One of the reasons we're here at this meeting is just to make sure what all this stuff for
Texas Department of Transportation is that's actually doing the houses, businesses, and
what's actually going to be done, what payments are going to be taken care of, what the actual
meanings of some of the abbreviations out here, we're confused about it all. Don't
really understand what it is, how they're going to do it, when they're going to do it.
We don't know if someone will walk up to us and say, okay, your house is being taken
in a minute in the domain and we won't have anything by tomorrow.
But that's why they would need it all explained to us.
This is a family business that started here in Temple in 1896. My great-grandfather moved
here to Temple from Decatur. They moved to this location from downtown Temple just after
World War II. The highway then was a divided boulevard like on Avenue G and Avenue H where
there was two lanes northbound and two lanes southbound with a large grass median in the
middle.
They did the survey about two months ago.
We started putting our heads together to consider what we were going to do, whether we were
going to try to move back or move to a different location. The location here would be ideal,
but the problem is to survive the four or five years of construction until they get
complete and we have free access to our property and our customers have access to the property.
So we may try to lease or buy a showroom somewhere in the neighborhood away from the construction
zone, but we're not sure even what they're going to be able to offer us for the property
they're going to take or the value of this older building. So everything's just kind
of up in the air until we get some concrete proposals from the state.
This house has always been here for a fissure. I believe it was near the first of September,
around September the 9th when I got the letter telling me that I could expect the appraiser
from Textot to come visit me and walk my property in my house so that they could then go back
and pull their appraisals together. What I found at the time was that Textot was going
to probably take from the fence up to my front steps, up to the very front of the porch,
and it would just go all the way down to the end of the street. So I said, well, that means
that my house will be gone, but when they came out to actually survey, it came a lot
farther. So I was surprised how much more they took, and I have right at an acre, and
so they're taking a quarter of an acre. It just so happens that that quarter of an acre
is what my house sits on. I'm 60 years old, I've been divorced, I'm by myself, and I
can pay this, I can pay the taxes here, but anywhere I move in Temple, it will be at least
four times more. So that one I haven't really figured out yet, and I'm just hoping that
the sale of what's left of the three-quarter acres could be put in savings, of which right
now savings isn't bringing anything. There's not a lot of really positive things, but I
guess as I try and look at this positively, I have a cousin, God bless, God bless on who
to say, Crystal, you know, think of the next house, it'll be better insulated. And I go,
yes, I understand, I said, but you don't understand, I love old houses. I could tell you those
cold winter nights, and I love my little gas heater, and yes, I did have central air put
in, but come wintertime, you know, I turn that gas heater off, and I go jump in bed,
and I'm fine, I'm fine. We're taking the.5 of my.9 acres. Make the move because we've
been here in Temple over a hundred years, but I just don't know what to do. I just feel
very frustrated, and we'll get to the end of the year, and the weather's eventually
going to have some rain and that type of thing, and the bags are shorter, so if we are going
to have the move, it just makes it less efficient to time-wise.
Expecting two people from the appraisers' apartment who'll come and walk the property,
they'll be appraising the entire acre of which they'll then be able to reduce it to know
what to offer for one quarter of the acre.
That there's not a lot that I can do that they'll come in and they'll just, you know,
they'll appraise for the value that they see, and I'm not trying to disguise anything.
There'll be a lady from the relocation division who'll come and talk to me after they leave
about what I can expect that will happen.
I have a checklist here, and these are all the things that we're going to talk about today.
