Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, June 8, 2010,
Item 19
>> number 19 is to consider and take appropriate action on the creation of a process for making an appointment to the capital area metropolitan planning organization, campo, transportation policy board, to fill the fourth slot allocated to the commissioners court. Itioner eckhardt?
>> i put this on with regard to -- this perhaps could be considered in the larger context with regard to all of our full court appointments that perhaps we should establish a policy and a practice for how we solicit or recruit for such appointments. And what appointment we might be looking for. So with campo it might be an opportunity for us to use as a pilot for future procedures in establishing what we're looking for, sort of a -- either a scope of service or a skill set list, how we might go about soliciting for that individual. Do we do an e-mail blast? Do we do some sort of public hearing? And whether or not and under what circumstances we do full court interviews or individual interviews. For this particular --
>> i think our lawyers may tell us that we can do this for campo as posted. But not more generally as not posted.
>> i just wanted to put it in the larger context so that we could use this as a pilot perhaps. Some of the issues that have come up around the campo appointments specifically, whether or not it should be an elected official or not or even if that's a consideration, whether or not it should be geared toward representation of the smaller municipalities since there are 27 separate municipalities in travis county, only two of which officially represented on campo. And whether or not there should be a term for this. The bylaws of campo don't express a term, so we are free to express a term ourselves. Whether or not it should be a one-year term, a two year term, a four year term, and what timeline we would want to look at for that. One thing to consider with campo, of course, is the long range plans that would be -- that it could be disadvantage just to us, and this came up in our last discussion, to change horses too close to a vote on a long range plan because it's too difficult at campo to gear up and fully understand the long range plan if you haven't had at least a year experience with campo before that long range plan is voted, i think.
>> i would just offer up another criteria and that considers geography.
>> yes, good point.
>> mr. Priest?
>> thank you, judge. Morris priest speaking on my own behalf. I wanted to say on this campo appointment, we recently appointed the man who used to be the mayor of Sunset Valley. I know that there's been quite a bit of discussion in the community. There's even been polls done by some scientific polls. Most of the people that i've talked to do want an elected official from this court on the campo board, primarily because of the situation like we had with txi, henry gillmore, one of the board members of the ctrma. The public feels that there's no accountability, where there is with an elected official. And i just wanted to express that as well as i think that the comments previously during this time when mayor mills was placed on this board, there wasn't really an opportunity given to the public, there wasn't a process. Basically he was taken off by campo, campo voted for him to be taken on and he was summarily placed back on the board with very little input or process. During that discussion as i remember, if i'm right, there was discussion about that the city of austin would alternate appointments. Of course, travis county can appoint these members even if they're on the city council, such as wynn, but i view this as solely a travis county appointment, not a shared or alternating appointment. There are a lot of things that i've heard through the public process going to campo as many years as i have that many people were really disappointed with the court's actions this last time in the way that it appointed mills to this board. I was going to ask him and am going to ask him at this next campo meeting to resign, but i think that we should have an elected official and i think that we should have this remain as a county -- someone on the county court, otherwise appoint me.
>> mr. Priest, i would just like to correct or clarify one point you made. The campo board did not specifically vote mr. Mills off the board. It was a change in composition in the position that he held was no long are there.
>> right. Well, that's exactly what i meant. If i didn't say it correctly, but he was taken off the board. Because the small cities were taken off the board. And he was a small city mayor.
>> so do we want to put together maybe an outline of specific recommendations to respond to? Right now we don't have one. We have a lot of possibilities.
>> we could certainly do that. We could put together a stocking horse procedure for discussion by the court. And we're not under any kind of time crunch. We do have the position filled with someone who, in my opinion, has been a very good representative of county interests, both as the small cities representative and as someone who has become quite expert in matters that run much further afield than his mayoralship at Sunset Valley. So i don't believe that we're under any kind of time crurchl, but to have a stocking horse procedure for consideration would be good.
>> how much time do we need?
>> three weeks? Would that be --
>> june 29th, miss porter?
>> yes.
>> that's fine with me. You and commissioner huber will put your heads together on that?
>> sure.
>> okay. Then we'll have 19 back on june 29th.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, June 8, 2010 1:45 PM
