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Volume 19
Number 8
AUGUST 2017
A milestone trifecta
The great outdoors
The Traugott Inc. team is celebrating 35 years since Michael Traugott Sr. started the company.
Learning about nature.
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his is a big year for Michael Traugott Sr. as all three of his businesses are celebrating anniversaries. South Texas Drywall & Construction is marking its 20th anniversary. The sister company he owns in Austin with Carl Russell, which Russell runs, called Russell & Traugott is celebrating its 10th anniversary. And the company that started it all, Traugott Inc., is celebrating its 35th anniversary. “It’s all hard work and consistency,” says Traugott. “Doing a good job consistently is key to success.” He adds that the longevity of his employees is a very big part of that success and a source of pride in the company. He notes that every Christmas, they hand out mile markers, a plaque and a check, to employees who have reached
five-year increments with the company, and they have some 30-year markers coming soon. Tammy Thompson, office manager, started with the company when she was 17 and she is one of the employees who has already passed that 30-year mark. Looking back on his history in the industry, Traugott laments that the industry has changed to the point where he feels schedules are too short with everyone working on top of each other, and he attributes this to the owners setting a schedule that is just not realistic to do the job right. When Traugott started his own business in 1979, he had a partner, but when he separated from that partner in 1982, he founded Traugott Inc. He worked continued on Page 17
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elebrating its 17th year, the Take a Kid Kampin’ and Fishin’ trip Sep. 23-25 gave 130 local children the chance to do things that they would not be able to do otherwise - things so many of us take for granted, such as camping, fishing, hiking and canoeing. The trip is for kids of SA Youth, a nonprofit dedicated to helping at-risk, low-income children in San Antonio. So, this year’s weekend at the H-E-B Foundation Singing Hills Camp was made possible by winning bidders from this year’s and last year’s SA Youth Charity Fun Shoots, E-Z Bel Construction and NOLHAN SERVICES. With the same team working in the kitchen and behind the scenes Cindy
Niznik, Niznik Concrete, along with Pattie Gamez and Kim Olson prepared the meals for the 160 at camp, including staff members and volunteers, accounting for $2,800 in food expenses. This year, the ladies had lots of help in the kitchen and with dishes. On Friday night they were treated to a spaghetti dinner their first night at the camp. On Saturday, they enjoyed daylong rotations in the big events, including fishing and swimming, since the camp sits along the Frio River. Niznik notes that the kids were kept very active this year with lots of fun with outdoor and creative recreation. In addition to physical activities, the kids made their own prayer boxes as part of an arts and crafts exercise. continued on Page 17
A place to play and picnic
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n building a multi-faceted recreational space at Pearsall Park, MJ Boyle General Contractor provided the City of San Antonio with an exciting, safe, and lush place where children can play and people of all ages can enjoy the outdoors. The $5 million project took about a year to complete and included turning bare land into a park with a large playground, a splash pad, an exercise area complete with equipment and zip line, a skate park, two basketball courts, a restroom building, a jogging trail, plenty of sidewalks, and two parking lots. The job consisted of a lot of site work and concrete work. With a whole system of pumps and filters, the splash pad is concrete with padding and several cool water features that squirt water out in different ways that make it fun for the kids to run around and splash in the water. The skate park includes ramps and railing for skateboards to do jumps and other moves. There’s a picnic
The work MJ Boyle General Contractors did at Pearsall Park included a large and unique playground.
pavilion that can be used for events as well as a concession stand. “The biggest challenge on the job was the weather,” explains Jody Mokry, project manager. “During that timeframe, we were experiencing a lot of rain, especially when we were trying to finish and we were doing the landscape part of it. It just kept raining and raining. It was so wet that we had to wait and let it dry out.” He notes that the City of San Antonio was understanding of the issues the project faced due to unforeseen weather conditions and the exclusively outdoor nature of the job. The construction team was granted six weeks in extensions, which allowed them to complete the job. The rain contributed to a different challenge the team faced on the job as Mokry recalls, “We were working on soil that was a very expansive clay-type soil, and so there was a lot of movement trying to work around that. And when it would get continued on Page 17