The Kerr County Commissioners Court will hold a “workshop” meeting on Monday, November 18, at 6:00 PM, at the county’s Youth Exhibition Center facility on State Highway 27 in Kerrville. The topics of that meeting include a presentation on the reasoning behind the changes in policies at the animal shelter, a discussion of coordinating with a nonprofit for adoption-related services, and public input related to these topics. During Tuesday’s regular Commissioners Court meeting, the body adopted new rules for decorum and public participation for all meetings, including the November 18 meeting.
The previous rules that were in effect since 1999 allowed each member of the public up to five minutes of time to address the court on an agenda topic, even though, for many years, the court has been restricting the public to a three-minute limit, although even that limit was rarely enforced. The new rules adopted Tuesday will limit the public input to three minutes per person. Judge Rob Kelly stated that the reasoning for the shorter time limit was, “to try to give more people an opportunity to offer input to the Court.” He mentioned that the change was specifically brought up to keep order at the upcoming November 18 meeting, and to make the agendas consistent with the court orders on the books.
The motion to change the rules passed unanimously. (Ref.: Minutes from November 12)
For comparison purposes, the City of Kerrville also places a limit on public input — four minutes.
Workshop on November 18 Agenda Topics
Monday night’s agenda is limited to these three topics, plus adjournment. The meeting is limited to just two hours — 6 PM to 8 PM. Items 1 and 2 do not have a specified duration, so the amount of time left for public comment is unknown at this time.
Ref.: Agenda for November 18
Video Recordings
Kerrville United plans to attend and video record the meeting on Monday evening. The recording will be made available to the public as soon as possible after the conclusion of the meeting.
Kerr County has encouraged our taping of this meeting, and have stated that they will also make the video available on their public website.
Kerrville United continues to encourage the county to implement a video recording/streaming system for all of their meetings, and we have opened a petition to that effect. Please consider signing and sharing.
Petition: http://chng.it/tQTcz5tL
