County hopes to boost public comment with earlier agendas

The county is changing the way it posts the Hays County Commissioners Court agendas in order to give members of the public more time to see what upcoming meetings hold.

At its Tuesday meeting, the commissioners court approved a measure tasking the county’s general counsel with formulating a timeline for making the change, which would involve posting a draft agenda five business days ahead of a meeting instead of one business day.

“The attempt is merely to give the citizenry a longer-range heads up,” County Judge Ruben Becerra said.

Sometimes, in order to speak on an agenda item at the commissioners court meeting, county residents need to ask for time off or make other adjustments. An earlier agenda posting would give them more advance notice.

The commissioners discussed the possibility of having agenda meetings well in advance to get as much of an agenda assembled as possible before posting a draft. The county would still have time to make additions or changes to the agenda before a final posting.

“In the past, we had issues with people submitting agenda items after the deadline,” Precinct 1 Commissioner Debbie Gonzales Ingalsbe said. “You would think with more notice … that would limit some of that.”

Ingalsbe also noted that if an item likely to generate a lot of interest comes in late, the item could be postponed unless it has a time limit.

“There are going to be some time sensitive matters, I believe,” she said, “but if it’s — for example — an elections discussion … we would have the ability to postpone.”

Precinct 4 Commissioner Walt Smith said he would want to emphasize that changes or additions to agendas could happen and that such changes are not nefarious.

“My biggest concern is everyone clearly understands that this is an attempt to be very open in our process,” he said. “... Whenever we begin posting things on Wednesday, or two Mondays before, and then an item comes up on that Friday that’s in our final agenda … a lot of these things do come up on the last day or the day before. … I can tell you right now we’re going to get lambasted by certain individuals.”

Becerra agreed, “There will be a learning curve.”

The measure to create a timeline for posting agendas earlier passed unanimously.