Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 8
>> all right, number 8, consider and take appropriate action regarding a proposed formula for Commissioner appointments.
>> I'm danny hobby, county executive for emergency services.
hailed like to do today is just have discussion with the court and possible action in regards to a proposed formula and how appointments are made to emergency services district boards.
as for the public that may be watching, each Commissioner has a -- in their particular precinct if they have a e.s.d., and current there are 13 emergency services districts.
the reason I'm here before you today is there are some -- reappointments or appointments due at the end of December.
and so time is of essence in regard to some of you that are going to need to make those appointments.
or reappointments.
so what I've done is basically looked at the redistricting, that's why I'm hear, what has happened is there are some districts that have multiple precincts in them.
or you could reverse that and say there are some precincts that are in more than one precinct are in one district.
so what I did is I have been working with some folks, in particular our gis coordinator in t.n.r.
and based upon the 2010 census, I'm just proposing that -- and an easy way of doing this would be to simply look at population and then see what the percentage come out to each precinct and then based upon that it would determine the number of appointments that you would make.
and so in your backup what you see is a formula that's been developed based upon percentages, and with some of your districts it has no effect whatsoever, but for those that have the crossover of several precincts in one particular e.s.d.
district, then this helps in determining the amount of appointments you might have.
so again, it's not something that's very complicated, in fact I tried to make it as simple as possible, but because of the fact you do have some appointments coming up, I felt like there was an attempt that needed to be made that would make this easier for you and the December deadline but also in the future.
>> have we shared this with the e.s.d.s?
>> no, sir, I've not shared wit the e.s.d.
boards.
>> okay, court members, questions, comments?
>> I think that it's -- it's a fair way to go about divvying up these appointments.
it is a complicated -- I think it's a start.
I would just like to offer up that I have had nine of the 13 e.s.d.s in my precinct and I have spent a whole lot of time this the last three years looking at these e.s.d.
appointments because of the challenges what all of our e.s.d.s face from a standpoint of funding and loss of tax base as the incorporated cities gobbles them up.
so one of the things that I think I would just like to highlight here in addition to how we divvy these up, that I have come to realize since each e.s.d.
is sort of an entity into itself, I have made an effort to be sure what when I make my appointments to the e.s.d.
boards, and the majority has been all five, some of that is change, but that I look at the composition of the board to be sure we have at least someone with financial expertise, someone with good managerial skill sets, someone with knowledge of emergency services, someone with good communication skills for public outreach because more and more our esds are faced with meeting challenges of public information and communication.
and so as we end up sharing more and more of these esds, I would hope that we can collaborate together to be sure there's not only geographic representation on the boards, but also the complement of skill sets is there to effectively run these boards.
but I think this is a very good start in how we need to begin to divvy up these appointments.
>> what drives us more than anything else is redistricting?
>> yes, sir.
and also I would just like to submit to you as well, I think it's going to be important for me in the future to be more involved with you in this process since I'm so directly connected to the esds themselves and that's something that my office needs to be, I think in the future dedicated to helping and assisting you as I can.
>> any additional comments?
move approval.
>> second.
>> of the recommended formula.
>> and just by clarification, precinct 41 not affected.
>> no, ma'am.
it is affected in one esd, yes, but -- yes.
and I will be getting with each office as well as a followup to go over some of the other work that I've been doing.
>> a greedy county judge would have --
>> I'm sorry?
>> a greedy county judge would have asked for the ability to appoint half of each emergency services district, danny.
but I'm at zero like Commissioner Gomez.
>> is that a request?
>> no, ma'am.
>> [laughter]
>> discussion on the motion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
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