Travis County Commissioners Court
December 8, 2009,
Item 29
29 is consider and take appropriate action regarding the Travis County appointment to the capital metropolitan transit authority board of directors.
a, receive applications received, and b, determine a process for selecting which candidates to be interviewed by the Commissioners court on a date certain.
>> Commissioners, thank you very much.
good afternoon.
as you know, the court decided on October 20th that it would appoint a nonmember of the court as its appointee to the capital metropolitan board of directors and set in motion a search process that included development of qualifications, development of an application process.
the publication of that process and then the decision by which the court would, first of all, decide who to interview and finally decide who its appointees should be.
we have received seven applications.
all of which meet the minimum statutory criteria which is the county's appointee must either be a registered voter in Travis County or live or have a place of business in the portion of Travis County which is inside the capital metropolitan transportation authority's service area.
so all the applications you have in front of you do meet that criteria.
but what I did last week was pass out to the court the applications plus a little summary sheet on each application, plus just a little sheet that you can make whatever notes you wanted to make about which applicant you want to interview, which applications you wanted to consider further.
and with that, I just would turn it over to the court to decide how you wanted to proceed.
the other question that the court has asked several times and has stressed several times is that you wanted to make this choice in the context of who the other applicants are or who the other appointees are that have been done by the other governmental bodies that are making appointments, and in your packet is a status sheet that shows the current status of the eight slots on the new capital metro board often who has been appointed to those eight slots.
as you can see from that status sheet she that's the sheet that looks like this, and as you can see six of those vacancies have already been filled.
there is one vacancy by the city of Austin, it is a citizen appointee, and the city is in the express of procef soliciting applications and plans to make a decision on that next week.
and then there is the Travis County citizen appointee to the capital metro board.
>> in my opinion, we ought to short list down to about three.
there are three ways we can do.
that we can ask one of our managers to do it for us or we can just do motions at some point.
or we can kind of rank them.
the problem, though, is in order for us to stay on our -- making a decision by December 15th, if whatever we do, we would have to do it today.
if we get managers to short list for us, based on given criteria, in addition to short list, we would ask them to set up the appointments for next Tuesday afternoon.
and whatever notations we make would become part of the permanent record.
>> yes, sir.
if -- for instance, I passed out a sheet that would allow you just to make your own comments or marks or scoring of the candidates' applications.
if you decided to use that sheet in making a decision about who to interview, then I suppose that sheet -- those sheets would become part of the official record.
obviously otherwise they are just your notes on -- on who the candidates were and what you thought of them.
>> now, if we --
>> done hille is here to confirm that.
>> if we use a sheet that has been provided for initial candidate rank, there are two ways to do that too.
we could rank 1 through 7 or we could rank 1, 2 and 3.
if we do 1, 2 and 3, I guess we add up and -- would that work?
>> well, I don't know.
i've already had a chance to go through the applications and looked at the candidates that I felt were someone we should short list after reviewing the application as far as what we had before us.
and looking at what I wanted to see as far as -- and I basically looked at it from that angle.
now, whatever way you all want to proceed, that's fine, but I've already looked at my short list and -- out of the seven and I've come up with a short list.
but again, I'm not trying to hamper or get in the way of what y'all want to do.
i've already done my -- by reviewing and going through each application that was presented to us of the seven.
and I just, you know, thought I wanted to know more about them, each one of them, and I had a chance -- we had a chance to go through all of them.
so, you know, so --.
>> if we were to just rank our top three, there's no issue with that, is there?
>> it would still be an open record.
the document -- once you start doing things with that, that may be the only legal issue there.
if you want to just start making motions as well and you could do it without the sheet of paper.
that's what Commissioner Davis was inferring, he's ready to go.
there's a variety of ways to do this but with that piece of paper comes a document, it does become an open record.
>> what if each of us were to rank one, two and three, give that to dietz and let him do the calculation of the scheduled appointment of the top three.
so it would be the ones with the lowest -- yeah, if we schedule appointments with the top three, it would be the lowest numbers, right?
so the three with the lowest three numbers would be the ones we would interview and the only problem that results there is that if there is a tie.
that way we could schedule -- we could have him also schedule the appointments for next Tuesday afternoon for interview.
and if we could get that information to dietz by, say, 10:00 tomorrow morning.
>> sure, judge.
>> I looked at all of them, but I really didn't rank them.
i'm agonizing over a couple of them.
>> you know, we thoroughly went through each one of them and so bits and pieces as far as what's the functionality as far as cap metro.
but again, I can -- whatever process you want to use.
i would also like to give the three that I felt were the strongest in this particular situation, I would just submit those three names.
>> I move each of us would rank the top three and give it to dietz by 10:00 tomorrow morning.
now, Commissioner Huber is not here, but if she wanted to participate from a distance, if she got us her three -- top three, we could give that to dietz also, right?
because she will be back.
and so the lowest number --
>> the lowest number of people who had answers.
presumably there might be some people who would not be ranked or at least not ranked by all five members of the court.
>> right.
then we'll interview the three.
so in fact, we would not discuss the four that are excluded, but we would all together discuss the three and decide which one of those to select.
so I think that makes the process fair.
>> okay.
>> if I were one of the four excluded, I don't know how fair I would think it is, but I don't know that we can avoid that.
is that okay?
>> I don't have a problem with that.
by tomorrow morning.
>> and let's just use -- can we use the form dietz gave us?
the initial candidate rankings?
and just put 1, 2 and 3.
>> so each of you would turn that in 1, 2 and 3, 1 being the person you would most like to interview, 3 being the second -- 2 being second, 3 being third.
>> right.
>> now dietz, when did you supply the court with that form you are referring to?
my office didn't --
>> in the materials that were distributed on Thursday, and the form looks like this, Commissioner.
>> I don't have it in my backup.
but make sure we get one.
>> I'll walk it over to you right after this.
>> thank you, I appreciate it.
>> is that a motion or just directions?
>>
>> [inaudible].
>> second.
>> were you suggesting that motion die for lack of a second, ms.
porter?
i thought we were all in agreement on it.
discussion?
we'll do this and get it to dietz by --
>> 10:00 a.m.
>> -- 10 a.m.
tomorrow morning.
>> and judge, could I ask the court for direction as to how long the interviews would go, how much time you want to spend with each candidate?
will there be a set of questions to ask?
>> okay.
well, typically we have scheduled these interviews to last 45 minutes.
and if we schedule them 50 minutes apart, we make sure we get them all in Tuesday afternoon even if we start about 2:00 or 2:30.
to be safe, we probably ought to give ourselves a little time in the afternoon to finish the voting session work.
because we do have a couple of big items next week.
even if we try to keep the agenda short and we finish that morning, that will give us a little more time early afternoon.
>> 50 minutes each would be two and a half hours.
for three interviews.
so you want to begin at 2:00 or 2:30, something like that?
>> 2:00 is fine.
>> 2:00.
what we do between now and next week is -- what if we bring a set of questions -- if we get draft questions to one another by 5:00 Friday, in court on Tuesday morning we can decide the appropriate seven or eight questions.
that's kind of worked in the past.
and so we should be ready to go by the time 2:00 rolls around.
that process seem fair to you, mr.
eckstein?
>> seems wonderful, judge.
>> all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> now for a real easy item, number 25.
consider and take appropriate action on the composition -- hold on, before we get to that easy item, let's take another one that should be really easy.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, December 8, 2009 2:30 PM
