Travis County Commissioners Court
September 9, 2008
Citizens Communication
Citizens communication is next. This item gives residents an opportunity to address the Commissioners court on any matter not on the agenda. Three -- four residents signed in. Gus pena is first, to be followed by Karen rennick,.
>> good morning, judge, gus pena again. Listening to the public hearing, I want to commend you on listening, concerns and questions. It reinforces our appreciation of you all. You know that I've been at the school board meetings the city council meetings at the legislature. That is a compliment. Thank you for being attentive and sensitive to the needs and concerns of the community. We know by the budget hearings that the city council passed their budget. I have been working on the budget for the last 25 years. 19 on the county side since renfro was the judge here the county judge. I believe $404,000 was the -- the amount was mentioned in the print media. Funding for social service agencies, I want to thank them for that. But I want to say this for the record, I want -- I told the mayor and councilmembers and -- and I consider him a friend, our city manager marc ott that you set the standards, for providing social services for people, I really do. I say that sincerely and honestly, I hope that you take it that way, because I know the public will because they listen to whatever I have to say whether it's good or bad. Thank you for setting the standard for city council. They finally listened to what you have. I know that they are going to work more closely with several issues that affect county and city issues. Students, children still need their immunizations, call 972-5520. Various locations call for dates and times. H.u.d. Vash, I have been in contact with the assist -- deputy assistant secretary for veterans affairs dealing with the h.u.d.-vash program. This is a fiasco. We do know that senator james web and other senators are considering a congressional investigation. No criteria eligibility. I got these good faxes from pete Daugherty, assistant secretary of veterans affairs, also paul smith, washington d.c., also, just not spelled correctly exactly what the parameters are. We are working on that. Interesting quote in the paper. Says spending on the war and poverty continues, trills spent or wasted depending on your proactive, america has the richest poor people in the world. Whoever September this I would like to meet you. I can tell you what this is one of the worst statements I ever read in any kind of article or paper. Regarding the -- the -- the budget here at the county Commissioners court, I'm former federal investigator, if you want to see this, you are more than welcome to see it. We increased the corrections officers, I'll wrap up. I do ask. Patrol is very much needed as a top priority, you look at the inmate to officer ratio is not acceptable, not safe. Bless you Commissioner. Last but not least, support your veterans. We have left the female veterans out of the loop. We tend to think about the male veterans. We need to start acknowledging their efforts in defense of our countries freedom and democracy. Thank you all very much for your effort. Have a good day, god bless y'all.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> mr. Rennick is next, followed by jennifer gale.
>> good morning.
>> good morning, judge and Commissioners. My name is Karen rennick, the co-founder of vote rescue and the coordinator for the state-wide coalition of texans for real elections. In my brief remarks this morning, I will complete the reading of important sections from our September 2nd, 2008 letter to the court. This letter was our response to the previous week's, which was August 26th, unanimous decision by the court to approve $102,000 for 35 brand new hart intercivic voting machines that count votes secretly and provide no way to perform an accurate recount. These machines have been proven by numerous nationally recognized computer security experts to be easy to manipulate to change the voting results. I'm reading now from page 3. Given the undeniable volt voltability to -- vulnerability, a, pull the use of machines -- ... Starting this November, 2008. B, demand or sue to get your money back from hart intercivic and buy one ballot marking device such as the auto mark, for each polling place in Travis County, to satisfy the hava requirement for disabled voters and therefore you will be providing a paper ballot for them, too, which can be hand counted. Or for the upcoming election, you could keep one hart intercivic e slate for each polling place for the disabled community to use. There are many statements that dana made last week, which is the meeting of August 26th, that need a clear and factual rebuttal. We will be responding to them in the near future. In an attachment to this document we have recapped exactly what evidence we provided you last week in hope that you will actually take the time to review them all. And this is the attachment. Each packet contains six color coded documents. And I would like to bring to your attention to the white one this morning. The white document is a Texas secretary of state directive dated April 24th, 2006, from anne mcgeean the Texas state director of elections sent to Texas election officials regarding the status of ballot and programming cart orders for the may 13th, 2006 elections. With only three weeks before the election, she was authorizing election officials who had not received their programming media or ballots from their voting machine vendor to create their own emergency paper ballots and to handle the voter in the regular manner as if paper ballots are being regularly used.
>> [buzzer sounding] I would like to conclude very briefly that we respectfully request that the court provide us with a working session so that we can continue these discussions and bring in our experts who can then speak with dana's experts. Thank you.
>> thank you.
>> thank you, ms. Rennick.
>> judge, can I ask mary, can I just -- I don't want to engage in conversation, but can I -- I can provide information. The information that I would like to provide is the statement that was made on August the 26th that it was a unanimous vote. It was a unanimous vote because there were only four year.
>> yes.
>> the correction is I was not here.
>> that's correct.
>> okay. Jennifer gale is next, followed by don smith.
>> good morning, Travis County, Commissioners Gomez, Daugherty, eckhardt and Ron Davis. Judge Sam Biscoe. I want to talk about education. Our education is not getting funded properly. We are spending money on our -- on the people that are getting private education. They are not only taking their money I mean surely they still pay for a regular education, but they have private education, so they are actually paying for both. That's why we are not getting the $23 an hour that we should have as minimum wage. They are using employees payroll for -- for further profits. They are using our money to send our children to poorer schools. 7/11's, japanese, burger king's, british, we are sending them to places that aren't properly paying us a fair wage. With capital metro there is no basis for negotiations. They should strike. Two years ago they set up the two tier system still in place, removed half of our bus operators. They are not dealing with co-pays, ductibles, having to pay for a quarter or a 10th of your insurance payment for any surgery. They can't afford that. There is no basis for a negotiation that are going to begin tomorrow. And I'm suggesting a strike. Electronic voting. You had an expert on yelled that said it doesn't work. People are going to vote for sarah palin and mike mccain, their vote may not be counted if someone wanted to play around with those machines, you know that. You have heard no other evidence to the contrary. You said no where's the evidence? The fact is that it can happen. Ever expert that I have ever heard of has said it can happen. We have got to use paper ballots. We need to be able to double check those paper ballots a week or so later to make sure that the count was accurate. There's a -- there's an article in today's daily texan on integrated health care. This shows that our health care professionals are not doing their job. We are not taking care of our patients here. I was at the Travis County health care district meeting a few days ago to discuss the taxes which are going to be $144 for your average home. We are talking about paying for a health care clinic in north dallas -- north Austin where the people there don't want to pay, don't want to have it in their neighborhood. The people that need those services are not going to be able to get there. Unless they take a -- take a group of buses. And -- and I've asked for a university of Texas medical branch -- and the eligibility, everybody should be eligible. It was originally brought up as everybody would be eligible. Now they are giving it to people from other countries. I'm seeing people from this country need the health care. We should have a university of Texas medical branch that everybody can have access to. I have spoken with two people this week that -- that have brought up to
>> [buzzer sounding] me the fact that we need tutors in our schools, that they don't have access to math tutors. If they have those tutors they could move on in school. Let's get tutors in the Austin independent school district. Thank you.
>> thank you. Don smith is next.
>> good morning judge, Commissioners.
>> good morning.
>> thank you for allowing us to speak to you today. I have brought a few items here to -- to show you and hope that you might join me in a small picture session in just a moment. I would like to read you a letter. Congratulations on behalf of the members of the president's council on service and civic participation. We congratulate you for earning the president's volunteer service award. This award recognizes you, your dedication, to volunteer service and signifies that you have served your community and your country with distinction. Through your volunteer efforts you are demonstrating values that make our nation strong and you are helping to build a culture and citizenship of service and responsibility to america. By volunteering you have joined a remarkable team that includes millions of americans whose every day acts of kindness andes see make our country a better place. Please help make the team even stronger by encouraging your friends and family members to serve. Americans of all ages can get involved and make a difference in their communities. Congratulations on receiving the president's volunteer service award, deputy chief john murphy.
>> [ applause ] in 2002 president bush set into plagues an action that would allow pep -- into place an action that would allow people to volunteer and receive recognition. In that he said that I would like for you to volunteer at least 4,000 hours of time from that point forward to your community or to the country. And be recognized for that. Chief murphy has been recognized for that award. With quite a bit of -- more time than 4,000 hours. Last time I even tried to track it, it was somewhere around 7,000 hours since 2002. So I -- so if possible, I would love for us to join in front to -- to give this award to deputy chief john murphy.
>> okay.
>> I know that you have an action item on the agenda today for us. I hope that -- that you vote to approve it. We're in the process of -- of developing our cadet class right now. I think that we have had affirmative calls from all but two saying that they are ready for the class to start in October. So we are sending them for physicals. The medical screening and preparing to start our class and it's going to be exciting again. And thank you all for supporting that and thank you for your action today.
>> thank you all.
>> thank you.
>> congratulations to deputy chief murphy again. 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:
Tuesday, September 9, 2008 1:37 AM