By LARRY TUCKER

editor@wood.cm

Wood County Commissioners heard from former Wood County District Attorney Mark Taylor and current District Attorney Angela Albers Tuesday urging them to approve a resolution seeking a grant for victim services.

The resolution authorizes the submission of an application brief to the office of the governor for funding a program known as “Wood County District Attorney-Victim Services Project for 2021.” 

Taylor spoke during the citizen’s comments portion of the meeting.

“I was the criminal DA here from 1979 until Dec. 31 of 2006 when I retired after seven terms. I wanted to address this because I’m the guy that started that. Many years ago the original legislation that created the Texas Crime Victims Act was from this county. The charge for that was led by a lady named Janie Wilson from Hawkins,” Taylor said. “That was in the aftermath when three young people from Hawkins were murdered in Upshur County. They were murdered by Jerry McFadden who has been executed. Those were the last three of seven homicides we had in one year in a three-mile radius of the intersection Highway 14 and Highway 2869.”

According to Taylor there was no victim’s legislation at that time for victims of crime.

“I want to credit Ms. Wilson to getting legislation and she led the process of getting crime victim legislation in Texas,” Taylor added.

The former DA said Wood County has not used the grant funds in recent years.

“Wood County has not sought any of it in the last 13 years. I am incensed as a taxpayer. That is basically free money to this county, but the grant application the current DA Albers is seeking to have a full-time specified real crime victim’s coordinator is such an important part of what goes in the criminal justice system,” Taylor acknowledged. “Victims need to know what is going on with their cases.”

Albers spoke when the matter came up for action.

“To go back in time like Mr. Taylor did, back when we had two victim coordinators or assistants, we were handling making contacts for 1,500 people. In 2019, we were only able to make contact with 800 people,” Albers said.“Amy Cook is the current coordinator. She also has a lot of other duties and she cannot devote full-time to being victim coordinator. Georgia Cameron prepared the application. To get a grant funded full-time coordinator, it would allow us not only to make contact Amy Cook does now, to answer calls from victims, write letters to parole boards but it would allow us to give them crisis intervention, legal advocacy, escorts to and from court, emergency financial referrals, assistance with filling out their crime victim’s compensation benefits, assisting them with their victim impact statement, and telephone and in person contact. Right now that cannot be done with current staffing. A full-time person would actually be able to go out and meet with the victim.”

She said the $60,794 grant is requested from the governor’s office, not from the county. The only things asked for by the county would be in-kind match of office space, furniture, things that would not have to go out and be bought.

Commissioners voted unanimously to approve the resolution for the grant application.

In another matter, commissioners met in a workshop to discuss plumbing repairs at the courthouse. 

Precinct 4 Commissioner Russell Acker takes care of facility maintenance for the county.

“We had a problem,” he said. “It was caused by a storm drain connected to the sewer. It put too much rain water into it and it couldn’t drain out so it came up in part of the building. In the process of trying to figure out how to fix all that, we had a company come in that specializes in running cameras in sewer lines and they videoed all the sewer lines.”

There are two ways to fix the problems.

“One is to break all the concrete up like we did at the jail and fix it from the top and the new way they are doing now is to tunnel under,” Acker said.

Jonathan Jackson from JPJ Construction looked at the problem for the county.

“It would be a little cheaper to come in and saw everything out from on top,” he said. “We have done a lot of lot of plumbing repairs in renovations. For projects like that the buildings are always vacant. So I don’t know how we can do it without the courthouse closing. It can be done, but I think we would have to consider the courthouse not being in operation for two months. It might be a little quicker, but that is why we started pursuing the tunneling under. There is a business in the Metroplex that has been in business for 30 years and that is all they have done, tunnel buildings.”

Jackson said it can be done.

“We believe if you do tunnel the courthouse can stay in operation,” he said. “We may have to have temporary facilities (restrooms) for that particular situation. We have to have four entrance points, three outside and one inside. We could tunnel the whole building and then come in and re-plumb it.”

He added tunneling would take 14 days and seven days to plumb. 

Acker said he wants to go where the tunneling company is on location working to check out their work gain more information on the process. He said he would like to come back with another workshop concerning the proposed project.