Commissioners choose La Fleur to negotiate LCRA tower project

During a special called meeting Thursday, Dec. 19, the Gonzales County Commissioners Court appointed Precinct 3 Commissioner Kevin La Fleur to be the “designated, appointed individual” to represent the county in negotiations with the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) regarding an emergency communications tower bid that was accepted earlier this month.

Only three of the members of the court were present for the meeting: La Fleur, Precinct 1 Commissioner K.O. “Dell” Whiddon and Precinct 2 Commissioner Donnie Brzozowski. Both County Judge Pat Davis and Precinct 4 Commissioner Collie Boatright, who favor negotiating with LCRA in an open session and not in private, chose not to attend the meeting.

Davis and Boatright were also the two people who voted against awarding LCRA a $4.998 million bid to build a new emergency radio communications system for Gonzales County as they favored having the county build its own towers and enter a partnership with the Texas Department of Transportation and the Greater Austin Travis Regional Radio System (GATRRS) instead.

A concerned citizen, Jeanette Soefje, asked commissioners on Thursday, “Would it be better suited for Gonzales County, since you already have a project manager for this tower project, for them to be an independent negotiator going forward, instead of having an elected official who's fixing to leave office (referring to La Fleur, who is retiring on Dec. 31 and did not seek re-election).”

The question seemed to irritate La Fleur, who told Soefje that his imminent retirement — as well as Whiddon’s — “has nothing to do with this.”

“Y’all are hung on this ‘We're leaving office,’” La Fleur said. “We've been doing this (tower project) for over three years, and now, because it's coming to an end, y'all are blaming it because we're going out of office.”

Whiddon tried to bring the temperature in the room down a little by saying, “I think everybody wants to do the best thing for the county. We've all got good intentions on doing that.”

Brzozowski stated that the court had “spent a lot of time looking into all this stuff and we’re doing what's trying to be done best for the county.” He questioned why Boatright had voted against going into an executive session at the regular meeting on Monday, Dec. 16, to conduct negotiations with LCRA.

“I don't know why they wouldn't let us discuss it the other day,” Brzozowski said of Boatright and Davis. “If you're worried about the betterment of the county and who’s handling it, why didn't they let us discuss it the other day so we could have discussed it and then went forward and knew what they had? Why would they not let us discuss it to see what those people had to offer?

“Why were they scared to let those people tell us what their actions were, what they had to offer? You ought to be more concerned about that than about these two guys going out of office. You ought to be concerned why the two people on the end (Davis and Boatright) wouldn’t let us discuss it with LCRA to see what they had to benefit the county and what kind of deal they had for us.”

Brzozowski told Soefje that he, Whiddon and La Fleur “have done nothing but work for the benefit of the county ever since we've been here.”

“The county's in good shape, but it don't take long to get in bad shape, ma’am, like any other business, but you're going to sit there and complain to us about it and come over here when we're trying to do the right thing,” Brzozowski said. “If you want to talk to somebody, talk to these two people (Davis and Boatright). They're the ones that stopped it. How can you find out what anybody has to offer if you don't sit down and negotiate with people and talk to them just like we're talking now?”

Soefje replied that if the court couldn’t handle negotiations “in the manner prescribed by law, then those conversations should not be had.”

“If you cannot have LCRA agree to publicly discuss what is being discussed behind closed doors, then what are y'all hiding?” Soefje asked.

“We’re not hiding anything,” Brzozowski replied. “Those people don't negotiate in the open with anybody. They don't negotiate at all.”

Brzozowski said he believes LCRA would negotiate either one on one with the county or in closed session with the full court.

“We would have talked to and them and then we would have came out and said, ‘Hey, we're going to go with LCRA and this is a deal that made us’ or ‘We're not going to go with the LCRA and we're going to go down the road and do something else.’ That's the whole point you people are missing.”

Brozozowski said he was “tired of taking slack” for Davis and Boatright and accused them of holding up the project for three-and-a-half years.

“Let's talk frank today, since you’ve got me cranked up on this,” Brzozowski told Soefje. “They held this up till the end of year so these two guys would be gone, and they know what's going on with this stuff — what kind of radios we need and what kind of service we need. They held it up to push it over until the next time.

“I don't think it's right and if you really believe and you really care about Gonzales, when you go home and you'll drive home, you'll think about this and see that I'm right.”

Soefje replied she thought the commissioners should listen to Sheriff Keith Schmidt as “the chief law enforcement officer of this county and what he feels best serves the county and emergency services.”

Brzozowski asked Schmidt what the sheriff said in open court when asked which system he would choose if he could only have one, to which Schmidt agreed if forced to choose one, he would go with “Does anybody have a complaint about what kind of service they have with LCRA? Have they not been Johnny on the spot to fix everything?” Brzozowski asked.

“As I mentioned, you asked me again in court on Monday and we've had good service out of (LCRA). They've been a good partner,” Schmidt replied.

“You want to run LCRA off then you’d all be in it with no radio system?” Brzozowski said “Why would we want to go with this GATRRS system unless we have to. We're going to be on an island by ourselves. Pretty much everybody around us is on the LCRA.”

La Fleur told Soefje “it’s obvious what side you’re on” when it comes to the towers and “you’re sitting there pushing and pushing about doing what’s good for Gonzales County and speaking about me and Commissioner Whiddon because we’re leaving.”

“One thing nobody brings up is nobody knows what the towers are going to cost when Motorola puts them up,” La Fleur said. “Nobody's had an answer. You want to take a deal, assist them and hope like hell that it’s going to work and you have the money for it. I don't do personal business like that. I hope you don't.”

Brzozowski said negotiating with LCRA in private “may have saved you some money and we have a responsibility to the people that we represent here.”
“That's the reason we wanted to talk to those people and hear what they had to say, but those big people like that — they won’t talk out in the open,” Brzozowski said. “They want to talk in executive session. And we're not hiding anything, ma'am, but we're the ones that catch the heat if something goes wrong. So it's up to us to make the decision for everybody.

“(Davis and Boatright) are going to fool around and the LCRA ain't going to be here, Sheriff. You're going to be talking on two coffee cans with a string somewhere because how long is it going to take that GATRRS system, if that’s the one you’re talking about, how long is it going to take them to get into operation? Commissioner Whiddon asked them for a price on what it was going to cost and what did they give you, Dell? Nothing.

“So you want us to quit dealing with these people and deal with somebody that won't even tell us what they're going to charge us, ma’am, and you have the audacity to come over here and sit and tell us something like that. I mean, that's not right,” Brzozowski said to Soefje.

Asked by the Inquirer if the appointment would extend past the first of the year, when La Fleur leaves office, La Fleur said “it won’t.”
“I’m going to go over there and talk to (LCRA) and they're going to put in writing what they're offering us,” La Fleur said. “I will turn it to Donnie and he can turn it over to the court, and they can decide. That's what this is all about.”

Brzozowski scolded Schmidt about a meeting the sheriff had with other law enforcement, emergency services, Gonzales City Manager Tim Crow, representatives from Nixon and with Davis and Boatright about the GATRRS system, to which Brzozowski said he and La Fleur had not been invited and he only found out it because La Fleur called up Schmidt and questioned him about it. That meeting happened before GATRRS made a presentation to the court in October.

“I didn't know a thing about it,” Brzozowski said. “I didn't appreciate that one damn bit. If y'all want to have a meeting and talk about stuff, then have a special called meeting so the other commissioners can come in here and sit down and listen to these complaints that people have.

“They didn't invite all the commissioners. I wasn't invited. I didn't know about it till (La Fleur) called the sheriff, and I sat right there listening to the conversation. And the only reason he got invited was he called and asked what was going on. But (Boatright and Davis) knew about it.

“That meeting should have never been held like that. And sheriff, you shouldn't have went around politicking and trying to see who was going to help you and who wasn't. I don't appreciate that fact either. That wasn't right. I would have never done you that way, and I don't expect you to ever do me that way again.”

Brzozowski threatened to complain to the Office of the Attorney General in Austin about a possible Open Meetings Act violation if such activity took place without his knowledge again.

“I don't ever want that to happen again, or I'm going to have a damn fit,” he added. “The truth is everybody ought to be involved, not just the sheriff and the law enforcement and the emergency people. The commissioners should have been here, because you cannot make a good decision if you don't know how these people feel, plus you have to make a decision what you think is best for the taxpayers.”

When Schmidt replied that he cannot schedule commissioners court meetings or set their agenda, Brzozowski called it “cop out.”

“Sheriff, don't tell me that crap,” he said. “You could've been in there and told the judge, if you and the judge got together on this, ‘I want to meet with the commissioners. I found something good,’ and invited everybody to come. But you didn't do that. I don't appreciate that kind of business. That's underhanded to me.”

Commissioners then voted 3-0 to select La Fleur as their negotiator.