News

The Wimberley City Council and City Administrator Don Ferguson will soon be parting ways. The City Council Thursday night voted 4-1 to approve an amended employment agreement with the City Administrator with a term of ninety days.

“Change is inevitable,” said Mayor McCullough. “While the City Council feels Mr. Ferguson has done an outstanding job managing our city over the years, the Council, at this time, is interested in a change in direction and leadership.”

Ferguson has served as City Administrator for the past ten years, leading a staff of approximately twenty full-time and part-time employees. He has worked for four mayors and numerous city councils while in Wimberley.

The financial comparison of Wimberley’s wastewater options is on the table – kind of.

The subcommittee of the Wimberley City Council that met with Aqua Texas presented a side-by-side comparison of the costs, along with a list of pros and cons, for the city’s proposed wastewater treatment facility versus options discussed with Aqua Texas. It was stated, however, that the costs presented are the current “best estimates” and that the numbers will need to be updated once contractors have bid on the project. (Editor’s Note: The project can’t go out for bid until the Texas Water Development Board approves the design. The city submitted the design to the TWDB in December. Once the project’s design is approved, it will take 30 to 45 days before bids are finalized.)

Burnet County Judge James Oakley will remain on the Pedernales Electric Cooperative Board of Directors, but he must relinquish his vice presidency.

PEC directors voted 6-0 Tuesday, Jan. 17, to replace Oakley as vice president of the organization “due to the distraction associated with and stemming from” a November 2016 Facebook post he made which gained national notoriety.

In accepting the recommendation of a PEC Complaint Committee, the board also issued a warning to Oakley that “as long as he remains on the PEC Board, to carefully and thoughtfully guard his public and personal actions,” but did not remove Oakley from the PEC Board of Directors.

On average, Wimberley Fire and Rescue responds to more than one call a day, because it does so much more than just deal with fires.

During the department’s annual awards banquet last week, Fire Chief Carroll Czichos went over the call list for last year. In 2016, there were 396 calls for WFR with 12 of those being structure fires. Those structure fires resulted in $126,000 in loss. There were seven grass fires.

Beyond responding to fires, there were 91 vehicle accidents that the fire department assisted with in 2016. There were also five searches, in which all of the people lost were found, and two water rescues. There was also one elevator rescue and one large animal rescue. 

Not every call turns out to need the fire department though. Last year 92 calls were canceled after the fire department began to respond.

The votes have been tallied and the winners notified. The Wimberley Valley Chamber of Commerce has named the Wimberley Pharmacy as the 2016 Business of the Year and EmilyAnn Theatre and Gardens as the 2016 Non-Profit of the Year.

Owned by John and Ela Anderson, the Wimberley Pharmacy has been operating in Wimberley since 2001, but John has been a pharmacist in the town dating back to the early 1990s.

“This is the best kind of recognition you can have when our fellow business leaders recognize you as doing and outstanding job,” John Anderson said. 

 “I have to thank my team, because it is a team effort to run a business like that.”

Anderson said that he believes an increased focus on customer service is what helped the business reach the point of recognition.

The Wimberley City Council deliberated for nearly two hours about the job of City Administrator Don Ferguson, but they didn’t say much when the group came back from executive session behind closed doors.

“On advice of city legal council, we are unable to comment on any ongoing personnel action,” Mayor Mac McCullough said. “There will be no further action at this time and no public comment will be heard.”

The agenda item said the council would deliberate the “appointment, employment, reassignment or duties of” Ferguson.  The city’s attorney said that, because no action was taken when the council came out of executive session, nothing changed in regards to Ferguson’s contract.

Ferguson was originally hired in the summer of 2006.

According to a city official, his position is typically reviewed in April of each year but his contact runs through December. 

The Dripping Springs teen that allegedly used a hammer and screwdriver to attack his mother before stealing her car has been arrested in Illinois. William Michael Bryars, 17, was arrested early Friday after a chase involving local police and U.S. Marshals. 

“Bryars attempted to evade the officers and subsequently wrecked the vehicle he was driving,” Hays County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Dennis Gutierrez said in a press release. “He sustained minor injuries during the collision and was transported at a local hospital for treatment.”

Bryars hit a pole in the crash in Alton, Illinois a small town just north of St. Louis, Missouri. The Hays County Sheriff’s Office believed Bryars may have been on his way to Missouri based on threats he allegedly made to other family members. 

Multiple burglary and trespassing incidents in Wimberley have led local authorities to ask for the public’s help.

Two people “of interest” were captured by a game camera on River Road on December 27.

 “We want to identify who they are to see if they saw any suspicious people,” Lieutenant Dennis Gutierrez said.  “We want to see if they know anything about the burglaries and trespassings that have been occurring.”

Gutierrez said that there have been a “handful” of cases over the last “few weeks” in the River Road and Flite Acres areas. Only homes have been burglarized, and Gutierrez said the sheriff’s department did not wish to release any information about what was stolen at this time.

Two Pedernales Electric Cooperative directors are seeking a permanent injunction against the rest of the board and the Johnson City-based cooperative as a whole to prevent implementation of single-member districts this year.

Directors Cristi Clement of Burnet County and Kathy Scanlon of Travis County have been joined by Burnet County resident Thomas Mitchell in the lawsuit, which was filed Dec. 29 in Hays County District Court.

Last August, the PEC board voted 5-2 to create single-member districts in which only members who live within a district may vote for the director from that district. They also created a different quorum requirement for election of directors than that required for the annual PEC meeting, which is when director elections have traditionally taken place.

The Hotel Occupancy Tax has been set to zero, but it has not gone away.

The Wimberley City Council voted to change the HOT rate from five percent to zero percent during the last meeting at the behest of hoteliers and the HOT committee. The committee voted 6-1 in favor of setting the rate at zero percent.

As of last week, the HOT fund reached $266,000 with the expectation that the fund will grow to $300,000 by the end of January. So far the committee has only distributed around $30,000 in HOT funding that has been used.

“This is not an attempt to kill the tax,” HOT Committee Chair Mark Bursiel said. “We are not killing it or getting rid of it. We simply want to take it to zero at this time. We have over collected.”