years and needed it badly. We then went to CR 1635, CR 1435 and CR 1455 and scabbed several places. From ther we went to CR1360 (Daphnes Prairie road) and put that special mix on over a mile of road. With last year and this year's effort, we should complete that portion of road, that has not been resurfaced in twenty-five years, next year.
6T Ranch purchased some land along CR1550 and was rebuilding a fence. We were able to slip in front of their fence builders and pull a good scallopped ditch the entire length thanks to Mgr. Chad Parrish of the 6-T. We are now working our recycling project on CR 1680 at JR's Bottom and hope to upgrade that mess considerably.
In a side note, the negotiations on the Constuction Management Contract for the loop project is just about completed, and hopefully, we can begin pushing dirt in October.

We have now completed our ditch work for 2011. We still have more to do in the eastern third of the precinct, but the excavator was a rental and we sent it back May 26th so we could get started on some chores and a complete patching of the precinct. We completed CR's 1450 and 1452, parts of CR 1635, and parts of CR 1660. We installed culverts for Mr Taylor on CR 1780, Mr. Martin on CR 1345, for the county on CR 1680 and also for the county on CR 1317. We have also trimmed the early grass around the bridges, culverts and intersections and will come back in three weeks to spray the regrowth. That method has worked well for us for the last two years.
We have plans to patch CR 1400 before we begin our complete overlay. This is the road that was given to the county by Luminant and has been a problem ever since. We are partnering with Luminant to bring that road into county specs. We also plan to do extensive scabbing on CR 1475 and on CR 1362.

No big whoop since my last post..., except the most important work that we've done for the future of our roads in Precinct 1. We have been doing major ditch cleaning throughout the month of February and so far in March. People in the precinct are surprised and sometimes upset with the way the ditches were designed to look like and function. Every "old school" road man has told me that no matter how much asphalt or cold mix you put on a road, it won't last long if your ditches allow water to stand at base level or roll down the road instead of into the ditch. We have done parts of CR 1475 and CR 1465 in the Bridges Chapel area. Then we moved to the end of the Old Paris Road and worked the curve back to CR 1350. From there we moved to both ends of CR 1345. We also worked the frequently traveled CR 1317 between Hwy 271 Bus. and Hwy 271 By-pass. We just finished the East end of CR 1535 and will be moving to CR 1450 and CR 1452. I've been told people have given me the nickname "Ditch Don". Understanding the importance of this effort, I answer to it proudly. Precinct 1's crew should be commended for their efforts as well.
We also have spent about a week in February patching some badly damaged road from the snows we had this winter. Culverts were installed on CR 1468 for Mr Coil, on CR 1350 for Ms. Cole, on CR 1046 for Ms. Hendricks and we are going to fix a culvert on CR 1315 this week.
I know many are concerned about the selection of Pate Transportation by the selection committee ( Jerry Boatner, Darrell Grubbs, Mike Fields, Mike Ahrens and me). Let me say that we have been doing every thing we can to follow rather strict guidelines set forth by TxDot. The committee is working as a committee generally works, unpredicably.

Much has happened since my last post. We've had a transition in some of the offices, we've had snow twice and we've started our ditching effort one month earlier than last year. The new electees have been busy getting their Texas Association of Counties training and seem to be adjusting well. They are energetic and eager to do the job. So far, we've enjoyed a month divorced from the controversies that plagued us before the election which is good. I am committed to the effort to keep it that way!
The crew has given me a hard time about wanting to tear up two roads during the cold weather of early December. It has not been done that way before. We did however get both CR1312 and CR1030 torn up, mixed with cold mix and laid down in the middle of December. It seems to be holding, to the dismay of my crew. We do have some scabbing to do on CR1362 but could not get to it in time before the bad weather.
The latter part of December was spent allowing the crew to use up their accumulated vacation days, since they aren't carried over to the next year. We leased another excavator starting in January and began pulling ditches along stretches of the county roads. We began on CR1468, continued down CR1550, and started on CR1465 before the snow hit. That has slowed us considerably. We have installed two culverts on CR1550 that were needed and one on CR1340.
Also during this time period, we have taken a couple of days here and there to try to keep up with our patching.

We've been really blessed since my last post with some very good weather for what we do. There were a few days of stormy weather but overall we've been able to continue scabbing and patching and here it is, after Thanksgiving. We are all surprised but saddened by some incumbents being beaten at the polls however the new electees may do a very good job. The court is committed to working with the voters choices and doing the business of the county seamlessly with the new additions.
We've been busy with some soft spots in the road on CR1362 and 1363, which we then scabbed over after we dug out the places and back-filled with iron ore rock. The crew then scabbed some areas off of the Hart's Bluff road, CR1662, CR1664, CR1725, and CR1745. We then went over to CR1660 and CR 1435 to scab some areas we missed the first time through.
We started the side-boom mower around the precinct early in November. That machine can operate from the pavement and reach out to some "difficult to mow" areas and clean up some low hanging and broken limbs from the many trees that grace our roads. It was a beautiful site this fall to see the "tunnel of trees" changing color on many of our precinct's roads. This machine not only serves a critical service but also gives the trees this tunnel shape.
We did have to cut some dead or dying trees since my last post. Specifically, on CR1535, CR1048, CR1046, and lately CR1345, we cut and hauled off these trees to our mixing field to be burned during rainy weather.
Our biggest effort has been with culverts. We installed a new culvert for Mr. Barnum on CR1725, an extension on a culvert to accommodate Mr. Blair on CR1046, and a replacement for Mr. Young on CR 1048. We installed a culvert for the county across CR1362 to replace one that had rusted and collapsed. We also replaced a culvert for Mr. Martin on CR1345 and cleaned up some trees near his gate. Finally, Mrs Cathcart on CR1435 has had water run into her house in years past because her house pad sits below grade from the adjoining lot. We installed a concrete tile culvert and deepened the ditch by her house to prevent the run-off from the road adding to the problem during a torrential downpour.
We continue to press on with the counties duties concerning the loop project. Despite what was written in the paper quoting individuals involved with acquisitions, we stay active in overseeing the contractors in all phases of the process, including acquisitions, behind the scenes. But we have not, nor will we get involved with dollar amounts during the process of obtaining the property necessary for the project. We feel our presence would be counterproductive in that area to the county's tax-payers as a whole.

I know, I know, it's been almost two months since my last post so I'll make this quick. From the time of my last post until the 10th of September, we cut some dead trees on CR1200, CR 1342 for Mr. and Mrs. Hill and one on CR1635. We also did some maintenance on our equipment on one rainy day. We cleaned out a culvert on CR1200 that one of the utility companies had covered with dirt.
On September 13, we began extensive resurfacing on portions of CR1200. Starting on the TLI trucking portion, we resurfaced much of the road between there and the haul bridge. We also did several places up to CR1345, where our responsibility becomes that of Precinct 2, our partner on this shared road. We finished work on CR1200 on September 24.
On September 20, we started mowing the right-of-way for the second time this year. He completed his circuit of the precinct on October 15.
We also took time during this period to make 3900 tons of our own oil blended dirt for light paving. On September 27, we began addressing resurfacing needs in the "middle" portion of the precinct, beginning on CR1468 and then moving to CR1455. We also repaired a portion of CR 1465. We had a minor emergency on CR1360 when a culvert separated during a rain, allowing the pavement to fall through. We installed a new large culvert at what we refer to "the big ditch" and resurfaced.
On October 14, we moved to the development west of Lake Tankersley and resurfaced portions of CR1040, CR1042, CR1035, and a larger portion of CR1038. From there we moved to CR1660 and repaired the road on one of the curves and resufaced several parts of that road. We also installed culverts for Mr. Blake on CR1048 and for Mr. Miller on CR1535. Today, we picked up limbs blown down during the weekend's strong but much needed rain.
As a point of reference, my foreman said, due to the good weather and the reclamation money from the pipeline company, we have already done as much or more road resurfacing than in any year he can remember in his twenty + years with Titus County!
Hopefully, I will not be as negligent posting the next month as I was the last two!

It has a month and a half since my last blog. We have been taking full advantage of the extremely hot and dry weather since my last post. As I mentioned before, our big job of the summer was a complete resurface of CR1905. I must compliment my employees for a wonderful job on that stretch of road. I am so impressed that I am going to stripe that road like the state does. We also scabbed a portion of CR1430 down to the turn to CR1535. We didn't immediately finish CR1430 because the remainder called for a different process that was more cost effective for a lightly traveled section. Last week, we did finish that whole road however. We worked several weeks on a road best described as a disaster. The outlying section of CR1360 was in terrible shape simply because it had never been shown much attention due to its remoteness and the lack of frequent traffic. We applied the method discribed in the last post of pulling ditches, applying recycled asphalt, and oil to make an inexpensive paving material suitable for that road. Again, it went down well and, if it holds up well, we will do the rest of the road next year. We scabbed portions of CR1250 which is way out near Franklin Co.. During this work, we also took time for some tree cutting after a storm, a charitable repair of the pavement for the MPISD Transportation Dept. and picking up junk that people throw out on the county right-of-way. Just this week, we did some needed repairs on CR1680, CR1683, CR1690, and CR 1670.

We have finished our first round of mowing the precinct. I have sent home the part-time employee since I now have a full crew devoted to our roads. I was a good thing as the weather has been rainy for much of the time since my last post. We have put in several culverts in the precinct, all for the county instead of home access. We put in two west of Lake Tankersley on CR1042 two solve a drainage problem in that neighborhood. We also put in a new culvert across CR1125 to replace one that was in poor condition. We have reapplied recycled asphalt to the creek bottom road on CR1680 and we have repaired a portion of CR1540 by tearing up the existing pavement, relaying the pulverized material, and topping with a good cold-mix layer. We are looking forward to our biggest job for the summer; the rebuilding of the pavement on CR1905. It should take us about two weeks to complete the job and has been waiting on a good long term forecast. Wish us luck!

Well, its been over a month since I last posted and, I could say we've been busy, but that didn't stop me before from posting more often. So... no excuses!!! We continued to excavate ditches until the end of May. In all we cleaned ditches on CR's 1605, 1607, 1609, 1330, 1332, 1333, 1335, 1360, 1362, 1123, 1125, 1040, 1042, 1046, 1048, 1360, 1350, and 1362. In all, I'd say it was the most popular thing we've done among the people in the precinct since I started as Commissioner. Almost everyone was pleased to have the work done. We had to get started however on our mowing of the right-of-ways and I sent the leased excavator back. I plan to start again in December with a larger machine with a cab on the longer stretches of roads so we can work even in bad weather. We split the crew during this time so our patching and road repair could go on. We put in culverts for Mr. Yeago on CR1046, Mr. Johnson on CR 1540, Mr. Stansell on CR1333, Mr. Walton on CR1362, Mr. Irvin on CR 1130, Mrs. Hendricks on CR1046, Mr. Black on CR1362, two for Mr. Chism on CR1362, and one for the county across CR 1125. We started our road refinishing on CR 1330 with a long scab from the curve to the intersection at the Old Paris Road. We also are pulling ditches now with the motor grader on CR1220, CR 1465, and CR 1695. We also should be finished with the mowing by the end of the month. I want to acknowledge the cemetary committee at Bridges Chapel for the up-grade to their cemetary roads. Since we can't use long term methods to repair private roads even in cemetaries, They opted to BUY the asphalt based cold mix themselves, no small feat, and we assisted them in spreading the material. Now they have a very impressive pavement throughout their cemetary.

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.