October 31st Council Meeting

Only City Council members and authorized staff are allowed to post on this message board.
Delia Garza
Posts: 52
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2015 9:20 am

October 31st Council Meeting

Post by Delia Garza »

Good morning colleagues and Happy Halloween,

This morning I am attending a school event with my daughter so I will be about an hour late to our meeting today.

I originally planned to pull Item 2 to add the direction I discussed at work session. My staff will pass out the direction on the dais. If there is no opposition or the need for discussion on the item, I will not need to pull it and I am fine with it passing on consent without me there with the additional direction. If there is opposition, I ask that we pull the item. I should be at the meeting by 11:30.

I also had planned to comment on items 8 and 20 as I’m assuming they will remain on consent. Below is what I planned to say and I may ask a colleague to read a portion of the below statement.

Item 8 will help finish the Moore’s Crossing station in my district so it can open on time in 2020. Both items 8 and 20 will help get the design and construction underway for the Travis Country station in Council Member Ellis’ district. In 2016, staff identified the areas of greatest need for new fire stations, and Travis Country was at the top of the list because of lagging response times. It was followed by Moore’s Crossing because of response times and because of higher insurance rates in an already underserved part of town. While the road has been long to get to a place where we have definite timelines for construction and dates that our constituents can look toward for when these stations will open, I am extremely grateful to staff for being responsive to us on Council and to the residents who came up to City Hall and make it clear how badly needed these fire stations are in their areas.

Analysis and reports and maps are one thing, but when our constituents take the time to come here and tell us about the real impacts on their lives, that reminds us all--both staff and Council--why we do the work we do. On the Moore’s Crossing station in my district in particular: We approved the staffing for a temporary fire station nearby in the budget to serve the Del Valle/Moore’s Crossing area, and since that station opened on October 1, we’ve already seen the impact.

o Less than a week after it opened, there was a call about someone in cardiac arrest.
o Fire and EMS crews were able to reach that person in less than 4 minutes.
o They performed CPR and resuscitated the patient and got them to the hospital for treatment.
o That’s just one incident where a lower response time may have been the difference between life and death.

So thank you to AFD, EMS, Public Works, Capital Contracting Office, and every other department that has helped us make progress on the construction of these stations, because that hard work will literally save lives in these areas.


See y’all soon,

DG
Mayor Pro Tem, District 2