By West Lake Hills Mayor Dave Claunch

Contributing Writer

You may have noticed the signs going up around town alerting drivers that it is now illegal to use a mobile phone in an active school zone. The fine can be as high as $500. The signs were installed by TxDOT at the city’s request along Bee Cave Road in front of Eanes Elementary School and are the result of a law recently passed by the Texas legislature and signed by Gov. Perry. According to that law, without the signs in place, a violator can avoid prosecution. The law provides exceptions for using the device while your vehicle is stopped or in an emergency.

Many local communities including Austin have gone one step farther, outlawing the use of mobile devices for anything other than making a phone call while driving. The Austin law prohibits driving while using your phone to send text messages, send or read e-mail messages or use other mobile applications.

The West Lake Hills City Council recently enacted a similar ban on the use of mobile devices while driving in the city. It is now a Class C misdemeanor with a $500 maximum fine to text, email or surf the web while driving. And there doesn’t need to be any signs warning drivers of this new law.

So please help us spread the word – especially to the younger drivers in our community – about the dangers of using a phone while driving. Although the $500 fine is a fairly steep disincentive, the real hazard is a terrible auto accident that could be far more costly.

In other news, we’ve made good progress with our efforts to secure low-cost funding from the Texas Water Development Board that would allow us to accomplish two goals. First, we hope to purchase our wastewater system from the Lower Colorado River Authority, which will save us millions of dollars over the life of the system and allow us to pass those savings along to the ratepayers in the form of relatively lower rates.

The second goal is to expand the wastewater system to serve two additional areas: Hull Circle and the southern end of Buckeye Trail adjacent to Bee Cave Road. Many residents on both streets have asked about service because their septic systems are reaching end-of-life. And even with the high cost of deploying centralized wastewater service to these properties, doing so is preferable and less costly than trying to bring a failing septic system up to the current TCEQ standards.

Before we go much farther to secure the funding, we need to assess the demand in these two areas. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be conducting informational meetings in both neighborhoods to give these residents the information they need in order to make a decision. If not enough property owners express an interest, then we likely won’t pursue it much farther. If you live in those areas, stay tuned. You’ll be hearing from us shortly.