Travis County Commissioners Court
July 6, 2004
Citizens Communication
Citizens communication is next. This gives residents an opportunity to address the court on any matter not on the agenda and a resident has signed in, scott johnson?
>> thank you, judge, Commissioner, good morning, my name is scott johnson, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about today is regarding the quality. It's unfortunate the plan that has been developed over the course of one year is not necessarily going to be a whole plan as it's finalized and approved by tceq. I don't have any inside information to know which parts of the plan will be implemented and which ones won't and while there are many important efforts that have been given toward this plan by staff from governmental entities such as Travis County, campo and the city of Austin, I believe that looking at the strategic planning about how easy is it for us to get from the first step to the second step to the third step, some of those steps may have been taken for granted. Judge Biscoe, you may recall back in February I spoke before the clean airco legs and I believe you were at that meeting and I indicated that while the first step is developing and brain storming which measures we'll choose, inspection an maintenance for vehicles, vapor recovery for gas stations, that type of thing, while that takes time and more effort, perhaps rom thee difficult would be the governmental entities and the business groups and the advocacy groups go out and make sure that is done well, which is what is going on now, and the third step, implementing the measure, is perhaps the most important step and there are going to be some resources in my opinion that are needed beyond what is already in place on the county level and the city level, on campo level, to do that, and a question was asked by judge wright about that wanting to know what type of resources that would be. I would encourage the court to continue thinking about that issue not knowing what is going to happen but y'all obviously are going to carry the lead on the low income repair assistance program to help people pay for the vehicle inspection an maintenance but may be other costs, other resources needed that are brought to bear. I encourage you to think about it as you do your planning for this coming fiscal year and think more about how the elected officials, the people that have the political connections can talk to one on one the Texas commission on environmental quality, those Commissioners, to make sure that they don't try to weaken the plan, water down the plan further than it may already be because if you take one major measure out of that plan, it's not whole anymore and we may not be able to reach the mission reductions level that we need to in order to cleanup the air. This year here, if it's a clean year, we may still be all right but the cleanest year we've had in the last three years has now dropped off, so if we have an average year or a dirty year, we will very likely vie lite the 8 hour sew zone level. We're on the cusp right now as many of you know, how can we make sure that the regulars put in place are strong and how can we put resources aside to implement the measures once they're put in place in 2005. I'll be happy to answer any questions.
>> questions?
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you, scott.
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Last Modified: Friday, October 28, 2005 12:50 PM