HAYS COUNTY, Texas — The cost of lumber is expected to slowly drop in July, but the Hays County Sheriff's Office is seeing more construction site thefts.
Tearing down walls and replacing them with something better is what the owner of River City Construction Design gets paid to do.
"We are doing full kitchen cabinetry right here," said Owner Donny Wills.
Now, he has to pay a cost himself.
"They tore the claps on the trailer," Wills said. "They didn't even cut the lock, tore the claps and opened it up and took everything out of it."
Wills said the thieves stole over $50,000 worth of high-quality tools, as well as the surveillance camera from the North Austin construction site overnight on Wednesday
He had to close the site.
"One battery on one of those tools is $100," said Will. "There were about 30 in there."
Although insurance won't pay for the theft, Wills said getting the tools back won't be hard, but his crew members not being able to work is the most upsetting.
"Some of these crews are paid by the hour or square foot, so they are at home not working right now until we get the tools back on the site," said Wills. "That takes food out of their family's mouth and my family's mouth."
Thieves are chewing through other pockets too, even more than usual in Hays county.
"So anywhere we have a new subdivision going in, we're seeing a rise that we haven't seen before," said Hays County Sheriff's spokesperson Dennis Gutierrez.
Gutierrez said from January to June there were 40 burglaries and thefts at construction sites. This year there have been 62.
He said to keep an eye out for construction trucks with paper tags moving lumber and other material at night or on the weekends. Surprisingly, he said in some cases it's other construction companies stealing the materials to cut costs.
"We already invested last night, we bought a lot of alarm systems for the trailers," Wills said.
Demolishing the bad and rebuilding for the better is all in a day's work.
"It's one of those things where we can't sit there and wallow because someone took advantage of good people," said Wills.
They all hope as the price of lumber drops, the thefts will follow suit.
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