Travis County Commissioners Court
July 25, 2006
Citizens Communication
First on the agenda is citizens communication, and a few citizens have signed in. Beginning with jim bellview. Doctor or medical ambitions? [ laughter ]
>> my family was large -- (indiscernible).
>> number two is tomas ybarra. Morning.
>> morning. My name is jim bellview. I'm here to talk to you about the county document and storage retrieval company. I know that with more important issues like the brady lane closure and budgets, etcetera, this seems mundane, but you need to be aware that your document storage company is falling down on the job and it's affecting real people. Most of you know me as a land use attorney. I'm in here occasionally on subdivisions, etcetera. I also do some specialized property tax cases, and that's where this document storage issue is coming into play. My clients are typically owed money that's being held by the Travis County district court. And they're usually minorities, even elderly. Many times with serious health conditions like diabetes, etcetera. And I work with them to get the money released by the court. In order to accomplish this I have to work for the Travis County attorney's office and they have to -- they're noticed of hearings, etcetera, and the county attorney appears and they have to have access to their files to be able to respond to my pleadings. And somewhere in the system the document storage company is kind of falling down on the job. Let me give you two recent examples that I have observed. I had a client recently, african-american gentleman, he was homeless, we ultimately got a judgment for over $40,000 that was in trust over at the courthouse for him. I gave the three weeks notice for him. At the time of the hearing the documents had not been retrieved and we had to postpone the hearing another two weeks which means my client lived on the street another two weeks because somebody couldn't get the documents into the Travis County attorney's office. I also recently made an open records request a couple of months ago for some files which took 60 days to fulfill. As you're aware, the state code requires those to be responded to in 10 days. The reason I was given for the delay was that the documents were not being provided to the county attorney's office from the document storage company. This has gotten so bad that the county attorney's office has asked me to give them about three or four weeks notice before I filed my notice for hearing, which is an additional three weeks, so that they have time to get the documents out of storage and to their office because they obviously need to review these files before they go through. The reason I wanted to come in and talk to you today is number one to make you aware of this, and second of all, I'd like to know who the head administrative person would be at the county that would oversee the document storage company or their service, etcetera.
>> that person's name is steve broberg. But thanks for calling this to our attention. We'll call the county attorney's office and try to get to the bottom of it. We'll see if we can help. But this is news to me. I don't know whether any other member of the court has heard about it.
>> news to me too.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> mr. Ybarra? How you doing?
>> pretty good.
>> I'm a citizen of Austin, born in 1952. The community -- a community activist since 1994. I started (indiscernible) in 1977 with two other Austin citizens, and I've come before the Commissioners court to see if y'all would give us the honor. We are a tax exempt organization. We incorporated in 1977. And what we do is we work with youth at risk to teach them non-violence as a means of conflict resolution. We use theater, everything. We were lucky enough in that the first year of our existence the city of Austin gave us a large grant, and that's -- I think it was for $2,500. And that's the only time we've ever gone before the city. Now I come before you with a bigger project. It would be my honor and the other two co-founders if Travis County Commissioners would approve the first annual Travis County black tejano festival to be happening August 31st. To be held at the expo center in collaboration with the city of Austin, using the convention center as a site as well. It going to be a biggie. The reason why we went with black-tejano is because we're going to target -- tejanos are multi lingual and it's all encompassing. And one of the co-founders is a black woman, so that's what I'm here for, to see if y'all would put it on the agenda for next week to decide if y'all would -- otherwise it would be city of Austin first annual festival. That's number one. Number two on my agenda is does the arch get Travis County money? They do?
>> we have a contract with them. We purchase services from them.
>> okay, great. I would like for y'all to put some input into getting their board of directors to change one of the policies and procedures. If you leave the building prior to 3:00 a.m. You cannot automatically -- you're banned for 12 days. I'm a case manager, so I'm on case management and I've come representing several, several latinos as well as homeless people who want that policy changed because it makes it hard to find a job if we're given -- if we're given the graveyard shift. The way it's structured, it's really hard, and that's what I've come for your help. Get them to change that policy asap because I've been banned for 12 days and now I have to go next door to salvation army, but they also have the same policy and procedure if you leave the building prior to some time you cannot come back and you're banned for several days or weeks. We need your help. The homeless need your help.
>> okay. Thank you. By the way, Commissioner Gomez will not be with us today. She's away on county business. I did not see forms 3 and 4. You're number 5. Does somebody have three and four? Then we'll take number five.
>> thank you all. Good morning.
>> morning.
>> as you know, I am the president of the group of parents of concerned inmates being abused in Texas prisons, jails and youth facilities. And I finally got a chance to go down and visit with my son, and yolanda from the senator barrientos office doesn't want me -- didn't want me to go and see him at that particular time because he had been beaten really bad and abused. That was my first time lying eyes on my child. I've been waiting for them to transfer him. She promised me before senator barrientos left his office that they were going to transfer my son from out of harm's way. Well, he's still in harm's way over there at the same unit that the guards beat him. My son's finger is broken, his hand is like this now. He can't walk that good. He has big -- like they slammed him up against the wall. He has lines in the back of his head is kind of swollen. His eye is messed up. He told me, momma, they beat me pretty bad. He wants off of the unit. I have life endangerments where he has filed them. No one is paying any attention. I want my son off of this unit, allred unit, before the guards attack him again. He say momma, I don't know when they're coming in here and attack me again. He say, I don't even know what I'm being attached for. I want to come home. I want my innocent child home. He is innocent. I turned in his information of his innocence over here at the Travis County third court of appeals. The representatives who work in criminal justice department has taken my son's information that would clear him of this 15-year drug possession case, put it in a miscellaneous file. This is showing you that these people are covering up things. We have a lot of corrupted people that work for our county and our city. And it doesn't make sense. I would appreciate it if all of this would hurry up and be investigated, transfer my son from off of that unit. He has -- the cause number has been changed and so has other cause numbers, such as my group's inmate loved ones. They had their cause numbers changed too and they people can't get out of prison. And the disciplinary court is to me illegal, an entity inside of an entity. It doesn't make sense. They put charges on these inmates and make them do extra time for so-called disciplinary punishments. Well, who is over them to see about them filing lies on the inmates? Who is disciplining them? No one. And they can do whatever they want to to these inmates and nothing is being done about it. But I want something done about mine and I want it done immediately. I want my son transferred immediately because this doesn't even make sense. And then I want his habeas corpus released because he's innocent. He's not even guilty of the 15-year drug possession case. We have proof of that. Thank you.
>> thank you. Anybody else for citizens communication? Somebody came to my office this morning, wanted to show some information.
>> judge, I saw that person and they were exiting the building and they wanted to show it next week or something like that.
>> anybody else for citizens communication?
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, July 26, 2006 10:34 AM