Travis County Commssioners Court
April 15, 2003
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Citizens Communication
Citizens communications is an tint to give residents an opportunity to address the Commissioners court on any matter not in the agenda. Two have signed in, kenneth snyder and charles williams.
>> my name is kenneth snyder, north ridge acres, capital city colonial down here. I pulled them off the computer the other day, showing it, what gets me is this part here on the second page. This is the does he, they are getting grants. They are not borrowing money, getting a grant, they don't have to rape the neighborhood. That's what I can't understand. How come they give a taxing entity like a city grants and here we have got to take and get a loan to pay back half a million. That don't make any sense to me at all. They just take and bring the water into the subdivision. I don't put no infrastructure or nothing. That stuff has been going on almost 10 years now, we can't get nothing done. I sure appreciate Daugherty, but I知 telling him king is not going to call him back. He might chase him down, he won't return calls. It's disgraceful. This is our future right here. Bottled water. This is where we get our water. I won't wish this on a dog to drink water from a fire hydrant through inch and a quarter water lines that are supposed to feed like 10 houses feeding over 300 homes and families out there. A lot of them are moving outlet because we are getting 3 and $400 water bills. Sitting out there vacant now, 7 or 8 of them out there now vacant. Saying we can't afford it. The one that is staying, he started out with 160 meters, 87 meters now left. Take your [inaudible] sitting out there with no water. Four families moved out. Whatever is left, people are saying they can't afford the water, we have to haul water in anyway, might as well haul it in, take a bath with it. Pretty soon we will have storage trucks sitting out there in the yards and everything to haul water because we are getting raped big time. Tnrcc says he can do anything that he wants to do. They don't check on him or anything. Stuff going on, going o. They have been on that fire hydrant to about four years now. Really -- we are in precinct 2, Williamson county and Travis County, but we are in precinct 2. Daugherty is the only one that's been out there, outside of the judge, the judge has been out there. But I don't think we should live like this here. People in iraq don't have this big of a problem. At least they are getting water to them and everything up there. We need help just like over there in iraq, we need help in north ridge acres. Just a few miles down the road. People shouldn't have to live like this here. These kids shouldn't have to suffer like this here. I知 going to take and fight this thing until I drop to get something done out there. We need water and sewer, we need sewer worse than we need water. But we have sewer running down the streets out there. I gave mr. Doherty a bottle of water that I drawed out of my tap, he didn't have to take the top of it, it stunk like coming out of a septic tank out there. 90% of the time, you turn the water on after it rains, that's what it smells like, I don't think we should live like this here. If they can get cities a grant just like here this came off the internet, pulled it off the computer the other day, if they get grants out there for cities that's taxing entities [buzzer sounding] water development board, I tell you they have got money out there that we can get this problem fixed. We need the Commissioner to put it in for us, I知 hoping mr. Daugherty will put in a grant for us and everything because we do need help out there desperately, I don't need to come up here every week and try to get off of this stuff here. I spent a fortune hauling water for myself, looks like I知 going to end up getting off this water system, I知 going to get me a water tank so we have safe water to drink because -- because what -- the county told me that they were going to take -- going to take the receiver is going to take and dump the lines down, but he's going to contract to somebody else to put the lines in there that are sitting on topf e ground and everything, collecting $5,000 or something like that they are telling me. They give him $5,000, I guarantee you the lines will sit in the same place they are now because he will not do something out there.
>> you are about a minute over, mr. Snyder.
>> somebody told me he's not supposed to be running two water systems anyway. Ain't no license or nothing out there. I can't understand how come we can't get the city to take this thing in one way or the other and get some water out there. This is disgraceful, I this.
>> I thank you very much.
>> thank you very much. Charles williams. Good morning, judge Biscoe, Commissioners, I知 with the conservation board of Travis County. With me is irene guzman krill executive director for keep Austin beautiful. We are here to talk about clean sweep, April th 5th. It was a tremendous success. We are designating April as one of our big cleanup months, that was the big kickoff. I want to let irene talk about it more in detail while I pass out the famous t-shirts. [multiple voices]
>> all right. We -- this year reached number that's we had never reached before.
>> oh, man these are nice.
>> maybe I will give you a minute to look at the t-shirts.
>> thank you. This was a year that we reached number that's we have never reached before in clean sweep, we had almost 900 people cleaning up town lake and the surrounding areas. And with that number of volunteers showing up, we had to develop a strategy where we were -- where we were effective in our cleanup. And so with that, we cleaned up some areas that we had never done before. We cleaned up montopolis area, which woe had done that one before, but little stacy had a cleanup, we did Barton Creek country club, way out far out in the county. Festival beach area and we also did waller creek and so with -- with this cleanup, with expecting that many volunteers out there, we developed a strategy to -- to be more far-reaching and not just do the town lake area. As I said, we had almost 900 volunteers out there, that's a lot of volunteers to feed and to give t-shirts to, also. We had some great sponsors this year. I want to also add that we collected almost 7-tons of litter. The way that we calculate that is by determining how much trash was collected, how much trash fits into the rolloff that's were donated to us. For every dollar that we received for this event we got almost $27. We really made good on making the money stretch for this event. Keep Austin beautiful month was, as you know, a kickoff. We read the proclamation from the mayor and from you, judge Biscoe. In addition to that, a letter of support from the governor of Texas. We have been incredibly effective, looking forward to do knowledge more cleanups the month of April, so I think charles is going to take to you a little bit about the big cleanup coming up in June.
>> real quickly, going to use that same momentum for June the 14th. That's our Travis County parks clean ups, we have a lot of things going, very excited about that cleanup, we are going to make it larger than we have ever done before. We are going to use contests between homeowners groups, home depot is going to give us $100, plus tools, competition between the homeowners, we are going to recognize the people that -- that -- the oldest person in the cleanup, we are going to recognize people with the largest family at the cleanup, so we are going to make this a fun event, June the 14th, please come occupant and help us clean up the parks.
>> I want to talk about a little bit too, our future plans for the Travis County parks cleanup. Next year we have a plan in place where we are going to expand the cleanups to include more parks east of 35. We are also going to focus on diversity and including families that actually go out and enjoy the parks. For example, after memorial day, after cinco de mayo, after labor day weekend, because those are the weekends that we really need to do the cleanup. So we need to target those family that's use the parks. Thank you very much for your time.
>> thank you.
>> have you ever had an opportunity, you may have already done it, but to equate the amount of money that would be spentf you did not do the cleanup? In other words, go out and do that --
>> yes, sir.
>> how much money are we talking about, volunteers in the -- with the tons of litter that was actually picked up.
>> we keep a tab. We also have a base price of all of those volunteers it would cost us. Irene went over that. After this cleanup, we will have all of those statistics, I will bring them before the court. I have a yearly summary that I present to the court on how much we are saving. Volunteers is the way to go, reduced budgets, cost effectiveness, we are exercising these volunteers, doing a fantastic job of helping us keep our parks and our lands clean. And our lakes.
>> if I could, I would just add to that, we use the points of light foundation for our volunteer rate, 16.76 an hour, last year for the county park's cleanup, we saved the county $75,000.
>> okay, great,.
>> thank you all.
>> thank you.
>> good nobody job, thank -- good job, thank you very much. Anybody else for citizens communication, whether you signed in or not to add the court on any matter not on the agenda.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 9, 2003 3:52 PM