Hays County Commissioners Court establishes Veterans Commission

HAYS COUNTY — At its Sept. 5 meeting, the Hays County Commissioners Court voted to create a Veterans Commission to collaborate with veteran-focused organizations to support and promote veteran needs.

“The item is to establish and formalize a commission throughout the county to help provide advice and also seek the efforts of all the different veteran service organizations,” said Hays County Veteran Service Officer Jude Prather, “[as well as] provide a space, a committee for that, to make formal recommendations and also to just help collaborate between those organizations.”

Prather also discussed a formal process that would allow streets to be named after veterans. Although it is currently done informally, he believes that the commission would be an ideal group of individuals to vet the names that are submitted and create a list of local veterans to be chosen when new roads are built.

Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra confirmed that Prather’s office would act as a liaison in the body, a nonvoting member, to help oversee the commission.

Regarding other seats on the Veterans Commission, commissioner Walt Smith voiced that he believes it would be important to allow local organizations to have an active member sitting on the dais to represent themselves and that, though active participation is important, he understands that a vast majority of veterans are not involved in specific organizations. Because of this, he would like to have a few members that are involved in the community to be members as well.

Each precinct would also have a recommended member to be appointed.

“What excites me about this, truly, is that I don’t believe within those organizations, as much hard work as y’all do, there’s not a great formal process within those organizations to distribute the knowledge about the assistance that y’all provide,” said Smith.

The court unanimously voted to establish the commission.

Commissioners also heard a proposal to work with Vaughn Construction regarding an attorney visitation center renovation at the Hays County Jail.

According to commissioner Debbie Ingalsbe, attorneys and public defenders are requesting the centers to be improved so that they can have their visitations with clients at the jail.

The renovation would occur at the east end in sections C and D and would add six visitation areas, doubling the current amount.

“The design was completed by HDR about a year ago. We originally got a price from Vaughn Construction through their PCP and contract at that time and because of the frequency of visitation at the time due to post COVID and so forth, the executive committee decided to put it on hold,” said Terry Whitman of ECM. “Since then, with the public defender’s office being established and so forth, the need has come back around.”

Whitman stated that this project would be funded with the 2017 bond program and would take approximately 120 days to retrieve materials and another 120 to construct.

The item passed 5-0.

The Hays County Commissioners Court met on Sept. 12 for its regularly scheduled meeting and will hold the last public hearing for the budget at 1 p.m. on Sept. 19.