It was brought to my attention this morning that one of my points in my previous post was inaccurate. I've checked and that is indeed the case. A subsequent version of Chapter 775 of the Texas Health & Safety Code to what I was referencing published after enactment of an amendment last year makes the reporting requirement in 775.036 only required if requested by the commissioners court by December 31st of the prior year. My apologies for the error. You can be sure I'll communicate with the commissioners court prior to December of this year that they request the report to be due February 1st 2011.
The most serious of the three reporting failures I commented on though, the financial audit, we learned today was not even submitted to the auditor until May of this year. That would have indeed made the June 1st deadline tough to hit.
The latest update on this subject comes today following a meeting this morning with ESD Director Joey Reed, ESD President Glenn Reue, Joshua Mayor Joe Hollarn, Joshua City Manger Paulette Hartman, Joshua Director of Operations Mike Peacock, Joshua Fire Chief Wayne Baker and myself.
The meeting was requested by the ESD to try to work through the issues the City of Joshua has with the ESD and find a way to an amicable working relationship going forward. I don't think that was accomplished. The fact is though that the things we've brought up are not simply problems for Joshua. They should be concerns for everyone in the district. The ESD is full of excuses for not being where they should be in budget development and I couldn't get a clear answer as to why they don't have a long-term spending plan to accomplish the the things they think will benefit the county. They have wonderful ideas, but they seem to want to just sit on the money for a while and think about it. The time for thinking and planning should have happened before even asking the voters for a tax increase. Instead of a solid plan of action to meet a goal they pushed it as an emotional issue on the public as if it were all of a sudden an emergency and they got what they were after. Who could say "no" to helping our fire fighters and making sure we're all safe? Very few said "no" at the polls. Now they need to get down to business on providing that enhancement we were all sold.
Mr. Reed and Mr. Reue put a lot of stock in what might be accomplished at their board meeting tonight as far as budget development is concerned. The specific agenda item only refers to the fire department contracts portion of the budget so they'll still have a lot of work to do in the next 30 days to show us how, in detail, they'll be spending their new found riches we're all so graciously supplying.
Bringing this into the public has certainly ruffled some feathers, but I use that as a barometer in measuring whether I'm effectively representing the Joshua taxpayers that elected me. I will not be intimidated into letting things slide. To do that would call into question my own integrity. Exceeding the voters expectations of transparency with tax dollars is the only way to maintain a trust relationship. That's the lesson I hope the ESD board will take from this. One need not live in a big house and pay more tax than anyone else to have an equal voice in how our money is spent...blogs in fact are free.
A.J.
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