Gómez: Longest-serving commissioner locating new methods of carrying out business

With new members on the court docket this previous calendar year, Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez has been rethinking the court’s longtime procedures. (Ann Howard, who signifies Precinct 3, assumed place of work at the commence of 2021, whilst County Judge Andy Brown assumed business in late 2020.)

Gómez, who was elected in 1994 and is the longest-serving commissioner on the court docket, was the to start with Mexican American female to hold her place.

Just one of the excellent achievements tales from this earlier year is the collaborative work it took to established up the Covid vaccination heart at Circuit of the Americas. Travis County partnered with neighboring counties these kinds of as Caldwell, Bastrop and Hays, as very well as overall health care vendors Ascension Health and fitness and Central Health and fitness, to set up a really productive clinic.

“I come to feel excellent about it,” Gómez explained. “To deliver all these teams alongside one another, they just about every have a function in it and they all type of do the job jointly. They experienced to determine out what was the ideal way. … It was superb.”

This collaboration has continued to the pop-up clinics, Gómez reported.

“The entire factor was to make guaranteed that when the constable and this workforce goes out, that individuals will believe in them when they tell them that this is a excellent vaccine for you,” she mentioned.

“It’s taken a lot to persuade individuals to make confident that the vaccine is good for them, that it is not heading to problems them, and it’s not heading to have an effect on their overall health in the upcoming.”

Yet another huge issue the court docket reexamined is the criminal justice method, Gómez explained.

“Time goes by and we move together to other issues, and you have to form of seriously place the brakes on from time to time,” Gómez reported. ”Let’s glimpse at what we’ve been accomplishing for a while now.”

In a delay spearheaded by Brown and Howard, the Commissioners Court set on hold ideas to establish a new women’s jail right after general public backlash from users of the group and advocacy groups in June…