Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, July 6, 2010,
Citizens Communication
>> speaking of citizens communication.
>> happy vacation.
>> that's next.
>> thanks for coming in.
>> thank you, judge.
>> this item gives residents an opportunity to address the court on any matter not on the agenda for up to three minutes. Kenneth snyder has signed in, a well-known williamson county resident. Morris priest is second and third is joe gieselman and randy nicholson.
>> my name is kenneth snyder, north ridge acres subdivision in the e.t.j. Of austin, a colonial. I was watching that grant thing, the lady here on affordable housing, stuff like that. I can't understand too much, people called the other day and everything, they split it up so much. Administration, streets, all of this kind of stuff, all split up. I don't see how come they can't put it all in one project and finish it instead of waiting four or five years. We are waiting four or five years to get water in there. I think that i kind of figure that out and everything. I'm going to the water development board the next meeting, i'm going to mention that to them and everything. I think they need to start a project, finish it, get it over with. Of course i'm going for urgent need out there. That's getting bad. There's another dog that died the other day. I didn't get a picture of it. The dog died with liver problems, i think that's what he told me. It was a boxer. But i think it's an urgent need problem out there. I don't want to wait no five years. I may not live five years. I would like to see it end before i die. The city of austin did take and turn it into williamson county health department. They are writing another letter to update this here. She's going to put the grant in and i don't know what the letter he wrote, we will get a copy of it in a day or two. I think they need to take all of the money, get the problem fixed, and then go to the next project instead of putting $50 here, $50 there, $50 there and nothing ever gets done for five or 10 years down the road. It just don't make sense to me. But -- but it -- i don't know. Y'all bare with me more than anything did so far. The city of austin is really getting involved in it. They have been calling me. All of the city council people have been calling me. They said that they are going to try to get something done. They keep switching me over to different people, everything. I guess i gave this lady a little bit of hard time for water and wastewater. She said it may take five years and everything. It can't wait no five years. It's got to get done immediately. Put affordable housing housing out there, trailers, cheaper and everything. Average person like me, i can't pay $4,000 a year taxes on my house. If they put it in the city, i may end doing that there. I may have to sell out and move into a trailer or something. But we can't live like this here like we've been doing for the past 30 years out there. It's been going on every since i have been out there. I have been out there since '85 when i moved out there. It's been going on for years, years, years. It's a shame that i have to beg to get anything done. It's a shame. At least we did get the water in. I appreciate that 100%. But every time i -- i understand more and more these grants and everything. That's why i couldn't understand when they had that there deal on, watching on tv, a bunch of friends watching it, said they split that stuff up. Nothing left of it. No wonder it takes 20 years to do anything. They need to do one project, finish it out, go to the next one, thank you very much.
>> thank you, mr. Snyder.
>> mr. Priest.
>> morris priest, speaking on my own behalf. I did want to speak to the court about the transportation situation. Back in the first year of light rail, i don't know if this can be seen, but capital metro's fair rate, you looked at their total budget, 8 sperls of their dollar -- 8% of their dollars came from fares, 92% came from tax. Their first year of rail they had 11.8% increase. Okay. I mean, this is -- the increase that they had is resulting from fare, which was 10.5% of that figure. Of the 11.8%. And now we look at our toll roads, and we look at campo, and our toll roads cost twice as much to build, with only a quarter of the revenue coming from tolls. And now that figure is down and txdot is having to -- the difficulty in collecting fares. But when we look at our transportation issue, and we look at these numbers, you know, it's -- it's amazing that people can implement such programs and now we see our city council looking at their budget and there's just such a tremendous amount of waste spent and looking at the legislative session, now, going into this coming year, i've talked to these people at our capitol and we do have a solid 70% of our legislatures that are going to pretty much say no to tolls. Possibly as much as 80%, depending on what happens in november. So we see our structure changing and, you know, even when we look at 973, you can go back five years and see that was in the transportation plan. And so -- so when these things come up, before our local jurisdictions, they are no surprise because you can generally, any time that you look at any local agenda, whether it's city council or travis county, you just merely have to go back five years and look at the txdot documents or the campo documents and you can see what's going to be on the dag five years later. Agenda five years later. But i do know that deece is not going to have, i did talk to mr. Eckstein out in the hall. I told him that i didn't think that he would have much to do this legislative session. I believe we unanimously agreed because of the other issues that's going to be facing -- i know last year diane marble who served on the campo board who says it was interesting first time in office that there really wasn't a lot done with voter i.d. This year around with the issues facing us, education, transportation, some of the same issues if not more, i don't expect much to be done. Pretty much anything that is going to be done is going to be done at the local level. I know on item 13 you have a letter sent to kay bailey and senator cornyn. I would hope that you all would send a letter to them saying you didn't support kagen for the supreme court justice. Thank you.
>> thank you, mr. Priest. Joe gieselman and mr. Nicholson.
>> good morning.
>> good morning, judge, joe gieselman with transportation natural resources department. It's my pleasure this morning to introduce publicly introduce randy nicholson, who is my -- my new comprehensive planning manager. Randy comes to us from the town of hilton head island, south carolina, where he was the comprehensive planning manager for that town. His 20 years of experience in planning and project management mainly with local governments. And has expertise in -- in everything ranging from -- from green space planning to -- to the capital improvements program, ordinance making, i think he's a really good fit for this position for the county. And it's led any number of inter-- he's led any number of interdisciplinary teams. He has a real can-do attitude which i like, i think he will be a really positive influence with t.n.r. And the county as a whole he's a graduate of texas a&m university.
>> took me a while to get back. Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to work here back in texas. The last time a south carolinaian came to texas they named a county after him, travis county. So i don't think that i will have that big of an impact on the county. But that's my goal. At least working with the commissioners court --
>> we're not changing the name of the county for you.
>> okay.
>> [laughter] but it is a pleasure to be back in texas once again and put my heart and soul back into a project that i think we'll be proud of at the end of the day. Thanks for the opportunities.
>> we're thrilled that you're here.
>> thank you so much.
>> very happy.
>> looking forward to working with you.
>> yeah.
>> thank you.
>> thanks.
>> did you manage to bring your golf clubs from south carolina.
>> i did. The first thing on my trailer.
>> mr. Reeferseed.
>> hot diggety. Good morning, y'all, yes, i'm ronnie
>> [inhale] reeferseed, singing hey kids, cherish what you have got now. Why? Because adult life is usually less fun. Taxes, bills, obligations, who needs it? Don't waste a second trying to be grown up. As we all know by now, with that first hit off of a cigarette or joint or first swig of alcohol, precious childhood ends. Hey grownups let's face reality now to best conserve our garden planet. We humans are super powerful. Let us all use our stewardship to conserve life not bank center schemes, such as derivative that's have been hijacking the future of farmers and workers for decades. Hello dr. Paul. That's right, everyone, ob/gyn dr. Ron paul delivered well over 4,000 babies so far, has been trying to deliver for our nation a sound commodity based courtesy from this ponzy scheme of selling our debts to others. Guess what, no ticky no buy-ye ... Real money like gold and silver as we all should be right now. Face reality. So called president, so-called barack obama, ie kenyan born indonesian subject barry sataro vulnerable to blackmail eagerly said out our economy to the banksters, do we want to be peasants or serfs ... Or lead from freedom. Absolute freedom for families, imagine family farms can once again lead our world away from gmo frankenfood. It means less money for organized crime thugs to ruin our old. Face it, thugs cannot think about saving topsoil and helping feed our future. We need to do it here and now. Our solution to all of these problems is absolute freedom for farmers from
>> [indiscernible] crops et cetera. And we need to help save our world by fully examining info wars.com. You can find an ongoing cycle of broadcasts for each day show f. You miss the original 11:00 a.m. To 3:00 p.m. Weekdays, 4:00 to 6:00 on sundays, each show is rebroadcast until the next one. Also timely well documented full examination of many issue are forever to be found in several provocative articles that tackle many taboo issues with film clips and more, also listen to the phone for backup by dialing (516)646-5000 when the radio is out or commuter is down, call the mayor today about the toxic sludge garbage we are all slow to drink ... Reality is not pretty, actually mind boggling bizarre how on it and out evil these plans are, thanks and talk to dr. Paul.
>> thank you, mr. Reeferseed.
>> okey dokey.
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, July 6, 2010 2:35 PM
