Travis County Commissioners Court
September 13, 2005
Citizens Communication
Citizens communication is next. This is to give residents an opportunity to address the court on any matter not on the agenda. For up to a full three minutes. Any matter not on the agenda. Trek english is first. And joyce best is second.
>> good morning, judge, my name is trek english with the northeast action group. I really didn't want to be here today. I was -- I was going to -- you were giving us a break, we were giving you a break. We hadn't planned on being here. We -- these are the sheets that we would like to give to the court or perhaps to one of your aides so it can be distributed as to what happened Saturday. We came to file a protest because we are receiving calls from our neighbors that are now complaining that they are being called by a company on behalf of b.f.i., in the last 48 hours, I guess, and some of them were at the meeting, some of them were not. They are being asked questions, being intimidated, do you know if you take the contract we are going to be gone by 2015, whatever. We feel those are -- those are underhanded tactics. We did things out in the open, we -- we worked on it for two weeks, put a flier out, we walked all the neighborhoods and distributed -- not all of them, but most of them, many neighborhoods were distributed with the flier, we held the meeting, at a public place which was a school. We -- we made copies of the contract, we made copies of the restrictive covenant and we made copies of your memo. We explained to people what's going on. We left it all open, we invited the b.f.i. Reps and, you know, it was up to them to convince people to -- to the -- either vote for the contract or not the contract. We give them what we felt were the -- our explanation of what -- what they were asking. And at this point we don't like what they are doing. We don't think that you should be doing business or entering into any contract with companies that are not playing by the rules. They are not gentlemen. They are not -- they are wise guys just doing anything they want in this town. So I am putting out a message to any business in town that keeps enriching them and have a dumpster that says b.f.i. Or waste management, well, I’m going to boycott them. I don't care if the rest of the residents will join me in doing the same thing. Because if they don't want to play by the rules, neither do we. Frankly I feel that if you believe, if you believe that a business that says that they only need five years needs 75 feet to go up, if a landfill needs to go up 75 feet, to stay five years, then we have a serious problem in this country. 75 feet in five years is a lot of height for a landfill to go up in -- in Texas or in any other state. I think that's wrong. And they are -- one of the things that they made very clear to the people, which is what angered most of the people, is that they don't have to do anything. They don't have to have a contract. One of the things they made very clear and said, they said we can -- we have ways of handling waste to where if we don't get an expansion we can stay here until 2020. If you believe that they need an expansion to stay here, I think we are all dupes. Obviously they didn't have to say it, they said it. Now we know they don't need an expansion to stay here until 2015. The residents are saying we are willing to south carolina guys, we are -- sacrifice, we are willing to put up with them until 2015 we are not going to survive the expansion. The 75-foot expansion first of all is a reward. Second, was what we have been enduring, things are just impossible for us to put up with another expansion. This will be the worst thing that could happen to this area of Austin. Thank you.
>> thank you.
>> thank you, trek.
>> ms. Best.
>> I’m joyce best, I live in northeast Austin. And I wanted also to protest the actions of b.f.i. And their under the guise of a survey calling neighbors to ask specific questions about the contract. Those neighbors who were not able to attend the meeting may have felt uninformed about some of the issues and therefore put at a disadvantage in these phone conversations. Some felt intimidated by this kind of action. They also asked some unnecessary personal questions, I felt. Such as a person's age which really had nothing to do with the issue. So I simply wanted to protest based on the fact that I think this is an unwarranted intrusion on our neighbors, that they are not acting in a good neighbor sort of way when they do these kinds of activities. I feel that we have acted in good faith with them. And we are not happy about this intrusion, thank you.
>> 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, September 14, 2005 9:23 AM