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Kerr County commissioners on Monday voted unanimously to create a team to fast-track implementation of a unified flood warning system in the wake of the July 4th flooding that claimed the lives of more than 100 people.
Many of the victims were young summer campers on the Guadalupe River who had little or no warning a great flood was coming as the waterway rose 26-feet in 45-minutes before dawn on the holiday.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said the flood tragedy happened after the county had tried on several occasions in the past to work with partners to win grant money to pay for such a system.
He said he favors coming up with a plan and then finding a single donor, such as the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, to pay for it. The foundation has raised more than $100 million dollars in donations since the flood to assist recovery efforts.
"We need to do this right now," Kelly said. "We need to have this in place before next summer. We need to be able to entice our tourism business and campers' business back to Kerr County next year and tell them we got a state-of-the-art flood warning system."
Some summer camps have said they have seen a lot of campers cancel reservations for next summer after the deadly flooding.
The team will be led by former Kerr County Commissioner and former NASA engineer Tom Moser, who worked on the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions, and in the past as a commissioner, supported such a system.
Moser estimated the entire system would cost around $5 million. He talked of a largely automated system with faster computers to send out fast alerts.
Kelly's motion called for the team to complete plans for a flood warning system in one month and have work on the system itself completed in six months.
Besides Moser, the team would include one representative from the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, Kerr County, the City of Kerrville, and the City of Ingram, who would have to agree to make the flood warning system a reality under an interlocal agreement.
In other action, commissioners voted for a proposed property tax rate at 40 cents per $100 dollar valuation, slightly lower than last year's 42 cents per one-hundred-dollar valuation. Commissioners set public hearings and votes on the proposed property tax rate and budget for Sept. 8. The fiscal spending plan would take effect Oct. 1.
Kelly was the only no vote, citing concerns over budgeting for all county services beyond the coming year into the next and for dipping too far into county reserve funding. But other commissioners said that in the wake of the flooding, the property tax burden should be lowered.
The county took a $240-million-dollar loss in property appraisals due to the flood, which translates to lower property tax revenue.
