Senator Averitt Town Hall 9-24-09

I just returned from Cleburne, TX where our state senator for district 22, Kip Averitt, held a town hall meeting for some citizen feedback. This was actually the first town hall meeting I've had the opportunity to attend and it was nice to see local people come out to address a member of their representative delegation. Our state legislature doesn't have anything nearly as hot to deal with as national health care or cap & trade so, as expected, this meeting was quite civilized and respectful.

For those of us that supported public option transportation funding it was good to hear the senator's remarks about his support for the legislation and his frustration with the house of representatives and the opponents of the option who kept it from progressing last session.

When asked if there is anything that can be done to get TXDoT and the NTTA to move forward on the TX 121 extension in Johnson county the senator's honest answer was "no". In his opinion the Texas Department of Transportation is the most difficult to work with publicly funded department in the state and he's as frustrated as the rest of us, but he's not giving up either.

One other interesting subject that came up was about the lack of funding and opportunity for high school kids to become skilled in a trade as an alternative to college. A staggering statistic mentioned was just 30% of high school graduates go on to college yet our public school system works with near tunnel vision towards college preparation possibly to the detriment of simple life and skill preparation. Trade schools are nearly a thing of the past where hard working well intentioned young people not interested in college could learn to be productive members of society with rather lucrative skilled career paths. The pendulum has swung very much away from those options and towards an entire society of academics which may not be practical economically in the long term. There's obviously a lot more to it globally, but it's something to think about.

Thanks to Senator Averitt for taking the time to maintain the relationship that makes our system work.

A.J.