By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. has placed several items on Tuesday’s commissioners court agenda to address concerns raised by the leader of an activist group who has charged more than $1 million in county funds were “misused, misspent.”
Sandra Fuentes, a co-chair of The Border Organization, spoke to members of the court about a range of county expenditures during the citizen comments portion of the court’s May 9 meeting.
“This is part of our democracy, right? This is about holding elected officials accountable. So, as you well know, I have submitted 17 open records requests (to the county). Almost all of them have been answered. Some of them were very vague and general,” Fuentes told the court.
“What we want to state here this morning publically is the answers that we have gotten to date, and these are facts. The commissioners court, this commissioners court, has spent the following amounts on the following items,” she added.
Fuentes then gave some details on the answers she had received to her open records queries.
“(The county spent on) $323,603 on terminating a software contract that the citizens of Val Verde received absolutely nothing (for). Nothing at all. $58,950 on a fence in Precinct 4. There was an existing fence already there. $1,012,000 that we paid extra because we didn’t finish Frontera Road in a timely manner,” Fuentes said.
“The reason this is important, and there’s more to come, and by the way, I think $60,000, I believe, on the consultants for the sports complex that never materialized. Again, nothing,” she added.
Fuentes said she is still waiting on replies for money spent on other projects.
“Still waiting on an answer for how much did we spend on the shooting range, whatever else it was, in SE Ranch that did not materialize. We made expenditures. We understand it’s going to go up somewhere else, but the fact remains that there were expenditures done on the initial proposed area.
“The point to all this is this: I don’t know that this commissioners court can say publicly that we’re not going to spend $600,000 on improving Old Foster Road, spending taxpayers’ money on Old Foster Road, but yet you have spent $1.4 million to date, misused or misspent. We can’t square that up in our heads. That does not make any sense to us.
“Where is this court’s priority? It should be on their citizens. We need to remind this court that you’re elected officials to serve, not to be self-serving. Thank you,” Fuentes finished.
Neither Owens nor any of the commissioners typically address concerns raised during citizens’ comments during the meeting, though they may speak about the issues later, if they are asked. The judge and commissioners have also occasionally replied to citizens’ comments under the “judge’s comments” or “commissioners’ comments” portion of the meeting.
According to the commissioners court agenda posted on the county’s web site, Owens has placed several items on the agenda of Tuesday’s session that appear to be in response to the issues raised by Fuentes during the May 9 meeting.
The first item is titled “discussion and possible action on the Odyssey case management system/program, which was not continued by Val Verde County.”
The next item is “discussion and possible action on the cost of the Frontera Road project.”
Owens has placed a third item on the agenda titled “discussion and possible action on cost for plans for a sports complex at the county fairgrounds.”
There are also two agenda items for discussion of and possible action on invoices from Davis Powell Architecture and Esser and Consulting LLC for professional services rendered to the county in regards to the county target range project.
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