News

The Cypress Creek Watershed Protection Plan looks to bring hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Wimberley Valley to help protect the local watershed, but poor wording in the plan is currently holding it up.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality have already approved the plan. Hays County, the city of Wimberley and the city of Woodcreek have all previously passed resolutions supporting the initiative. 

But depending on interpretation, the plan may require the cities to go far above and beyond anything expected, and some Woodcreek City Councilmembers see it as a sticking point. 

Habitat President Jerry Moore has announced that Saturday, February 20, 2016 will be the BIG BUILD date. Community volunteers age 16 years and over are welcome to help build the home. Come and help, and have one of the best days of your life. 

In prior years as many as sixty community volunteers came together and worked in teams supervised by experienced builders to assemble the stacks of lumber into the wall sections and then raise them into place. For many volunteers this was their first experience to help build a new home.   

“Volunteers from throughout the community, church groups, business groups, and anyone who wants to swing a hammer, all are welcome,” Habitat Building Committee Chair Bill Tarwater said.  

The Fischer Store Road Bridge will be open to traffic much earlier than initially expected and the public is invited to a ribbon-cutting ceremony February 26. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and members of the TxDOT Board of Commissioners are expected to be among those in attendance.

“Thanks to our partnership with TxDOT and help from state and local officials, we were able to start planning the bridge replacement on Monday, Memorial Day, following the devastating 2015 flood that demolished the bridge,” Conley said. “The loss of the bridge cut off an essential part of the County’s transportation network, causing public safety and quality of life issues for hundreds of families in southwestern Hays County.” Residents who needed to travel to or from Wimberley, Dripping Springs or Austin had a one-way detour between ranging from 40 to 50 miles.

On a beautiful Friday morning in February Precinct 3 Commissioner Will Conley and Precinct 4 Commissioner Ray Whisenant helped TreeFolks kick off the reforestation of the Blanco River banks at Five Mile Dam Parks by planting native tree species where many were lost due to floods in 2015. They were joined by local and Texas Conservation Corps volunteers.

By accelerating the natural regeneration of plants along the river banks, the reforestation effort will aid in providing clean air and water, shading and stabilizing the river’s edges, and potentially slowing down future floods. 

The Wimberley VFW was broken into last Friday, though according to those with the VFW, nothing was stolen. 

It appears that whomever broke in was trying to get money out of the ATM machine, though they did not succeed. 

The damage done to the VFW included a hole in the wall, broken doors and a busted light fixture. There was no immediate estimate on the cost of the damage. 

Friday night Bingo was canceled due to the break-in, but it will be back this Friday.

Due to President’s Day on Monday, the Hays County Sheriff’s Public Information Office was unable to assist with information on the case.

Shinyribs is the continuation of Kevin Russell’s musical journey which began in Beaumont,TX when, at 14, he found his father’s guitar under his bed, along with a sewing machine, a billy club and a box of comic books. Luckily he chose the guitar. Following his family’s oil boom and bust migratory path he landed in Shreveport,LA where he formed his first band. Picket Line Coyotes were a Husker Du meets Elvis Costello hybrid that lived and died between the “Arklatexabamassippi” borders much like their unfortunate animal namesake. That’s what took him to Austin where The Gourds were born from those Coyote ashes. That storied band of pumpkins came to an end after 18 years of good times and hard travelin’.  And from that point on Russell has been riding high on the Shinyribs river of country-soul, swamp-funk and tickle. A Shinyribs show is an exaltation of spirit.

Residents in the back of Woodcreek North woke up to a bit of a surprise on Sunday morning finding a car floating in a retention pond at the back of the subdivision. 

It turns out that the car had been stolen from a nearby home the night before.

“Upon arrival, deputies observed a red sports utility vehicle with the windows down and unoccupied sitting in the middle of the retention pond submerged in water almost to the windows,” Hays County Sheriff’s Deputy Stephen Traeger said in an email to the Wimberley View.

The Wimberley Fire Department was called out to use their boat to get closer to the car. The fire department was able to confirm that the vehicle was unoccupied. 

Authorities believe the car was stolen between 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 29 and 7 a.m. Jan. 30 before being crashed into the pond. 

With the roll of the dice and a flip of the cards, Wimberley’s Knights of Columbus raised more than $12,000 for the Warriors and Family Center during Casino Night last Friday at the Wimberley Community Center.

“The event went well, and in some ways I think it was the best,” Mike Steinert, co-char of the event for the Knights of Columbus, said. “We had more prizes, and if you could measure it by the cheering and the laughing it was hugely successful. People have already asked about buying tickets for next year.”

There were more than 250 people in attendance and over 50 prizes with values ranging from $25 to $300 each. 

(Editor’s Note: This article was written by the University of Delaware about their students who are working on restoring photos from Wimberley’s flood.)

Suffice it to say that no one recommends putting treasured photographs – or anything of value, really – into raging floodwaters, filled as they are with whatever has been swept along in the current.

But many of the photographs spread out on tables in a workshop at the Winterthur Museum Research Building this month went through that kind of abuse during deadly flash floods that swept homes off their foundations, damaged bridges and roads, and cut a swath of destruction throughout Texas and Oklahoma during the 2015 Memorial Day weekend.

Looking good and doing good

Chili of all types along with choices of cupcakes like Cloud Nine, and Mint Chocolate Chip were on display and more importantly ready to eat at the Katherine Ann Porter Second Annual Chili Cookoff and Cupcake Wars.

The fundraiser benefits the Dragon Initiative Program, which is used for a spring field trip. The kids, parents and friends were all excited as the smells of the chili and the tasty cupcakes produced smiles on everybody.

There were 20 entrants for the Chili Cookoff and 23 from the community to enter cupcakes. Teams, businesses and individuals from other schools even entered. The judges were from Sugar Shack and the Leaning Pear. The winner of the Cupcake Wars now has the cupcake recipe featured for a month at the Sugar Shack.

The top winners for the Chili Cookoff were: