HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) — Speed bumps installed by a group of west Harris County neighborhood residents were removed by Precinct 4 after being deemed unpermitted.
Residents told ABC13 they installed the speed bumps to slow down drivers who zoomed through their neighborhood.
The removal confused residents who claimed their deeds and property records showed the road was private, but ABC13 has been told that’s not true.
“Call after call after call…I’ve worked on it for 6 years,” Beverly Wolfe, who lives on Eula Morgan Road, said.
Beverly Wolfe has only ever wanted what’s best for her community. She explained that her efforts began as a plea to the county for help with road maintenance, but it was met with a roadblock.
“Frustrating” is how Wolfe describes the communication.
“They can’t touch our property because it’s private. This road is private, we can’t dig out the ditches because it is private. You need to call such and such,” Wolfe said.
Wolfe gave ABC13 an array of emails that appeared to be between her and Harris County officials dating back from 2019 all the way up to 2022.
In one of them, a person from the engineering department writes, “Eula Morgan Road shows to be an unrecorded subdivision with property owners owning up to the street centerline….it goes on to say the maintenance of the road’s drainage is responsibility of the individual property owners.”
In 2023, Michelle Burns said the county came in unannounced and re-paved Eula Morgan Road.
She and Wolfe’s neighborhood then became a popular cut-through for people coming from Sunterra and other neighborhoods off Clay Road.
She said they installed their own speed bumps because the speeding was getting out of hand.
“We got an email stating our road is now public,” Burns said. “On Friday, we got a letter at 10:30 saying our speed bumps would be taken out.”
When ABC13 inquired about ownership on Tuesday, we were told by Precinct 4 that they needed a day to track down the information.
They now tell ABC13 that the 0.5-mile section of Eula Morgan Road became county property during a June 2023 commissioners’ court meeting, which aligns with when they came in and paved it.
While Eula Morgan Road wasn’t specifically mentioned in any of the agendas from June 2023, they did vote to approve funding to repair “orphan” roads in each precinct.
“No warning saying ‘Hey, we are going to do this,'” Wolfe said.
In their email to residents, Precinct 4 acknowledged the speeding problem and said they performed a traffic study.
It indicated the area may be a candidate for “traffic calming measures” and they’ve requested another study.
Wolfe takes issue with the last line, which states their purpose in all this is to safeguard the community.
“Whose community? We are the ones who deal with this every day,” Wolfe said. “For 20-plus years, they wouldn’t touch us.”
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