Williamson County just proposed an almost 900 MILLION dollar bond project “for roads and parks”. [Link]

If you’ve heard any of my rants over the last two years, you won’t be surprised to learn that 93% of this bond goes to pay for roads. We in Williamson County are going to BORROW 825 million dollars to pay for new roads that will need to be replaced in less than 30 years (because that’s the lifetime of a road). Williamson county is already paying 164 MILLION this year for the debt on our existing roads. That’s our tax money that we’re spending to pay for roads that are already wearing out. [Williamson Budget]

The county claims that this “won’t increase tax rates” which is civic code for “we’re gonna provide less services” and that’s simply unacceptable. Every small business owner I know in Taylor has a collection of stories about how Williamson County is INCREDIBLY SLOW with permits and frustratingly random with which regulations get applied. Decreasing services will only make these problems worse.

“The number of vehicles registered in the county also has also increased 41.3% over the past 12 years, to around 530,000 this year, said Williamson County Commissioner Terry Cook”
Total cost of ownership of a car is over 9K/year, which gives us a back-of-the-envelope cost for all vehicles in Williamson County at 4.7 billion dollars. Every year, that’s what it costs the residents to own and maintain their own private vehicles, up from the 1.6 billion per year that we were spending 12 years ago.

Welcome to the sunk cost fallacy in action. It’s incredibly disappointing to me that we keep missing opportunities to make better transportation infrastructure because we’re busy trying to prop up an unsustainable system.