Issues

With your support and vote, I will seek to:

  • Put integrity to the ballot box – restore recount ability – full details at VoteRescue
  • Work to reduce salaries of County Commissioners (now 103k+)
  • Address County Jail and Hospital issues of overcrowding and needed mental health care via alternatives through the successful drug courts and educational opportunities, in addition to addressing uninformed consent issues related to medicating juveniles in detention
  • Encourage the county to join into Interlocal Agreements for a Zero Waste goal in Central Texas – ctzwa.org
  • Ensure responsible fiscal management of County Budget by eliminating high cost privatization and outsourcing and move to merit-based awarding of contracts (end the pay-to-play system we now have)
  • Improve accountability to citizens by posting the full county budget and all contracts online in a timely fashion and holding real public hearings instead of holding them minutes before rubber stamping approval
  • Ensure all bonds over $300 million are put to a vote, unlike the recent $1.2 billion bond just approved by Commissioners without a vote
  • Push for Range Voting for all elections in Bexar County which will save money by eliminating costly runoff elections without resorting to plurality elections and give us a more representative democracy
  • Attract progressive, environmentally friendly, small-to-medium-size companies to renovate urban industrial areas who will provide meaningful jobs with livable wages
  • Reduce commuting & congestion with proven methods in other locales through smart zoning and planning

How Commissioners helped Builders Profit at expense of homeowners

In the 1990s, the County Commissioners, including my opponent, voted to remove a Bond Requirement requiring new roads that would become County maintained to be built to code. Since then, the county has refused to take ownership/maintenance of 77 miles of 535 roads in 122 subdivisions, due to substandard building. This type of corruption, removing laws to profit builders, ruins homeowners’ investment. The commissioners finally reinstated the bond, after almost two decades because of pressure from the advocacy group Homeowners for Better Building (HOBB) and residents, in May 2010.

“If Bexar County started paying to fix roads in Ventura Heights, it would open a “Pandora’s box” throughout the county, where there’s 77 miles of streets in similar, though perhaps less drastic, condition, Elizondo said.” http://www.hobb.org/content/view/3405/89/

“When we knew we had this problem, the first step was to stop the hemorrhaging,” said Bexar County Engineer Renee Green. – http://www.hobb.org/content/view/3441/89/

Seriously? You thought this wouldn’t happen if you let builders off the hook?

Breaking Story by Jennifer Hiller on May 24, 2010.

Follow stories on this issue at Homeowners for Better Building