Lantana volunteers have gotten the number of signatures needed to present their traffic enforcement petition to county leaders for consideration.
Ross Ferguson, president of Fresh Water Supply District #6, said that 50 percent of the homeowners in both FWSD #6 and FWSD #7 have signed the petition.
The next step is to officially present the petition to County Commissioners for approval.
“I am pretty excited,” said Ferguson. “I’m glad to get this moving along and look forward to this issue being resolved soon.”
Ferguson said that he will be working with Pct. 4 Commissioner Andy Eads to determine the timeline for taking the petition to Commissioners Court.
The petition drive was organized after Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a ruling in 2010 that Lantana and other Fresh Water Supply Districts did not have the authority to adopt and enforce traffic regulations on the streets inside their communities.
The ruling effectively barred the Denton County Sheriff’s Office from issuing traffic citations.
In response, Texas legislators passed a law last spring to provide a solution that would allow traffic enforcement to once again be allowed inside districts.
House Bill 2541, which was signed by Governor Rick Perry on June 17, 2011, authorizes residents in a FWSD to file a petition with their county’s Commissioners Court requesting traffic enforcement to resume in their community.
At least 50 percent of Lantana homeowners have to sign the petition in order for it to be presented to commissioners for consideration.
Since last December, a handful of residents, including a majority of Fresh Water Supply District board members, have been going door to door and manning signing tables at the Community Center to get the number of signatures needed.
In all, over 2,000 residents signed the petition.
