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Police “all hands on deck” in response to back-to-school traffic

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The first day of school led to traffic back-ups and lines of cars at some school campuses in Elgin during student pick-up and drop-off.

During the city manager report portion of the agenda at the Elgin City Council’s regular meeting on August 17, city manager Thomas Mattis brought up the traffic situation earlier that day during Elgin ISD’s first day of school. Interim chief Chris Noble discussed the Elgin Police Department’s operations that day in responding to the backed-up traffic at the school campuses around town.

In anticipation of potential protests at the schools regarding Elgin ISD’s recent mask mandate announced the night before, EPD kept the officers from the night shift on duty for the morning. Fortunately, Noble said, protesting was limited and only happened at the school district administration building. However, the additional officers were busy helping with the bad traffic conditions due to school traffic.

For example, the line of cars to drop off children in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon at Elgin Elementary School stretched down 2nd Street, across Main Street and across the railroad tracks; County Line Road was backed up from U.S. Highway 290 to Neidig Elementary School and on FM 1100 to the soccer field. Traffic kept moving at Elgin Middle School with the help of one of Elgin ISD’s new security officers directing traffic.

“It was all hands on deck from this morning until this afternoon,” Noble said. “There were numerous calls to 9-1-1 with frustrated people being stuck in traffic. We were just trying to explain, today's the first day of school, and we're gonna have some issues and it will smooth out over time. ... To sum up, it was a challenging day, and I'm glad we had the extra staff.”

Every part of the city’s law enforcement operation was focused just on the schools at a point during the first day of school, and while the city wants to provide as much support as possible, EPD cannot devote all of its time to one situation and still provide service to the entire city, Mattis said.

“I'm certainly hopeful that we had some first-day-of-school impacts today that won't continue,” he said. “It's definitely a challenge for us moving forward. It's another example of what both entities are facing in dealing with growth, and we're gonna continue to have these challenges. We're going to do everything we can to continue to support the school district, but obviously our commitment is to provide safety to the community at large.”

Elgin Mayor Ron Ramirez suggested further joint meetings and collaboration with the school district in the near future to address these traffic concerns.

“The fact of the matter is, it’s not going to go away, especially on County Line and FM 1100,” he said. ”Even these other elementary schools, (Booker T. Washington) and Elgin elementary (schools), maybe not as bad as County Line and FM 1100, but they're going to face the same kind of traffic problems.”