05.01.09
Hutto Citizens Group meeting May 5th
The Hutto Citizens Group (HCG) sent out a press release [.pdf] for it’s upcoming meeting next week. They are having a meeting on Monday to discuss several topics, including the three highlighted below.
At its upcoming regular meeting on Tuesday, May 5, the Hutto Citizens Group (HCG) will hold open discussions on major items that are on the front burner of local and county issues, including the problem of no grocery store in Hutto, the ongoing landfill concerns, and the county’s legal problem of having the county judge serve as the county budget officer.
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At it’s April 1 meeting, the group passed a resolution to work on a combined community strategy to attract a grocery store to Hutto. “It’s been an ongoing problem,” said Steven “Bear”
Salfelder, president of the HCG, who added, “and despite efforts by the City of Hutto and the Hutto Economic Development Corporation, no solution has been forthcoming.”According to Salfelder, the HCG has discussed alternatives to the refusal of major retail grocery chains to serve the local Hutto market. “We’ve developed some practical concepts,” Salfelder said, “including a model that is financially viable which is tailored to meet the specific needs of our local
community, and we’ll be fleshing out those ideas at Tuesday’s meeting.”Another front-burner topic on the meeting agenda is the legal conflict in which Williamson County finds itself by having the county judge serve as the county’s budget officer, despite a ruling from the Texas attorney general that the arrangement is illegal. “With the county’s upcoming budget now in process, this problem needs to be addressed and resolved,” said Jeff Maurice, chairman of the HCG’s information committee who has researched the issue in detail.
Other agenda items include discussions of ongoing landfill problems and the county’s failure to answer questions about current concerns, planning for the Hutto Cultural Festival, and an update on the county’s contracts to run the T. Don Hutto in prison in Taylor which confines women and children with immigration issues. “The federal court oversight of the prison, which corrected past abuses, expires in September,” Maurice said, “so some answers about safeguards need to be discussed.
The meeting agenda is also available here [.pdf], (which includes location, time and directions). Also read EOW’s reporting on Judge Dan Gattis, Sr continuing to act as the budget officer, in violation of the Texas Attorney General’s ruling here an here.