Travis County Commissioners Court
May 10, 2005
Citizens Communication
Citizens communication is next, three citizens have signed in. Katy capell is first. Good morning.
>> good morning, Commissioners and judge. My name is katy capell, I’m a retired Travis County employee for 2002 and currently the executive director of services for the elderly. We are an agency who receive a yearly grant from the county to provide in-home services for elderly and disabled people. This is older americans month and I thought that I would come down and visit with you and give you a little update. We each year serve over 600 elderly and disabled people. Our attendants provide in-home cleaning, cooking, laundry and personal assistance such as help with bathing. The grant that we receive from you is designed to provide a sliding scale for people who are probably going to qualify for medicaid but haven't applied or are waiting. As you know the state is in disarray right now. Oftentimes the wait can be six or seven or nine months, which is not what we foresaw when we requested this money. Most older people wait too long until they ask for help. They don't want help, they want to be independent. We have people who can't stand long enough to cook or do their laundry. They call us for help. We don't turn anybody down. We have been spending our own reserves, our sliding scale is double what we actually receive from our city and county grants and we have done this because we don't like to turn anybody away. But I wanted to let you know that in your budget deliberations that come up in the summer, since this funding has been level for a long time and we have more and more elderly people that are in need. I also wanted to let you all know that we do not just serve the elderly. We have received a grant from susan b.kohman to do short-term in term care for women who have had surgery with breast cancer. When they are released from the hospital they are often unable to use their arms at all. They were very excited that we offered this service for -- for up to 84 hours for each person coming out of the hospital or if they are having difficulty with chemo. So we are looking at our resources and we are -- we are -- we continue to work out of east Austin, to serve the older people of Travis County. Thank you.
>> thank you. We appreciate your work.
>> don't you have an event coming up, recognition something?
>> we do. We do. Our attendants that do this work are paid very little and we offer almost an employment coaching service out there because we have people who don't have high school degrees, haven't had much work experience, but we want to honor them and to help them get in touch with resources. So on Thursday, the 19th, we are having the attendant benefit fair in the afternoon. We are going to have door prizes, food, resources, educational resources, live music and this is to just honor caregivers. It's a joint effort with outreach health services and the junior league has contributed money to this event to honor the people that care for the elderly and disabled.
>> great.
>> thanks, kay,.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> jennifer gale is next.
>> good morning.
>> hi, Travis County Commissioners court, Karen Sonleitner, precinct 2; Gerald daughterty precinct 3, Margaret Gomez, precinct 4 and Biscoe. I’m jennifer gale candidate for governor of the state of Texas. I’m here to introduce into evidence the -- the petition signed by -- people of Austin. Collected by mark nathan. Of the 369 signatures admitted, 66 of them were declared invalid by the city of Austin. That left 303, well, she needed 294. Of those, 195 having complete addresses and have -- have 22 have missing voter registration numbers. Which is required by state law until a judge -- a court changes that. Also it's missing your -- on page 5 the -- the missing dates. Now, dates are supposed to be put on when they are collected and they are clearly not on here. And then there's -- there should be checked when the entire petition is being verified. Then the -- the lettering is illegible on many of the pages on the header. So the header is having legible -- illegible that you can't even read when the person they are signing for is. Here's the page without any dates on it. Clearly, those invalid. 12 right there, meaning 12 minus 303 or 300, takes it well below the 294. Of course 195 brings it well below that, along with the 22 voter registration numbers and the 18 missing dates. So I’m suggesting this is invalid for those reasons. It's also invalid in that it's -- it looks as if the -- the name of the candidate was added afterwards because it's similar. The scribbling is similar to the last page, which is also illegible. It also looks like it was sat down on a table for people to sign and on each one of them you are supposed to say by state law, sign the petition more than one candidate for the same offices and the same elections -- is prohibited. Clearly they didn't do that. So I believe that our city clerk here in the city of Austin is corrupt. City clerk's office. I was a part of the clean air task force, it was clear that john wickam made a deal with the cancer society. He admitted to this on the porch party that we have for candidates, he made a deal. It's clearly that the rest of the group knew nothing about it, that's why it ended so quickly, they never heard my -- my compromise. Also our state government is taking away the control from local governments, town, cities and counties to have control [buzzer sounding] over our environmental guidelines. That we ask, that were asking in the state by having us having to -- paying for the loss of the use of the land. That we let our state legislators know that -- that that's -- that shouldn't be a burden upon local governments. That that's insane. That we wouldn't never be able to protect our environment, thank you.
>> thank you. Dusty knight is next.
>> good morning, dusty knight with the Travis County tax office. I wanted to on drop by and tell you after several false starts we do have the precinct 3 remote tax office open, taking customers, starting yesterday morning. The precinct 3 office is at 8656 highway 71 west. Building b, second floor. They are able to take care of your motor vehicle property tax and voter needs if you go out there. They do not have any art on the walls as of yet, Commissioner. I would like for the [laughter] television people that are listening, we also have locations currently at 4011 mckinney falls parkway and 15822-foothill farms loop. Which we are doing full services at all of these places. The other two locations do happen to have a drive-through, the one at Commissioner 3's precinct was up on the second floor, it's kind of hard to get cars up there. Anyway, we are open, very happy about it, we want to thank the Commissioners court for making available the space for us to be able to go into these locations. I want to thank facilities for -- for expediting this and getting this in the location, i.t. For helping us get all of the wiring and whatnot done so we can do that. We are real happy. We are at 5501 airport boulevard is the main office if anybody needs anything to come down to the main office. But we are happy for people to be able to go out to these remote locations. It's my understanding at 1811 springdale road, hopefully early fall, we'll have the location in precinct 1. That's our hope. So I want to thank the Commissioners court for your support.
>> thank you.
>> anybody else for citizens communication whether you signed in or not?
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.
Last Modified:
Wednesday, May 11, 2005 8:12 AM