Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, November 23, 2010,
Citizens Communication
Citizens communication is next.
this item gives residents an opportunity to address the court on any matter not on the agenda for up to three minutes.
would the following three persons please come forward: gus pena, ronnie reeferseed, and paul havina.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners, gus pena, proud east Austinite, proud united states marine corps veteran.
number one, of course, we have thanksgiving coming up Thursday.
please, please, please give thanks to whoever you believe in, whatever you believe in.
I give thanks to the good lord for giving us another day in this world and another day out of poverty.
and I thank our lord god and jesus christ for giving us friends that help out in the community.
thank you, judge, for your leadership, thank you, Ron Davis for your activism and advocacy for the people throughout the county.
sometimes you remind me of me.
you are tough, tenacious, but you are a good-getter and I appreciate that very much and you are honest listen forthwith.
I would ask as anybody who has ever listened to me and seen my ugly face on television, show appreciation for the armed services.
nobody likes war.
I don't.
I country that is in turmoil but we appreciate this country.
>> [buzzer sounding] our society's measure is -- thanks for all you have done for our citizens.
thank you.
>> thank you, mr. Pena.
mr. Reeferseed is next and would john kim please come forward.
>> thank you, gus.
>> thank you.
I don't know if this is working.
okay, there we go.
yes, I知 ronnie reeferseed.
saying to everyone, look, I知 sorry, I blew it.
I brought these Ron ball signs with me into the social security office and this time nobody stopped me.
thus I got a chance to chat with a gentleman about air force flight surgeon dr. Ron paul.
he actually wrote down the phone number and ronpaul.org for weekly updates with dr. Ron paul.
the man I talked to was a cop, retired, he had been approached by some delusional security guard and I overheard the first gentleman say that george w.
bush was a friend of his.
so the other guy started bad mouthing cindy sheehan and I could have and should have spoken up.
I could have told them I致e spoken to cindy sheehan and she believed the hype at first about saddam and cindy sheehan lost her own son in an ongoing quagmire.
let's hope again to change her mind about that so-called war n review, she camped out at george w.
bush's crawford compound trying to educate the president about the fallacys of that war.
bush never allowed her to speak with him.
instead the bush-cheney regime sacrificed thousands of more u.s.
troops and perhaps over a million men and women and iraqi children in this fiasco and I could have, should have said yeah, what did cindy sheehan give up to our nation?
her son.
like pat tillman who gave up his life, his high dollar football career in the n.f.l.
until he saw the poppies being grown and protected by our troops and thus planned on talking about it when he got back.
and instead, of course, pass tillman was surprised to be executed by our own troops before he got a chance to tell us about it.
now the bbc, secretary of defense robert gates admit we're just there to guard our poppies.
our troops are sacrificed to guard those poppies and marijuana fields.
for one group of organized crime over some other illegal grog of drug thugs.
just like calderon in mexico.
at least has a couple of ways to learn more about dr. Ron paul.
sorry I did not tell them how to learn more here in Austin.
anyone can listen to 90.1 fm from 11 a.m.
to 2:00 p.m.
we can all learn more by listening to alex jones where anyone can hear the show on a rebroadcast loop until the next show.
headline, north korea has now followed up on their objections to ongoing exercises by firing missiles at one of the south korean military bases on the island.
>> [buzzer sounding] two soldiers were killed.
so it's war right around the corner.
and I値l get to that other issue later.
thank you so much.
>> thank you, mr. Reeferseed.
mr. Havina is next.
and would steven turner come forward.
>> good morning, Commissioners.
>> good morning.
>> when I tell you about the revised meddling in school policies, dps engaging in i.d.
theft and police conducting ticket raids I thought you would rush out to protect the dignity of the state.
then
>> [indiscernible] to extort money from us for the city.
I also told you about judges bembry, diaz and gonzales during my trial opening up the courts for an insurance lawyer in a case where I was not the defendant.
judge number 4 in this case, jay meeker, worked diligently throughout this trial to keep it in sifken's hands.
the only objections were mine pointing out to mr. Sifken's lies and misleading both to judge meeker and the jury.
with judge meeker is missing every one of them, even when mr. Sifken revealed evidence
>> [indiscernible].
mr. Sifken being the defendant's lawyer in this case.
the lawyer for unbelievable corrupt racist judges and my loss.
that wouldn't matter because a few blacks and hispanics are affected.
but if you relate this practice to the military and go to iraq and afghanistan to impose them there, your soldiers will keep from getting blown up because nobody wants this garbage in their land.
we didn't in the 1800s.
but we couldn't stop you.
you came killing families and buffalos and trees digging for gold.
nevertheless, what you have today a paragon of justice and equality is a sorry mess due to corruption that keeps blacks and chicanos down.
our triumph end when judge meeker announced the jury's decision.
he said I need to make a -- she said no, it's not.
I said you fax it from mr. Sifken's office an hour ago.
I have a copy of the farce.
she said sit down.
so this is the copy of the fax that the lawyer from the courtroom called his office to be faxed in for mr. -- for judge meeker produce this jury charge right here.
for the jury to deliberate -- the jurors to deliberate and issue their -- their verdict on.
so this lawyer held this courtroom hostage the whole way through the end.
and this is actually the defendant's lawyer verdict by himself.
I have the name of the lawyer's office and the phone provided by -- the fax number provided by judge meeker's assistant, the date and the time.
how is that for corruption?
>> may I see that?
it looks like a standardized jury charge from a book.
>> this one?
>> [buzzer sounding]
>> no, the fax.
>> you want to see it?
>> uh-huh.
yeah, this is a standardized jury charge from -- from a book.
it's not from --
>> it came from the lawyer's office.
>> right.
it was sent --
>> judge meeker didn't have it.
>> it's the pjt.
it's just boiler plate language.
>> thank you.
>> thank you, mr. Havina.
dr. Kim.
>> thank you, honorable judge Biscoe and honorable Commissioners Ron Davis and sarah Eckhardt and Karen Huber.
thank you very much for your great opportunity to speak to you and to jesus christ as well.
he's a hero in this time all the time.
I spoke the other day about jesus christ is here on the same day I met the abc news reporter in the courtroom.
she was standing beside me and I told her what happened.
I知 here -- as the gentleman said about unfairness in court, honorable
>> [indiscernible] wallace jefferson on February 12, 2009, told the Texas legislator, so-called the lawmakers and the judicial election, people don't trust the system.
chief justice wallace jefferson asked the legislature to abolish the state 133-year tradition of apart tied and saying influence and money has destroyed public confidence in justice.
he mentioned the influence of money in judicial elections.
he said that polls show that more than 80% of texans believe kingpin contributions influence a courtroom event.
I am here 14
>> [indiscernible] court wronged.
my case for four years.
they are judge john k.
dietz, scott jenkins, Margaret cooper, orlindo
>> [inaudible] david pillage, straws, shepherd, scott bozeman, rhonda holly, diane bond.
14 judges of district court of Travis County wrong the violations and democracy.
treated me, defrauded me, defraud the court.
defrauded government for four years since 2006 until today.
and I知 speaking to you and jesus christ and to the public.
I am here.
I知 here spoke four times through the public citizens communications.
I don't see any change at all.
now I知 going to take Travis County attorney -- no, Travis County attorney david escamilla in this court as a defendant next session.
>> [buzzer sounding]
>> why he did not prosecute those charges.
I visited his office several times and they told me get out of here.
>> thank you, dr. Kim.
>> thank you, your honor.
>> steven turner.
is mr. Turner here?
okay.
anybody else for citizens communication?
whether you are signed in or not.
And one more resident would like to speak during citizens communication.
and it looks like renee valdez.
good morning.
>> good morning, Commissioners.
my name is renee valdez.
thank you for your attention, for your time, sorry I was tardy, issues with parking.
contract and grant monitoring.
it's a subject that's near and dear to my heart.
I wanted to begin by reading some typical language provisions that you are probably familiar with yourselves under the maintenance of and right to access of records.
consultant -- or the contractor agrees to maintain appropriate accounting records, the costs of expenses.
the contractor agrees that the county shall have access to all books, documents, papers, records for the purposes of making audits and these contract provisions are included in most contracts and grants to protect the citizens' interests and I just wanted to submit there is tremendous room for improvement because we do not take full advantage of these provisions sometimes.
now, of course, there is performance and financial reporting, but the gathering of reports is not really the same as monitoring sometimes.
especially when it's self-reporting.
for instance, back in grade school if you remember having a friend grade your homework or grading it yourself, sometimes that creates issues.
as an employee, if you were to do self-assessments, usually those self-assessments were pretty rosy.
well, as an administrator who is tasked with evaluating his or her own administration what would you expect those evaluation to reflect?
because in each instance the evaluator has a dog in the fight.
there's no independence and there could be bias, there could be prejudice to that administration and it is simple human nature.
so what I壇 like to ask is for you to ask your directors about monitoring and about independence.
and don't associate audits with monitoring because audit reports, we're all familiar with, have many disclaimers sometimes than useful data.
what I知 asking is you to call on your directors to embrace some form of systematic, independent, ongoing monitoring, monitoring that's not performed by the contract owner, monitoring that's not performed by the grant officer, monitoring that's not performed by the administrator or the director because they all have a dog in the fight.
performance evaluation is best done when it's independent and no one should grade and report on their own homework.
I think citizens will be better served if you consider that.
thank you for attention.
thank you for your time and your help.
thank you.
>> thank you so much.
>> thank you, mr. Value beds.
by the way, is there a phone number or email address if one of our managers wants to reach you to follow up on this?
do you want to put it on this?
and phone number or email or both if you have them.
>> thank you.
travis, are you here on the grant?
>> mr. Turner signed in for citizen communication this morning.
he's here now.
mr. Turner, come forth.
>> this is my second request for safety for Austin and my first concern is not safety so much but just a request for the public to be served a little better about the bus system.
the Austin metro bus system passed me not accepting my fare.
approximately 1400 block of riverside drive, 5:35.
I repeat at the bus stop.
the second time I got into the lane and waved my arms and the bus driver passed me again.
so I walked downtown.
and I had to -- took about an hour.
it's a nice walk so I enjoyed doing that even though I had been somewhat injured and had to do that as -- through kind of a rough part of the city and everything too.
my second concern is the safety.
on October 30th, it may have been actually early in the morning because my friends work late and I do play some music around the city and in the late hours.
so I was on the access road close to driskill street and I致e been trying to find the approximate address because the business is closed there so it's past driskill and there's a monterrey service going to mexico, bus service there close by, and a taxi went over three lanes over across and was on the horn completely and as I pulled to the right, the taxi stopped half on the road and half off the road right in front of me and the vehicle I was in slipped and fell on my foot hurting one of the toes on my left foot.
it's been difficult driving around the city and I have a standard shift also.
so I would request the drivers of the taxi cab companies take a safety driving class at least once a year.
I致e noticed this for several months that I致e been here that the taxi drivers have not been driving quite as safe as they could be.
and I知 briefly going through this not reading every word on my presentation.
it's not been easy if you need to wear shoes in this cold weather so I知 in sandals again and I can't wear shoes, my foot is too swollen so I知 having a little problem there.
and my third very important safety issue concerning everybody in apartments in Austin right now is that I was broken into last Friday during when I was sleeping early in the daytime.
and things were stolen.
I can deal with that I知 okay and be thankful for the things I do have.
retired people and semi retired people should be concerned and hard woods --
>> [buzzer sounding] -- around the doors, but the door frames need to be reimbursed.
about all I can say today.
>> thank you, mr. Turner.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
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, November 23, 2010 2:020 PM
