Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 (Agenda)
Citizens Communication
Citizens communication is first.
this item gives residents an opportunity to address the court on any matter not on the agenda for up to three minutes.
four residents have signed in, gus pena number one, number 2 steven turner and number 3 bill bunch.
>> good morning, judge.
gus pena, thank everybody in aisd for allowing the kids to participate in the parade last Friday.
it was very emotional and we just don't do enough for the veterans.
may god help us all.
I know there is a proclamation on homelessness, I talked about this is last 15, 20 years, but I want you to know, judge and Commissioners, got a lot of people living in poverty.
the city of Austin is going to adopt a downtown plan to the tune of $300 million.
according that that it will subsidize the highest rents in Austin both residential, city -- I'm sorry, residential and office space.
why, and I told this to the mayor and city council continuously until I am out of breath, you will never be out of breath, why downtown development, let's develop the outer laying area, the suburbs, but make it affordable.
we are always talking about affordable housing.
one of the things I've said for many years and at the capitol and the legislature and city council and school board meetings, anyone will listen to me, define affordability.
$300,000 is not affordable.
one of the interesting things I saw on cnn, donald trump, he made one saying I've been staying at the city and legislature for many years, people -- they say 9% unemployment.
that's not correct.
it's more than that, people have given up.
those that have given up are not reflective on the number of people who claim to be unemployed.
the indicator is housing.
when you are buying a lot of housing, that will bring up the economy, no more recession.
that's a bunch of bull.
look at the families looking for food, food bank, transition out of poverty, we need economic development, but not development that's going to compromise the environment and health and safety and well-being of the communities.
high-paying jobs is more than $10 an hour with benefits.
a lot of people go out to peoples community clinic, thank god for them, don't have insurance, I've gone there and I'm a veteran before I got my health care benefits from the veterans administration.
I'm also you also to continue as much as you do continue to advocate for this stuff.
economic development, jobs, affordable housing, a rental unit that is $500 or less.
we can do that if we get together and also demand accountability from these developers.
they were at the city council the last meeting and the mayor was hobnobbing with all these development attorneys.
with when it comes to us, poor people want to go say affordability, crack down on homelessness, veterans that are homeless, they shine us on.
that's not acceptable.
a society's worth is measured by its treatment of the less fortunate.
>> [buzzer sounding] we have too much poverty and too much homelessness.
sponsor a family for thanksgiving.
thank you very much.
have a good day.
>> thank you, mr. Pena.
steven turner.
>> good morning.
>> good morning.
>> good morning.
>> good to be back in beautiful Austin, Texas.
might not recognize me, I lost a little weight.
not much, I can't tell where.
I brought plants again today for different issues.
I thought of going to the acl last year and it has to do with safety walkway ramps to the street to be used during large crowd venues.
and these ramps could be made based of plywood to be used at any of the parks and public places where the streets are blocked off for pedestrian travel.
logic at entrance and exits, of course, and the pedestrians I noticed last year could not see where the curbs start and stop while walking, they could fall down or hurt their ankles.
or knee depending how they fell.
my first point would be the ramps would be inexpensive to build and maintain.
storage space would be minimal.
the ramps could also be placed by street curbing of different heights with small wooden shingle-type shims. These ramps would also allow wheelchair accessibility.
>> thanks for your ideas.
>> thank you.
bill bunch.
>> good morning.
>> good morning.
>> county judge, Commissioners, bill bunch with save our springs alliance.
just wanted to say a few words about the currently pending request from hays county to Travis County to help build state highway 45 southwest of the county road.
and to also ask if you can tell us what the schedule is for being -- having that matter considered by the Commissioners court.
been trying to find that out for a while, but haven't gotten a good answer yet.
we've heard a lot about this road as always being planned and always being promised.
and that that's the reason we still need to follow through and build it.
but I'd like to give you a few major changes since then.
when it was first -- I would say laid out rather than planned, it was laid out as a whole loop.
we've taken out the western part of that and I don't imagine that's ever going to get put back in because of the tremendous cost to build that part as well as the environmental sensitivity.
so now if we build this part, all of that traffic that would have been directed on the loop is dumped on to mopac.
and what the modeling from a couple years shows is an additional roughly 30,000 trips per day on to mopac.
I think if anybody has looked at congestion on mopac, that's obviously something that's not acceptable.
when the environmental studies were done in the late '80s on this road, the eif said point blank it takes three years from polluted runoff from that location to reach barton springs.
the study since then now say two to four days.
fundamentally different.
over hundreds of recharge features have been mapped in the right-of-way along this proposed road.
it's hard to imagine a road that would threaten barton springs more than this one.
the -- also, this county along with the city committed to protecting flint ridge cave as a legal mandate in your bccp 10-8 permit, yet the right-of-way and building of road would go straight over the cave and would violate that permit.
you would also be facing takings issues with the barton springs salamander, an endangered species that was not known at the time this road was first pitched and which there was no legal commitment to protect.
I'm concerned about transparency in this process.
through an information request I just got, your staff has now estimated building a two-lane road at $17 million.
that was done two months ago.
how come we never even heard about this.
now, when there was a real public estimate made for a-four-lane road --
>> [buzzer sounding] we need transparency and a schedule please on this road considering this road.
>> thank you, mr. Bunch.
ronnie reeferseed.
>> do we have a date, judge?
>> the most recent information I have I gave to you two weeks ago.
I also gave you my promise that as soon as there is a better schedule, I would share it with you.
I plan to keep that.
>> thank you.
>> mr. Reeferseed.
>> yes, sir.
good to see you again, I tell you what.
a always a pleasure, mr. Reeferseed.
>> you too, miss Eckhardt.
yippee, ronnie reeferseed here.
celebrating, yes, dr. Paul was allowed to speak a whopping 89 seconds through the entire debate recently.
sound familiar?
hello.
those precious 89 seconds were clearly the most cogent and articulate words uttered on stage.
immediate preferred empty suits like governor romney care were asked to rattle off more tired slogans to placate the press from our lane stream media.
slurping snake with no legs newt globalists who divorced his dying ex-wife is lame scheme media's huckster's latest version of anybody but Ron paul.
why?
dr. Ron paul soundly defeated so-called peace prize and has for months now.
the other big secret is dr. Ron paul will cancel our counterproductive war on pot smokers to instead liberate all family farmers with hemp marijuana again, the inevitable market forces of supply and demand translates into all family farmers will be made richer with freedom from farming no matter what they grow and organized crime thugs will have a whole lot money to kill people with less tax free money to bribe political criminals and we all get more peace and liberty right here at home.
absolute freedom for family farmers is our key to earning leadership on the world stage.
by example not by continually killing more people with bullets, bombs, depleted uranium, drones and/or other illegal weapons of mass destruction, they just keep on killing any and all living things.
for thousands of years, stop the killing now, we must stop the killing of the completely innocent unborn.
stop wasting the wisdom from our elderly that we should be celebrated and valued, not wasted, not exploited and abandoned.
the irreplaceable value and gift of life is
>> [indiscernible] and I know, okay?
and we must stop the killing in both young and old babies and seniors, the unborn and perhaps unintelligible that hey, I know I was in a coma for ten days and I'm overwhelmingly blessed to be here with you now.
to learn more online please visit Ron paul 2012.com.
american free press.net.
we are all forever showered with blessings of all things at all times so let's stop and appreciate the joy is that we all have available and legalize peace and freedom worldwide liberty for family farmers.
>> [buzzer sounding] -- that's the key.
absolute freedom for family farmers means more money for family farms to generate tax revenues to add to the huge savings of taxpayer dollars canceling our counterproductive war against pot smokers since nixon stupidly launched it last century.
>> thank you, mr. Reeferseed.
>> okay.
stop there.
>> those are the four who signed in to speak under citizens communication.
let me announce for our human resources management department that their employee appreciation balloon sales continue, in fact, they are set up in the hallway.
last week they were kind enough to give us a balloon apiece on behalf of this court I requested one this week and they said the free balloons were last week.
they did remind me individual balloons are one dollar apiece and a full bouquet for five bucks and they will deliver to downtown tcso and airport if you pre-order.
so 50% of all sales will go to Travis County combined charities so let's assist as much as we can.
the other thing, we will post for a status report on our combined charities' efforts this year.
so as county judge I encourage all employees to give as much as you can to this worth he cause.
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.
