By Bill Peterson
SAN MARCOS – Officials in Buda and Hays County hope a contract agreement for city police protection can be completed within a few weeks.
Rather than fork out immediately for its own police department, the city wants to contract with the Hays County Sheriff's Office for officers who would be dedicated to work within the city limits. Officials from the sheriff's office updated the Hays County Commissioners Court Tuesday morning.
The city and county began negotiations last October. Hays County Precinct 2 Commissioner Jeff Barton reported to the court that Buda officials are pleased with how the sheriff's office has conducted negotiations for the arrangement, which would dedicate a captain and three deputies to Buda. The arrangement also would establish an office for processing fines issued within Buda.
Buda City Administrator Robert Camareno has earmarked $315,000 from this year's budget to pay for the officers, their vehicles and supplies. Camareno said Tuesday morning that the main points left to be negotiated concern insurance. But he said he hopes to have an agreement done within three weeks. Buda officials would like their dedicated Hays County officers on the job by late March.
Barton told the court that the agreement will ultimately involve joint funding by the city and the county, though amounts are yet to be finalized. Barton added that Pct. 5 Justice of the Peace Lamont Ramage "has a few concerns about how the program is implemented."
Commentary
By Hap Mansfield
If you are interested in local natural resources, climate changes, water supply, our general ecological health and/or birds, you could be of service to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society on the weekend of Feb.16-19 (President’s Day weekend) just by counting a few birds.
You need no special training. Indeed, 15 minutes of your observation is sufficient for the Great Backyard Bird Count, which is in its tenth year. The web site at www.birdsource.org will give you all the information you need, including bird species lists and instructions for how to count birds in a flock or at your feeder. The site also can aid you in identifying bird species.
You can participate without leaving your back yard. You don’t even have to leave your house. You can do it sitting at a window for 15 minutes. You can do it alone or with your kids. You can do it at a retirement facility. You can count birds for each day of the weekend or just once. You can be a research volunteer and input valuable data that will give ornithologists all over the world valuable information.
It’s easy to spot a wide variety of birds here in Hays County, though you may only be most conscious of the great-tailed (sometimes called boat-tailed) grackles in the parking lot at the H-E-B (which, by the way, are a handsome and smart group of birds, regardless of some opinion to the contrary).
With very little effort you will see hawks (red-tailed, sharp shinned, cooper’s and red-shouldered), cardinals, juncos, chickadees (usually the Carolina chickadee), sparrows (song sparrows, house sparrows, chipping sparrows, and more), mockingbirds (the Texas state bird with, possibly, the prettiest song of any bird in North America), grackles, crows, mourning doves, inca doves, swifts, warblers, blue jays, robins, meadowlarks and swallows, just to name a few.
A full downloadable and printable list of birds you may see is on the birdsource.org web site, telling a story of amazing and impressive variety. Last year, by the way, the state of Texas reported the largest variety of birds in the country.
Biological surveys of this sort tell us much about global warming and drought just by the way birds migrate to areas that are most advantageous for feeding and breeding. Birds want to raise children with ready water resources, just like you do. The record high temperatures in different areas of the country last year enabled many birds to postpone or even cancel their migration plans. Many birds, due to warmer temperatures, were able to migrate farther north.
It’s worth noting that much of the ornithological knowledge we have today is from contributions by amateur bird watchers.
If you’ve ever been thrilled by the soaring gymnastics of a hawk or had your heart lightened by the song of a finch, you can repay these creatures by contributing data to the ongoing efforts for their conservation.
