Lone Star Parkway repaired with Joe Corley facility proceeds

Following the failed Montgomery County road bond election in May, Precinct 1 Commissioner Mike Meador used leftover money from the sale of the Joe Corley Detention Facility in 2003 to fund a $839,529 reconstruction of the west side of Lone Star Parkway in Montgomery.

“This is one of the projects that [opponents of the bond] called ‘pork and maintenance’ [during the election], and it is not,” Meador said.

The west side of the parkway, which spans from its intersection with FM 149 to the west intersection with Hwy. 105, was littered with potholes and cracked roadway, leaving Meador no choice but to close the roadway or rebuild it, he said.

“Out of a normal budget I would have to close the road; I couldn’t have afforded to fix it,” Meador said. “Those are the type of projects that we need to fix [with a bond], and it is millions of dollars per road. We don’t have a big pot of money that we can siphon off of to do these projects. It is either bond money or raise taxes.”

The roadway was damaged by a number of factors including the record-setting drought four years ago.

“In 2011 when we had the record drought the blackland [soil] under the road heaved, and it cracked and it buckled,” Meador said. “Then we had 25 inches of rain in May, and it got into that sub base. We did everything we could, but [the roadway] was becoming dangerous.”

Repair work was completed July 28, and the project was funded from Meador’s approximate $1.5 million allotment from the sale of the Joe Corley facility by Montgomery County. Each commissioner received a similar allotment from the sale, Meador said.

“We probably get $1.5 million to $2 million per year to spend on roadway repair [in the annual budget],” Meador said. “You can maintain with that money but you cannot do a project like this out of your yearly budget—it would wipe you out.”