Entities to join efforts for high school lighting

Jacksboro ISD, the Jacksboro City Council, the Jack County Commissioners Court and Faith Community Hospital are banding together in hopes of getting lights placed in front of the Jacksboro High School on U.S. 281.

During the Feb. 24 city council meeting, City Manager Mike Smith said he has been putting together letters with the other entities to send to the Texas Department of Transportation.

“We originally has thought about just doing a single letter with everybody’s signature from all four entities,” Smith said. “(Jacksboro ISD Superintendent Dwain) Milam, actually made the recommendation that why don’t we all four send a different letter from a perspective and stick them all in the same envelope.”

He added Jack County Judge Keith Umphress would be willing to hand deliver the letters if necessary.

“The goal here is to try and get some support from the state to put some street lights really from about the hospital out to the edge of town going North,” Smith said.

The city manager added a previous request for lighting in August was denied by TxDOT because there were not enough wrecks or deaths in the area. Jacksboro Police Chief Scott Haynes said if basing it off crash data then they could not justify any lighting because there are not many wrecks in city limits.

“Chief Haynes went out about five o’clock in the morning and started at the city limit sign coming into town and filmed it the whole way actually turned his lights off and you could not see at all,” Smith said. “We sent that to TxDOT, I gave them that footage and that did not sway them one bit.”

He said they are also worried about speeding in the area and are working on gathering data on tickets issued in the area.

“Coming in to town from that area at night, it’s dark, well the speed limit is 45 all of sudden, well it’s dark so it doesn’t register,” Councilman Craig Fenter said. “If it’s lit up people will be like ‘well, I’m in town.’ I think it would be more of subconscious registering that I really do need to slow down.”

Smith said the letters will also highlight how two overpasses are being put in Jack County due to death numbers finally hitting the number necessary and how they hope that will not be the case for the area which is a school zone which has pedestrian traffic including during sporting events.

“The (crossing guard) should have a lit (stop sign) because I bought them one,” Haynes said. “It is really not in our responsibility, but I identified that as a risk. We knew we weren’t going to be able to put lights there, so we mitigated risk. That was the next thing was that I bought them a sign that the LCD was good for a mile’s visibility.”

The lighting was set to be a topic of discussion during the Jacksboro City Council’s March 9 meeting before it was cancelled.