Travis County Commissioners Court

July 3, 2012 - Item 2
Agenda

Item 2, consider and take appropriate action on an order concerning outdoor burning in the unincorporated areas of Travis County.

>> Good morning, judge, Herschel Lee, Travis County fire marshal.
Last week the court enacted a burn ban for unincorporated areas.
My recommendation today is take no action and leave the burn in place.
The current doubt index yesterday was 551 at noon and the forecast for the next month or so does not really show any significant improvement.
So my recommendation is to leave the burn ban in place.

>> Now, for those wondering what effect the burn ban has on their fourth of July barbecue tomorrow, there is a way for you to conduct -- do that barbecue outside and still comply with the ban.

>> That's correct.
Cooking, when you have a cooking piece of apparatus, container that will even close the fire, that is entirely allowed and appropriate and a good thing to do on July 4th.
We do ask if you are using solid wood, solid fuel such as wood, charcoal, those kinds of things, to be sure either leave those coals in the pit until they are completely out or if you take them out early, put them in a metal container, soak them with water.
Be sure they are out cold and wet before you discard them.
Every year people discarding coals, sometimes even inside the city they will throw those into a dumpster or trash can and people lose houses because of that.
So be careful disposing of coals and charcoal.

>> But you really ought to monitor the cooking process, I goodes.

>> Oh, yes.
Stay with the fire or the cooking at all times.

>> I had that question from a couple residents, so that's the answer.
We take no action and leave in place the burn ban that we adopted last -- I guess it was last week we did it.

>> That's correct.
If no other action is taken, that one would expire on the 25th of July, I believe.
We'll be ready to brief the court prior to that time.

>> Okay.

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.

July 3, 2012: Travis County Launches New Video Playback System

Our new streaming video system uses a single video clip for each session and items are linked to specific locations on that clip. Some browsers and mobile devices do not recognize the location information and display the entire clip. If this happens the "start time" will help you find your item's video within the larger clip.

If you encounter playback issues check out our video playback help page. If you still encounter problems let us know.

On July 3rd, 2012, Travis County began leveraging free resources by posting Commissioners Court meetings on Youtube. Previously every video clip was edited separately and hosted on the county's video server. The old system also required RealPlayer to view the video clips.

The new systems save time and resources -- and that saves taxpayer dollars!