03.03.20 Regular Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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City Council Meeting Minutes March 3, 2020 Dallas, Washington D. C, Oakland CA, Coulder CO, and others. Waste Management systems have not received as much attention in teh city planning process as water and energy therefore gaps can be observed. He provided a number of examples. - Restaurants Food Waste: - Auditing how much they buy so they will not overbuy. - Providing Composting opportunities (provided the city has a composting center available). - Keeping leftovers to give to community centers (i.e. Southside community center). - Providing more menu options with leftover food items that would have previously been thrown away. (Comments were limited to three minutes, time expired) Eric Martinez, Policy Director w/ Mano Amiga and spoke in favor of the proposed ordinance on item # 29 and read the following comments: "Since 2007, Texas law enforcement officers have been able to "Cite and Release" , for certain low-level, non-violent offenses, like driving with an invalid license, petty theft, and possession of Marijuana, in effect treating these offenses much like a traffic ticket, where somebody still has to go through the court process, pay restitution if necessary, rather than being arrested unexpectedly. Being arrested and jailed even for short period of time can have devastating consequences. As a merely an arrest record can negatively impact employment, and housing. To be eligible to have these offenses treated like a traffic ticket a person must be a resident of Hays County, not be publicly intoxicated, they can't be a danger to themselves or others, they can't have any outstanding warrants, or be charged with a more serious non -citation eligible offense. An ordinance ensures that 100% of people who are citation -eligible no matter their race or class will experience law enforcement in the same way. I'm certain under the direction of Director Stapp and Chief Klett that small improvements are being made, but small improvements are just that: small. We should be arresting 0% of the time for citation -eligible offenses, not 77% of the time. How long do peaceful non-violent members of our community have to wait to be free from fear by the hands of our local law enforcement? How long do we have to wait till, we say that we will stop separating parents from children for these non-violent offenses and stop ruining students' lives. As somebody who grew up in a household with family members who lived in fear of law enforcement everyday this is very real to me. My step -father, worked 3 jobs so that my mother could work 1, so we could have 1 parent in the house -hold, half the time. He drove to those 3 jobs with an invalid license, dropped me off at City of San Marcos Page 3