Travis County Commssioners Court
December 9, 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 communication is first. And we do have six residents who have signed in. And the first one, the name I can't make out, a doctor or -- I won't say the or, but it's bpcca.
>> [indiscernible]
>> all right. I can make out chuck garner's name. Garner or garnett?
>> garner.
>> all right. And is mr. Her better with you, too? Herbert?
>> yes.
>> and john carlson. And bpcca.
>> black land prairies concerned citizens association.
>> now that sounds familiar [laughter]
>>
>> we will have one more, when we finish we can give it to you.
>> okay. Commissioner Sonleitner will be absent for the entire meeting. Okay.
>> good morning, judge Biscoe, Commissioner Davis, both Commissioners, good morning. The name with the chicken scratch is mine, I'm ken casner a member of the blackland prairie concerned citizens association, we are a community of neighbors and a rural enclave in northeastern Travis County chartered in part to monitor progressive development of northeastern Travis County. First and foremost, I would like to thank this court for your instrumental role in helping us to temporarily prevent the further dumping of waste by captex sludge operation, your efforts has been certainly appreciated and definitely observed by this organization as well as all of your constituents and our friends in the blackland prairie. I would like to note that the blackland prairie concerned citizens association, unlike many community organizations, we do not oppose development. What we do object to, however, is simply bad development. Currently, risk to our community include pollutions of all types, impacts to the flood, developments that cause sewer problems and traffic congestion, and more specifically, developments that decrease the value of our property and ineventually destroy the farms, ranches and agribusiness in northeastern Travis County. We have seen a trend in these risks over the last few years. Case in point with captex sludge development and other bad developments in the area. I would like to draw this court's attention to a recently new development that we have our eyes on in northeastern Travis County, just north of the intersection of highway 290 and f.m. 1100, is a transient trailer park that is slowly developing and it's called country inn or country inn estates or something to that effect. We have some serious concerns regarding this, to which my colleagues will be addressing here shortly.
>> good morning, Commissioners. My name is chuck garner. I also reside in far northeastern Travis County. Speaking with you today as another member of the blackland prairie concerned citizens association. And we do appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. The citizens in northeast Travis County do have grave concerns about this used trailer park, meaning the country inn motel that's planned for f.m. 1100. This country inn used mobile home park is less than a half mile north of highway 290, which is the residential corridor and as you will hear we believe that it is in violation of several ordinances and feel that all permits should be pulled and the project declined immediate. We understand that Travis County ordinance limits the number of mobile home in this situation to 8. At this point it looks like he's being approved for 10 and it appears this may violate section 8 2.302. We understand that septic plan has been approved subject to a couple of technical issues even prior to the applicant obtaining sufficient water. I believe he has one five inch tap off a two inch water line to serve the entire subdivision. We understand he's required to have a larger supply after a 3 or 4-inch water line that does not yet exist in the area. We don't understand if he plans to get a master water meter or several individual meters to service his different lots there. We do not see any evidence that present septic system that he has at the house that's already built there was ever approved nor what his plans are to -- to do anything with that present system or when you -- when [indiscernible] new to systems that he's planning to put into operation. We do not see anywhere in his plans where the amount of septic in the application includes the house and these additional residences that he's creating. It appears this violates section 8 2.301 d and a, b, c and d. He is creating a leased habitational structure in his proposed motel by purchasing older mobile homes and setting them out on his lot to rent out to people. There's no adequate water source in the area or fire hydrants his ingress, egress is also restricted and there's only one access into this outdated mobile homes that are going to be housing families. We think the local fire departments will be unwilling to sign-off on this situation. Er also he -- we are also pursuing these concerns with the state fire marshal's office and the county has had previous experience dealing with the problems similar to this habitational units that are being built. Problems such as septic system, water inadequacy, fire protection limitations and the building of similar projects in or near a flood area. The city ended up buying out landowners along onion creek so they would not go back and set up in that area prone to flooding. We are kinds of wondering why the county would allow it to happen here. It appears from his plans that the septic system will end up running off into adjoining properties when the ground is saturated. On the handouts that I gave you, if you could note, page 1, there's several things, this is his plan, we have indicated in the -- I'm sorry I didn't a more differentiating color. One purple, pink line, I'm sorry, is showing the fat one, I guess, is showing the 100 year flood contour that exists right now. The skinny pink one that comes off on the side is basically just the floodplain following the curvature of the land which puts it in that septic installation that he's got. And we have pictures and people have seen the water right up where the yellow line is, completely covering all of the septic system. We are also getting information in this -- of the area to fema so that they can update their records and maps, too, because this is 10 years old [buzzer sounding] and some of the problems that exist that downstream from this project there's been quite a bit of fill that's gone in. It's going to back up the water into this flood area. Upstream a lot of development up in Pflugerville that flows down through here, increasing the water coming down. The -- the pages 3 -- I'm sorry, 2 and 3 are pictures of the area and [indiscernible] can tell you a little more accurately where he's located in this,, but that whole area in there floods badly. It's every two to three years. I have seen it twice in six years, herb, I hi has seen it five times in 25 years. So we will get you --
>> your 40 seconds are over, mr. Karnes. We were trying to share this time, is that a problem.
>> 3 minutes each. When the little beep goes off --
>> yes, sir, we were going to share the time, but I guess that's not allowed, thank you, your honor.
>> each of you gets three minutes.
>> we were trying to share the time, thank you.
>> each of you gets three minutes. When the beep goes off, that's three minutes.
>> I live at the corner of 1100 and 290, I have lived out there 25 years. My property is directly east of this proposed or planned site. Over the years, I have seen over the floodplain the water, it gets up to the bridge on highway 290. And it covers this area he proposes to put the treatment tanks in. And if -- when we get the rain out there and it runs off of Pflugerville down there, we have flooding on both sides of highway 290. We have two large lakes there. And as chuck mentioned the build up, the water coming across 290. We are really concerned about the surge in this situation, into cotton wood creek, goes council stream. The capital area soccer association owns the land directly south of 290. The water runs into their property. Like I say they have a lake down there. Now, if this sewage gets in there, contaminates the soil, then we have a lot of children at risk on a health problem. We have hundreds of them, all over the Austin area, not just in east Austin. This is a great concern. We would ask you all to look at this floodplain, if the -- get the county engineer to look at it. We feel it's outdated because -- because it shows one way it's going, but the water follows the contour. So this drawing that was submitted, we don't quite agree with it. And -- but we feel like we need the expert help from your engineers and our engineers to get this thing worked out to where that we take -- protect the people that's going to be in our mobile homes if it works out and also protect the people down below it. Appreciate the time. And we hope that we can get your support out of this. Thank you very much.
>> okay.
>> judge, Commissioners, my name is john carlson, I'm an attorney, part-time farmer. I would like to use this [indiscernible] quoment to highlight a bigger picture that we have out there. Commissioner Davis is familiar with this. This isn't the first of these type of subdivisions or developments that have used dilapidated mobile homes on potentially [indiscernible], we have the mada quoment, a constant problem for us the last three years. We oppose these type of divisions for several reasons. They lower our property values, place disproportionate strains on already limited fire and police resources, a source of numerous police calls. They have been for the last couple of years. They tend to lack adequate sewage and septic controls and quite frankly they are just an eyesore. Not a happy thing to drive by every day. We strongly encourage the Commissioners courted to adopt the most stringent regulations that are at your disposal to control these types of developments. I would like to point you specifically to section 232.007 of the Texas local government code which gives counties a fairly good degree of power to regulate these types of subdivisions in areas of the county that are outside of the city e.t.j. And along those lines, we would like to encourage the Commissioners court and in fact we would like to work with you during the next legislative session or sessions to help enhance your ability to control these sorts of subdivisions. It's going to be a constant problem for all of us in the coming years. We want quality development and growth and life out where we live. Thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> I would like to -- I would like to request that -- that when this comes back up that we can set this in a couple of months on the Commissioners' agenda for more discussion.
>> let me say this, normally we don't exchange comments, especially when something is not posted to the agenda, per se. But I would like to encourage you to work with our t.n.r. Staff and also we have a county attorney here, tom nuckols, who is aware of a lot of the regulations and things that you just brought up. And, again, I want to say that -- that it's been really a pleasure working with you. I know we just recently had a little victory here dealing with the captex situation out there when it went before the tceq Commissioners. Again, that is something that we are -- we have concentrated on and worked on. But we are having victories as we go through this process and again the most recent was the -- was the one that captex decision to -- to gain or permit the -- continue to do what they are doing, basically put on hold. So again, which is a victory for the community as far as the sludge operations out there. So again as things come up, we do it as we get to them and again I would appreciate y'all's input in this. But please get in touch with and directly to t.n.r. Staff, stacy sheffield, the person that you need to get in touch with as far as t.n.r. Is concerned, I think 854-9383, of course we have the county attorney here, tom nuckols who is willing and able and ready to work with us to come up with some type of resolution to this situation. Thank you all very much.
>> Commissioners Davis, just as a point of clarification, pages 4, 5, 6 auto the handout of -- on the handout are pictures of the existing mobile home park that he owns, just to show you the status of it and the conditions there.
>> okay. Please follow up on those suggestions that I made, I appreciate it. Thank you very much for your efforts. Thank you.
>> my recommendation, y'all have about eight or 10 concerns. My recommendation is that you reduce it to writing in one document and send it to transportation and natural resources department or a member of the court and we will get it to the department [indiscernible] to get those concerns addressed. But there were 8 to 10 of them.
>> yes.
>> if you would just enumerate those in writing for us, one document in bullet form would be fine, we will get them addressed for you.
>> can you do that? Can you do that?
>> I will.
>> okay. Do that and at least we will have it in writing. Thank you.
>> thank you.
>> all right, bye. Thank you, judge.
>> [inaudible - no mic]
>> okay. Thank you.
>> district attorney ronnie earle is next. And is eric mcdonald with you?
>> I beg your pardon? Are you together?
>> I have claire dawson brown, with me and bryan donahue who is the information magician. Good morning, judge. Commissioners. I appreciate in opportunity to visit with you -- this opportunity to visit with you this morning, we will only take a few minutes of your time. We bring some good news to the court. We want to give you a report on the return on your investment. You recall about a little over a year ago in response to the jail overcrowding crisis, that the court provided a lawyer and a staff person to the district attorney's office. And that was an investment that we feel has returned value, manifold, to the county, and we want to talk to you about that briefly this morning. The -- this was a direct result of the team that judge Biscoe put together to address jail overcrowding. Judge Biscoe brought really --
>> along with the full support of this court.
>> absolutely. [laughter]
>> absolutely. But you were the one with the whip hand, judge, making it -- making us meet and act right and turning it into a team. What you did was you turned a group of cats into a herd, that was no easy feat. You brought everybody together, the judges, district clerk, county clerk, judge coronado as well as the district attorney's office and the county attorney's office. You gave us a lawyer and a staff person. Now with that lawyer and that staff person we began to address the cases that are really kind of like the fire ants of the criminal justice system, those are cases involving small amounts of drugs. There are lots of those cases, that was the majority of the defendants in the jail. So we focussed on our attention on those cases and created the rocket docket. What we are here to explain to you this morning and report to you is the progress of the rocket docket over the last year. You will see -- you have a handout, but there's also a slide that shows of the 1,042 cases that were designated as rocket docket cases, 959 of them have been disposed of. That's 841 pled or found guilty, 32 admitted to the drug court, there have been some -- 36 -- 86 dismissals and 83 of them are still pending. But the important statistic and the important chart is the one right below that that describes time line reductions. If you will see, the average before the rocket docket, the time between arrest and indictment or information before the rocket docket was 35 days, that's between arrest and the filing of the indictment information took 35 days. We reduced that to 22 days. The -- the time between arrest and final disposition, when the case is over, and the defendant leaves our jail, that time went from 103 days to 41 days. That's a significant decrease. You see with the next slide that we are disposing of roughly a quarter of the cases, ruffling 25% of the cases -- roughly 25% of the cases at the first court setting, that's two weeks after arrest. The remainder are dispossessed of after -- disposed of after the first setting. The next slide, I'm moving through this pretty quickly because I understand the court's time is limited this morning. [buzzer sounding] I just want to give you the amount -- if it's all right with you, I will take claire's couple of minutes from her. Her share. If you notice the effect of jail overcrowding reduction efforts on our caseload, if you will see here that in fiscal year '02 there were almost 9500 cases open, and a little over 8,000 cases disposed of. But in fiscal year '03 we disposed of more cases than we took in. So we are working on the backlog a little bit at a time. Now, the last slide I want to show you is what this translates into for the taxpayer. And you will see that these 959 defendants, we have saved an average of 62 days apiece, at $45 a day, that's a little under $3 million if they were in jail for 62 days. And over a million, almost a million and a third dollar ifs they were in jail for 31 days. So those are direct save tongs the taxpayer that have been realized through the trust that this court gave to the district attorney's office by providing the investment of a lawyer and a staff person. They want to thank you for that.
>> I want to thank you all. Really, I want to give you big applause, I really appreciate that. [ applause ]
>> thank you.
>> the tax players ought to be applauding just like that.
>> the credit for this goes to claire dawson brown.
>> that's a significant savings. Thank you all very much for that, for the effort.
>> we certainly couldn't have done it without everybody in the criminal justice system getting behind this plan and working very hard to get it set up. It was a real team effort that responded to the crisis.
>> judges, sheriff --
>> judges, sheriff, police department to run the lab tests, court administration worked very hard with us to get the docketing system set up, pretrial services.
>> supervision, directors.
>> it was a major team effort.
>> right.
>> for those concerned about justice, we think that even if you -- if you spend 6, 7, 8 months in jail, the kinds of disposition that's we were seeing were similar to the ones that we were seeing if you spent two or three or four weeks in jail. What we did basically was expedite this position.
>> exactly.
>> the down side of that is moving the case faster since all of these defendants are in jail, we appointed lawyers a lot faster. We have a whole lot more cases, a whole lot more lawyers to pay at the end of the cases, but we think even factoring in that, we still realized savings for the county which is outstanding, I think.
>> I think the taxpayers will come out way ahead on this, judge.
>> for sure.
>> thank you all very much.
>> thank everybody for that effort, all your coordinated effort here. I really appreciate it.
>> ronnie or claire, can we get kind of a mindset on this thing now? I know that -- that these are great statistics. Are you comfortable with -- with us being able to carry this on or -- you know, do you -- what do we have to do to make sure that you have got that put in place, that this is not one of those things where you go, you know what, we have taken care of that, we showed everyone that we can do it, but if you don't watch it, sometimes these things have a tendency to kind of creep back up. Do you think that we have a mindset this is what we are going to do from this point forward.
>> absolutely. Rocket docket is not going away. We are going to try to expand it to another layer of jail cases. Also that the -- that the joint task force on jail overcrowding is continuing to meet. The -- captain balagia at the sheriff's department e-mails us on a regular basis telling us what the population is. I know that you all get that and wability to pay attention to that. Respond to it if we see any creeping up, this is something that we will continue to monitor. Everybody is so happy with the rocket docket and feels that it's working, the defense bar, everybody feels that it's very effective and so anything that we can do to -- to grow upon that we will.
>> okay.
>> well, I was over in the court the other day watching it. It's -- it's pretty interesting.
>> yes.
>> I can see, so congratulations on it. It was -- there was a lot going on.
>> yeah.
>> obviously. [laughter]
>> thank you.
>> thanks very much.
>> thank you.
>> thank you very much.
>> we appreciate it.
>> eric mcdonald.
>> judge and Commissioners, I'm going to stay here for just a minute with eric mcdonald the assistant district attorney assigned as the neighborhood d.a. To the downtown area of Austin, he has a report for you this morning.
>> okay.
>> good morning.
>> good morning. Yesterday judge Biscoe I sent you an e-mail and you politely responded in regards to the partnership that we may be creating with monte de cristo. Mr. Earle wanted me to give you an idea of how all of that started. Back in August we found out that the Travis County state jail was releasing individuals who were homeless and dropping them on 8th and neches without much more than clothing. And so what we did was we created a partnership with the state jail as well as the police department and others, transitional housing, and also drug rehab facilities to try to create some sort of reentry plan for those individuals who came out that are homeless and that -- that need some services. And so we did that. And as of today, we have met and I have interviewed 55 individuals who were -- who come out of the state jail and were homeless. And basically what happens is once they are prepared for release and earmarked as an individual who is homeless, I go in and I interview them and try to create a reentry plan for them, including some sort of transitional housing. On the release date, the Austin police department actually provides them transportation to a transitional housing location here in Austin. The real key component to that is what the police department is doing, that is providing the transportation because before this, like I said, before they were being dropped downtown at 8th and neches, which coincidentally is where many of them were arrested to begin with, in that area, either for dealing or possessing crack cocaine. So once they are delivered at the new transitional housing they try to start over. We try to hook them up with was services either through mhmr, s.s.i., Whatever they may need. But the reason why we are here today is because one of the biggest needs is clothing. And dechristo has been a big help. We would try to try to help them out in getting them some donations of clothing. We were hoping that y'all would approve a county clothing drive on behalf of monas de cristo to help them with their clothing so we can finish to provide clothes for individuals that they work with that come out of the state jail. This is something that we started as I mention understand September. We plan to continue the partnership and hopefully continue to help out some of these individuals and -- who come out who really don't have much other than the clothing on their back.
>> you think about 90% of them are male?
>> yes, sir. All -- all of the ones that we are working with are from the men's facility. State jail facility. So they are all men.
>> okay.
>> this is actually a continuation of our earlier report because this is -- we are addressing jail overcrowding here as well. We are peeling back a layer and getting a little bit earlier on because what happens, what's happening is that -- that the state jail drops off at 8th 7 and neches at the salvation army, roughly 720 released inmates a year. Most of them are -- a few of them have clothes other than their prison whites. Many of them are release the in their prison whites. That's like a sandwich sign saying sell me crack. They are about two blocks away from the biggest crack dealing area in this part of Texas. So what we do, we have a revolving door that we are needing, ya see, we are feeding it in like feeding widgets in a machine. They go to the jail, overcrowded jail, here we are, the taxpayers are paying for it. What we are doing instead of the cops waiting until they are arrested to meet them, eric and the police are interviewing them, giving them a ride to transitional housing place so they don't end up on the streets and then back in our jail costing our taxpayers money. So far it's been sort of dramatically successful. What we need, though, is some clothes. The penitentiary might provide a suit, but the state jail doesn't.
>> is someone writing to eric -- to -- they are looking at this publication there, they are looking-- if they are looking at us live, how will they be able to -- they may have suits, whatever, clothing, how will they be able to get that to the department that's collecting, how will they do that.
>> what we were hoping to do, they agreed to set up the logistics, but either to put bins up in the -- in this building or either the -- that or the criminal justice center so that people can place their donations there and then what they can do is sign basically the jejer saying they donated the clothes,monas decristo will send them a receipt. The easiest way I think would be to set up bins here or in the criminal justice building as well. Either one or both. But the folks at monas decristo said they would help us as far as figuring out those logistics.
>> is this where the crime prevention institute, that the group that -- I have taken clothes to them and they do that with this, don't they? Are they a part of that.
>> they have done in the past, yes, sir.
>> okay.
>> they do work with some of the folks out at the state jail. And I know that they have tried to provide clothing. The state jail has some clothing, but it's always in short supply out there. As far as when they release individuals.
>> [indiscernible] I plan to put it on the agenda next week. I did ask dan and sheryl in my office to work with eric. We will have it on next week, see if we can help.
>> sounds good. Thank you.
>> focus on county and county employees, which I think is good, we probably ought to expand that, but the item will be broad enough for us to do whatever we think that we ought to.
>> thank you, judge.
>> thank you.
>> anybody else for citizens communication, that's to address the Commissioners court on any matter not on the agenda. If so, please come forward.
>> we will remind county employees a few days ago the county judge did explain the deadline for making -- extend the deadline for making contributions to combine charities to tomorrow, many departments have done quite well this year. Hrmd, for example, human resources, had a imoafl $2,500. -- had a goal of $2,500, as of December 4th, they had raised a total of 4200. That is a good standard. Other departments should be envious. And also should feel competitive. [laughter] and we have until 5:00 tomorrow to -- to act on it. The county judge's office had been slow to respond because the county judge has a bad habit of waiting around until the last minute to be really dramatic when he makes his contribution. Plus to make sure that it's really, really needed. It is needed this year.
>> that's right.
>> and so the county judge will be taking action before 5:00 tomorrow and encouraging his staff to give the maximum. So if -- if other county employees, managers, officials, et cetera, would -- would do the same, we would be able to bless many Travis County residents who are more in need than we are.
>> judge, I would like to also make announcement under citizens communication. Tomorrow, which is the 10th of December, at 5:00 p.m., At the south -- south capitol steps, there will be a -- a vigil March for justice to the federal courthouse, which is on 8th street, there will be song, candlelight vigil as I said earlier, song, prayer, and things of that nature, going to the federal courthouse. The event starts again at 5:00 p.m. On the south steps of the state capitol. And it will to the federal courthouse. And everything shall be over by 6:30. That evening. So those of you that would like to participate in song and prayer,, vigil for justice dealing with the redistricting case that we are dealing with right now, asking you to participate. Participate.
>> thank you.
Last Modified: Tuesday, December 10, 2003 6:44 AM