Travis County Commissioners Court
April 19, 2005
Item 1
1. Receive comments regarding proposed Travis County election precinct realignments.
>> move that the public hearing be opened.
>> second.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> good morning.
>> good morning. Dolores lopez, Travis County voter registration, gail fisher with elections division, kim dilling as well and melinda [indiscernible] of my office are here. This is the public hearing to -- to give public testimony regarding the 15 election precincts that have over the 3,000 registered voter count. Backup would be option a, that is the staff recommendation to meet those changes. It affects about 17,000 voters and represents four new precincts. The second item as your backup is the citizens -- excuse me, request from citizens recommended by staff and that -- I’m not sure who we have got here to testify on that behalf, but we do have -- a -- approval from the community about that one. The third item on your backup is request from citizens not -- no recommendation from staff and I understand we do have some feedback about that particular item. The last item we have before you is making some boundary line adjustments. There are no voters affected by those boundary line adjustments. Voters are affected only by option a. And the backup of b and then c which are citizens request, recommended by staff, not recommended by staff. At this point we want to be able to open it up for public testimony. If anyone is here for that. Also to ask you after public testimony is taken to call up item no. 25, and then consider approval of this item.
>> so for those who want the specifics of -- of what the public hearing covers, options a and b are the two that staff recommends.
>> that's correct.
>> okay.
>> would anyone like to give testimony during this public hearing. If so, please come forward.
>> I have got someone racing down the elevator as we enter who is going to be testifying shortly. I’m going to try to tap dance for two seconds unless there's somebody else here until she gets here.
>> if you would like to give testimony during this public hearing, please come forward.
>> what happens if we are successful in the state legislature regarding the mandatory splits at -- can we undo the feedback that we are getting and any kind of action that we take, because it presumes something that we hope gets fixed.
>> unfortunately not. We -- we are following current rules and we have to continue through this process. This -- if anything happens in terms of the house bill that would increase the number of registered voters, all that would do is be in effect next time around, which would be two -- 2007. This point there's nothing that we can do in terms of this current year. But in future years, it would be in effect, unless, of course, the house bill is worded differently. At this point it just says to increase them, that would be effective 1-106. But if the house bill is worded directly then it may affect. Did you have something to add to that?
>> judge, our citizen has arrived with some input.
>> okay.
>> good morning, judge and Commissioners, my name is grich chen [indiscernible], the precinct 2 39 -- precinct 239 democratic chair. I did initiate the change and I do have -- have a memo -- a flier that I handed out. When I discovered this issue about a year and a half ago or so, I decided that I wanted to interchange -- entertain a change so I approached the county elections division and asked them to pursue this. I did walk two weekends ago, I walked every house, about 89 homes around I distributed a flier explaining the change, the boundary change that I was requesting. I also contacted both the republican precinct chair of 239, the one in 241 and the democratic precinct chair of 241, all were in agreement, did not have any objections. And so we pursued this. I informed everyone. I also posted on our neighborhood list-serve and I received four comments in support, no objections and that's been basically it.
>> citizen request.
>> recommendation from staff.
>> thank you very much. Would anyone else like to give public testimony?
>> move to close the public hearing.
>> I bet this action item will be part of the consent motion.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, April 20, 2005 10:34 AM