Road signs indicating a school zone on Bee Caves Road will be changed in order to be more visible to drivers, West Lake Hills City Administrator Robert Wood told City Council at the regular meeting April 11.

Texas Department of Transportation officials decided the school zone signs on Bee Caves Road, near Eanes Elementary, will be converted into the kind that hang from an arm directly over the road.

“I think that will provide more visibility,” Wood said. “It will be harder for people not to see them in the morning and afternoon. [The sign replacement] should happen in about a month.”

Wood said he also talked to TxDOT officials about the Bee Caves Road construction schedule. TxDOT expects to finish everything between Red Bud Trail and Westlake Drive around mid-summer of this year.

The city is also currently working with their engineer and Water District 10 on plans to rework and repave the center turn lane on Camp Craft Road.

“Water District 10 needs to replace a water line there,” Wood said. “We’re not going to repave the road then have them come in right behind us and tear it up for the water line, so they are getting their plans to our engineer hopefully in the next week or two.”

The plans will be turned over to the Bee Caves Road contractor, who will give the city a price for the project in early or mid-May, Wood said.

The project is scheduled to start after school gets out for the year. Wood said they want it executed during the summer so there is as little interruption to the schools as possible.

“We can actually shut down the road between Bee Caves Road and Eanes School Road,” he said. “Then it will get done a lot faster and safer.”

Wood said there will be a point where the whole block is shut down, but it should not keep anyone from getting where they need to go.

In other news, The West Lake Hills March public safety report, compiled by Police Chief Scott Gerdes, was approved by the council as part of the consent agenda.

Officers responded to 21 traffic crashes in March, compared to 18 in February, which resulted in 12 crash reports being created, the report said. The most common crash location this month requiring a police report was Bee Caves Road, with 11 of the 12 crashes happening in different locations on Bee Caves Road.

“In March, we responded to 13 suspicious package calls as a result of the Austin bombings,” Gerdes said in a separate item on the report. “We also sent an officer to assist the Sunset Valley Police Department while they were securing the area around the FedEx store during the FBI investigation.”