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April 28, 2009
Commissioners get swine flu update
Travis County emergency management and health officials updated commissioners on local response to the swine flu outbreak during Tuesday’s regular meeting.
Every day, officials will have a conference call at 8:30 a.m. and again at 3 p.m. with state officials, said Travis County emergency management coordinator Pete Baldwin. A status report will be put out daily, which Baldwin said would be forwarded to the commissioners.
A public-inquiry phone line has been set up — 1-888-777-5320 — and county health officials also referred people to the state health department’s Web site at www.dshs.state.tx.us
Wash your hands frequently and before eating, cough into your folded arm, dispose of used tissues in the trash, stay home if you’re sick and see a physician if you have a fever that’s 100.3 degrees or higher, county emergency and health officials recommended.
“It boils down to good personal hygiene,” Baldwin said.
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April 7, 2009
Travis County declares drought disaster
Travis County commissioners on Tuesday unanimously declared the county a disaster area due to the ongoing drought.
The commissioners votes to sign a letter to Gov. Rick Perry in support of his request for federal assistance. Williamson, Bastrop, Caldwell, Fayette and Comal counties have signed similar letters, according to Travis County emergency management coordinator Pete Baldwin.
While Travis County has fewer agricultural interests than most of its Central Texas neighbors, the dearth of rain over the last two years has taken a toll.
Commissioners also decided to keep the county’s burn ban in place, despite the rains Austin has received over the past two weeks, and they gave the go-ahead to Texas AgriLife Extension Service in Travis County to coordinate a study of drought effects on Travis County farmers and ranchers.
In Bastrop County, 1,000 cattle have died, said Brad Pierce, Texas AgriLife’s agriculture program leader for Travis County. He said the number of lost cattle is unknown for Travis County because there are no auction services here. In 60 days, they’ll have a better idea production-wise how the county’s doing, Pierce said.
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December 9, 2008
County bans bottle rockets
Travis County banned some kinds of fireworks Tuesday, with county officials saying the fireworks create too much wildfire risk in the current drought.
Under the ban, fireworks that are “skyrockets with sticks” and “missiles with fins” — such as bottle rockets — are not allowed to be sold or used.
The ban applies “to the kind of firework you stick into the ground, you light, and then have no control over,” said Pete Baldwin, Travis County’s emergency management coordinator.
The ban affects the parts of Travis County that are not part of a city. Austin does not allow most kinds of fireworks.
The Texas Forest Service has declared that Travis County is in a drought. The county fireworks ban will last until it’s rescinded by the county commissioners, or the Forest Service reverses its drought declaration. Until then, Baldwin said, any fireworks should be handled with caution.
“It is just too dry to be messing with anything that sets of sparks near grass,” Baldwin said.
Those caught using the banned fireworks face penalties of up to $500, according to Travis County. Fireworks are also banned in most municipalities, including the City of Austin.
Firework vendors will open their stands Dec. 26.
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August 5, 2008
Commissioners enter bizzaro world over pay
Generally speaking, County Commissioner Sarah Eckhardt advocates expanding county services (which tends to increase taxes), while County Commissioner Gerald Daugherty thinks the county taxes and spends too much (and every year votes against the final county budget on the grounds it’s too large).
So it was a little strange to hear Daugherty, a Republican, clearly on the side of the county employee’s union on Tuesday, while Eckhardt, a Democrat, gave the union the hardest time when the commissioners discussed employee wages.
Daugherty made no bones: he agrees with the union that the county uses an “obviously unacceptable method” for determining what county employees should earn, leaving them underpaid as a result. Eckhardt, obviously skeptical, grilled union head Greg Powell about his proposals to put the county payscale where he thinks it needs to be.
Powell’s argument for higher pay is, in a nutshell, that county employees could make more elsewhere for doing the same work, and that too many (as many as 25 percent a year in some departments) are leaving for the county to do business efficiently.
Afterward Powell told me the attitudes shown by Daugherty and Eckhardt during Tuesday’s meeting are representative of how they’ve dealt with the union’s ideas. Daugherty, Powell said, seems to be the commissioner most inclined to ensure county employees earn what the union thinks they should, while Eckhardt seems most skeptical.
Okay, so Daugherty could believe the union hasn’t gone nuts and that turnover hurts operations enough to pay employees more. And yes, Eckhardt could simply be aiming at good stewardship of limited taxpayer dollars (she, along with Daugherty, voted against a big raise for Sheriff’s Office employees last year). We won’t know where their hearts are truly at until a final vote.
But the discussion Tuesday still left me wondering: Who are you people, and how dare you not conform to standard presumptions?
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