Travis County Commissioners Court
March 22, 2005
Item 7
7. Consider and take appropriate action on persons recommended for membership on the Travis County community justice center advisory committee.
>> Commissioners and judge, over the past I would say six or seven months to a year, we've had some membership or some folks off the cjc advisory committee that have dropped off for a number of reasons. So we are requesting approval from the court to add five additional advisory committee members to the cjc, those persons are joan burnham, executive director of Texas inmate family association. [indiscernible] ... Actively involved in our criminal justice efforts in Travis County, former Travis County employee lawrence [indiscernible] who recently retired from counseling and education services and pam willheight the executive director of the Texas council on family violence. So we are just here this morning to seek your approval of adding these members.
>> I just had a point. My idea was in the past each member of the court has sort of recommended people. My idea was that we really ought to go and recruit people that we need on the committee. And there are other positions available, we need a lawyer and we need somebody to help us carry out the mission purpose of the community justice center and the problem being on the committee is if you don't show results people get tired of going to meeting after meeting after meeting. So I’m thinking that we ought to recruit people that we want on there and work with them. Give them real work to do and hopefully produce results good enough that will keep them motivated, keep attending the meetings and keep working. The other thing is that at some point I think we have to beef up our strategy to get a great deal more community involvement. And I think a lot of volunteers, a lot of churches are on stand by, but they want something specific to help with and I think we need to advise the committee to do that.
>> I agree.
>> in addition to approving these, I think if we have, if each member of the court wants to appoint another pepper and can do it within two or three weeks or a month, that would be good, right?
>> sure.
>> otherwise we want to be authorized to go ahead and recruit some other people.
>> I’m fine with -- judge, have we made an active recruitment effort in the leadership Austin classes? These are folks who have gone through pretty extensive training over a year long. It seems like that would be a natural place to try to place information with that group and certainly the at lumber of leadership Austin -- the alum of leadership Austin. We may need to expand our search area. Because those are folks that have already shown a commitment to say that they want to go through the leadership training and same kinds of skills that you would find on any kind of board or commission. Whatever. That may be another place to -- to throw the --
>> makes sense to me. We would like to have 12 to 15. But if you get 20 good mexico, that's even better, isn't it.
>> yes, sir.
>> so -- so why don't we do that.
>> okay.
>> and the members of the court want to try to find additional members or just -- should we authorize the committee to go ahead and -- and self perpetuate?
>> I think the committee ought to try to find the people that it needs to it can keep going. I have done that in the past and I don't know that it's worked out really well. So if you all would --
>> sometimes you don't know what you are getting into until after the second or third meeting, a lot of folk weren't cut out for this kind of work. People who have done it every day, people in the past who have a keen interest. I think we ought to seek --
>> that have ideas that can be implemented.
>> right.
>> move approval of these -- these five. So we'll just ask the committee to keep working on getting new folk and if members of the court have recommendations, those also, okay. Any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much.
>> thank you for your time.
>> thank you for your support.
>> we expect a report back in about a month.
>> yes, sir.
>> we plan on coming back and probably doing like a work session presentation on the more full-blown program model.
>> okay. Fine. Thank you.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, March 23, 2005 10:22 AM