Travis County Commissioners Court
February 17, 2009, 2009
Citizens Communication
Citizens communication is next.
thank you all very much.
this item gives residents an opportunity to address the Commissioners court on any matter not on the agenda.
for up to three minutes.
gus pena is first, he will be followed by morris priest, who will be followed by jo kathryn quinn, are you coming back?
>> no.
>> okay.
we have gotten ms.
quinn already.
ronnie reeferseed is third.
if we could get those three persons to come forward, I would appreciate it.
good morning.
>> good morning, judge.
Commissioners, gus pena again, I was not going to speak on the cdbg public hearing.
but anyway nonetheless I felt is warranted.
one thing that I forgot to mention on that item a lot of the developers, a lot of people who provide transitional housing going to sro, single room occupancy instead of transitional housing for homeless families.
i kind of left that out of the equation, we need to be aware of that and hopefully that equation will be improved.
number one, we are hoping to have an increase of funding for social service agencies from the stimulus package.
i have been in dialogue with my cousin, frederico pena, we are hoping that we get some funding from washington for not just the city of Austin but Travis County because I live here, I'm a native of Austin and Travis County and that's my concern is mom lives in precinct 2, I have a lot of aunts and uncles in precinct 1 and 4 and 3 throughout the county.
the issue is what are we going to get from the stimulus package?
it was very interesting and intriguing to hear the dialogue, your work session, judge.
i think that you provided a -- an outstanding leadership.
i also called the young lady, came in from -- from however the agency is styled that supports and assists the county Commissioners and their -- they are there to support and it was very interesting to hear their definitions and made me feel good to finally understand some of the things that are going on here in Travis County and I think y'all did a good job asking the pertinent questions and having the questions answered to where we the public could understand it.
the veterans affairs department, again we're seeing a lot of veterans coming in, being discharged with brain injuries, ptsd, some of them are not being treated, then it's going to flood Austin Travis County mhmr, the state mhmr, we need more funding for that.
i have already called the veterans affairs department in washington to make sure that the physicians are really diagnosing the veterans for brain injuries and they are not just being discharged.
also, I have talked about reentry programs, I think Travis County has a good program here whereby if you have a record they will give you a chance, you know, for a position, which is very important in this recession and a lot of veterans are coming back over here that have problems, they are getting into problems, their needs not being addressed.
whatever your personal position is on the war in iraq and afghanistan, please support our veterans, pray for them.
they are losing their jobs, their homes, we need to stay by them.
they are in harm's way, they are -- they are defending our country.
last item we -- I'm still asking, begging for anybody that can volunteer to become a tutor and mentor, any help to master math and reading, please, please, the tests are coming out before spring break, we need your help.
troop 853, gave us veterans a valentine's day card saying we thank you for your service to your country veterans, thank you all very much, god bless you, thank you all for the work that you do every day.
mr.
priest?
>> judge, Commissioners, morris priest for the record.
i wanted to say I'm really outraged by this court and campo by their actions that they have taken.
october the 13th as you will remember we had this cross collarization, there were not enough meetings before they tried to slam this down the public's throat.
the November-december meeting was combined.
the public was not allowed to speak.
i did get a letter from the hays county judge.
quoting from her letter I do not believe it is fair or proper to require you to sign up to speak on an item, have you wait until the end of the day for the item to be called only to be informed that you will not be heard.
simply put, what you witnessed was a glaring example of government at its worst.
i'm truly sorry that you had to be on the receiving end of what must have struck you as a totally inappropriate behavior on the part of some of the board members.
as you will recall we didn't get to speak that night.
the agenda was put until the very end of the meeting and we were told that we couldn't speak.
so there was no public input on this matter.
the four public hearings were on a statement of purpose not the agenda item.
and to add insult to injure, the January meeting was rescheduled only to find that our Commissioners of this court voted in lame duck members which this community has worked very hard to rid ourselves of, such as mike krusee and gerald daugherty.
the kickoff of that -- of that campaign that campo is doing right now that they are involved in started February the 9th.
they are saying that -- that these public officials want -- want the citizens to -- to be involved to consider possible cuts in the next 25 years.
i think that the com pa has a very -- campo has a very sinister way of addressing the members of this community as well as this court by their actions.
now they are including bastrop and caldwell county.
the situation that we have right now is that -- campo is having these public meetings, yet the public doesn't get to speak at them.
i have a -- I have received contact from many people on the board.
i haven't heard from my county judge yet on this matter that I have made repeated requests.
i have heard from other people that are on the campo board.
many people are very upset about these lame duck members being put on the board that I have been told by kirk watson's staff is -- is pretty much -- has pretty much lived out its course and is going to be ending very soon.
probably about the same time that mike's place on the board as a voting member no less on the campo board.
i would like you all to encourage people that you may have contact with, such as bob day or john trevino and ask them when the public -- when the public asks to speak at these meetings, that these non-elected people as well as the elected people get away from this humpty-dumpty approach of whatever the chair says goes when it comes to citizens communication.
>> as a points clarification, it was cynthia long comparing that chat meeting and a motion to open it to public comments and it failed.
i believe that all of our campo board members voted, I made the motion and all of our members voted for it.
>> my request is that you remove yourself from the board next time that occurs.
maybe if the -- if several of you all would have come down and sat with us, then she would have realized that she wouldn't have had the votes to slam this toll road down our throat maybe we would have gotten the chance to speak.
>> good points, all.
>> mr.
reeferseed is next, followed by Karen reasonnick, jenny clark and vicki carp.
>> thanks to you all.
welcome back.
i wanted to one ditto almost everything as has been said earlier by mr.
priest and of course gus pena.
i want to say with joy for all of us to rejoice for new real vote now because each day more people are realizing truly that 9/11 was an inside job.
that means that the perpetrators, criminals, conspirators, tag alongs and absolutely evil mindset of bigotry and elitism, facts of internal explosion that's actually brought down the twin towers are leaking out now from the brave surviving firefighters and others even our zionist controlled media -- continually resuscitate their ongoing holocaust industry about their retelling of the nazis during this holiday season, meanwhile the prosecution of some of the real criminals involved in the ongoing genocide in door darfur is beginning to surface.
3 million people permanently displaced with 300,000 men, women and children executed so far in this ongoing tragedy, no longer ignored.
even the millions of people killed in cambodia beginning to have some justice against those perpetrators of their own actual genocide as some senior schemers are starting to be prosecuted against their crimes against humanity.
ob/gyn dr.
ron paul, delivered over 4,000 people, many of them students at u.t.
possibly will be our last internationally known political leader left standing after the full prosecution of both major parties, traders and criminals, luckily millions of our own fellow citizens were at least introduced to dr.
paul, that founding father among us now during our most recent election cycle, obama is beginning to evaporate more and more every day, as everyone can see his continual surrender to the international military industrial bankster cab balance of criminals, why would our children's children surrender to those bankster criminals for their miscalculations and evil schemes?
proudly with confidence we can all just say no to the hog wash, it's not going to be easy at first, but soon our global leadership will again be earned by example.
weekdays from 11:00 to -- 11:00 a.m.
to p.m., 4 to 6:00 p.m.
on Sundays on 90.1 f.m.
right here in Austin, we are all blessed with the truth from alex jones and at infowars.com and prisonplanet.com online 24/7.
this again is ronnie reeferseed saying thanks to you all and I really appreciate the leadership that's provided to the world by this county and judge Biscoe and all of the rest of y'all.
thank you.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> mr.
-- ms.
rennick.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners, my name is Karen rennick with vote rescue an election integrity group in Austin we support hand counted paper ballots.
i have come here today with two of my colleagues, we are going to read for the record a letter that we sent to the court and the county clerk regarding a vote that was taken last week on the study group, the election study group that will commence, I hear, early March.
so we will -- I will commence reading and depending on the time, we will just keep reading so the entire document is into the record.
our letter is in response to an e-mail that was sent to us from judge Biscoe to jenny clark who will be speaking.
judge, your e-mail to ms.
clark read that ms.
clark, I was advised today that virtually all of the recommendations submitted by vote rescue last week were incorporated into the final draft of dana's plan.
let me know if this is not the case.
thank you for these additional comments.
so we responded with the following letter: dear judge Biscoe, in response to your e-mail request on February 10th, 2009, to apprise you if it was not the case that virtually all of the recommendations submitted by vote rescue last week were incorporated into the final draft of dana's plan, which is better known as the outline of election study group mission background issues in process, we submit the following: after submitting to the court on February 3rd our suggested revisions to this outline, we were pleased that many of them were incorporated into the document by the county clerk.
we remained, however, still concerned that the second section entitled Travis County is in a strong position to work from, remained exactly as it was first written.
as explained to the court on February 3rd, we find these statements to be overly subjective and detrimental to the establishment of a fact driven study and potentially prejudicial to members of the study group who do not know the background of this issue.
it was our intention, had jenny clark made it to the court in time to testify in person at the February 10th voting session hearing, to respectfully request for a second time that the entire second section, except for the second sentence in the fourth statement, be deleted from this outline.
as a reminder to the court, here are each of the four statements listed in that section and in italics below each one our reason for requesting its deletion or partial deletion.
number 1, Travis County has a six year history of success with the current system.
currents voting system.
our response --
>> [beeping] I will allow my colleague, vicki carp to read the response.
>> I'm vicki carp, with vote rescue continuing the statement.
absence of observable election manipulation does not comprise a history of success.
the hart machines have already been decertified in three other states because comprehensive studies have proven that they are not secure.
a former hart employee has sued the company for making false claims about the capability of their election products to election officials.
about -- I'm sorry.
the national trend is moving away from dre, direct recording electronic systems.
for these reasons and numerous others, we argue that the word "success" is subjective at best.
number two, no system failures have occurred or are eminent and require emergency action.
the unexplainable hype under vote rate ...
can be interpreted as system fails with the hart machine used in Travis County.
it is important to point out that problems with straight party voting on the hart machines have been the impetus of two lawsuits filed in Texas to date.
it is the opinion of hundreds of voters in Travis County that emergency action is in fact necessary because the machines are not counting all of our votes in secret, a violation of our basic right to vote.
and just to define for the record an undervote is when a voter votes the ballot but fails to --
>> [indiscernible] number 3, Travis County is a national leader in security testing protocols for electronic voting systems.
while we do acknowledge that Travis County election staff typically conducts testing of their voting machines, it is more thorough than that done in many counties in Texas and across the u.s., according to nationally recognized computer security experts, there are no testing protocols that can dedetect tampering that has been proven to be possible with these voting systems.
one such expert is dr.
dan wallic of rice university.
we have presented to both the Commissioners court and the county clerk copies of his testimony and statements about the ineffectiveness of testing protocols.
number 4, two parts, part a.
the use of the study group for election administration has a history of success.
first, we must say that we think the use of a study group for election administration has the potential for success.
but this is different from saying that it has a history of success.
we think that a good example of the previous study group not exhibiting success is when they decided to make the "ability to report election results by 10:00 news" one of their top three criteria for recommending a new voting system.
choosing expediency over transparency is a mistake that we hope is not repeated by the new study group
>> [beeping]
>> good morning, judge and Commissioners, I'll continue the statement.
my name is jenny clark, I'm sorry that I missed the meeting to bring this up when you all voted to approve the language for dana's study group.
>> [indiscernible] number 4 b.
this will be the third time this method has been used within the last 20 years to examine voting systems.
this is the only sentence among the four statements in this section that is purely factual.
hence we have no objection to its remaining.
in summary our first request dated February 3rd, 2009, for the deletion of the entire second section of the outline was not accepted by the county clerk and therefore the section remained in full in the version of the outline approved by the court on February 10th, 2009.
we now respectfully request that the court pass an addendum to its February 10th vote of approval for the record and for addition to the outline that deletes statements 1 through 4 a in the second section, if the court is unwilling to do so, then we ask that it pass an addendum that clarifies the same four statements by preceding them with a note that says the following statements shall not be construed as fact but are the opinion of the Travis County clerk and her staff or something along those lines, we thank you and the court for your attention to our request to ensure that the new Travis County election study group is indeed a fact driven study.
sincerely Karen rennick founder and director of vote rescue, vicki carp, pr director, jenny clark, member, vote rescue.
i also wanted to remind the court of -- of how -- how -- I'm looking forward to an answer from y'all about this request.
but I wanted to remind the court of how we came to this place to even have the election study group.
in may of 2008, we brought to your attention a whistle blower lawsuit against hart intercivic from william singer a former employee.
mr.
singer frequently accompanied hart representatives to perform demonstrations, testing and support maintenance of the voting machines in various locations.
and thus heard firsthand a number of misstatements by hart in its attempt to win voting system contracts.
as well as misstatements made to conceal the voting machine's frailties and vulnerabilities.
in January of 2004, mr.
singer resigned from hart under protest, citing many of the fraudulent acts and misrepresentations given rise to this action.
in July of 2004, mr.
singer wrote the secretaries of state for the states of Texas and ohio, to alert them to hart's misconduct.
>> [beeping] he received no substantive response.
so I would -- I am curious what y'all think about our request to change the language of the -- on the election study group.
>> we are out of time.
number one.
two is that we cannot deliberate this item, but I would be happy to give you all another e-mail indicating my position and I request that any other member of the court interested in doing that should do it.
y'all's position is dana shouldn't say anything good about our voting system.
her position is she's telling the truth when she does.
as county judge, my hope was not to get involved in it to be honest.
but I did think that based on the conversation that we had in court, first conversation that we had after we got the plan, dana made a whole lot of changes to accommodate recommendations that y'all made.
and this thing about she shouldn't have put this in the plan, she shouldn't have put that, I agree with you it is pretty subjective.
but every elected official here probably thinks that he or she does a pretty good job in his or her respective area.
so I don't know that getting -- that our changing that letter matters that much anyway.
right now we're down to the committee taking the comprehensive review of our voting system and y'all are on the committee and we made -- we made clear that that would happen, there will be 25 or 30 people.
i would use that opportunity to convince the committee of the rightness of my position if I were on there.
>> we intend to do so.
we appreciate that.
>> right.
>> we just want to be sure and -- we're glad that there's an opportunity for the public to -- to either see on tv or read into the record now our reasons for thinking that the second part of that -- of that outline that was approved, you know, officially voted on for the study group that we -- that we at least our objections to the validity of the statement have been heard.
>> but I served virtually all of the ones that you all presented to us the first time we discussed the plan, you believe I should have used many.
is it too late to change that?
>> used many.
>> right.
>> I don't know what you are -- I don't understand.
>>
>> [multiple voices]
>> let me give you an --
>> virtually all.
we just wanted to clarify that.
>> of the ones before us at that time.
right?
>> this was part of what-- we had submitted changes on this section we are suggesting today.
>> we asked for it to be deleted because it wasn't based on fact.
>> didn't give you the amount of detail at that time.
but at any rate we appreciate the comments.
>> we are not posted.
>> we are not posted.
>> anyway.
>> well, I would be happy to give you an e-mail response.
>> we will look forward to that.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you very much for your time this morning.
>> thank you for yours.
>> now, that does it 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:
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 2:10 PM