Health and Human Services Committee Meeting Transcript 12/5/2016 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 12/5/2016 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 12/5/2016 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [2:35:54 PM] >> Houston: Good afternoon. My name is Ora Houston. I am the chair of the health and human services council committee. A quorum is present and I will call this special meeting of the health and human services committee to order on Monday, December the 5th and it is 2:35. We're meeting in council chambers, 301 west second street, Austin, Texas. I want to remind everyone that if you parked in the garage, please get your parking ticket validated before you exit the garage. Staff has it or -- staff will have that to validate your parking ticket. The first item on our agenda is the approval of the minutes of the October the 12th council committee meeting. Mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: I move approval, but I'm going to make an edit. Okay. I notice that on the update from health and human services community partners, Perla cavasas's name is misspelled so I would just bring that to our staff's attention. Perla it's there as pearl and then her last name is spelled incorrectly as well. >> Houston: With those corrections do I have a motion to accept the minutes as corrected? Okay. Is there a second? It's been moved and seconded that the minutes be accepted with the corrections. All those in favor let it be known by saying aye? Opposed, nay? The ayes have it and it is unanimous. Members, if you would allow me to go to the number 4 item, which should be our 2017 meeting schedule and let's take that in case [2:37:55 PM] somebody has to leave before we get to it. You've got two options. One is the January option and the other is the February option. On January 11th there's a council retreat that's been scheduled. And so the question is would you prefer to start in February or go ahead with the January and try to find another date for us to meet? Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I could support either one, but my first response is that just to meet in the beginning of February. That also pushes us -- makes it not March because the March 8th is close to spring break and the other things that start to happen downtown that make it challenging for people to come. So I think that option 2 maybe works better for both of those reasons. >> Houston: Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we adopt option 2 for our meeting schedule for 2017. All those in favor let it be known by saying aye? Opposed no? It's unanimous on the dais. Okay. And we'll come back after it's over and talk about the future agenda items. We've got several things that have kind of been pending. So for our first meeting in 2017. Okay. The health and human services council committee will now retire from the chambers and go into executive session to discuss the appointment of board members to the central health board of managers, personnel exception 551.074 of the government code, interview identified applicants and select a top candidate. There are two recommendations to make. One for the joint appointment with Travis county and one for the city seat being vacated by Rosie [2:39:57 PM] Mendoza. We will retire at this point and we'll be back after awhile. Thank you. >> May we ask if there's going to be citizens communication today? [3:09:59 PM] [5:11:58 PM] >> Houston: Thank you all for waiting. The health and human services council committee is out of executive session and as you can tell by the length of time that it took, we have always tried to be very thorough and very thoughtful about the eye points that -- appointees that we would appoint to serve on the central health board of managers. And that happened today, a lot of issues that we were trying to juggle with. But I think that as far as the joint committee, the Travis county-city appointee, I think we're ready to make a recommendation. And I will entertain a motion on the recommendation for the joint appointee. >> I'll make a motion to appoint Abigail Akins. >> Houston: Councilmember troxclair recommends that we appoint Abigail akin. Is there a second? Councilmember Garza. All in favor of that recommendation to the joint working group, back to the Travis county commissioners' court, let it be known by saying aye? >> Aye. >> All opposed? It's unanimous on the dais. We had so many wonderful people who have applied for the city's position that we were not able to reach consensus on that position, and so what we're going to ask that staff do is do another open call and see if we can get some other [5:14:06 PM] candidates who are interested in serving on the central health board of managers. I'm not sure I said all that correctly, so I would ask other councilmembers to speak. >> Councilmember Garza. >> Garza: I just wanted to reiterate what you said earlier about how this was a really tough decision and we took -- you know, every one of us read every email and read every letter, and I had several calls this weekend from several different stakeholders asking for input on this. I just wanted to add because it's something that I brought up in this discussion is there was a concern about a conflict with Abigail, and we asked questions about that, and we are comfortable with her response. And mainly I think the point is that she is not an employee of the center that has a relationship with Seton. I think it's important that the public knows that we absolutely heard concerns, but we have information that there is no conflict there, so that is why I felt comfortable with this appointment. >> Houston: Mayor pro tem tovo. >> Tovo: I just also want to reiterate a point that our chair, chair Houston mentioned. These have been challenging decisions every time we've had central health applicants and it's really -- comes from a wonderful problem to have, which is that we have had such enormously qualified individuals to serve on the central health board of managers. So I really want to sincerely thank those men and women who stepped up and filled out the application and came to the interviews because we have enormous amount of talent in this community ain't very heartening to see how many people were interested in a board that requires such [5:16:06 PM] commitment. As chair Houston said, today was more challenging than usual, we simply couldn't come to a consensus on that appointment, so the right thing to do seemed to be to give it a little bit more time and move forward at a later date, not tonight, not today. But thank you again to all of you who expressed interest in this position. >> Did we take a vote? We did, right? So I think what we're going to do is that we're going to do another open call and try to get that on the council agenda for the 15th. And then that will give us some time into the next year to be able to look at application, and we urge people who have applied previously to apply again for the city's spot. And then we will be able to make a decision. We think that the central health board of managers may be without a person for one or two months, if at all. Well, I know one or two months. So that's our plan this afternoon and so we thank you for being here and thank all of those candidates who have applied. It's been a very rigorous afternoon for all of them. So I thank you for -- I thank them for that. We have one last thing on the agenda. Are there any things that we need to look at for next year as far as getting on the agenda? I know we've gotten one from the human rights commission, which is the impact on gentrification on human rights is one of the things that I think we will take up in January -- at the February meeting. And if there are other things, if you would just send them to my office we will get them on the agenda. If there are no other comments, this meeting stands adjourned.