Travis County Commissioners Court
December 8, 2009,
Citizens Communication
Also, now let's call back to order the voting session of the Travis County Commissioners court.
citizens communication is next.
and this item gives residents an opportunity to address the court for up to three minutes on any matter not on the agenda.
any matter not on the agenda.
gus pena is first, followed by paul avena, morris priest is third.
mr.
priest, why don't you proceed.
>> gus had to catch the bus, judge, so he won't be speaking.
>> okay.
>> morris priest speaking on my own behalf.
i've really seen a real issue with this Commissioners court of the county judge and for the most part our county Commissioners when it comes to citizens communication or items that are posted on the agenda.
when I asked Karen Huber last week a question, I got cut off by our county judge.
and she's yet to answer that question.
there was a question asked this morning by Commissioner Davis, that question is yet to be answered.
Commissioner Davis, myself, other members of the public, have come up here time and time again saying that we haven't been able to receive the information.
i've asked for information, I've always gotten the information, the information has always been available.
when we have a campo board of 20 members that don't have a -- have the information that they need, nor have they ever bothered to even look at the information, we end up with toll roads on the east side, we end up with projects like txi, we end up with projects that are always poor performing and then we have this -- these meetings where we have asked to give them a forgivable loan and time and time again this information is out there.
one example would be the flyover that was suggested to be built by txdot that campo had on its tip amendment for months.
there wasn't a member on the campo board that I discussed this with that didn't know this project was going to be funded.
it was a gas tax ramp as I call it, the s.h.
130 told road.
they are so under performing they can't even build ramps without using 100% financing from gas tax dollars.
this wasn't even going to ever materialize on the campo board but it was on the campo agenda for months.
when it came up to finally be voted on, this project was taken off.
being down at txdot seeing that this project was going to be taken off, I was confused where the campo board kept having it on the agenda.
out at decker lake area, they have a housing project out there.
they don't have a bus ramp.
we're talking about spending millions and millions of dollars on more rail.
we have issues that people come up here and ask for information, they are not given information and then the vote is taken.
i think that I would like to see this governing body, you get this information out to the public, this comprehensive plan that I discussed and the question that I asked Commissioner Huber last week was we don't have the option to come to these meetings if they're not going to be posted.
i applaud Commissioner Davis for his actions last week in citizens comments of saying he was going to attend these meetings that affect precinct 1.
>> [buzzer sounding] so that they will be needing posting.
i'm going to ask this Commissioners court to provide the information to others.
i have been able to get it, it may be because of the fact that I have 40 people that will help me with a freedom of information request or whatever avenue I need to take to get the information.
but the public is just not getting the information.
thank you.
>> thank you, mr.
priest.
>> paul avena, followed by ronnie reeferseed, please come forth.
neil cartman is third.
>> good morning, Commissioners, my name is paul avena.
i came here last month asking for help to eradicate the influence in the formal policies that keep chicanos and blacks out of education and employment opportunities.
that was ignored.
here's an example of what I meant.
can I ask you, Commissioner Gomez, if you run a campaign in spanish?
in 2002 alongside mr.
debbie dewhurst?
for -- for lieutenant governor?
back then?
>> I don't recall.
>> I think that I thought it was you.
that radio station was set up by a guy from california.
and it was a radio station that a d.j.
was luring wives to speak out.
it feltlike having all of the prostitutes in my neighborhood sitting together in the living room talking to our families about the love making experiences in detail.
it was a porno radio station.
that episode punched many hispanic women to the ground morally.
the station was raided twice by the feds because they were reaching out to minors.
i don't think you got any votes out of that.
but we lost a lot.
if I request the commission of sorts to look into economic education, a cycle of emotional abuse, so we can stop the check points and
>> [indiscernible] gang style protection of companies that prey on us, the removal of hispanics and blacks from magnet and science programs by their teachers, the porno stations, the data dealers of driver's licenses, the
>> [indiscernible] that turn their sights on us, how can we end this course so other americans can have access to education and employment.
whatever you decide, please stop the
>> [indiscernible] from meddling in the barrio schools, they are cunning and malicious and have effectively disabled our youth and it's getting worse since 9/11.
so where do I go from here?
i really expect a response from the Commissioners this time.
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> citizens communication, we can't respond specifically.
but -- but only in the agenda item.
>> thank you.
>> by the way, they call this citizens communication because it really gives citizens an opportunity to communicate with us.
and a lot of issues are brought here that have nothing to do with county government.
we receive the information.
but that does not mean that we act on it.
so if you contact a member of the court directly, typically we can provide more assistance that way.
>> thank you.
>> all right.
mr.
reeferseed.
neil cartman.
okay.
>> mr.
reeferseed.
>> thank you, judge.
by the way, my time is no less valuable than any swift flipping high dollar taxpayer funded slush fund prostitute lawyer.
so that's -- that's my own opinion there.
but I'm ronnie
>> [inhale] reeferseed, a carbon based life form.
and by the way, kids celebrate.
celebrate your childhood, as long as you can.
because that first hit off a joint or swig of alcohol ends it and that's it, kiddos.
from then on you have got only grown up blues, but hey, don't worry, ob/gyn Ron paul, hb 1207 overwhelming passed the house of representatives and the u.s.
senate companion bill 604 is making its way through, they call for an audit of the federal reserve, a scheme based derivatives, et cetera, that only exacerbate our ongoing economic melt down worldwide.
tim geithner, along with senator christopher dodd and others I predict will be convicted of at least massive financial fraud and I believe treason when the ugly truths about this ongoing scam are revealed to the world with dr.
paul's conspiracy shattering audit of the feds just as I predicted two weeks ago.
because of the unstoppable public hounding of the head honcho of hog wash, al gore has indeed already begun his retirement from interacting with the public because we all know now, thanks to those pesky e-mails, about the years of false data and lies to prosecute honest truth tellers that were concealed, that were revealed, actually, weeks ago.
again to review carbon dioxide people is not a poisonous gas.
it's absolutely necessary for any and all plants to survive.
they need co 2 as much as we animals need oxygen.
as powerful and important as we humans think we are, cosmic forces like sun spots and solar wind have now and always have had much more effect on our climate than mankind.
we have only been here a short period of time.
geological and fossil records prove that greatly increased levels of co 2 in the past have actually -- actually accompanied huge explosions of life forms here on earth like the cambrian epox for example.
this sovereignty shredding climate gate scam in copenhagen is disgolfing, people, by golly alpha sore loser gore had to cancel his speech there because he knows this level of fraud from years of deceit about the so-called global warming will put himself, al gore and others, behind bars for years.
even bankster stooge obama, bs obama, had to change his schedule about when to speak there.
hum ...
bs obama will get his booby prize in oslo from mind dead norwegians just like henry kissinger and al gore did.
>> [buzzer sounding]
>> ronpaul.org, campaign for liberty, lou rockwell.com.
and --
>> thank you, mr.
reeferseed.
>> 15, 20 years of more money to karzai, unbelievable.
>>
>> [indiscernible], susana almanza.
that's three.
and -- and you all are with them?
all right.
good morning.
>> good morning.
>> good morning.
>> judge Biscoe, Commissioners, thank for you the opportunity to speak.
i'm neil carman the clean air program director for the lone star chapter of the sierra club.
i'm here with poder and a resident of east Austin, a concerned mother, to speak about industrial pollution from a facility known as pure casting metal foundry.
according to the monitoring activities by the Texas economics Commissioner on environmental quality.
out of 24 metals 12 were found to be highly toxic.
including ...
these metals include seven that are known here carcinogens, 10 that are neurological toxins, six that are developmental toxins and I'm going to provide a handout about some of these metals.
and in addition, they also found a number of highly toxic
>> [indiscernible] compounds called poly cyclic compounds.
so this plant is next to -- next to zavala elementary school, where children and people living in the neighborhood and their children can be exposed to -- to a cocktail of 12 toxic metals and 14 benzene carcinogenic agents.
i would also add on another page, I've handed out called children's vulnerability to air pollution, that children, because they are so small, they have high respiratory rates and their bodies are rapidly developing are the most vulnerable group in our population to air pollution.
and that raises an issue on the last page of a handout called report on environmental chemicals associated with neurodevelopmental disorders in children.
in a nutshell, we're though the doing a very good job of protecting our children's health.
we're not doing enough at the federal level, the state level and the local level.
and this report was -- was assembled and reviewed by a group of top public health scientists, pediatricians and public health experts two years ago.
and basically, their critical discoveries included -- included even very low doses of some biologically active contaminants, such as some of these metals, can alter gene expression important to learning and developmental dysfunction in children.
another concern they found in the discoveries is exposures during fetal development such as mothers who live in the area, near pure castings metal foundry, can adversely affect learning and development of the individual and last a lifetime.
and many of those children that attend zavala grew up in the neighborhood near pure castings.
humans are exposed to complex mixtures of chemicals that can inherit to enhance adverse effects.
>> [buzzer sounding], anyway, I would just conclude that this plant puts out a lot of toxic pollution, although part of the dilemma is because the amounts are low enough it doesn't have to have a permit from the federal or the state environmental agencies.
thank you.
>> thank you.
>> thanks so much for bringing this to our attention and I did find out about this last week and I have e-mailed david escamilla for some kind of response as to what more we can do.
okay?
>> okay.
>> my name is page deshaun, thank you for listening to what we have to say.
i moved in across the street from pure castings two years ago.
and with my four-year-old son.
directly across the street from pure castings and cater-cornered to zavala elementary school and two doors down to the right is u.t.
elementary school, a total of 650 elementary school children going there.
since the day I moved in, every day I was getting a black layer of dust on my property the back side of my house all over.
i was out there one day and I saw them what they were doing, across the street from the dumpster at pure castings, they were lifting these huge forklifts of big vats of black dump, dumping it openly, watching the black clouds waft over into the neighborhood.
horrible respiratory problems, stinging skin.
my son refused to go outside to play because he said mommy it hurts when I breathe if I'm outside.
this is what's going on around the all of the neighborhoods.
at that point I called the tceq and had them come you the out and check the dust.
on my property auto% burnt molding sand, exact sand used by pure casting.
causes
>> [indiscernible] leads to death.
chlorine, magazine news yes, ma'am, silicone, titanium, chromium six of erin brochovich, including further tests we had the tceq come and test the air, clean air days, I was watching the whole time.
which means the coldest days of the year.
open air facility.
they had all of their open air things closed, there as much as no smells.
we usually smell the smells.
also while this is open air and all of the guys who work there, they wear masks, 20 feet away the little bitty children on the playground, kindergartens don't wear masks.
they breathe it, it's okay for the children to breathe it.
and so -- so well -- well I'm going to get to the important stuff.
we are breathing all of this all at once, all of these carcinogens, neurotoxins, et cetera.
the tceq not one of these are exceeding some level, lowest or high amount.
but I know from my experience, I was sick the entire time, my four-year-old was sick the whole time.
we sold our house and moved in August.
neither of us have had these respiratory problems.
the neighbor next to me is pregnant with her second child.
there's children, every parent that I talk to at zavala their children have respiratory problems.
the last time we spoke with the human rights council, one of the Commissioners or councilmembers said his daughter went to zavala and his only child that went to zavala, his only child that has asthma.
clearly it's creating health problems the tceq after they did all of this testing published a 400 page document that luckily neil spent all night going through.
on npr the head toxicologist tells us it poses no health rick.
that to me is a crime for us
>> [buzzer sounding] not only is it okay for us to play out there, but, you know, we should play out there.
it's not -- they should at least let us know that we shouldn't be playing outside and the kids shouldn't be on the playground.
anyway the street and state really has not been able to do anything.
they are not the ones breathing it and getting sick every day and rushing their kids to the car.
hopefullyall the county can do something.
>> what about the city and state.
>> the city and state have not been able to do anything.
the city has been working, susana almanza can really tell but this, with pure castings trying to broker a deal.
they would love to move.
they are sitting on that toxic property.
they would love for the city to buy them out and build them a brand new factory.
the tceq obviously will not do anything.
we have been working with some state representatives, I know lloyd doggett's office and who else?
>> thank you.
>> anyway, ms.
almanza.
>> good morning.
>>
>> [inaudible - no mic]
>> one of our proposals is that the 55 million affordable housing bond money was issued that some of that money be used to purchase this particular project and to build affordable housing there.
we feel that so many people have told me this would have never happened across casis elementary school or matthews schools, but yet children of color in east Austin continue to live with this particular industry right across.
i want to show this slide.
here, I don't know if you are showing it yet.
>> uh-huh.
>> yes.
>> okay.
i think that I might have hit the -- okay.
if you can see here, pure casting, you can see the little playground where the prekindergarten plays is directly across the street from pure casting.
that's how close it is.
the other issue is the traffic.
this little yellow house that you see there, that's where page deshaun used to live.
parish pure casting just to show you, that little street cannot take on that particular traffic.
that particular truck happens every day, has to cover the whole street in order to back up to there.
our concern was at least they change the routes of the dropoff because these trucks couldn't see the little children as they walk to school.
they are too tiny, the truck is so high.
there have been changes in the hours because we brought that as an issue in the area.
the other thing is that -- I want to go back.
is that we have gone through the human rights commission, also.
they passed a resolution, also, to support the issue this does not belong there.
it's really impacting the health of our community.
we come to you all because sometimes you're able to work on joint processes and since the city council does have some funding that they could purchase this particular facility, maybe some pressure got also put on them to move on this particular issue, of -- like I say, the guy is willing to sell.
we've had a stakeholder meeting with the owner and the applicant and he's willing to also sell.
but we recognize that he needs another location.
so the city has told us that they are looking at locations and yet we're going to be presented because we've also had some research done and we have found a lot of different re-- possible location areas, property has the city owns and has acquired through different means but they even these properties.
but so we just come before you because we think it's important to bring this information.
in the past when we were struggling with the tank farm, we went through all of the different entities, it was the county Commissioners that stepped forward and really helped us to resolve that issue.
if it wasn't for the county Commissioners, we would still have a tank farm there.
that's why we bring this issue before you.
thank you so much.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> gavino fernandez.
donna sherman.
>> on a lighter note, I just wanted -- I'm sorry, I'm donna centerman with the race chair for the brown santa five k and wellness fair.
i wanted to tell you all this morning, I don't have any final numbers for how much money we raised, but we had a really good turnout considering the weather was so bad, cold, rainy, but we did have quite a few folks come out and run and walk and it was a lot of fun.
the expo and their staff was exceptional, above and beyond as usual.
so I wanted to present y'all with our shirt, our brown santa 5 k shirt this morning.
i do -- I have about 30 left over, if anybody wants to buy one, I'm selling those, also.
>> by e-mail.
>> hopefully.
>> contact me by e-mail or call me.
and so that's all that I wanted to say, thanks you, I will come back once I have the numbers.
>> thanks.
>> 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:
Tuesday, December 8, 2009 2:30 PM
