Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 29
29.
consider and take appropriate action on the following requests: a, land conservation program guidelines; and b, a resolution to conserve natural and cultural resources in Travis County.
>> thank you, judge.
>> [indiscernible] here who took the lead in getting these guidelines created with help from the citizens of Travis County.
and if you don't mind, I would like her to walk through this for you.
>> okay.
>> good morning,.
>> good morning, judge Biscoe, Commissioners.
undertaking this initiative under the authority of senate bill 1044 that was passed this past legislative session.
and we are planning to implement the first phase of the program with voter approved bond funds, 8.3 million has been allocated for this purpose.
that's of course assuming the bond passes.
and if not, we would have to find other sources of funding.
the purpose of the guidelines that we have here is to define the parameters of the program, in this case we're pursuing land conservation through purchasing or executing conservation easements on the property.
we also want to define the role of the county and its partners and lastly set the values that we will be using to -- to select projects in the future.
so the court asked us to come up with a way to systematically assess projects fairly, transparently and also -- also let's see, I guess talk about several public benefits being one of the things that we wanted to identify.
so I'm going to quickly go over the guidelines, per se.
in exhibit a.
and one of the first things that we do is lay out the public benefits.
and this is in summary protect natural and cultural resources in the county.
that's water quality, working farms and ranches, rural character.
as well as to leverage county funds, so they are spent most effectively and I think that's it in a nutshell.
these were the reasons the advisory committee decided to put this project into the bond package.
they felt the benefits were strong enough to warrant the county participating in this program.
and I want to emphasize that when -- that when the committee was spoken to, and then when we took this out to the public, the leveraging the county dollars was a main focus or a strength of the program.
because that isn't necessarily part of a conservation easement program.
but we did present it to the public that that's for these bond funds that was part of it.
we also when it came up, when it was discussed, these funds are not to be used for purchasing easement for the endangered species habitat, the balcones canyon land preserves, that's how we presented it to the public.
because conceivably it could be.
>> from a -- from the voters who voted that down previously, so it certainly would not be consistent with that action.
>> so that's our position on that.
I mentioned the purpose.
the guidelines are a framework for more detailed policy that needs to be developed.
with much more public engagement.
so it would be a more involved process.
but in terms of administering the program, there's more policy that's needed on that.
for example, we have values, but those really need to be turned into criteria or measurements that could be used in the review of -- of applications.
we're recommending that there might be twice yearly call for applications.
but again these are things that need to be really nailed down through a systematic policy planning and public engagement process.
and of course Travis County investments would be protected and that's -- that's, you know, legal language that would be going into the agreement.
so we do not get into that, per se, in the guidelines.
the first thing that we would be doing when we look at applications is looking at, we would have threshold criteria.
those would be first and foremost they would have to have a clear benefit to the county.
it would have to be perpetual and Travis County, this is where we're defining the role, Travis County would be a holder, a co-holder or a holder of contingent rights in having responsibility for enforcing the conditions of the agreement.
so this means there aren't any situations or in which the county contributes money to -- to execute an agreement, but does not have any involvement in it.
for instance, if the landowner said we do not want government involved.
that's not going to happen.
and then project selection values, I'll run through these quickly.
purpose, we'll be valuing projects that -- that serve more purposes than those that serve less.
the broken and brochenbrau ranch project, when we look at that, that helped preserve water quality, working ranch, wildlife an at that time, certainly an opportunity to leverage county dollars.
consistency with planning priorities.
we also will value projects that are consistent with county plans, adopted plans such as our park master plan, land development ordinance, also looking at external plans such as the city's preferred growth scenario they have adopted as part of their comprehensive planning and even campo, 2035 has parameters that we would look at.
public access, we are assuming it's controlled public access because there's not -- not the way we have access in a park.
much more typically there are scheduled events such as children being brought to the site for field trips.
but we would be evaluating projects according to how much of this access they provide.
cost effectiveness, this gets at the learning of county dollars, this might be situations where there's bargain sales or donations, we would be looking at that.
site characteristics, I think one of the most important things that we will be looking at is really aggregating property.
so we prefer projects in which there's land adjacent to an existing county park or a preserve or another already conserved property.
also if it's already defined, buffer.
uniqueness, I mentioned we look at multiple, how many purposes the project serves, but we also want to have a measure of just how unique the.
in hays county, the blue hole unique natural feature, if hamilton pool wasn't a park, that would be a unique future.
lastly, I would be looking at a development thread, just how emanate is development of a site.
that -- that -- that -- a couple more things.
guidelines don't preclude the court granting an exception.
we do have -- we do have a project that may be coming forward with federally imposed deadline by the end of the year.
so much is the broken
>> [indiscernible] then last through there's a resolution we were asking you to adopt, but this is to support our partners and that the landowners with a clearly defined statement from the county, the landowners can go to the i.r.s., this satisfies a -- a requirement of the i.r.s.
for the landowner to get a charitable donation credit.
>> is this -- is this -- this particular setting that come before us today, I know there are some similarities with the -- with the brochenbrau acquisition as far as the county using it at that time, the co's.
to -- to purchase either put up its share of getting the leverage possibilities from -- from the united states agricultural partner, actually the natural resource conservation services extension of that.
my concern I guess at this point looking at that leverage and making sure that the tax dollars that if the voters approve the bond referendum, to ensure that we get as much mileage as we possibly can out of those tax dollars.
I guess that I need to ask this question.
since we have an example, we've done this and thank goodness we had senate bill 1044 to get the thing going, we got an example out there.
but for future purchases are those persons that are interested in allowing the conservation easements to be used in perpetuity for public access and a whole lot of other things that go with this, is there any way that person would have the same leverage opportunities or let me ask this question even better yet, what is the leverage leverage percentage-wise if we were to use taxpayer dollars to approve this for a conservation easement, what would be the other end as far as an example, the natural resource conservation services or under united states ag, what would their portion of the money be?
>> that's typically we've been on brochenbrau it was 25% partnering, and nrcs came up with 50%.
>> 50%.
>> yes and the landowner 25.
>> okay.
now does that preclude, in this particular scenario that we're dealing with right now, of course the brochenbrau let's use that as a boilerplate.
would that preclude any other researching aspects -- leveraging aspects other than the natural resource conservation services or u.s.
department of labor --
>> the guidelines don't --
>> I'm sorry --
>> I was going to say the guidelines don't preclude other partnerships.
>> okay.
because for that particular brochenbrau boilerplate as far as that conservation easement, there were other moneys that were made available to get more leverage for this possibility.
another question I needed to ask, I know adjacent properties, contiguous properties, wilbarger creek type of setting.
however, is there any way of knowing the -- the minimum amount of average that we would look at as far as trying to require under the conservation easement, is there a minimum.
>> nrcs does a calculation looking at what the average farm size is in the area.
they have a minimum.
I don't know.
it's 120 or in that vicinity.
be under 200 acres.
>> ?
>> so they have that requirement.
100-acres has been thrown around as a minimum requirement, non-nrcs.
I mentioned the county holding contingent rights, that's the preference.
that's because we would not then have the o and m costs associated with enforcing the agreement and we would only step in if the holder of the agreement fails to do what they are obligated to do, either because they can't or they won't.
I'm getting off track, but so the question of how small a property can be is related to management.
o and m costs.
>> okay.
all right.
my final question is in, in the resolution aspect, this resolution basically is a document that the internal revenue need for the -- for the owner or the person that is involved with the relationship with Travis County to show I guess the natural resources conservation folks also to show that this is a charitable type of situation and this is what they'll be using as far as proof of that.
>> it shows that we support conservation, that they are giving the landowner is making the charitable contribution.
>> charitable contribution, that's a document that they use for internal revenue purposes.
>> it's really for the landowner and partner.
>> right, exactly.
okay.
I guess that's my last question except for the fact that voters need to understand that this is I guess if the leveraging aspect of it, we get more bang for the buck if the continued -- if the program will continue with the united states ag department under the natural resource conservation services.
>> right.
so that's really what the model started it but also as you look at it, it's not the guidelines aren't just tied to nrcs type of program.
>> okay.
thank you.
>> you're welcome.
>> I have a few questions.
so if we had applied the recommended criteria and values to the one project that Travis County has, we would approve that project?
>> I think so.
it's very consistent with what we're proposing.
>> okay.
I guess in my view what we ought to do is schedule a public hearing on this draft document, and I would schedule that like three or four weeks away of the then we will know whether the bonds are passed, whether we have that $8 million to deal with or whether we need to deal with some alternative funding ideas.
>> okay.
>> the other thing is, I have been trying to do due diligence on this, my own view is that we need to beef up the language regarding public access.
I don't know that I would require it but I would certainly emphasize it.
it's our goal to take the guidelines and values and put them in like an application form where they are scoring.
>> yes.
>> because I did, I guess hays county or one of the others that you sent me they had all of these set out, but you had a score that you would get for each one of them.
>> right.
that's like there would be I'm sure lots of people having thought in the process of going to public thoughts about how those are weighted, these various values.
>> all right.
well, if we have a public hearing, shouldn't we have a draft application or form covering that so residents will see specifically what we have in mind?
>> I only hesitate because -- because, you know, we had a group working on this.
and I guess we could reconvene.
we could give it a shot definitely.
>> otherwise I don't know that we are much farther down the road.
the few times when I was doing public education, people asked me, I told them that we were working on policies around guidelines and before we finalized them, they would be given an opportunity to review them and provide comment.
my good government vein says we should do that.
>> okay.
>> I would rather see us delay the public hearing a week or so to get that done rather than expedite our action and then try to have comments later.
I think this is -- it's kind of new for us, although we did one.
>> yes.
>> and the $250,000, you know, pales in comparison to the 8 million that we have asked authorization for.
>> right.
>> plus we want to do it well so when we do the next bond issue we can have conservation easements there if it works well.
>> judge, that $250,000 that was just our investment as far as Travis County is concerned.
can you tell me exactly what we got out of that overall as far as the u.s.a.
g under the nrcs participation on top of the additional moneys that were added to the particular project.
this is the model of the brochenbrau for the conservation easements along wilbarger creek.
can you tell me overall that full amount.
it was up there.
why tell you the exact number right in front of me now.
>> it was $2 million.
the property owner reduced the sales price by I believe a million.
nrcs put up half a million and hill country and Travis County put up the remaining half.
>> okay.
okay.
well, like I said, it quite a bit of leveraging possibility with the small investment coming from the county.
>> how do you value a conservation easement?
are there people who do this for a living like appraisers.
>> appraisal, exactly.
they would have to appraise, development rights.
>> pay for the reduction in value.
>> is that part of our guidelines that we would do that?
>> no, we don't say that in the guidelines.
>> do we plan to do it?
>> how it would be appraised?
>> yeah.
do we plan to require that the conservation easements be appraised, to be some determination of value.
>> it's implicit in the statement that we will safeguard Travis County.
>> I would rather see it explicit in Travis County.
>> I would like to see them provide it to us otherwise we would be paying for appraisals that are not paying out.
>> the sellers obligation.
>> I think that the amount of the requested Travis County investment should help us determine how much we spend on the front end to decide whether we do the deal.
so asking them for an appraisal is fine.
but there are circumstances under which we would never accept it without doing some due diligence ourselves.
so --
>> seller obligation from an appraiser acceptable to Travis County?
>> well, if they use one of our appraisers, we can direct them to one of three appraisers.
>> similar language.
some of them have sort of a general feel for it anyway.
and the appraisals that we use for real estate matters to preserve road projects, we got a rotating wheel, right?
we do, but I would say as the Commissioner said, when you are buying a conservation easement, you are buying just the development rights.
the landowner stays in possession of the land, occupies it, can live there, run their business there.
so it's a very different creature than -- than our typical real estate transaction, where we're buying fee simple title.
>> I understand.
>> all of the appraiser has to do is look at the comparables and so on, you know.
plus if you are participating in one of these federal programs, for example, the -- the requirements for how that appraisal is done are very specific and very different from the appraisals y'all talk about in executive session from week to week.
so -- so with that -- I mean, yes, we will have an appraisal, it will be very different --
>> I'm creative enough to accept difference, that's why I asked the question are there people who do this professionally.
>> I don't know that there are any of them on our rotating list yet.
I guess that's my point.
>> looks like we'll use our list as a last resort.
our goal is to try to get this otherwise, which makes sense to me.
if we can get the property owner to pay or the non-profit or the federal government or any other partners so be it.
I'm -- I just think in the file somewhere there ought to be a value placed on the conservation easement that we can share with taxpayers if asked.
>> sure.
>> so -- so otherwise I wouldn't think of doing anything like this.
I wouldn't spend my own money without it.
>> rose deals closely with something like that.
>> rose
>> [indiscernible] program manager for natural resources, I wanted to let you know that we use several praisers that have appraised conservation easements that Travis County has purchased and that they are on our contract list and have experience in appraising conservation easements.
>> there are counties, I guess not a whole lot of them, but a few of them in Texas that have done these for years, I assume that they would do the same thing.
I don't know that I saw that I just thought of that a moment ago.
but I don't think how you would really explain it to taxpayers later if you cannot point back to something.
because it all kind of starts with the value of the conservation easement, right, and we try to hustle up as many partners as possible, including the property owner, then we calculate what a reasonable contribution by Travis County would be.
the other one there were enough partners there our contribution was of a reasonable amount compared to the grand scheme or plan, and I was real comfortable with what we did.
>> uh-huh.
>> oh, this sounds like fun, y'all.
>> yeah.
>> when do we do the public hearing?
>> you work with that committee to put numbers to the criteria.
that might take her a while, soon after that, a week or two after she gets that information, we can come back or let you know when to set the public hearing.
>> can they have the public hearing without us, tom?
we don't have to order the public hearing, right?
or is it best to do it?
>> what do you mean by public hearing?
generally that means anybody from the public can come say anything they want to, is that what you have in mind, open mic.
>> yes, sir, yes, sir, preferably a Travis County resident.
>> we want them specifically commenting on these guidelines, correct?
>> right, I think we do.
one we want them to know the guidelines, two if they have comments we want them to come and give them.
I'm hoping they're tight enough where you can read the guidelines and say hey if they follow this, it's a good deal.
based on what I have seen in other places, through the information that you have sent me, our guidelines and values look pretty good.
>> as a framework, yeah, there's a lot of details to be worked out.
you say it's new for us, it's new to Texas counties in general.
>> I'm proud to be a Travis County resident and a texan.
>> are we prepared to do the resolution at this point?
>> I wouldn't.
I would do the resolution, have it set for comments at the same time I have the other stuff set.
I would approve it all as a package deal.
>> okay.
>> we're for the doing anything anyway until we have the different pieces, right?
>> right.
>> that's right.
>> right.
>> although we're not barred from entering into a conservation easement if one comes across the threshold tomorrow.
we have already done the brochenbrau one.
we are not barred by statute from entering into one without guidelines, we thought there should be guidelines so we imposed it on ourss.
>> there was a small amount of money involved in that one, though, I anticipate others could be larger.
>> could be, don't really know.
>> or is that our maximum.
>> we haven't set a maximum.
>> don't start me to thinking.
>> you start thinking there's lots of --
>> [laughter]
>> $250,000 was really, you know, really we got a lot of mileage out of that.
a lot of mileage out of that $250,000.
>> $8 million would do a whole lot of 250,000 a pop.
>> I bring it up only to say we can work on this diligently and make it a really good document because we are not under the gun, if something comes across the transom we are not barred from doing it.
it's a self imposition that we have chosen to pursue guidelines.
>> okay.
we will come back to you in three or four weeks, ask to set the public hearing then at that time.
>> I had in mind coming back as soon as you can, because I think we need to set the public hearing three weeks or so later.
so give residents an opportunity to one, to obtain a copy of draft documents, two review those, if they want to prepare comment do it or email us in the letter or something like that.
that way you don't have residents like on our backup, you know, we have a meeting next Tuesday.
I want to give them more than that.
the public hearing would be on a Tuesday meeting anyway.
it would be 9:00.
>> right.
but would you want us to come back with our recommendations for how we would wait or score the values?
several issues here.
>> I would love to see them.
if we can get it, input from others, like the committee members then I'm -- I don't have any problem deferring to their expertise.
but knowing me, there will be one or two changes that I would want to make.
I'm just like that.
that's the lawyer in me, that's the tom nuchols in me coming out.
>> we will take what all came today including what wendy described, roll it into a revised guidelines, bring it back to court for you to -- to give us an okay to go ahead and set the public hearing.
>> that will work for me.
>> all right.
thank you.
>> mr. Reeferseed, comments?
>> one little comment, listening to what you were saying, maybe three or four weeks might not -- why not five or six weeks if we're going to talk about the bond, the bond is relevant.
if the bond passes or not.
we don't know if it's going to pass.
>> we will know that next Tuesday night, though?
>> would we, really?
>> okay, I'm confused about the election.
okay.
all right.
thanks.
>> this is Travis County, mr. Reeferseed.
>> oh, okay.
with that I move that we recess until 1:30.
>> second.
>> all in favor?
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