Guidelines aim to protect life and property
Proposed changes to the county’s flood-damage prevention order aimed at protecting life and property include new provisions for manufactured homes, campgrounds and more, officials said.
Other alterations aim to ensure property owners are not completely stripped of their right to build in areas threatened by storm runoff, Kendall County commissioners heard Wednesday.
County Engineer Mary Ellen Schulle appeared before Commissioners Court Nov. 12 and outlined the developments, focusing on rental communities in a flood plain.
Next, a public hearing will be set by commissioners before voting. A date has not been announced.
Still on the minds of commissioners and others is the catastrophic events of July Fourth when rains caused the Guadalupe River to swell past its banks starting in Kerr County. The flooding subsequently claimed more than 130 lives.
“The flood-damage prevention order is just another step to provide more safety,” said Precinct 4 Commissioner Chad Capenter. “We had no loss of life in Kendall County. That was because of the decisions that were made by previous courts. But some of the tweaking we need to do needs to allow the property owners their rights.”
The properties in question are not those along the Guadalupe River.
“For anyone thinking we’re going to grant someone the ability to build in the floodway after what we just saw, that’s not what we’re talking about, not the Guadalupe,” Carpenter said.
A major change to the order adds RV parks and campgrounds to the definition of a manufactured home “so that those types of overnight stays in the flood plain are prohibited, so that we don’t have loss of life during flood events,” Schulle said.
The proposed order prohibits manufactured-home parks or subdivisions in a zone prone to rising storm water. Commercial or organized tent campgrounds will also be barred within the special flood hazard.
“ There are lots of waterways, creeks, that can rise,” the commissioner added. “Current rules forbid a landowner from doing anything on their property even if it’s engineered and designed in a way that’s not going to float away.”
The flood-damage prevention order contains language distinguishing between camping on private property and an organized campg round, removing private property owners from the “no-camping” prohibition.
Another change deals with proposed subdivision layout.
The new order would specify that landowners or developers creating a new subdivision need to declare at least 1 acre of a property outside the flood plain.
“If you have a smaller lot size that is less than 1 acre ... that lot has to be outside the flood plain,” Schulle said. “If you have a 10-acre lot, at least 1 acre would need to be outside the flood plain.”
A third modification allows property owners who once had structures on their lots years ago to rebuild there, if they can provide evidence of pre-existing development.
“You have situations where your constituents can’t build on their property anymore,” Schulle said. “This is a potential rule change: if you had a structure that can be documented through appraisal district records or a previous permit through our offices ... you would be able to go ahead and reconstruct a building on that property.”
Commissioners tended to agree, acknowledging the rights of landowners to use property as they choose.
Precinct 3 Commissioner Richard Chapman said he backed most of the provisions discussed in the presentation.
“I don’t want to make many changes after what we just went through,” Chapman said. “Our rules do work, and they were proven to work. Minor changes, I could support; anything major, I could not support.”
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