By Laura Kestner, Associate Editor

 A public notice published in the DeLeon Free Press and the Comanche Chief, in January, has generated a great deal of conversation and speculation recently about the closing of a portion of CR 459 at Nabors' Lake.

The notice read, in part, "The Commissioners Court of Comanche County, Texas, provides this notice to the public of its intention to convene a public meeting to receive comment upon the adoption of a County Road Map including each road in which the County claims the continued existence of a public interest and a right of access and egress for maintenance of an existing County Road. The roads in which the County claims a public interest have been maintained for many years, beginning sometime prior to 1981, have previously been listed in a notice included in the 2005-06 Ad Valorem Tax Statement. A proposed County Road Map depicting each road in which the County claims a public interest is available for inspection by the public at the office of the County Judge, beginning December 2, 2005."

The notice went on to read that a public hearing would be conducted on March 2, 2006. The last line reads, "By way of this procedure, the County makes no claim affecting title, acreage, or ownership of the land, but seeks merely to establish and document the right of the County to continue maintenance of the existing county road in its present location and dimension."

Sallie Hale and Margaret Rodgers are two lake residents who say they want the road across Nabors' Lake dam "to stay exactly like it's been" and they're afraid that recent action taken by other lake lot owners, not the County Commissioners, may jeopardize that.

"The lake has been there since 1947," Rodgers said. "Lee Nabors built the lake, the dam, the spillway, and he built the road, so that people could get from 587 to the lake and choose their lots. He intended for it to be a public road, for people to be able to get up to the lake. And it connects to Highway 6.

"Some of the officers of Nabors' Lake Development Corporation, (all of whom are from the metroplex) filed a protest on March 2, at the County Commissioners meeting," Rodgers said, "and they requested to have the road across the dam be designated as a private road. They took it upon themselves to file the protest before talking to anyone else. Then the officers called a meeting, on the 25th of March, of all the lot owners, and they told us that the County Attorney told the Commissioners not to put their equipment across that dam, because of the liability. But, that's if it is made a private road. These members of the corporation told us that it was a done deal, that the County was not going to come across there any more; they were not going to grade our road anymore. So they asked us to vote on closing the section of the road from the south side of the dam across the spillway to the north side. And because of the way they presented it, everybody at that meeting said, 'okay, let's do it' but it was very misleading."

Hale likened the meeting to a high-pressure time-share sales pitch.

"And within 30 minutes they took the vote," Rodgers added. "We got their opinion, but very few facts."

Only later did some of the members began to have doubts.

"When we got home," Rodgers said, "we began to wonder 'what have we done', what is the purpose of this. And we realized, we're going to have to maintain this road. The County has always maintained it before."

"They didn¹t present us with any cost estimates for maintenance on the road," Hale said. She also noted that information about closing the road was not listed on the agenda for the meeting, as such, but was instead referred to as "in reference to a course of action that needs to be taken concerning the road that goes around Nabors' Lake and is marked by the county as CR 459."

According to Hale, other information presented at the meeting was also misleading, including this printed item, "In the last several weeks, the Comanche County Commissioners have posted a notice in the local papers on their intentions on claiming several county roads in the county as property of the county. These roads are private roads and there is a possibility that the roads will become county property if protest is not filed. This does include the road that starts at Sipe Springs Hwy and leads to the lake, crosses the dam and continues north to the Dabney farm. This road has been marked as CR 459 for 911 purposes, but is and always has been a private road."

"That¹s just not true," Rodgers said, "From Sipe Springs to the south side of the dam has never been a private road. We have an affidavit from Mr. Nabors' son Charles, who helped his father build that road, and he said it was never his intention to close that for a private road."

Rodgers said she talked to the president of NLDC for "about an hour" one evening, trying to convince him to drop the protest, but "got absolutely nowhere."

According to Rodgers and Hale there are only a few full-time residents at the lake.

"There are six families who live there on a permanent basis," Rodgers said. "Of course, there are several who come out almost every weekend." She said the rest come out less often.

"The lake itself is private," Rodgers said. "It's not open to the public. But the road from 587 all the way through to Highway 6, has always been an open road. The county, I guess you could say, has egress access, and has had since 1947. And of course the lake lot owners are not the only ones who use that road. There are farmers, who use it.

"They believe that the majority of lake lot owners share their opinion that the road should remain open to the public.

"I think it would be safe to say, because of the proxies we have received, that a majority of the lake lot owners do not want the road to be closed," Rodgers said. "It would be a major project. The only way to close it would be to put up gates. They would have to, I guess, be electronic gates, where you'd have to have keypads and that kind of thing. It would certainly be an inconvenience if nothing else." There has been some discussion of moving the mailboxes down by Hwy 587, if gates are erected.

"Which means that we'd have to drive down there every day to get our mail," Rodgers said. "Right now, the people who live there are mobile, but we're not getting any younger. So we're looking not just for today, but for the future."

Rodgers pointed out that a gated community would also make it difficult for emergency workers to gain access to lake lot residents, and that deliveries -- such as propane, would be much more involved.

Hale noted that the cost of installing the gates could be exorbitant.

"The bid we got on a gate was over $4,000" Hale said, "and they're talking about needing two gates, one at each end of the dam."

"It would just be highly inconvenient," Rodgers said, "to close that off."

Since Rodgers had no luck convincing the president of NLDC, Roger Murphey, to drop the protest, she and Hale took matters into their own hands.

"We sent a letter to all the lot owners," Rodgers said, "and enclosed a copy of the proxy. And we didn't ask them to take our side. We said, 'whatever you feel' and we tried to present all the facts."

According to County Commissioner Garry Steele, the situation is already out of the Commissioner's hands.

"No decision was made at that March 2 meeting," Steele said, "none whatsoever. It was simply a scheduled hearing for protests, as required by state law. Any valid protests were then referred to a jury of view, which will convene on April 26, and after they hear both sides, the pros and the cons, of the existing road pertaining to maintenance, they will make a decision. Once a decision is reached, it is binding on the County only, the protesting parties have two years to take it to District Court."

Steele said the County will abide by whatever decision the jury of view reaches, and that they have no objection to maintaining the road as always. "Basically, if no one had protested," Steele said, "things would still be going on like they were six months ago."

Rodgers wants it clear that they'll be presenting more than their own opinions to the jury of view. "We're not only representing lake lot owners," Rodgers said, "we're representing more than 50 people (by proxy) from the Comanche County area."

Rodgers and Hale acknowledge that there is some confusion associated with this issue.

"I don't think the County's ever going to maintain the dam," Hale said.

"But that's really not what we want anyway," Rodgers said.

"No, we want them to maintain from the road up to the dam, we want to maintain the dam ourselves," Hale said.

"Just like we always have," Rodgers added. "We want it to remain just like it is."

Whatever the outcome, Rodgers and Hale believe it was handled poorly from the start.

"Our main concern from that lot owner's meeting, is that we would have preferred that a vote had not been taken that day, that we would have been given an opportunity to learn all the facts, and then make an informed decision. That was our main objection to what happened at the meeting."

Rodgers urges anyone interested or affected by the outcome of this issue to be present when the jury of view convenes, Wednesday, April 26, at 10:00 a.m. at the Comanche County Courthouse.