Travis County Commissioners Court
September 12, 2006
Citizens Communication
Citizens communication is next. This gives residents an opportunity to address the Commissioners court on any matter not on the agenda for up to a full three minutes. Charles williams is first, second is thomas ybarra.
>> judge, Biscoe, Commissioners, I'm charles williams, conservation coordinator. We want to talk about the 12th annual Lake Travis underwater cleanup, which was a tremendous success this last Sunday, September the 10th. I want to talk a little bit about the weights. We had a little over seven tons of trash picked up throughout the lakes and underwater cleanup. We did a fantastic, we modified our recycling this year, that's not including the recycling. Our recycling this year was about 1500 pounds, we normally have about 300 pounds. What we did we used ecology action, instead of using the bags, we opened every bag that came in, and took the recyclings out. We had 300 pounds of aluminum, 600 pounds of steel, 500 pounds of glass, 100 pounds of plastic, an outstanding effort. I've got the rest of the partners with me, each going to introduce themselves a little bit about the cleanup while I pass out the t-shirts.
>> okay. Good morning, judge Biscoe and Commissioners. Thanks for having us. I wanted to talk a little bit about the volunteers that we had for the event. We had the most volunteers ever this year. We had 1200 people helping us keep the lake clean and beautiful. We had 600 divers and 600 shoreline volunteers. I also wanted to just make sure that you knew that -- that this was a partnership among four agencies and organizations, it's keep Austin beautiful, the colorado river foundation, lcra and of course Travis County and I just want to make a special thank you to Travis County because we couldn't do this without Travis County as one of the key partners. And it was Travis County that -- that made this big effort to increase the recycling and what's -- that's really great. We made five to 10 times more recycling. And I will pass it over to zach.
>> good news.
>> good morning, I'm zach [indiscernible] from the colorado river foundation. And this year we brought more than $40,000 in sponsorships and this is both in kind and cash sponsorships. And this helps make the event almost entirely pre for all of the organizations that are partnering. As well we have several boat and dive shop that's contribute time, people, resources as well as donated items for door prizes at the event and we had a great event with all of our volunteers, carlos and charlie's, who has helped with this event I think for the past 10 years or -- so we are just going to continue to get as much as we can. We have already heard from several new sources of sponsorships to help make this event free every year.
>> good morning, I'm john [indiscernible] with the lower colorado river authority. And this year the lake levels served as a benefit for us. For this particular event. The divers were able to get to lake levels, services that were otherwise too deep to get to in the recent past. On behalf of lcra, we would like to thank Travis County for their continued support on this event.
>> thank you.
>> thank all of you, appreciate the great effort.
>> okay. Thank you, judge.
>> thank you.
>> mr. Ybarra is next, if -- is somebody holding sign-in sheet number 2? All right. Mr. Ybarra please come forward. How are you doing in gus pena will be next.
>> [indiscernible]
>> I hope the budget sessions are going well. And the report this morning was fantastic. I'm here to discuss three factors. Mass transit, low income housing, and economic development for Travis County. And in regards to economic development, definitely help with city of Austin and the state partnership on film development. Tax incentives. We have got to compete against louisiana and new mexico. On housing, think about on electric and housing, electric cooperative partnership. And on mass transit, we began the study of the -- [speaking in spanish] okay, cool.
>> never changed.
>> I'm sorry. Just need to get more publicity. I represent a group of people that ride mass transit. We have been meeting since mid '80s. And we went before the capital metro board back then and told them we knew Travis County cannot enter the 21st century without having a 24 hour mass transit system. If you all were would implement that, we will get more conventions that will go in hand with economic development. Help us lobby for the night outs to go seven days a week, not just six. And that's all that I have to say. Keep up the good work. Hi, Karen, good to see you again, colleague.
>> thank you.
>> thank you, mr. Ybarra. Gus pena is next.
>> one thing I almost forgot. I came here for. I was here three weeks ago to make the offer about the first annual Travis County festival, here's a new one to think about. First annual Travis County peace and justice festival.
>> thank you.
>> pena next followed by kevin connally.
>> good morning, I should have spoken under the budget hearing for -- with regards to corrections officers, I'm a former federal corrections officer, also i.r.s. Investigator. You want to look at these, view them, whatever you want to. The thing is we need more corrections officers somewhere down the line, not enough funded for this budget year. If you are a corrections officer you have a certain amount of -- of inmates that you do spfz. That's not acceptable. Very precarious situation. I hope that the jail commission standards will look at that review, maybe get more corrections officers, more funding for that. I should have said this first, hi mom, hi loose why I don't, I know you -- hi lucio, I know that you can see this in high school, you are supposed to be in algebra class. I love you, amigo. More people are diagnosed with conditions more funding needed for health care needs. If a strong outreach effort was made more health care providers would see the need for more mental health care services and funding. On the bus Saturday we saw an individual that had mental health issue that's needed to be corrected or addressed. That's not acceptable. We are also seeing an increase of patients in what the city and county clinics, patients waiting longer to be seen, possibly a solution is expanding hours if possible. More new residents arrive in Austin, Travis County will continue to be inundated with new patients, many indigent and needy. Support more funding for the social security agencies, some are youth programs, agencies, city side issues. This -- this funding for youth, summer youth programs and job programs keep the kids out of gangs. As you well know, I'm going to say it again, gangs on the increase. We are on the streets working with these guys, young ladies, they are soliciting more members in gangs as we speak in school. We identified some at travis, johnson and others. Anyway, we don't want the gangs to attempt to ignore the youth, gang members not productive for them as a citizen. We said the senior citizens and youth are our two most precious segments of our population. Keep funding senior citizens, also. Also increase the funding for utility, rents, other basic needs for less fortunate. It's a big problem, it's a big need. You and you will see it every day. I don't think they have enough funding over here at the health and human services. That's always need for some more. You have a fiduciary, statutory responsibility for maintain the status quo. We know that already, appreciate what you are doing. Finally I will leave you with these three issues. When too few have too much, too many have too little, we will never have a sustainable society. A society's work will be -- worth will be measured by its treatment of the less fortunate. We have to understand this. If we didn't help the poor, don't say I have mine get yours. That's not a good saying. I hear it a lot from the rich. Not all of the rich, but some of them. The heart of leadership is to balance different constituencies and try to create value for all. [buzzer sounding] I want to thank you all very much for all of the hard either and staff because sometimes staff I will wrap it up, staff are not appreciated for this hard work. But anyway keep up the good work, thanks for the hard work you all did on the budget. Thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> mr. Pena, if you would put your address on the sign-in sheet.
>> I will do that.
>> yeah.
>> mr. Connally is next. And joyce best is after mr. Connally.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners, wanted to take a moment to introduce the newest member of our staff, of your staff, jennifer brown is the newest environmental specialist. She will be working in the new natural resources and environmental quality division. Jennifer will be working primarily on the balcones canyonland preserves and certainly going to be a huge help there. Jennifer brings a huge wealth of experience dealing with [indiscernible] issues as well as environmental concerns, not just in Texas, but across the country including washington state, new mexico and in hawaii. So we are very lucky to have her, excited that she's joined the team, just wanted to take this opportunity to introduce her officially to the court. So thank you very much.
>> welcome.
>> thank you.
>> tell ms. Brown we have a little water treatment plant number 4 issue waiting for her?
>> we are getting her up to speed as quickly as we can, judge.
>> I don't think it's little. [laughter]
>> welcome.
>> ms. Best?
>> thank you, judge. My name is joyce best. I'm speaking on behalf of the northeast action group. I'm here this morning to remind you of your recent position regarding the b.f.i. Landfill in northeast Travis County. The community is in agreement with you that both northeast landfills should close by 2015. With regard to b.f.i.'s proposed vertical expansion, community members were willing to compromise so that the court would have something to work with in discussions with b.f.i. However, the majority of the court ignored the fact that the height of the proposed expansion is what the community opposes. No landfill in Travis County should be that high. We want to encourage you to work for the citizens and support their viewpoint. After hearing about the wonderful recycling efforts at the Lake Travis cleanup, we can all be so pleased about that happening, we would like the same kind of progressive efforts to be made with regard to landfills in Travis County, so that we don't continue to grow the enormous mountain ranges that are occurring in the northeast sector of the county. Thank you.
>> thank you, joyce.
>> thank you, ms. Best. Anybody else for citizens communications whether you signed up or not? And if you happen to be holding number 2 and number 6. Okay. Then that does it for citizens communication.
she is here to tell us something about 31.
>> we postponed that to next week, the information we got got. Sorry about that. We postponed that the first thing. I guess we can receive information though without violating the law.
>> as long as we don't talk to you.
>> okay.
>> this item will be back on next week, if any action is necessary. We just received information now. We will give you a late citizen's communication.
>> very nice. I appreciate that very much. Dana, Travis County county clerk. This is just to let you know that there are parts working right now to try to get the election day polling places in early and mobile voting places to you by next week with the changes that we have. The two that I wanted to mention to you, well, we have a set of them that have to do with the redistricting redistricting. You all knew that we were going to be under this tough time constraint imposed by the court. Voter region has done a great job--registration has done a great job of getting the information to us so we can move forward. We are going to be able to bring those to you and we think that will be clear and clear cut. There is one mobile voting location that I am working on in the Pflugerville area that I'm trying to nail down down. You probably have also heard me talk about the heb itself congress has denied our request to be early voting facility, which is a huge blow. We are in negotiations with them right now to, please, please, please, not kick us out. I'm optimistic that next week we'll have a good answer for you. For those of you who have helped me with early voterer applications, I know you have an appreciation for how touch it is to get this all nailed down. I thank you for our help. That's all I need to tell you today.
>> okay. Those are the two items we should think about between now and then.
>> yes, sir.
>> thank you.
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 13, 2006 10:11 AM