Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, February 8, 2011,
Item 14
14, consider and take appropriate action to affirm the extension of the application deadline for citizens bond advisory committee to February 8, 2011 and consider the need for any additional extension.
>> good morning, judge and Commissioners.
what I知 requesting of you today is to affirm a decision I made last week to extend the due date for applications for folks who are interested in serving on our 2011 bond referendum, citizens bond advisory committee.
we had originally set a date of February 1, but prior to that we had some problems with our automatic application that folks could use from their home to consider applications from the court.
I extended it until today at 5:00 to pick up any folks who had trouble with it or hadn't had time to submit an application.
we now have 60 applications we've received so far, and -- anna, would you -- and just since walking over here, I致e received two more.
so the options I think that the court would have are to end the application day today at 5:00 and we'll update that list and provide that to you; extend it another week if you feel like going to be helpful to you; or leave it open indefinitely until you have the applicants you want to serve in your capacity on the bond advisory committee.
given the number of applications and there are plenty for each precinct and the judge as well, I would be inclined to close it down at 5:00 today, but I can understand why you might want to keep it open a while longer.
>> you know, it's really good to hear this kind of response, folks willing to volunteer their time in such an important initiative as the bond citizens advisory committee, looking toward the 2011 bond referendum.
I guess those persons -- and it's only so many folks, you know, each one of us has, I think, three that we can appoint, each person on the court.
and there are a lot of good qualified persons.
my question is, those particular individuals that are not chosen, how can we encourage them to, number one, I want to thank them, I want to thank everybody for their participation thus far, but I知 concerned about the after, after these persons are selected, how can we keep the level of interest involved with these persons that have applied and to make sure that they are still involved in the duration of the process?
have we looked at any possibility of doing just that?
>> well, what comes out of me at first is that there will be public hearings, public meetings with members of the committee, and anyone from the public can attend those meetings and express their support or nonsupport for projects, and I would recommend that if they are going to do that, they try to attend as many meetings as they can.
other than that, I知 not -- you know, they can touch base with us periodically to find out as the list changes and I don't have a problem sharing information on projects, scopes of projects, things of that sort with them.
>> okay.
I guess, steve, now how will we -- after this particular committee is formed, and I guess it's to the -- in the past what we've done, we've kind of allowed them to -- you know, to do what they need to do, but at the end of the day the -- getting the word out that there will be a public meeting held in a certain area of the county, my concern is what can we do, I guess, as court members in that regard, and I guess when it comes down, I guess we'll look at that at that time.
but I just want to be mindful of the fact that it's a pretty involved process, and I think the more involved we are at the front end, the better results we'll get on the back end.
so that's why I知 kind of laying things out the way I知 laying it out thus far.
>> right.
and t.n.r.
would work with the committee to select the dates they would want to meet and we would reserve the room and we have assembled a list of folks who have expressed interest, such as the folks on this list here now that may not be selected for the committee that we could do email blasts to and I believe each one of your offices also has a list of folks who are interested in this sort of thing that email blasts would be helpful.
advertising on our website public hearings is pretty common for us, and also using channel 17.
>> okay.
thank you.
>> I have two questions.
>> yes, sir.
>> when staff in response to problems being called to your attention extended the deadline to apply, how was that extension communicated to the public?
>> we put it on our website.
we made notification of it on channel 17.
and we also communicated directly by email to folks that we had already been in contact with and also I believe discussed with y'all's staff if you had your own list to please let them know that as well that they are extending the deadline.
>> and how many applications did very receive after the extension?
>> the bulk of them.
we have 60 now and I believe around the time that February 1 was rolling around, we only had about half that many.
so it's been pretty active over the last week.
just walking over this morning I got two more.
>> so we think most interested persons probably knew about the extension?
>> that would be my belief, judge.
>> the precincts that are listed here were indicated by the persons applying or did we just look at the address and determine the precinct?
>> we looked that up ourselves.
I would also add that on that list you see some of the names are shaded.
those are folks who applied for more than one position for the judge and a Commissioner or the judge and two Commissioners so there is some duplication.
I think there's eight of them that did something along those lines.
>> any other questions or comments?
you know, we have a whole lot of applications here, but I would feel a whole lot better extending the deadline one week.
>> second.
>> if you are interested and didn't find out, you should know.
this will be more sufficient public notice, I think.
>> yeah.
>> so I do move we extend the deadline until 5:00 next Tuesday.
which is February 15th.
and if we approve this motion, we're still trying to get this committee engaged working by the end of this month.
>> that's what I would like to try to do, judge.
February 22nd is supposed to be the first meeting of the committee.
they will be more or less establishing their bylaws and intersections, not looking at projects at that point, I wouldn't think, but still something they have to get through.
>> we had talked one time about each of us appointing three.
did we formally adopt that?
>> I think we did, judge.
basically -- we looked at -- and I think it was the norm from last time, unless it's changed.
I think that's what we did last time.
three last time.
>> it is correct.
>> three last time when we first dealt with it in the '05 bond election.
>> okay.
the motion is to extend the deadline until 5:00 next Tuesday.
any more discussion on the motion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you.
>> thank you very much.
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, February, 2011 2:19 PM
