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Did fiscal conservatism block plans for a new flood warning system in Kerr County? [1]
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Date: 2025-07-13
“This is a pretty conservative county,” said former Kerr County Judge Tom Pollard, 86. “Politically, of course, and financially as well.”
County zeroes in on river safety in 2016
Cary Burgess, a local meteorologist whose weather reports can be found in the Kerrville Daily Times or heard on Hill Country radio stations, has noticed the construction all along the Guadalupe for the better part of the last decade.
More Texans and out-of-state residents have been discovering the river’s pristine waters lined with bald cypress trees, a long-time draw for camping, hiking and kayaking, and they have been coming in droves to build more homes and businesses along the water’s edge. If any of the newcomers were familiar with the last deadly flood in 1987 that killed 10 evacuating teenagers, they found the river’s threat easy to dismiss.
“They’ve been building up and building up and building up and doing more and more projects along the river that were getting dangerous,” Burgess recalls. “And people are building on this river, my gosh, they don't even know what this river's capable of.”
By the time the 1987 flood hit, the county had grown to about 35,000 people. Today, there are about 53,000 people living in Kerr County.
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In 2016, Kerr County commissioners already knew they were getting outpaced by neighboring, rapidly growing counties on installing better flood warning systems and were looking for ways to pull ahead.
During a March 28 meeting that year, they said as much.
“Even though this is probably one of the highest flood-prone regions in the entire state where a lot of people are involved, their systems are state of the art,” Commissioner Tom Moser said then. He discussed how other counties like Comal had moved to sirens and more modern flood warning systems.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/13/2333141/-Did-fiscal-conservatism-block-plans-for-a-new-flood-warning-system-in-Kerr-County?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_2&pm_medium=web
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