As the Texas Floodwaters Rose, One Indispensable Voice Was Silent

[UpInArms]

2. The story leaves out that the county had $5 million from Biden's infrastructure act

https://www.reddit.com/r/TexasPolitics/comments/1ltnjf8/comment/n1st2km/?context=3

The people also didn't want to spend any of the ARPA money because it was tied to the Biden administration. Even the Judge suggests just holding on to the money so that it can’t be sent to states that don’t share their same values. And now we have 10s of people who have died and many might have lived if the county had updated their flood warning system and installed flood sirens along the river like the multiple counties/towns around them did.

Commissioners' Court Regular Session 11/08/21

Resident: Are you accountable to anyone for how you spend it? Or is it a, kind of, a reward and shows your support for this particular program? It's not free money. Being present as we talk. How do we know this? Immediately. Unless you want it on the COVID lies and vaccination pressure, you have to send it back. Those are heavy strings. And those are strings. The deep state harangue and vilified President Trump for calling COVID for what it was and then suggest responses that were non-draconian, and then when Biden took office, the leftist government took its gloves off. It has lied and lied more about this COVID -- about COVID.

The temptation is great, you're accountable, and we would like to know where your allegiance is.

Resident 2: And I'm here to ask this Court today to send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House. And Kerr County should not be accepting anything from these people. They're currently facilitating an invasion of our border, and we're going to support these people? So that's what I have to say. Thank you.

Resident: I happen to know that there is no such thing as free money. It's never government-funded; it's tax-payer funded. So they're taking our money and they're putting strings attached to it and then they're giving it back to us. And they're going to get their foot in the door in this county. We don't want their money. I feel like the people have spoken and I stand with the people. Thank you for your time.

COMMISSIONER BELEW: We have money in the bank, $5.1 million, that was sent to Kerr County.

JUDGE KELLY: We didn't ask for it. They sent it.

COMMISSIONER BELEW: They sent it.

MS. DEWELL: Exactly.

COMMISSIONER BELEW: The money is in the bank right now. Hasn't been spent. In the event that you don't spend it, you send it back. That's part of the Treasury's rules on it. If you do spend it, whatever percentage, there would be no expense to the taxpayers in Kerr County. It would all come out of that account, no matter what you do with it.

JUDGE KELLY: And GrantWorks has been very helpful in -- in getting us focused on what colors between the lines and what doesn't. As of last Thursday, when I got a call from Bonnie White telling me about this -- the problem that y'all were going to present at the meeting, I went and got on the telephone to their Senior Vice President from GrantWorks. And there -- there are discussions that they want to have with us and so we want to sit down and listen to them. And we want -- we want you to hear them, too. Because you're the public. But we -- we need to know and get very comfortable with where we are with this grant before we start taking that money. And the claw back was the first thing. As far as where that money sits for the next year or two, my old law partner John Cornyn tells me that if we send it back it's going to New Jersey or it's going to New York or it's going to --

MRS. LAVENDER: Or California.

JUDGE KELLY: -- or California. And so I don't know if I'd rather be the custodian of the money until we decide what we have to do with it rather than giving it back to the government to spend it on values that we in Kerr County don't agree with. So --

COMMISSIONER BELEW: And any spending of it would have to be done in Commissioners' Court so you'll be able to see it and know it.