Rockwall County auditor: $2.9M available in road bond fund; court agrees to needs assessment and to finalize project contracts

Lisa Constant Wiley, Rockwall County auditor, told the Commissioners Court on Feb. 25 that about $2.9 million in cash remains available in the county—s road bond fund after accounting for encumbered, contracted and assigned projects, interest earnings and outstanding obligations.

Wiley summarized the county—s bond authorizations and issuances and reviewed specific encumbrances, assigned projects and items that her office and county consultants say need additional funding before contracts can be finalized. She urged the court to treat the numbers on her spreadsheet as the best available accounting of funds and encumbrances.

The presentation matters because the court and its road consortium are considering how to use remaining bond cash, whether to accelerate projects, and how to balance leveraging TxDOT partnerships with doing county-controlled work. Commissioners and consultants agreed to several next steps, including finishing negotiations on pending engineering contracts, circulating an electronic spreadsheet of the bond accounts, and asking the consortium to perform a countywide needs-based assessment that will produce prioritized candidate projects for the available funds.

Wiley reviewed the three voter bond authorizations that underlie the county—s road funding: the 2004 authorization ($17,250,000), the 2008 authorization ($100,000,000) and the 2021 authorization ($150,000,000). She said the county has issued bonds from the 2008 authorization and that the 2021 authorization remains an available issuance authority (no bonds had been sold from that 2021 authorization as of the meeting). She also reviewed a separate jail bond issuance approved by voters in November 2018 and sold in 2020 for $50,270,000; Wiley…