Travis County Commissioners Court
January 25, 2005
Item 35
35. Consider and take appropriate action on appointment of the Travis County citizens bond advisory committee. And the -- the one list that I received was from Commissioner Davis.
>> by e-mail?
>> uh-huh.
>> you responded back going oh, thank you so much, I appreciate it. [laughter] I can -- I can read them into the record.
>> why don't we we read it into the record, also read into the record their professional background.
>> absolutely. Okay.
>> okay.
>> oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know that you were asking me to go first. The two that I have got confirmed and I hope to have my third person confirmed tomorrow morning, they need a little extra time, number one is glen coleman, glen with one n, coleman, he works over at hoovers online in their tech support, customer services support. Background is he lives in hyde park, former head of the neighborhood association in hyde park, sits on the water and wastewater commission for the city of Austin, and is part of our citizens advisory committee for the balcones canyonland preserves. So I thought that had a really nice broad background. Our second person is rod reyna. He is from Pflugerville. He is a -- in the health care industry and also works part-time for the city of Pflugerville police department. He is head of his neighborhood association in Pflugerville and also head of the umbrella of neighborhood associations in the Pflugerville area and very active in saint elizabeth's church. So I thought that also -- he also had some good background of working on neighborhood conference committees on behalf of ronnie earle when we were forming that with the northeast criminal justice council which is where I first got to know him.
>> can we have the background of the third person without the name.
>> yeah, she will let me know, get it all locked down tomorrow morning. This is a person who has a background as a member of reca, she is in the transportation industry, but would not be somebody that would design or build any kind of one of our projects. But has a -- is on their transportation committee.
>> okay.
>> and is central city, Austin. So city of Austin. As well.
>> Commissioner Davis, do you want to give us yours if.
>> yes. I have diane achers, she's a resident of precinct 1, lives out in the rural community, also the vice-president of the [indiscernible] neighborhood association. Has been very active for many years, in many event, she's willing toll serve in this capacity. Also I have doctor charles akins, you know, we -- he served on the board before and of course you know he is -- a retired -- aisd administrator here in -- in Travis County, so -- so with that kind of experience and background that he's had, several, many bond committees in the past, I thought he would get another actual choice. Tentatively, this is just tentative, also talking with the -- with jim Davis, who is retired, also, but he was a former head coach of l.b.j. High school, administrator. So he's looking into it. He hasn't made -- trying to make some arrangements, but he will let me know something by next week, judge. I hope he'll come on board now. I think we will. He's trying to make some arrangement with his schedule to make sure that he can fit it in. That's just tentative. Do we have to pass these in to the clerk, judge?
>> I think we need to come up with a master list where we can see the master list.
>> > one more thing. As soon as I get a confirmation from jim Davis, then that will be the three, the other two have agreed.
>> you expect to have a third one next week?
>> yes.
>> okay. Anybody else?
>> I can give you mine.
>> okay.
>> my personal would be david hartman. David is a real estate attorney. Is a board member of the real estate council of Austin, is also on the transportation committee, reca. My second one would be leonard huber, leonard is a retired financial industry's executive, with a great amount of concentration of bonding and, third, is -- is steve martin --
>> not that one.
>> not the funny one, although this one could be funny. Consultant with his concentration of consulting matters being jail, prison operations. And construction.
>> okay.
>> judge, richard moya is the first one. I thought that he would have some good institutional memory about Travis County's jail situation. And probably the campus out there to see why it got, why it was set up the way it got set up. And number two is sal valdez has some financial background. I thought that would be of some help. I'm working on the third person.
>> okay. Any idea who the background of the third person that you may have?
>> neighborhood type of -- neighborhood association work, what else? Those -- some economic analysis, demographics, that kind of stuff.
>> okay.
>> judge, when do you see this being slated as -- us getting in touch with these folks and actually getting them -- to start their stuff? Don't we -- we like to have something back from these folks at least by March, first part of March?
>> it would be hard to get that, I think. But I think that what we ought to try to do is give joe gieselman a full list next Tuesday and ask him to go ahead and basically engage in -- let the -- them determine the schedule. A lot determines on what information we give them and what they plan to do with it. But if we are pointing towards the November election, I would think by April or may we really need to have recommendations. It will take them -- last time it took three or four months. They had a lot of meetings.
>> historically, what we have done is had like a kickoff meeting where everybody is together and, you know, comments in terms of thank you, good luck, then we kind of just leave them alone and they have site visits in the past of getting those things scheduled depending on how many or how few they need to do and then -- then having hearings and then, you know, when they are kind of narrowing it down to make sewer that you have geographic hearings as well. We traditionally had one downtown and then in each of the four precincts to again solicit and build this thing from the ground floor up. But our cutoff for November is -- has always been we have got to have the ballot not locked down no later than the first part of August. So, you know, June, July is really when we are trying to scope it down and at some point you get p.b.o. Involved. Okay, you put a price tag on this.
>> by the middle of February, we -- we would see this group meeting for perhaps the first time and say 90 days after that, have some sort of at least a report as to the -- how they're --
>> 90 days or less, that would be my recommendation.
>> okay. I would like to --
>> I have lynn neighbors who is a lawyer, lobbyist and was recommended by the chamber of commerce.
>> uh-huh.
>> and then I have two or three others. I do not have an engineer type. But I think we need that and the other one I'm seriously considering is a neighborhood community activist person with a child care background from the bee cave area. So I'm going to try to get an engineer then -- I kind of would like to see [indiscernible] that maybe what's short. Can we think of any professions that we are short of? Seems like we have a neighborhood association -- the neighborhood associations well represented.
>> and certainly with david hartman and glen cole man the whole open space -- because david's firm have worked a lot of the bcp stuff as well, they have a pretty good grounding in that. Richard moya certainly knows an awful lot about our parks system as well. So rob renya would also have good parks experience in terms of his stuff up in Pflugerville. Is diane achers, is that the coacher's wife?
>> so they were very involved in the east metro park. So yeah diane would be great. Dr. Akins has the institutional -- third time around, he certainly has experience in all of those areas.
>> oh, yeah, uh-huh.
>> uh ... I think it would be a good idea if I could get those resumes by Thursday or Friday. Put together a packet of information. That week. Just for the public record and give joe the list of names of resumes to the media, copies of that.
>> certainly e-mail addresses and phone numbers of contacts so that joe can just --
>> what I'm going to do is get an engineer type and this -- this bee cave neighborhood person, neighbors, that would be my three. I guess what i'll indicate to joe, to go ahead and start planning on that first meeting. He actually -- if we have told these persons that they have been or will be appointed on Tuesday, then if they get notice soon thereafter I guess in the first meeting it would be helpful. Last time the first meeting was in this meeting room, so pretty convenient for most folk. Okay. Let's do that. We will have this back on one more time for our action and consideration.
>> I don't want [indiscernible] in the past making sure that we had appropriate coffee and water and all of that kind of stuff. I'm happy to personally kick in to make sure that that stuff is handled since we had -- had food issues before.
>> maybe joe can give us an idea how much we need to put together.
>> I'm happy to.
>> yeah.
>> chip into the healthy cokes, water, fresh fruit.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, January 26, 2005 8:31 AM