Donations are needed to help the more than 100 dogs at the Hill Country Humane Society in Buchanan Dam that have tested positive or have come into contact with canine distemper, a highly contagious virus that infiltrated the shelter on June 1.

Donations will help defray costs as staff and volunteers work around the clock to care for the dogs, said Paighton Corley, executive director of the Hill Country Humane Society.

“Even at night, when we are trying to sleep, we are thinking of nothing but the pups,” she said in the shelter’s newsletter.

The cost to treat all 111 dogs is over $30,000. A donor has offered to match up to $10,000 of all donations made by Tuesday, June 18.

“Please donate today and help alleviate this financial stress so that our team can focus all our energy on the care and comfort of these amazing pups,” Corley said.

The recent outbreak forced the local Humane Society to implement a system to keep its dogs protected from the virus.

“We have created a lockdown protocol to ensure every dog in our care has the best possible chance of survival,” Corley said.

Donations may be made online or via check mailed to 9150 RR 1431 West, Buchanan Dam, TX 78609.

VACCINATION CLINICS

To help curb the spread of the disease, the Hill Country Humane Society is offering two free vaccination clinics for dogs and cats with shots for DHPPv (distemper/parvo), rabies, and FCP.

Clinics are:

• Saturday, June 15, from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. at Marble Falls High School, 2101 Mustang Drive;
• and Wednesday, June 19, from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Burnet County Fairgrounds, 1301 Houston Clinton Drive in Burnet.

SYMPTOMS

Canine distemper attacks the respiratory, gastrointestinal, and nervous system of dogs. It is highly contagious.

Early signs include:

• runny nose
• vomiting and diarrhea
• dehydration
• extreme salivation
• coughing
• loss of appetite
• weight loss

As the disease progresses, neurological signs such as involuntary muscle twitching, seizures with salivation, and jaw movements, also known as “chewing-gum fits,” may occur.

The mortality rate for canine distemper is 50 percent for adult dogs and 80 percent for puppies. It can take a dog up to two months to fully recover from the contagious pathogen. 

nathan@thepicayune.com

Llano County judges soon will have the option to recommend mental health evaluations of suspects, which could lead to treatment rather than jail time.

The Llano County Commissioners Court on June 10 unanimously approved a contract with the Hill Country Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Centers to provide the evaluations. The deal won’t be finalized, however, until the agency agrees. 

Under the contract, a certified mental health professional would evaluate a suspect at the recommendation of a Llano County judge. Each evaluation would cost $30.

The policy pertains to those arrested in Llano County on Class B misdemeanors or higher, including felonies.

Llano County Attorney Dwain Rogers said the county has been pursuing such an arrangement for years.

“If someone has been brought into the jail or magistrated, the magistrate (overseeing judge) can recommend a mental health evaluation for that individual, and we need a service provider to do that,” he said. “Hopefully, if the individual is indicated to require mental health services, they can start moving down that path rather than the incarceration path.”

While this policy is new for Llano County, it is not a novel idea in Texas. Mental health evaluations for suspects has been on the books since the Texas Legislature added Article 16.22 to the state Code of Criminal Procedure in 1993. The law creates an avenue for conducting mental health assessments of suspects, which can keep them out of jails and get them necessary treatment. 

“It’s helpful for us to provide additional mental health services for our clients in the criminal justice system, and the hope is to create more attention to that,” said Chris Sanders, a mental health caseworker for the North Hill Country Public Defender’s Office. “The idea is to save the county money and to serve the person holistically in the future so that they are not sitting in jail without mental health services.”

County Attorney Rogers also noted it would be prudent to identify mental illness in suspects for liability reasons.

“Frankly, (having an undiagnosed individual in jail) is a liability for the county as well,” he said. “If you’ve got an individual suffering a mental health crisis while incarcerated, that can obviously lead to issues.”

dakota@thepicayune.com

Two incoming Marble Falls developments will save money on impact fees following a unanimous vote by the City Council on June 4. 

Developers pay the one-time fees to the city to help finance the construction of necessary public infrastructure such as water and wastewater treatment.

Panther Creek Village, a multifamily housing project with commercial space, and Legacy Crossing, a master-planned subdivision, were each grandfathered into the city’s former, less expensive impact fee schedule by a5-0 vote of the council. Councilors Lauren Haltom and Richard Westerman were absent from the June 4 meeting.

For context, the cost to connect water and wastewater lines to a three-quarter-inch meter, a standard size for a single-family home, was $6,054 based on the city’s 2018 rate schedule. That cost jumped by 100 percent to $12,108 after April 30 following a December 2023 decision to hike Marble Falls impact fees to reflect those in similar-size towns.

Developers of Panther Creek Village and Legacy Crossing will now pay the lower 2018 fees.

“These were cases of mitigating circumstances that were beyond their control,” Mayor Dave Rhodes told DailyTrib.com. “It wasn’t that they were just being irresponsible and taking their time and asking us to give them a break.”

Legacy Crossing’s plans were significantly altered by late-developing issues following an announcement from the Texas Department of Transportation of $80 million of planned upgrades at the U.S. 281-Texas 71 intersection near where the 1,342-home subdivision will be built.

“It changed a whole bunch of things that they wanted to do,” Rhodes said. “They had to redraw it. Not only did they have to redo their site plans, but it changed the infrastructure on top of that. I feel bad for them. They had hundreds of thousands of dollars in engineering and soft costs and had to redo it.”

Panther Creek Village, a development of 237 apartment units and 20,000 square-feet of commercial space near Panther Creek Hollow on Corazon Drive south of the 281 bridge, has experienced major lag times in its planning due to a city request that developers build a lift station. 

The station will push septic from the topographically low property up a hill to a sewer line located along the highway. 

“We asked them to upsize it and put it in another spot so that it’s accessible to the other lots that are yet to be developed there,” Rhodes said. “We didn’t want to have to do it all over again. It took a little time to design that.”

Panther Creek Village developers and the city also had to convince neighboring property owners to let them build the station.

“We had to work with two property owners to get an access easement to work on their property,” Rhodes said. “It took a while to work that out.”

He said the lift station and lengthy negotiations were major factors in the council’s June 4 decision.

“Both of those things together took time, which the clock was ticking until April 30 to get all this done so that they didn’t fall into the new impact fee schedule,” Rhodes said. “They were doing things primarily at our request. It didn’t make sense to penalize them for that.”

Rhodes acknowledged that other developments might request similar relief from the new impact fees in the future.

“There will be some that say, ‘Hey, you gave it to them,’ and try to shoehorn something in and pound square pegs into round holes, and they’re more than welcome to do that,” he said. “Unless, they can provide circumstances that were beyond their control that were requests from the city, the state, or unforeseen, they’re going to have a hard time making the case.”

nathan@thepicayune.com

The Llano County Library lawsuit is back on hold. An unnamed judge in the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans requested “the issuance of the mandate” be withheld until further review.

The mandate, or majority opinion, was issued on June 6 and upheld most of a preliminary injunction ordered by a lower court in the ongoing U.S. District Court case of Leila Little et al. v Llano County et al. The preliminary injunction involved returning 17 banned books to library shelves and the online catalog. The appeals court said eight of those books must be returned as they were removed due to the opinions of government officials.

The court’s mandate also stated that the plaintiffs in the case “demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of their First Amendment claim.” A three-judge panel split 2-1 in the opinion.

According to a deputy clerk at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, any judge can ask a mandate be held for review by the full court, which includes 17 active judges and nine senior judges. Judge Jacques Wiener, who wrote the majority opinion in the Llano County Library appeal, is one of the senior judges. 

The court never reveals which judge makes the request for review, which could lead to a hearing of the case en banc, a French term that means “on the bench.” If en banc is granted, the full court would review the matter. En banc only occurs in rare, complex cases. Of the 5,700 appeals rulings issued in the past year, only 10 were en banc cases. 

The deputy clerk said the judge can release the mandate at any time or call for a poll of the full court, minus any judges who have to recuse. No timeframe is set. It takes “as long as they feel necessary,” the clerk said. 

Only the judges are involved in the discussion. Until about a year ago, the appeals court did not publicly announce when a judge asked for an en banc review. The court decided to make the process more transparent because of the number of calls and questions received in the past. 

suzanne@thepicayune.com 

Krause Springs is closed to the public for filming Wednesday-Thursday, June 12-13. The popular outdoors destination reopens its gates on Friday morning.

Little is known about the project being shot at the 115-acre, family-owned campground, Krause Springs co-owner Terry Krause told DailyTrib.com.

“I have no clue,” he said when queried about the film project. “I haven’t asked (the filmmakers), and they haven’t told me.”

Popular among locals and tourists, Krause Springs attracts large crowds every summer because of its natural spring-fed pool, towering 1,000-year-old cypress trees, campsites, waterfalls, and expansive butterfly garden.

The Krause Family has owned the campground for over 50 years. The park was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

This summer marks the second time in three years that Krause Springs has shut down for filming. The park was closed for three days in June 2022 for an almost three-minute Louis Vuitton commercial. (Krause Springs makes an appearance at the 1:49 mark.)

nathan@thepicayune.com

Marble Falls is moving forward with user-friendly improvements to Johnson and Lakeside parks after several years of planning. The Economic Development Corp. Board of Directors on June 5 approved a bid from Wimberley-based contractor Myers Concrete Construction.

The bid was originally brought to the EDC at $4.6 million, but the board ultimately decided to approve it at a figure not to exceed $4.2 million. EDC directors and officials will meet with Myers Concrete representatives over the following weeks to see where additional cost savings can be created through “value engineering,” a systemic approach to finding the cheapest way to complete a project without sacrificing functionality.

“The dollar amount was kind of a swag,” EDC Executive Director Christian Fletcher told DailyTrib.com. “We think we can save 10 percent on (the improvements) through value engineering. That’s what took it from $4.6 million and change down to $4.2 million.”

The vote on the bid was 5-1 with Director Ryan Nashdissenting. He said he wanted more information about the scope of work and the park project’s overall cost. 

“I disagree with the methodology,” he said at the meeting.

Myers Concrete’s initial bid was $18 million for the entire park project when presented to the EDC board in November 2023. Directors decided to divide upgrades into sub-phases and try to whittle down the cost.

Plans for the first phase include a pedestrian bridge over Backbone Creek linking Johnson and Lakeside parks, another bridge connecting Lakeside Park with downtown businesses, lights on the west side of the U.S. 281 bridge, a babbling brook between Lakeside Park and Hidden Falls Inn, and a pavilion.

“We’ve focused on enhancing the quality of life that can be enjoyed by residents and visitors alike for generations,” Fletcher said. “These are generational investments in our park infrastructure. They’re designed to make our parks system better for everybody.”

BOARDWALK ON HOLD

A proposed boardwalk stretching from Lakeside Park to the old powerhouse on the lake was cut out of the bid following months of unsuccessful attempts to lower its projected cost.

“The most expensive part of the project is the boardwalk itself and having to drill piers,” Fletcher said. “I think there are 39 piers that would have to be drilled into the bedrock of Lake Marble Falls to accommodate the boardwalk. We focused most of the value engineering on trying to get the boardwalk cost down.

“We did get it down some, but it still wasn’t palatable,” he continued.

The EDC could revisit the boardwalk after some tweaks.

“The cost stems from the design that we currently have,” Fletcher said. “We’re going to go back with StanTec (the EDC’s engineering consulting firm) and explore some alternative design options on the boardwalk.”

Director John Packer was doubtful.

“I don’t ever see us doing a boardwalk where there’s a big area with a big gathering area in the middle,” he said during the meeting. “It’s too cost-prohibitive.”

Instead, the former three-term mayor pitched a different idea.

“I think there’s got to be a way to do a 5-foot-wide trail (along the shoreline),” he said. “It sounds fairly reasonable.”

Other costs, such as the pedestrian bridge over Backbone Creek, were easier for officials to stomach.

“That is a much more straightforward project,” Fletcher said. “We were a lot closer to budget on that one.”

Marble Falls EDC board President Steve Reitz was absent from the June 5 meeting.

nathan@thepicayune.com

A grant from the Lower Colorado River Authority just made Llano County a little safer. The $13,265 purchased nine sets of emergency medical equipment for public spaces across the county. 

The grant is part of the LCRA’s Community Development Partnership Program. 

The emergency equipment packages include automatic external defibrillators and standard first-aid kits and will be located in Llano County libraries, county annexes, and the courthouse. One will be kept with the Road and Bridge Department crews.

Llano County Emergency Management Coordinator Gilbert Bennett said the county did not have this sort of equipment widely available before the grant.

“As a retired paramedic, I feel it’s important to have a tool that can save a life on hand,” he told DailyTrib.com. “I personally have seen (defibrillators) work. It’s a great feeling when (people) come back and say ‘thank you.’”

The defibrillators now stationed across Llano County can be used to stabilize victims of cardiac arrest by delivering an electric shock that re-establishes the heart’s normal rhythm. According to the National Institute of Health, having an automatic external defibrillator (AED) on hand is associated with nearly doubling the rate of survival for victims suffering from an out-of-hospital heart attack. 

A report from AED USA states that a cardiac arrest victim has a 74 percent chance of survival if an AED is used within three minutes of the event. These kits are made to be used by anyone, even if they have not been trained.

“You never know when a heart attack is going to happen,” Bennett said. “(Llano County) is now a safer place.”

dakota@thepicayune.com

Crownover Chapel in Backbone Valley near Marble Falls is getting a new floor, which means the Fairland Community will get its meeting venue back. The Burnet County Historical Commission approved a $7,000 gift to replace the buckled, rotting wood floor in what is believed to be the first church built in the county. 

The commission also approved a $5,000 donation to The Falls on the Colorado Museum in Marble Falls to replace one of the second-floor windows during its current renovation. The windows are not original to the building and are leaking. The new windows will be built to match the first-floor originals. 

Both the church and the museum, once a schoolhouse, have historical markers. 

“We are a county historical commission for the whole county, and I think we should do this,” said Lela Goar, who chairs Burnet County’s Certified Local Government program. The CLG is a Texas Historical Commission program that helps preserve local history.

Commission members voted to take the $7,000 for Crownover Chapel out of the Darrell Debo Estate Donation fund. Debo was a long-time member of the commission and authored the two-volume Burnet County History. In his will, he bequeathed part of his estate to the historical commission. 

The $5,000 for the museum window will come from a similar donation fund, this one from Ina Cooper, also a long-time commission member.

Although more work is needed on Crownover Chapel, repairing the floor will open it once again for a variety of community events. 

“We haven’t been able to let anyone have funeral services there for several years,” said Danielle Meredith, vice chairman of the Friends of the Crownover Chapel. The chapel is next to Fairland Cemetery on FM 1855, northwest of Marble Falls. 

The Friends group is applying for other grants to restore the historic building, which has been used for reunions, cemetery meetings, funerals, and other community gatherings. 

The Falls on the Colorado Museum, 2001 Broadway in Marble Falls, will open its second floor to the public for the first time since moving into the Old Granite School building in 2010. The building is owned by the Marble Falls Independent School District, which recently approved $250,000 to make the second floor safe. The museum is raising another $250,000 for new windows and other improvements. 

CORRECTION: The Falls on the Colorado Museum is raising $250,000 to replace the windows on its historic building on Broadway in Marble Falls, not $25,000 as originally reported in this story. DailyTrib.com regrets the error.

suzanne@thepicayune.com

Granite Shoals has a water problem. Leaders have acknowledged the shortcomings of the city’s water system, offered short-term solutions, and explained the long-term planning necessary to make big fixes. Millions of dollars in upgrades have already been made, but major improvements are needed and the money is not easy to come by.

“I’m here tonight to bring attention to the quality of our city’s water and ask that it be addressed,” said resident Micah Rate during the public comment portion of the Granite Shoals City Council meeting on May 28. “Like many residents, my family’s water has been yellow or green with black specks for weeks.”

Rate said his water had been discolored since at least April 22, two weeks before a major line break forced a temporary shutdown of the city’s pumps. The discoloration reportedly got worse after the shutdown, but it did clear up after city utility crews flushed the lines near his home.

Rate voiced his appreciation for the utility workers but noted the inconsistency of the city’s water quality is consistently concerning.

“My comments this evening are not to cast blame, accuse people of not doing their jobs, or accuse our city’s workers of not working hard,” he told the council. “I’m here to highlight this issue, speak up for my family and fellow residents, and ask for your help in solving it.”

Rate also asked the council if it would stop using money for the water system to balance the general fund. In the 2023-24 fiscal year budget, $1.2 million in revenue was transferred from the utility fund to the general fund. If that money had not been redirected, it theoretically could have been used to make serious improvements to the water system.

Granite Shoals’ current budget is dependent upon the transfer of funds from utility to general, City Manager Sarah Novo told DailyTrib.com. For example, the city had roughly $6.28 million in expenditures in fiscal year 2023-24 but only brought in $5.1 million in revenue from property taxes. The $1.2 million was necessary to make up the difference for that budget cycle.

“Ultimately, the goal is to have the general fund stand alone,” Novo said. “Historically, in the city, the general fund has been supplemented by the utility fund because that is where the revenue comes from. We’d like to move away from dependency on the utility fund, but we’d want to look at other revenue streams to offset that.”

This is not the first time water quality has been a hot-button issue in Granite Shoals. The city addressed several violations of water standards from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in February, dealt with sediment in the system when the Llano River flooded in October 2023, and scrambled to repair essential pumps after a lightning strike in August 2023.

The most recent quality issue was likely caused by the depressurization of the water system when pumps were shut down to repair a 6-inch main line break on May 5, according to Granite Shoals Utilities Superintendent Joshua Hisey. When the system is depressurized, water seeps into the pipe and sediment and particulates on the pipe walls fall away and inevitably enter homes when the water is turned back on.

Utility crews spent weeks after the line break flushing the system and answering calls for individual line work from residents reporting discolored water and sediment coming from their faucets.

“We’re finally getting to the point where (the discolored water) is stuck in residences. Now, we just have to flush their lines out,” Hisey told DailyTrib.com.

He elaborated on specific and general problems with Granite Shoals’ water system, explaining that much of the city’s distribution lines are old or terminate in dead ends that don’t allow for proper circulation, which leads to more breaks and potentially cloudier water. Many of the problem lines are from when Granite Shoals was built in the 1960s. 

Hisey said his six-man department responds to one to three line breaks a day.

According to the utilities superintendent, the 1000 and 500 blocks of North Sherwood Drive, the 100 to 400 blocks of East Bluebriar Drive, and the Kings Shore and North Lake areas of the city are consistently problematic.

Granite Shoals is nearing completion of $7 million in upgrades to the water system after work began in 2020. These improvements include a new water tower, disinfectant system, clarifying tank, and state-of-the-art software to manage the system. The upgrades were paid for with a $7 million water bond approved by voters in 2019.

While the upgrades will help mitigate contamination and improve water quality, they do not solve the problem of aging, underground water lines prone to breakage. 

Novo, the city manager, said major upgrades and line replacements would require major money.

“I think, at this point, what we’re looking at is a thorough analysis of what we have and what we need to upgrade so that we can develop some numbers and start looking for funding mechanisms like grants or bonds or whatever it looks like to fund (water line) improvements,” she said.

Hisey gave a ballpark estimate of $9 million to $15 million to overhaul the aging distribution system, something Granite Shoals has not been able to afford. The city would have to make extreme budget cuts or dramatically increase its revenue to stop making the utility transfer, Novo said. 

Some cities, like Marble Falls, generate serious revenue from sales tax to help with civic upgrades. Marble Falls collected a whopping $8.56 million in sales tax alone in fiscal year 2023-24. Granite Shoals only collected $275,000 that same year.

“If we were to see more sales tax and commercial activity, it would lighten the load and dependence on the utility funds,” Novo said.

dakota@thepicayune.com