logo
Ronald Reagan Blvd tollway study prompts concerns from Wilco residents

Ronald Reagan Blvd tollway study prompts concerns from Wilco residents

Yahoo21-04-2025

The Brief
County commissioners approved resolution Tuesday for CTRMA traffic study of Ronald Reagan Boulevard
Williamson County Republican Party issued resolution opposing the study the following day
People present at Tuesday's meeting worry about a lack of public input on the study
WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas - Williamson County is moving forward with plans to consider building a tollway along Ronald Reagan Boulevard.
However, the plans are prompting concerns from residents and opposition from the county's Republican Party.
What we know
On Tuesday, Williamson County Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution asking the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority to conduct a traffic study of Ronald Reagan Boulevard.
If approved, the CTRMA would pay for the construction of the tollway. It would transform Ronald Reagan into eight lanes on a 30-mile stretch. The project is broken into five segments and the county expects it to cost at least half a billion dollars.
The project would run from FM 1431 in Cedar Park to I-35 in Georgetown.
The CTRMA would also pay for construction and its upkeep, including the existing lanes on Ronald Reagan, which would remain toll-free.
Commissioners said they're considering the toll study because of growth.
What they're saying
"It is time to look for the future and acknowledging the congestion we have now and the increasing congestion we will have and ask them to begin their studies," said Williamson County's Sr. Director of Infrastructure Bob Daigh in commissioners court Tuesday.
"Because we need more information and I think this is the next step to figure out what our funding alternatives are, I will move to approve the adoption of the resolution on item number 72," said Commissioner Cynthia Long.
Dig deeper
The county also recently asked cities in the project's pathway to approve a feasibility study with the CTRMA, which will tell them if a tollway along Ronald Reagan is even possible.
Cedar Park City Council gave the county the greenlight, but Leander tabled the conversation until they could get more of their questions answered.
The other side
The day after the Commissioners Court vote, the Williamson County Republican Party issued its resolution opposing the study.
"It is a legislative priority that we want to speak out against these roads," said precinct chair Marcia Strickler Watson.
"Yes, we would have a choice not to be on the toll, we can go on the feeder road," added Strickler Watson. "We can take the red lights, we can do the things many are doing on 183-A, but why on earth would we need a whole other one less than a mile away parallel with what we already have?"
The resolution cites Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who in 2017 told the state to reduce its reliance on tolls.
The resolution also took aim at CTRMA, claiming it has been "plagued with complaints from Texans about 'surprise billing,' poor customer service, and levying unsubstantiated financial penalties, including improperly billing disabled veterans and freezing their ability to renew their vehicle registration."
7 ON YOUR SIDE: Leander man's car registration blocked due to $1,600 of unpaid tolls
Read the Williamson County Republican Party's full resolution below:
Click to open this PDF in a new window.
What they're saying
However, the county says it's taking direction from the federal government.
"One of the things he emphasized in his policy was that state and local governments need to look at user-pay models," said Long. "We are following instructions from the secretary of transportation."
Local perspective
Others present at Commissioners Court on Tuesday were worried about a lack of public input on the study.
"I think a lot of us just feel like things happen without our input, and when we do give input it doesn't matter," said Angela Wetuski, who was opposed to the county moving forward with the toll road study. "All four commissioners shared that they had a lot of emails about this issue before their meeting, but they still rose their hands and voted yes for it, and so that kind of feels like a slap in the face."
During court, one Ronald Reagan driver testified to the traffic she sees regularly and encouraged the county to do the study.
"I look at the folks sitting on Ronald Reagan when I get to 2243 at Ronald Reagan, I can look up the hill and see them past Crystal Falls Parkway," said Rachel Arnold. "That is a mile and a half of traffic."
What's next
Several other speakers asked for a town hall, which was not something commissioners ruled out.
There is no funding for the construction right now, and CTRMA will be paying for the study.
Commissioners were not available for an interview because of the holiday.
The Source
Information in this report comes from reporting/interviews by FOX 7 Austin's Williamson County reporter Lauren Rangel, Williamson County and previous reporting.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Why California Became Trump's Favorite Target — and Why the State Isn't Backing Down
Why California Became Trump's Favorite Target — and Why the State Isn't Backing Down

Politico

timean hour ago

  • Politico

Why California Became Trump's Favorite Target — and Why the State Isn't Backing Down

President Donald Trump and his supporters are right about one thing in this explosive clash between California and the federal government: It is a fight not just over position or even over public safety. It's about values. And it's been a long time building. For Trump, it's a battle of his choosing, giving him the opportunity to escalate conflict on a signature issue, immigration, in a city and state governed by political adversaries. For California, it is the logical result of a long and profound transformation — from the days of Republican Party dominance to Democratic Party control — one I've watched and chronicled for more than 30 years and that I now see culminating in literal fighting in the streets. Californians are turning out against forces sent here by guardians of a value system that the state has rejected. It was within the living memory of many Californians that this state was a solid center of the Republican Party. Most of its greatest governors — Hiram Johnson, Earl Warren, Ronald Reagan — were stalwarts of the GOP, and the state's officeholders were almost universally Republican. Warren was a colossus of the California Republican Party, the first person ever to win three terms as governor and, in 1946 and in an era of cross-filing, the first and only person ever to be nominated for the governorship not just by his own party, the GOP, but also by the Democrats. A few years later, when Pat Brown was re-elected to his second term, in 1962, he was the first Democrat ever to win the governorship twice. That changed. Today's California is as staunchly Democratic as yesterday's was Republican, a flip in orientation that helps to explain the resolve of Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in the current showdown with Washington. No statewide officeholder in California is a Republican. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the last Republican to hold the governorship, and he was an anomaly — a celebrity elected in a recall and one who governed as a centrist. No Republican has served as mayor of Los Angeles since 2001, when the moderate Richard Riordan left the stage, only to be wiped out in his campaign for governor. So far has the spectrum swung that in 2022, when Bass ran for mayor, her opponent, a developer named Rick Caruso, registered as a Democrat just in time for the campaign, realizing that the city would not, under any imaginable circumstance, elect another Republican to lead it. The county's current district attorney made the same calculation in time for last year's race. Many forces have propelled that shift, of course, but chief among them are the parties' divergent approaches to the environment and immigration and the shifting demographics of California, which, like so many things emanating from this state, are just now beginning to wash over the rest of the country as well. The environment is the easiest of those three developments to track. Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, both parties could boast of environmental successes. Democrats were more closely associated with efforts to clean air and water, but it was California's Richard Nixon who founded the Environmental Protection Agency. And though Lyndon Johnson signed the first Clean Air Act, Nixon extended and improved it. In California, reverence for the coastline, redwoods and interior forests was a bipartisan commitment in those years. But as Republicans increasingly came to represent business over stewardship and corporations over consumers, Californians who identified with environmental concerns gravitated to the Democratic Party. By 2020, Trump and other Republicans were calling climate change a hoax, and California rejected them. In that race, 78 percent of all Californians said the environment mattered greatly to them in selecting a president; 91 percent of Democrats ranked the environment as key to their support, and so did 58 percent of Republicans. Joe Biden beat Trump here by almost 30 points. Meanwhile, the state's demographics were changing. Once a part of Mexico, California has always been closely connected to its southern neighbor, with whom it shares ties of culture, trade and family. The percentage of the state whose residents are of Mexican or Latino origin has steadily grown since the 1950s, to the point that Latinos are now the state's largest ethnic group, having surpassed whites. In theory, that could cut both ways politically, and there was a time when Latino loyalties in California were divided between Democrats and Republicans. That ended in 1994, when a ballot initiative known as Prop. 187 sought to deny state benefits — vaccines, education, social services — to those who were in the state illegally. Then-Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, endorsed Prop. 187, helping secure his re-election but driving Latinos en masse away from his party. Although California voters approved Prop. 187, it turned out to be the high-water mark for anti-immigration enthusiasm in the state. In its aftermath, most of the measure was thrown out by the courts, and an invigorated electorate turned to candidates friendly to immigrants, no matter how they arrived in the state. But the Prop. 187 debate was three decades ago, and memories fade. Latinos in California and elsewhere favored Kamala Harris in 2024, but Trump outperformed expectations among Latino voters, perhaps signaling a softening of old antipathies. If so, the events of this week may rekindle recollections. As an old saw of California politics goes, it's hard to debate issues when you're busy deporting someone's grandmother. At the core of the separation between California and the national Republican Party, especially in its thrall to Trump, is what that history has produced. Taken together, the shifts of demographics and heightened sensitivity to immigration and the environment, along with a few other issues — police accountability, progressive income taxes, education reform — have produced in California a new and strongly felt agenda. How far has California come? Where Pat Brown was the first Democrat ever re-elected as governor, his son, Jerry Brown was elected twice, in 1974 and 1978. And then, after a 28-year hiatus, twice more, in 2010 and 2014. (Term limits imposed in 1990 constrained governors to two terms in office, but they were not retrospective, so Brown was free to run, and win, again.) Brown is arguably the most respected living person in California politics. If a place as big and diverse as California can be said to have a coherent set of values, those today would include respect for the environment, benevolence toward immigrants, support for living wages and insistence on civilian control over police. And if those values prevail, they do so at the expense of Trump, who is on the opposite side of every one of them. That tension has flared time and again in the Trump era, as the president has bashed California over its struggles with homelessness, its permissive voting rules and its determination to limit auto emissions, all manifestations of those values. Although California is a powerful donor state to the federal government — taxpayers here pay about $80 billion a year more than the state receives in federal services — Trump withheld support for homeowners devastated by January wildfires, demanding that federal aid be contingent on the state adopting Voter ID laws to curb fictional voter abuse that Trump believes cost him the state in his losing campaigns here. That was an attempt at bribery. It failed. Now comes force. From Trump's perspective, California is thumbing its nose at his program for America. He's right about that. What seems to confound him and his allies is that it's not California's political leadership that's behind that contempt — it's not Newsom or Bass or the state legislature — it's the people of the state, in overwhelming numbers and relying on deeply held beliefs. Those leaders are merely reflecting back what their constituents demand. Again, Trump lost to Biden here by almost 30 points — more than 5 million votes —- despite all the state's struggles and all the former president's flaws. In fact, Trump's attacks on Newsom and Bass — including his empty threat to arrest Newsom — may be the best thing that's happened to either in some time. Before all this, Bass was seen as having foundered in the face of the wildfire, which erupted while she was out of town; now, she's the mayor standing up to a deeply unpopular and dangerous president. That helps explain why Trump picked this fight in California, not just to be a bully but to force a showdown of values, to bring California to heel, or least to score points by trying. He authorized aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles. Predictably, those neighborhoods where the raids occurred were shocked and frightened, and in many cases angry. Residents protested, legally and peacefully at first, then with mounting fury. LAPD dispersed the crowd on Friday night. It was akin to a championship celebration that got out of hand. On Saturday morning, the same streets that had been tense the night before woke to calm. Diners lined up at the Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles for breakfast. The March of Dimes held a rally across from City Hall. LAPD officers had a booth; one joined the line dancing. Children played cornhole and munched on crushed ice. That felt like life returning to normal. But Trump could not allow Los Angeles and California to right itself, because to allow California to persevere is to risk allowing its values to prevail. Instead, Trump railed at Newsom and Bass and directed the National Guard to deploy in the city. That gave protesters another reason to be angry, and by Sunday afternoon, a much-larger demonstration erupted and then cascaded into the night, with scattered acts of violence. Still not satisfied, Trump sent active-duty Marines. And so, this government-induced unrest continues. If the goal is to calm Los Angeles, the solution would be simple: Withdraw federal forces and let the LAPD and Sheriff's Department do their jobs. But that's not the goal. The unrest goes on because Trump needs it to. He's not just fighting for deportations. He's fighting for his values in a state that rejects them.

Texas is the surprising ground zero for an increasingly critical area — here's what you need to know
Texas is the surprising ground zero for an increasingly critical area — here's what you need to know

Yahoo

time4 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Texas is the surprising ground zero for an increasingly critical area — here's what you need to know

Texas has quickly become the largest clean energy market in the U.S. today. Yes, you read that right — the state synonymous with the oil and gas industry is now the leader in renewable energy. In 2025, 33% of all new renewable and storage projects will be built in the Lone Star State, according to data from Cleanview, the platform I founded that tracks clean energy growth. After hundreds of hours of building data pipelines, cleaning data, and reading through thousands of public documents tied to energy growth in Texas, we have a good sense of what is likely to be built. Here's the headline: Virtually all new power projects trying to connect to the state's grid are solar, wind, and battery storage. That'd be great in any market, but it's especially important in Texas. The state is ground zero for America's electricity demand growth story. Data centers, electrification, and population growth are all fueling huge growth in Texas. The country hasn't seen anything like it since the post-World War II era. Without all that new clean energy, Texas would be burning coal, natural gas, and oil to meet that new electricity demand. Instead, the state has been decarbonizing its grid through this period of huge growth. Clean energy has been good for everyone in Texas. Solar and wind have helped meet growing electricity demands. Batteries have helped prevent blackouts and brownouts. And everyone is paying cheaper electricity prices as a result. And new developments mean clean energy growth will be even faster in Texas, thanks to a new bill passed by the Texas legislature that will make it easier and faster to install solar and storage. Should the government be paying people to hunt invasive species? Definitely Depends on the animal No way Just let people do it for free Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Today, solar permitting is absurdly slow. That's one reason why it costs three times more to install solar on your roof in the U.S. than it does in a country like Australia. In many cities, homeowners have to wait weeks for local officials to review paperwork, schedule inspections, and issue approvals. These delays increase costs and slow adoption. This new law changes that. It lets homeowners use licensed third-party reviewers to handle inspections and paperwork. Once the review is submitted, construction can begin immediately — and cities have just two business days to finalize the permit. This is a big deal for energy independence and resilience. It cuts red tape, reduces costs, and empowers more Texans to take control of their energy — all the more important in a state where millions lost power during Winter Storm Uri. The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. And it shows what's possible when lawmakers focus on practical solutions instead of political posturing. There's a lot that we shouldn't learn from Texas. But when it comes to building clean energy, the state is doing something right. And anyone who wants to build clean energy faster should take note. Editor's note: If you want to use your voice to make a difference, you can look up how to contact your own state senators here — whether or not (and perhaps especially if not) they appear on this list. Michael Thomas is the founder of Cleanview, a platform that helps clean energy leaders track the energy transition in real-time, and the author of a newsletter about climate change, Distilled, that has been read by more than 50 million people. Follow Michael on LinkedIn here, where this post appeared in its original form, or subscribe to his newsletter here. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.

As Democrats duke it out in Va. primaries, GOP nominees won't be seen together
As Democrats duke it out in Va. primaries, GOP nominees won't be seen together

Yahoo

time6 hours ago

  • Yahoo

As Democrats duke it out in Va. primaries, GOP nominees won't be seen together

"I Voted" stickers are displayed at a Richmond polling place during the 2022 midterm elections. (Photo by Graham Moomaw/Virginia Mercury) In about 10 days, we will know the names of all the candidates who will appear on November's general election ballot for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general in Virginia. What we might not know by then is whether both parties' tickets are unified. The nominees are set in the Republican Party. So there should have been no need there for the acrimony and infighting that tests the bonds of party cohesiveness in the run-up to primary elections and then the strained, awkward rapprochements that follow. Right? The Democrats still have that bridge to cross with a six-way primary for lieutenant governor and a one-to-one showdown in the attorney general primary. Levar Stoney ended his two terms as Richmond's mayor days before a January water treatment plant emergency left residents of the city and some parts of surrounding localities either without water altogether or having to boil it before consumption. Aaron Rouse is a former football star and state senator representing Virginia Beach. Ghazala Hashmi is also a state senator whose district takes in parts of Richmond and Chesterfield County. Three other candidates are newcomers to state-level politics: Victor Salgado, a public corruption prosecutor who resigned from the Justice Department after President Donald Trump's election; ophthalmologist Babur Lateef and lawyer and labor leader Alex Bastani. The winner faces Republican nominee John Reid this fall. Her time has come: Virginia will, after four centuries, have a woman governor Democrats Shannon Taylor, Henrico County's two-term commonwealth's attorney, and Jay Jones, a former Virginia delegate, former District of Columbia assistant attorney general and son of the late judge and legislator Jerrauld Jones are vying to be the state's next AG. The victor faces Jason Miyares, a Republican seeking a second term, in November. The party's gubernatorial nominee, former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, has no intraparty opponent. She and the Republican nominee, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, are already on a general election collision course. We shall see if the Democrats can keep it sufficiently civil to credibly make amends once the ballots are counted and nominees declared on June 17. So far, they've created little drama as each, to varying degrees, claims to be the best prepared to stand against Trump, who is zero-for-lifetime when his name has been on Virginia's ballot and has been an albatross for his party here. Va. statewide GOP nominees refuse to buck Trump in a state where he's a proven albatross Time will tell if the Democrats — who rarely meet an opportunity they can't squander — form a united front and make compelling arguments for voters to trust them, not just assume Trump will sink his ticket again. From job losses mainly in Northern Virginia to varied urban dysfunctions in Richmond to persistent economic atrophy in rural areas, their nominees need to do the research, listen to a broad swath of constituents and bring fresh, resonant answers to the table. As for Republicans, fate seemed to smile on them by obviating the need for primaries. Rather than spending time and money eviscerating one another, they had the chance to marshal their resources, cultivate cohesion as a ticket and fire outward at Democrats quarreling among themselves. That didn't happen. Segments of the GOP trashed President Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment and launched a homophobic, incomprehensibly stupid and ultimately futile effort to blackmail Reid — Virginia's first openly gay statewide nominee — into quitting the race. For more than a week, Virginia Republicans watched their party's elite practice a shocking level of fratricide, particularly for a critical statewide election year. What began as a Machiavellian plot to bully Reid into retreat in the face of ruinous (and specious) accusations, enlisting allied evangelicals behind the putsch, resulted in the governor himself, Glenn Youngkin, playing the heavy. They didn't know Reid. A former conservative talk radio host who inherited a flinty bring-it-on mindset from his dad, the late Del. Jack Reid, the younger Reid responded with the political equivalent of brass knuckles on one hand and a busted long-neck beer bottle in the other. He shot back with blistering social media videos and a sobering cease-and-desist demand from his lawyer that suggested imminent libel litigation. The GOP's disgraceful bid to sandbag its openly gay lieutenant governor nominee Things died down a bit after Matt Moran, a top Youngkin political Svengali, took the fall. After damning disclosures and Republican recriminations dominated each day's news cycle for more than a week, Moran was done as the head of Youngkin's fundraising juggernaut political action committee, Spirit of Virginia. You'd imagine that would be both a teaching moment and/or occasion for healing. Yet through it all, Earle-Sears has made clear her assertion that it's every Republican for himself (or herself). Earle-Sears was a no-show at weekend campaign appearances with Reid in heavily GOP-voting Southwest Virginia the day after the scandal broke in late April. Reid campaigned with U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, and was warmly received, according to on-scene coverage by Laura Vozella of The Washington Post. The following week, a GOP 'unity rally' in which Reid was to appear with Earle-Sears, Miyares and Youngkin was canceled without explanation. A defiant Reid booked the same Henrico County venue for the same hour as the canceled event and packed it with hometown supporters. On April 29, Earle-Sears broke her silence on Reid with a statement posted on social media that reads like a divorce petition, saying the focus on Reid 'distracted' the GOP ticket. 'John Reid is the Republican nominee for Lt. Governor. It is his race and his decision alone to move forward,' she wrote. 'We all have our own race to run.' This isn't the first time members of a statewide ticket have played keep-away from one of its members. In the 2001 election for the top three state executive offices, each party had an odd man out. On the Democratic side, ticket leader Mark Warner had seen his party get pounded in recent —elections in increasingly Republican-voting rural Virginia. He ran for governor as a 'centrist' who sought to rural voters with promises not to impose new gun restrictions. While he didn't win the NRA's endorsement, he kept the organization neutral in the election. Attorney general nominee A. Donald McEachin, however, had watched gun violence turn his home streets in Richmond into killing fields in the 1990s and was a stalwart gun-control advocate. Not only did the candidates coexist uneasily on the 2001 ticket, McEachin and Democratic former Gov. Doug Wilder slammed Warner over his coziness with the NRA in an extraordinary news conference that would have been front-page news if not for its timing: 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001. Appreciation: Congressman A. Donald McEachin On the GOP side, gubernatorial candidate Mark Earley and attorney general nominee Jerry Kilgore also avoided getting too close to the party's lieutenant governor nominee, Del. Jay Katzen. McEachin lost to Republican Jerry W. Kilgore. Katzen lost to future Gov. and U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine. The difference is that Earle-Sears, the ticket leader, has said it publicly and repeatedly — including once in writing. Miyares has neither embraced nor distanced himself from Reid and/or Earle-Sears. He has remained silent throughout the tumult. Her position that the GOP candidates were free agents appeared unchanged last week when Radio IQ political correspondent Michael Pope reminded Earle-Sears that she, Miyares and Reid had yet to publicly appear together. 'Actually, as you know, we are all running our campaigns,' she said. Yes, ma'am. We know. By now, so do Virginia voters. We're just waiting for you to explain the reason YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store