Wednesday, October 12, 2005

The Trans Texas Corridor will be built ... somewhere

TxDOT Executive Director Behrens pitches TTC-35 to rural newspaper reporters

Get ready. TTC-35 is coming.

Though Michael Behrens wouldn't use those words, not exactly, and he'd probably cringe to realize it, that's the impression he left at the end of an hour and a half of questioning Thursday.

"Something is going to have to be built somewhere," the executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation said after meeting in Cameron with a group of reporters from several rural newspapers. There was touch of resignation in his voice when he said it.

The Trans Texas Corridor is a proposed multi-lane transportation network designed to carry passenger, freight, rail and utilities. The TTC-35 portion of the corridor would roughly parallel Interstate 35 from Laredo to the Oklahoma border north of Dallas. Along the way, it will slice through a portion of east Williamson and Bell counties, or a portion of west Milam and Falls counties. Maybe both.

Behrens said that traffic demands on IH-35, Texas' primary north-south transportation corridor, have grown to the point of bursting. That's what's behind the push to build this portion of the corridor now.

"We were seeing the pressures on IH-35 eight, nine years ago while we were going through this same process for Texas 130," he said, referring to the new toll road under construction looping east of Austin. "We were already thinking back then that it would have to go off and head to Dallas. I don't know about you but I've driven IH 35 many times and wished there was another road to go on."

LIKE IH-35, ONLY BIGGER
Behrens, who has worked for TxDOT for over 35 years, often recalls Texas' early experiences with IH-35 when talking about the TTC-35 concept.

Early on, Texas didn't buy enough right-of-way for IH-35. Access to the highway was strictly controlled. Entrance and exit ramps were sharp and short. The entire concept of separating passenger and freight traffic on the highway was absurd, as was the idea of carving space out of the right-of-way for passenger and freight rail lines.

"What we're trying to do here is think ahead," Behrens said. "The interstate system was 100 percent financed by federal government. They said, 'go out an buy the right of way you think you'll need for the next 20 years.' That's how the right of way was bought."

At first, Behrens said, Texas highway planners bought 22-foot rights-of-way but, as traffic patterns and design standards changed, so did the amount of land needed to build a highway.
"I understand fully where a lot of the comments are coming from but, if you have the opportunity to travel back east, and drive on US Highways that are 22-feet wide, you see that we have better farm roads than that. They have no space."

As a result, the right of way for TTC-35 will be 1,200 feet wide, on average. That's as wide as the length of four football fields.

MORE PRESSURE
Two other factors are driving this concept: population growth and cost.

Behrens said that the population of Texas is expected to double in the next 25 years. An awful lot of that growth will be along IH-35 and that highway is already at capacity, he said.

The second factor is money. Texas really doesn't have the money to build this kind of highway system.

Behrens explained how Texas gets money to build and maintain highways. Most of Texas' highway dollars come from a 20-cent gasoline tax. A nickel of that goes to public education. "Last year, we got $2.2 billion from the gasoline tax," he said. "We spent $2.3 billion just to maintain our current system, the 80,000 miles of highway out there."

He said that the only money the state has to add capacity is federal dollars, of which we get back roughly 80-cents for every tax dollar we send. "That's not a lot when you look at all the needs we have, especially in this part of the state."

That's why the TCC-35 concept evolved into a toll road built and maintained by a private contractor, and one of the reasons the Texas Highway Commission chose Cintras-Zachary to build this portion of the corridor.

Cintras is the Spanish company with the money - $7.2 billion - and the experience to build and operate a public transportation system. The company will invest $6 billion in construction and pay the State of Texas $1.2 billion as a concession to operate the toll road.

Zachary is a heavy construction company based in San Antonio. This is the part of the partnership that will build the highway.

"We didn't just pick some company out there," Behrens said. "We went through a competitive process."

Money is also driving the route of the corridor.

"There have been comments suggesting [that] we just use the existing footprint of IH-35. Just widen that enough ... what ever it takes."

But, the property along IH-35 is some of the most highly valued commercial real estate in Texas.
"We do not see it as financially feasible to buy and relocate everything along existing IH-35," Behrens said. "Granted, there some areas of IH-35 not built up, and some of that is being looked at ... there might be some areas along IH-35 where we could put a new facility. We don't think that it is [feasible to buy up everything along the corridor] because we just can't afford it."

WHO OWNS THE LAND?
But land in this part of rural Texas isn't that expensive, which leads another reason some oppose the idea.

"One of the myths [going around is] that this company, a foreign company, is just going to come in and take our property and we'll have 90 days to get off. I can assure you that that is not the case," he said. "It's not like we'll be there today and start bulldozing tomorrow. It does not happen like that."

Because the state will actually own the land - then lease it to Cintras-Zachary on a 50-year concession - the right-of-way acquisition processes are the same for this highway as they are for any other highway the state builds.

Right now, TxDOT's highway planners are slogging through a long, detailed process of picking one 10-mile wide corridor in which to locate a 1,200-foot wide right-of-way. This has been underway for some time and is expected to conclude in the spring of 2006.

Highway planners have a similar process ahead for the more detailed studies necessary before a final route can be chosen and it will be several years before anyone will make an offer to any property owner.

"It's the same process we always use," he said. That process, of course, includes the possibility of condemnation proceedings for property owners along the final route who won't sell, Behrens said. "That process has been there a long, long time."

Even then, Berhens said, it will likely be some time before the full width of the right-of-way will be used.

"It doesn't make any sense to have the land out there underutilized," he said. "I remember about 20 years ago I was building a 4-lane divided highway [near Yoakum]. We'd bought the land but some farmers had planted corn in one area. I told them not to worry about it because it would all be harvested by the time we got that far. We do try to use some good common sense. If it's workable, we'll work with people."

LIVING WITH A HIGHWAY
Other areas of opposition to the corridor revolve around access to the highway and its impact on rural life.

Behrens acknowledged that the project will have an impact but he insists that planners are sensitive to people concerned about this disruption.

"It's hard for me to sit here today and tell you exactly how that would be addressed, but we addressed a lot of similar things on IH-35 and other major thoroughfares. In a perfect world, you would like to build these things along property lines, which is being looked and taken into consideration, but, again, it doesn't always hit all the time."

And, he noted that an intended by product of the project is for communities along the corridor to realize some economic benefit from it.

"I think you'll see development along this corridor like we saw when we built IH-35," he said. "When we get to a point that the some segments are built, the people who see the opportunities of locating along the corridor will come."

He predicted that the initial opportunities will likely service traffic on the highway but that will grow. "I truly believe that you will see companies look at properties along these corridors to locate a business, whether it would be manufacturing or warehouse distribution centers like you see now."

He also stressed that access won't be as difficult as some opponents suggest.

"You will have access at every intersection of Interstates, U.S. highways, state highways and major farm-to-market roads," he said.

He said that a look at the evolution of IH-35 would show how county roads left out of the initial plans might find access to the corridor. "Those decisions will be made when we get down to a final alignment. Go back and look at the interstates. Most county roads did not have direct access to the interstate but, through the development of frontage roads and overpasses, this was solved."

Behrens said that there is still a lot of planning and study before TTC-35 moves off the TxDOT drawing board and onto the Blackland Prairie. And, he said, the Feds could kill it, though that's unlikely.

But the problems that drew the concept to this point - growth, money and highway capacity - won't be solved until TTC-35, or something very like it, is built.
If not here, then somewhere.

This story was published Wednesday, October 12, 2005. Copyright © 2005 The Cameron Herald. All rights reserved.

Thursday, September 1, 2005

The man behind the camera loved to tell stories

Mike Peck, The Camera Guy: December 16, 1956-August 30, 2005

by Richard & Tia Rae Stone

Note:

Whether via photographs or words, Mike Peck was a storyteller. The 48-year-old managing editor of The Cameron Herald believed strongly that his place was behind the camera and the pen, so it was only his wonderful habit of sharing his stories that enabled us to write this story. His story.

"I learned to tell stories in West Cameron," he said once. "When I was a kid, I'd go over there and sit and listen to the old men tell their stories. They told wonderful stories that I could listen to forever."

Mike parlayed that experience into a career chronicling the life of this town for The Cameron Herald. The good, the bad, the indifferent, the ducks and the giant cucumbers - it didn't matter, all eventually made their way in front of Mike's camera or earned a spot as the subject of one of his stories.

That career lasted 32 years. He died Tuesday morning at his home in Cameron after suffering a stroke.

"I love this job. I can't imagine doing anything else," Mike said with a grin after midnight one Wednesday morning. Those long weeks and late nights were just part of his job. But, it didn't really matter to Mike. "What other job lets you go to a football game one minute and then to see (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair the next?" he said. "It's about the high you get when you're working on something that might actually make people think. That's more powerful than money."

Even so, Mike wasn't without a sense of gallows humor regarding this job. "Another day in the box," he'd say, sometimes cheerfully, occasionally factiously.

But that box often galled him.

He believed that Cameron's story needed to be told accurately and thoroughly. And, he knew when a story or column he was writing would anger or frustrate someone. He even knew when a story might hurt someone. And, he would write and re-write and agonize over it. But it didn't stop him from telling the story and it never stopped him from telling the truth.

"I'm not sure many people understand what that meant to him," said childhood friend and former C.H. Yoe High head football coach Randy Sapp. "He went through a lot [of personal hardship] to be a newspaper guy in his home town. Most of what he went through came from people right here in Cameron, people who should have known better. He'd get phone calls and emails from people griping at him for the smallest things. It was tough on him, sometimes. But he stood up for what he believed and didn't mind writing about it, even when it made some people angry."

Mike recalled one time a mother reacted badly to his work at an accident scene.

"She jumped in front of me and started yelling," he said. "I wish people understood that we don't like taking [pictures at car accidents] but it's our job. Sometimes, telling those stories can help someone else."

Still, Mike never went out of his way to make people angry. Ideas meant something to him and he respected others who shared them, even when they didn't agree. And there was something in him that secretly enjoyed being stopped on the street or in the grocery store by people who wanted to talk.

During his career as a photographer and reporter Mike simply called 'em like he saw them. Sometimes he saw them like everyone else. Sometimes he didn't. "But, you always knew where he stood," said Sapp. "He wasn't wishy-washy."

"When I think about Mike, the thing I think about the most is the way that he touched everybody in the community," said Rob Reed. Reed worked as a reporter and announcer at KMIL for many years and, during that time, struck up a friendship with Mike. "He had such a passion for Cameron and the people who live there. Whatever he did or wrote, it had an impact on the community."

It had an impact on those two men as well. Mike wrote stories about both men and both still have copies of those stories easily accessible.

"He could really choke you up with a pen," said Reed. "He was that kind of a writer and probably one of the best friends I've ever had."

First photo was [bad]
Mike's newspaper career began while he was still in high school. In fact, the story of his first sale to The Cameron Herald includes all you really need to know about Mike Peck and his love for Cameron and Yoe sports.

"I sold my first picture ... when I was 16," Mike said. "I came in and said, 'Hey, I'm the junior photographer at Yoe High and I noticed you don't have a sports page and thought you might like some pictures every now and then.' And by the time I left, we'd struck a deal."

He said that first profitable picture was of a running back, George Whiteside, hurdling another player.

"I took it. It was [bad] but when I saw it in the newspaper, it was real and it was, 'wow,'" he said. "I still have that first page folded up somewhere at the house."

With that, he began selling shots to The Herald for $5-6 each.

While that may tell you a lot about Mike and this business of newspapering, it doesn't really explain it.

Born and raised in Cameron, he suffered from hepatitis when he was in middle school. In the hospital for weeks upon weeks, he said he and his family were cradled and comforted by the people here.

His wife, Kim, said that the doctors had given up on him. "They gathered the family in, one night, and explained that they thought he wouldn't make it until morning," she said.

But Mike fooled the doctors that time. He survived.

But, he wouldn't have kept up with everything had not the community pulled together to help him. The schools even made it possible for him to listen in on classes though he couldn't be there physically. "They installed a telephone in my room," he joked. "It was probably the first example of distance learning in Cameron."

Within days of Mike's leaving the hospital, his mother was killed after suffering an aneurysm at work. Again, the family found comfort and support in their hometown.

"I could have gone someplace else," he said once. "I've thought about it. But, when it comes down to it, Cameron is a special place and these people have given me so much. I don't think I could be happy."

The visual storyteller
Mike spent much of his youth watching movies. His father, Billy, worked for the post office but also held a night job as manager of the local movie theater. Those moving pictures and the stories told by those movies, probably kindled Peck's visual and storytelling talents before he even realized it.

And he didn't realize it, at first. He was a typical high school kid, struggling to meet obligations with increasingly long hair and an intensifying 16-year-old attitude. He wanted (and got) a motorcycle, then wrecked it, then rebuilt it. Got an old truck and rebuilt it. But, despite being directed toward these goals, he still lacked a real focus when he got a call from the journalism teacher, Barbara Burke, one summer.

"She put this little camera down in front of me and said, 'I want you to be our junior photographer next year,' " he remembered. "I told her, 'Hey you've got the wrong guy' and pushed it back at her."

But she insisted and he, finally, acquiesced and found his passion.

"I used to get out of football games, run home for a sandwich and go back up to the school. I just couldn't wait to see what was on that film," he said. "I guess I'd be up there until about 3 o'clock in the morning."

One day a man gave him an enlarger for his home.

"I'll bet I used 7,000 trash bags plugging up the holes in my grandma's garage to make a dark room," he remembered. "I didn't have running water out there. I stuck a hose through the wall and had to run out and around to turn it on and run," he made running motions, "out again to turn it off."

"And now at, it's just about the only thing I know how to do so it's like - better do it," he smiled.

Cameras, anyone?
To Mike, doing his job meant lugging his enormous camera bag everywhere. His passion for new camera gear - for electronics of any kind - is legend. "I've got 15 or 20 camera bodies in a closet at home," he said while scrolling through a website with the specs for the latest Cannon digital camera. He weighed that last camera purchase for a very long time and could cite even the most esoteric specs on the new Cannon 20D with little or no provocation.

"There's nothing like the smell of new electronics fresh out of the box," he'd say, inhaling deeply.

But, having the best camera he could afford was important to him. "I believe that if you don't take the time to catch that moment on film, it's completely gone forever and some things only happen once," he said.

And sometimes, Mike tried to tell those stories and take those pictures, even if it put him in harm's way.

Once, he was backing up to better frame a rodeo shot when he stepped into a posthole and badly twisted his ankle. Bill Cooke, from the Rockdale Reporter took a picture of him several days later catching pictures on the courthouse lawn, his swollen foot stretched out in front of him.

"Mike's a good one," Cooke wrote on the back of the photo he sent to then-publisher Frank Luecke.

Giddings ignites opinions
While Mike took his photography seriously, he never considered himself to be a good writer.

"When Jacquie and I arrived in Cameron, Mike was already an exceptional photographer and was desperately eager to become an exceptional reporter," said former Herald publisher Wayne Green. "He was like a sponge, in a way. He soaked up every useful piece of instruction you could offer him and he put it to good use. Mike, I think, went on to become a very, very good reporter. Not only for a small town, at just about any level. He was an asset to Cameron."

While Mike grew as a reporter and writer, he resisted writing anything that gave him the opportunity to express his own opinion ... until that infamous football game in Giddings.

As the story goes, Mike was on the Yoe sideline, minding his own business when he heard the PA system call for security. He turned to the side judge to find out what was up but, instead, found two members of Giddings Police Department ready to escort him from the field.

"They said that I was creating a disturbance," Mike remembered. "What, me?!"

"I thought that Giddings was way out of line," said Sapp. "I think they were just looking for something to get our mind off the game. He wasn't disrupting us at all. I thought it was a ploy on their part but it's a standing joke, now. It is in Giddings, too."

"I'd been trying to talk him into writing a column for some time," remembered Frank Shubert, the publisher at the time. "Then, he came back from that game and he was hot. He just sat down and wrote it, beginning to end. Then, when he was finished, I worried that we would have room for it, it was so long."

Kids at school
By anyone's count, Mike attended every Cameron Yoe football game from the day he drew his first paycheck as a freelance photographer through last season. In fact, last Friday's season opener was likely the first time since 1972 that the Cameron Yoemen played a football game without Mike Peck stalking the sidelines.

It is certain that, over the years, Mike knew every kid that donned a Yoe helmet, and most of those who didn't.

"He and Kim didn't have any kids," said Sapp, "but he had a bunch of kids at the high school and he helped to raise them all."

"You know if I had to do it all again, I'd line up to do it the same way," Mike said. "It's been so much fun. I look at high school kids. This year's valedictorian wasn't even born when I started to work here."

Mike served his community and this newspaper for 32 years, through three owners and five publishers. He's watched the paper go from twice weekly and back again, from lean times when he raced to the bank with his paycheck, to more stable ones.

And like his community supported him, he supported it, with his life and his energy, his stories and his pictures.

-30-

Funeral services
Family visitation will be Thursday from 6 - 8 p.m. at Marek-Burns-Laywell Funeral Home in Cameron.
Funeral Services will be Friday at 1 p.m. at the funeral home.
Burial will follow the funeral service in Oak Hill Cemetery.
The Cameron Herald will close at 11 a.m. on Friday and remain closed for the rest of the day.

Mike Peck: side bar
Over the years, Mike garnered a variety of press awards. He was even quite proud of many of them.

However, he coveted the state trophy for sports photography. After years of trying, someone else always won.

"Always a bridesmaid, never a bride," he'd say.

To make matters worse, one year, his cross-county rival at the Rockdale Reporter won that particular category with a rodeo photo.

"That's not really even sports," he said in dismay.

But, in 2004, Mike's material won the first place trophy in both sports and feature photography.

In the last few years, he'd won state and regional recognition for his sports coverage, news writing and a third place national trophy for humorous column writing.

Mike is survived by his father, Billy, Kim, his wife of 23-years, his Aunt Lois, his step-mom Melissa, two step-sisters, a variety of nieces and nephews, two cats, a computer, an iPod and more camera gear than you can shake a magic stick at.

In lieu of flowers, you may make a donation in his name to the Cameron ISD Scholarship Foundation.

We'll miss you, Mike. This place will never be the same. We're expecting you to have the cigarette boat fired up and ready to go!

This story was published in the Cameron Herald August 31, 2005.

Friday, August 12, 2005

THE RAGGED EDGE: Lighten up on the dress code

Okay, I'm going to rant for a few minutes. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I think I've just about had it with the CISD dress code. The following story may be exaggerated for effect but, if there is even the tiniest shred of truth to it, I give up.

According to some students (and at least one school employee), several girls here in Cameron were sent home from picture day last week because they had exposed their collarbones. Not their bare shoulders. Not their midriff (though cheerleaders seem to get away with ignoring that particular regulation). They got sent home because the collarbone below their neck was exposed. It is, they were told, a new part of the dress code.

The only response I could come up with was ???????.

Our district already has a reputation for draconian enforcement of a rather draconian dress code that seems to be re-interpreted every two or three months. I'd lay odds that we can trace at least part of our sharp decline in enrollment to this.

Last year, for example, our kids were banned from wearing hoodies (hooded sweatshirts), of all things, because the garment seemed to let some of the boys get around the stricture against baggy pants and un-tucked shirts.

What have we become, some kind of crazed fashion Nazis? Let's just wrap these kids up in shapeless, one-size-fits-all orange coveralls and call it done, shall we?

Let's consider those baggy pants for a moment. That particular garment sparked much of the silliness that now passes for a dress code at Cameron.

Some school trustees and parents don't like baggy pants but what they really, really dodn't like is the fact that some white kids have started wearing these pants. They are fashionable among young Hispanic and black men but we can't really have white kids wearing them, can we?

Listen, I don't much care for them, either. I think they look silly. You can't run in them and you can't climb into a pickup truck wearing them because the crotch hangs around your knees. But, that's no reason to ban them. In fact, a sharp lawyer might be able to make the case that banning this kind of clothing is discriminatory.

The fact is, folks didn't like long hair on guys back when I went to high school and wasted a lot of time trying to ban the custom. Sharp lawyers across the south tied school boards up in knots over that one.

On the other hand, school officials didn't seem to mind that most of the girls wore micro-mini dresses so short that they would be considered positively scandalous by today's standards.

Times change and fashions come and go. So what?

If you don't like baggy pants, don't wear them. If you really don't like baggy pants, don't let your kids wear them. But, friends, this is a fashion issue. It's probably even a cultural issue. It is not a school issue.

My mother-in-law, a veteran teacher with years of service teaching at inner city schools, once warned that it is very dangerous to challenge the creativity of teenagers. They have a lot more time - and motivation - to figure out ways to defeat school rules they consider inconsequential and ultimately meaningless than administrators have to figure out ways to enforce them.

We publish the Thorndale Champion so I'm occasionally on that campus and see pictures of their kids all the time. Barely half of them dress in a fashion that would meet the letter of our dress code. Yet, that district has been ranked by the Texas Education Agency as "recognized" for three consecutive years. The year before this incredible run, TISD was rated "exemplary."

When was the last time that CISD earned "recognized" status as a district? (Never.)

Thorndale has a pretty simple dress code and doesn't waste a whole lot of time or energy enforcing it. Here it is: Don't show underwear; don't wear ratty jeans, flip flops, tank tops or t-shirts that promote alcohol, drugs or tobacco. They don't like baggy pants either but don't get all bent out of shape about it as long as there's no visible underwear involved.

That's about it.

Violators don't get sent home; nor are they sent to some sort of punishment class. Instead, the principal makes the offender exchange his or her clothing for a horrid lime green t-shirt and a pair of ugly gray shorts. All it takes is one day in that outfit for a Thorndale student to see the light. The school has very, very few repeat offenders.

Some claim that a strict dress code, strictly enforced, instills discipline and teaches citizenship. This may be true, in the Marines or at a Catholic school or with a sane and consistent policy. I posit that aggressive enforcement of an unreasonable dress code that doesn't let kids learn about life by making poor fashion choices, or allow for cultural differences or differences in body type, creates as many discipline problems as it solves.

Enforcing this dress code is sapping our resources and instilling in our kids a sense of resentment and contempt for school rules. That's much more dangerous, in the long run, than the occasional bare midriff or un-tucked shirt.

Our school officials should worry less about what our kids are wearing and more - a whole lot more - about what they're learning.

This column was published Aug. 11, 2005 in the Cameron Herald.