Rollingwood City Engineer Kenny Watkins stood before the council last week to announce that the water project was on schedule to be completed earlier, and even further under budget, than anticipated.

“As is visible in the community, significant progress has been made on the water line,” Watkins said. “The line is essentially complete from Rollingwood Drive to the Goodyear location, with the exception of some crossings to be made in the Timberline location.”

Significant savings will come out of the discovery of part of a 12-inch line, initially thought to be an 8-inch line that would need replacing.

“What’s being eliminated from the project is the removal of an 8-inch line and the installation of a 10-inch line; the traffic control will be reduced or eliminated; and all the work on the south side of Bee Cave Road will come out of the contract,” he said.

While he was unable to give council members an exact number on how much money they saved, he believed it would be on the order of $13,000. The project had a scheduled completion date of March 27, but should extremely close to finished even before March begins.

Council members also heard good news on the interlocal agreement with Travis County for street paving and maintenance.

“The interlocal agreement that the council presented to Travis County has been assigned to an assistant county attorney,” City Attorney Monte Akers told the council. “Hopefully it will be back for action at the March meeting.”

The agreement’s champion, Alderwoman Shanthi Jayakumar said that council members were now tasked with identifying the streets most in need of paving, and said they should consider a longer list.

“My belief is that we should have some money in the capital projects budget to increase the street maintenance because the water came in way under budget,” she said. “By next month, we’re likely to have finalized the interlocal agreement and have a list of streets to be paved.”

Jayakumar had Akers confirm that the money that will begin funneling in from the new street maintenance portion of the sales tax in April could repay money from the general fund used on street maintenance.

“I really think the prices are so low this year, we should really at least try,” she said.