(Seguin) — A business endeavor designed to spread some holiday cheer to families in Guadalupe County is doing anything but bringing that cheer to its new Guadalupe County neighbors.
Guadalupe County Commissioners on Tuesday heard from a large group of residents who protested the relocation of Northern Lights, a holiday lights spectacle to Guadalupe County. The comments were made prior to the court’s agreed upon consensus to not move forward with a public hearing on whether signage or other traffic related safety measures needed to be enforced in and around the operation of Northern Lights at 3171 Church Road.
Much of the opposition was tailored around the traffic hazards that this group of neighbors believed that this light show would create and its desire to be provided with the proper signage so that driveways and other thoroughfares would not be impacted around their homes. Many disputed the findings by an engineering firm hired by the owner and operator Donovan Dove and others felt the proposed plan to handle the numerous vehicles slated to make their way into the holiday lights display was just not accurate. Not having the proper room for emergency vehicles on an already narrow roadway was also a key factor in much of the opposition. One individual said it was also unfair to have to navigate family over for the holidays and ensure their safety to their home. Others said of course, the engineering firm paid for by Dove would warrant a plan to put the Northern Lights display in motion.
At the end of the comments, however, Guadalupe County Judge Kyle Kutscher says it was the consensus of the court to not mandate signs or other traffic related safety measures simply because it’s never been experienced before.
“The biggest challenge with this situation really is a myriad of assumptions, right? From the engineering standpoint –– that’s all an engineer’s doing –– it’s an educated person who works in the field that’s making a lot of assumptions based on information they have. Homeowners are doing the same thing with their concerns of what they know on how the normal traffic patterns work –– their normal interactions with each other as neighbors, and then bringing in a new element and a lot of other people, and then using the numbers they believe are going to be out there and saying, ‘this is going to be horrible and dangerous.’ Both are right, and both are probably a little bit wrong in this situation. The only thing I know is all of us don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Mr. Dove doesn’t know. The homeowners don’t know, and that’s what makes this decision so difficult because you’re trying to anticipate realistically what are we going to see out there. We don’t want to sit up here and make a decision knowingly letting an unsafe situation happen, or problem, go on. But again, we can’t be the ones who delegate and get in the middle of every single civil-type relationship and issue between landowners, either,” said Kutscher.
In deciding to move forward without a public hearing, Kutscher did apologize to the residents. He says while he understands the impact, it just doesn’t require enforcement just yet.
“I want to apologize to the landowners. I made a comment last court, and I wasn’t trying to be directive toward ya’ll, stating that just because five people wanted it, that shouldn’t be a reason we do it. What I was trying to say is that we truly, as a county and as a court, have to have a consistent approach in how we apply our authority when we implement rules for everybody. So if we do this for you just because some people were requesting it early on without any information and we have the next group come up in a different situation and do that, are we going to do that every time or are we going to be able to hold up something and say ‘this is why we did it, this is unsafe nature of it, and it met these metrics, and this is how we are going to apply it safely across the board for everybody.’ I just didn’t say it very well the first time, and I’m sorry for that,” said Kutscher.
One of the debated issues Kutscher says involved law enforcement and how or would it be able to enforce any traffic violation that comes up.
Agreeing to the court’s consensus was Guadalupe County Sheriff Arnold Zwicke. Zwicke says no matter what direction it decided on, deputies would be there to support it.
“My recommendation right now would not to put the signs up. Let’s see what the problem is going to be just like in the other places that we’ve had problems in the last 22 years that we dealt with. I’ve expressed my concern to Mr. Dove that his plan is not going to work and that we would enforce the traffic problem when it happens but right now, we’d be calling the fire department when there is no fire,” said Zwicke.
Also lending its support for the county’s decision was County Engineer Clay Forister.
“Part of that, we’ve required a traffic control plan due to the concerns that the owner had intended to queue traffic back onto public roads. There is now a traffic control plan, developed, signed, and sealed by a professional engineer in the state of Texas who takes responsibility for this approach. They have shown their math to –– except for the busiest times to have sufficient queueing on site to hold the traffic all on the property and not backup onto Church Rd. They also have a busy season where there is more traffic and they’re proposing as a mitigation measure to have an online ticketing process to where they schedule when people show up,” said Forister.
Forister says based on the best information he has as the county’s engineer, he can not identify a traffic situation on Church Road today. He says at this time, he too couldn’t recommend no parking signs or no parking zones for a problem that an engineer says doesn’t exist.
“We have a traffic control plan that is going to deter –– nothing can prevent bad driving –– but deter traffic from coming south on 725, and cutting down either Church Rd, southbound, or Warneke Road southbound. Instead, it is going to direct traffic all the way around to FM 467. So, this entire concept that has been proposed is predicated on entering traffic approaching from the south on Church Rd. And we have an engineer that has developed a signing and traffic control plan that I would say is appropriate to that outcome. These are signs that are directing traffic down to FM 467,” said Forister.
On hand to defend his quest to host the lighting display on his property was Dove. Dove says despite his efforts, he feels attacked for continuing a longtime tradition during the holiday season. He says recent accusations about what goes on at his property overnight and throughout the day is only an attempt to intentionally paint his character in a negative way. Some of the accusations include having nighttime and early morning construction on this property. Other residents claim to have seen some of his employees (which he says he won’t have until September) driving down the roadway at high rates of speeds.
“Here’s what I know to be true. I’ve taken input from multiple county officials. I’ve listened to the concerns of local citizens and consulted with a professional civil engineer. The result has been multiple modifications to my traffic control plan that come with a hefty price tag for my business, especially in its first year of operation. But doing so demonstrated my willingness to work with the county and the local to address concerns and find solutions to keep them from becoming real problems. Our new plan allows staging of a minimum of 96 vehicles at a time on my property. It also is adaptable to changes in traffic numbers through the use of an online only time ticketing system for the 10 days leading up to Christmas that will stagger the arrival of our customers by making them show up during a 30-minute window. For example, our booth can process up to 120 cars in a 30-minute window. We can limit online sales to 100 available tickets per half hour window on busier nights and weekends. This allows a buffer of 20 cars in case a few cars show up outside their assigned time slot. This was a concession that I personally asked the professional engineer to add to the traffic control plan against his own advisement to not include it because it would limit my income and I would be required to use it if he wrote it into the plan,” said Dove.
Dove goes on to address the safety factors that exist.
“In the interest of health and safety, Commissioner (Judy) Cope, the plan also includes a designated fire lane for emergency vehicles to access my property and bypass all staged traffic. And it directs incoming to stay mostly on the farm-to-market roads lessening the traffic impact to Church Rd, Warneke Rd, and Sterling Rd. Judge Kutscher, during the court session on July 12, in regards to the no parking signs, you said, ‘If we’re going to put up signs, it should be for the right reasons.’ You also said it needs to be based on real information and data. I cannot agree with you more on that. We should not be considering putting up ‘no parking’ signs just because a few citizens say, ‘we need the signs to stop him.’ We also should not be considering putting up signs because a few people with no level of expertise say my traffic control plan won’t work. When it comes to traffic control plans, we trust the expert opinions of professional engineers in the field of civil engineering who base their work off of real information and data as well as projections and results from past experiences in their careers,” said Dove.
The Christmas Light Show which has been compared to Santa’s Ranch in Comal County begins the day after Thanksgiving and runs through New Year’s Day. For the last 7 years, the free light show was held at Dove’s home in New Braunfels. The new location will operate along 1.2 miles of road on a 25-acre property that sits on the southern portion of the county.