The county is applying for a grant to provide infrastructure to encourage children to walk and bicycle to school — and do so safely.
At its meeting Tuesday, the Hays County Commissioners Court approved a preliminary grant application for funds from the Texas Department of Transportation Safe Routes to School, which has issued a call for projects. The grant is meant to “enable and encourage children to walk and bicycle to school, to make bicycling and walking to school safer and more appealing transportation alternative from an early age, and to facilitate the planning, development, and implementations or projects and activities that will improve safety and reduce motorized traffic in the vicinity of schools,” the county agenda reads. The county intends to use any grant funds awarded for the Hays County Sidewalks to School Initiative, which would involve constructing an 8- to 10-foot-wide sidewalk along the south side of Bebee Road in Kyle and along the east side of Dacy Lane to serve Science Hall, a sidewalk running north from the intersection of Bebee Road and Dacy Lane to Hillside Terrace and a sidewalk running east on Hillside Terrace to Goforth Road to Tom Green School Road.
In other business, the commissioners approved a payment of $210 to E-Gov Link related to the redesign of the Hays County website. The new website, hayscountytx.com, went public April 9, but some key documents were excluded. E-Gov Link has agreed to help the county with the additional migration of content from the old site to the new at a reduced rate.
The commissioners also approved a list of positions that are eligible for overtime payments. Often, county employees who work overtime are given comp time, but some positions may receive overtime payment of time and a half. Among the positions eligible for overtime pay are emergency communications officers, corrections officers, the animal control supervisor, road laborers, road maintenance superintendents and juvenile supervision and probation officers.