Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, October 5, 2010,
Item 23
Item number 20 he-well, let's call 23, consider and take appropriate action regarding the central texas-travis county health care district board of managers. A, reappointment of brenda coleman-beattie, and b, authorize staff to issue call for until nations to fill the vacancy created by dr. Donald patrick's resignation. This indicates we will call up 20 and 21 next.
>> good morning, judge, commissioners, sherri fleming, health and human services and veterans services. You do have before you an item requesting that we initiate the process to request nominations for your appointment to the travis county health care district board, i think central health is their new name. I did notice that your backup does not include the request from ms. Beattie, so i do apologize with that. Probably has something to do with the boss that you didn't have that in your backup, but we have an official request from ms. Coleman-beattie and as you recall you appointed here a little over the unexpired term would expire december of this year. And so her request is -- has been submitted to staff to be reappointed and her reappointment would result in a four-year term. So she served about -- she will have served by december about 18 months, and if you choose to reappoint her, that would result in a four-year term.
>> her attendance has been good?
>> it's been good.
>> i move we reappoint her.
>> i enthusiasmicly second. Every time i've called her back she's called me back within 30 minutes and been incredibly knowledgeable about what's going on with the board.
>> any discussion? That passes by unanimous vote. And on b we're just asking to issue the call.
>> yes. And if you remember the last time we did this process, we -- the documents that you have in front of you were put up on our website on the health care district's website. The only consideration you may have today was during the last process you may recall the applications were a little slow coming in so we did not do any newspaper advertising until we were 20 to almost 30 days into the process. So staff would just ask maybe you might want to consider whether you want to do that advertising up front or do we want to take the same approach we've done on the past, put it up in all of the public sources that we've listed and just see how the applications come in.
>> do we have a copy of the proposed ad in the backup?
>> we do not have a proposed ad to submit to you today.
>> what are we used in the past?
>> we have used the call for nominations, which is in your packet, and that set of documents which also includes a document that says health care district composition and qualifications, so it's some preferred traits you are looking for in your appointees. Those documents have been put up and available electronically as well as in hard copy at all of the travis county community centers on the central health -- on the central health website. We distribute them through the community action network, list serve, so a variety of different list serve opportunities that we have access to that basically will get the information out to those folks that we believe will be most interested. I believe you -- each of the court members also distribute to your list serves and your constituents that you might identify who have interest. And that has been our initial process in the past and during the last solicitation we did at the end of the process extend for another 15 days or on and put an ad in just to generate more applications.
>> did we get a boost in applications after the ad?
>> i would say no, we didn't. I think extending the process at that time basically allows some folks who were sort of finding out at the end to have more time to get their applications in, but i can't tell you that we got a tremendous rush of applications after we put the ad in.
>> was it a free ad or did it cost?
>> it did cost. And i'm thinking 16 to $2,000, something like that.
>> i think we ought to do what we did last time with the exception, though, that indicate to the health care district board that we would expect their assistance. I would send it to the other -- to the community organizations that may have an interest. All of the chambers, the hispanic, african-american, greater austin. The business-type groups. If we have the neighborhood associations, we can do that with a stamp, right? Or a few stamps. So i would try to get out the word that way. I think that would be more meaningful. The other thing is members of the court, if we could kind of brainstorm on individuals that we would like to see on the board, it would help. The good thing about this is while we're looking, if we can find two or three, we can only select one because of one vacancy, but if we can find two or three web make put them in pecking order because we will have probably resignations and terms expiring some.
>> yes.
>> how does that sound? The other thing is if we allow 30 days, we can check two or three weeks into it and see whether applications are flowing in. The problem is if you have a deadline, people do tend to wait closer to the deadline rather than early on.
>> that's true, and i believe that the applications that did come in, even after we posted the ad, were applications we were expecting had heard -- had had contact with folks and you are extending the deadline at that time basically gave them a little more time to get their packets together.
>> dr. Patrick has agreed to keep serving until we've appointed a replacement?
>> the health care district's bylaws provide for that so i have no reason to expect that he will not.
>> but we really ought to try to fill it as expeditious as possible.
>> so i'm hearing you say 30 days notices period and staff will get the packets together and maybe if i could have a little flexibility on that actual date so that we can actually have a full 30 days from the time that we know that the information is up. Today is the 4th so i -- i can foresee maybe through the second week of november maybe, might be a little more than 30 days, but that allows us time to get the documents up and out.
>> that's fine with me. I do think we ought to get a status report or progress report late october. I wouldn't wait until the deadline. About a week before then.
>> happy to do that.
>> let us know what's going on.
>> one last question about process. The last time you opened the process, the applications were submitted to my office and i wanted to ensure that that still works for the court. In previous times we have had them submitted to the judge's office, but it seemed to work out okay for them to come to health and human services. So at your pleasure.
>> the judge would not dare reduce your authority, mrs. Fleming. Let's have them coming to you.
>> happy to do so.
>> any other discussion? Move approval of b.
>> second.
>> with the -- we want the -- we want the invitation to be out 30 days so whenever you get it out, 30 days from there.
>> yes, that's my request.
>> okay. Any discussion on the motion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you very much, ms. Fleming.
>> 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, October 5, 2010 2:27 PM
