Travis County Commssioners Court
March 11, 2003
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Item 5
5 a, discuss proposed amendments to chapter 82. Anybody here on this item? Discuss proposed amendments to chapter 82, tract code. B, discussion major policy issues regarding Travis County and city of Austin subdivision regulations, any amendments to those regulations and take appropriate action.
>> move the public hearing be opened.
>> second.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. I need somebody to lay out what we have here, joe. If there are parents of agreement, what they are, if there are points of disagreement, what they are. And if there are issue outstanding, what they are.
>> let me just -- i'll good straight to the differences between this draft and the last draft. As you remember, the last draft you saw, you directed that t.n.r. Publish a notice in the newspapers required by law. They did that. So we're over that hurdle. We did get several comments from stakeholders in the city on this, so there's some of those issues to talk about. The one big change I want to point out is, during the house bill discussion, the issue came up of whether the county should adopt a park land dedication ordinance. And that's been discussed. That was covered in the newspaper notice we published. Parkland dedication language was not actually in the last draft you saw, but joe geiselman asked that I go ahead and put it in this draft so you could move forward with that. If you so chose. That parkland dedication ordinance language is almost verbatim what is in the city code. So we would be consistent with them. Again, places where the city code refers to city officials, directors of various city departments, we've substituted executive measure, Travis County t.n.r. To account for that difference. But otherwise the language is identical to the city.
>> may I interrupt you?
>> sure.
>> on item number 39 a and b, which we indicated we would take up at 11:00, it seems to me that we really ought to try to pull that item up at 1:30 this afternoon. Rather than trying to rush through it this morning. So if you will -- if you were coming over legislation, instead of taking the item up at 11:00, we will take that up at 1:30. And if my staff would notify of that change. Unless there is objection from the court. Sorry about that.
>> no problem. The city's comment was in the section on drainage and floodplains, there's language saying which floodplains and which drainage -- excuse me -- easements have to be depicted on preliminary plans, final plats, permits and the like. We had some ors where there were supposed to be ands so we made that change. What needs to be depicted on that document, with those changes, it brings that language in line with what the city adopted last Thursday. And then the stakeholders' comments, I think we talked with them a lot about the process for fema map changes, when that's required, that's basically as flood plain administrator, Travis County is required to submit information to fema on changing flood plain maps when certain things happen. Generally when a subdivision application comes in and a subdivision is going to be developed that changes the flood plain, the county essentially passes through that obligation to the developer and the developer ends up paying for the work to pay for that map change. I think on that we're -- the stakeholders are agreeable to what we had drafted, but i'll let them speak to that if they have any issues on it. The dual access language we talked about a lot. Again, I think we're -- I think we're okay on that. There's an issue with respect to a provision in the city code that is included in these proposed county amendments on maintaining the natural character of land with respect to flood plains. I think the stakeholders raised some issues about whether the county has the authority to adopt that kind of requirement. I'm of the opinion under senate bill 873 we do. It's not the type of thing that counties have traditionally done, but senate bill 873 was a very broad grant and this may be more of an issue of everybody just getting accustomed to the county having a lot more power than they used to have on certain issues.
>> tom, quickly, back to the dual access, are we still maintaining the language that's in our book related to that this conclusion must be to an accepted county road? Because I do not want to lose that. That's huge.
>> right. You know, the last time I talked about this issue, it was -- we're trying to clean up the language where we can. If everybody can agree on how to clean it up, then we'll do it. If not, we'll keep the existing language. I think we agreed on how to clean up the language. And the substance is the same. Now the city language is the same as the county language. So -- but the substance of the dual access provision is not changing.
>> okay. So is there specific language that says that this access still must be? Because all it says is by connecting to an external street. Is there a thing that says an accepted --
>> yes. Yes. Definitely. That issue came up, and yes, that's what that means.
>> that's a biggie.
>> and then of course, these code amendments don't address any of the so-called major policy issues, the nine or so issues that are still somewhat unresolved. That would include things like preliminary plan expiration, which I think is a big issue for the stakeholders, but since we don't have agreement between the city and county, I didn't think it was appropriate to try to do anything in this draft on that change. That's something you would have to come back and do later as well as on any of the other major policy issues you want to do code amendments on.
>> are we still working on those major policy issues?
>> yes. Those are on the agenda today to talk about so we can update you on those. Oh, and finally, if you will remember, the issue came up about whether these amendments would apply in the Lakeway e.t.j. And the Pflugerville e.t.j. Since we do have house bill 1445. Interlocals with them. T.n.r. Sent them a letter notifying them of these proposed amendments as required by the interlocal, and we basically said if we haven't heard from you when we adopt these, we won't apply them in your e.t.j. Basically we won't do anything in your e.t.j. Until we have heard from you. I'm not sure if t.n.r. Heard from them or not. As I drafted the order, these wouldn't apply in Lakeway and Pflugerville e.t.j.
>> hi, anna bolin, Travis County t.n.r. Lakeway did have a couple of questions. As they read further, they realized that they liked what we were proposing to change, and have I not heard from Pflugerville. So Lakeway didn't have a problem, and we haven't heard from Pflugerville.
>> any representative here from Pflugerville? Okay. Are you done?
>> I'm done.
>> I just wanted to let the court know that the city council approved all of these amendments on Thursday, March 6th, and also I would like to commend the work of your staff. We worked very cooperatively with this county attorney, gee geiselman and all of the staff that do the -- that work in the office. I wanted to publicly thank them. Taken stakeholders actually, we had a lot of agreement. There are some issues we didn't have agreement with, but I think there was a lot of effort to come together on getting these code amendments done.
>> when did you say the city council approved the code amendments?
>> Thursday marng.
>> this past Thursday?
>> uh-huh.
>> okay. Anything else? Would anyone like to give testimony during this public hearing? If so, please come forward. We've got one seat there. We may need one more. We could get two individuals. That way as one finishes and leaves, somebody else can come take that chair. If you give us your name, we'll be happy to get your comments.
>> my name is alan haywood. I think we have two comments with respect to the proposed amendments to the county regulations. The first one is that there are, I think, three different places in these proposed amendments where the county is agreeing to recognize the Austin metropolitan roadway plan as opposed to campo. Which I think is a problem based on past experience and so on. I think that's one of the major issues, and I would suggest that perhaps those provisions might want to be amended or deleted out of these proposed amendments pending resolution of how you come out on that -- on that major policy issue. For example, in your 82, 202 b amendments one of the requirements is streets be aligned with, a, metropolitan roadway plan, which of course in Austin is the Austin metropolitan roadway plan, and there are several others in the amendments that I can point out. But I suggest that you may want to exclude or defer those until you've reached issue on your major issue. The second one is, as tom mentioned, the natural and traditional character requirement in the city code, which is proposed to be adopted vertically ver bit tim here, there is a requirement that in connection with drainage and other facilities, that the property owner maintain to the greatest extent possible the natural and traditional character of the land, as well as the waterway. I believe that that is a land use regulation rather than a subdivision regulation. 873 specifically excludes from the county's authority the ability to adopt land use regulations in the same way that it expressly scliewdz those from the city's regulations. The city and county have the same authority in e.t.j. With respect to land use t city regulation is not based on the subdivision, but supreme court of Texas has confirmed and the lower court has confirmed that the city's authority to deal with those issues is a water quality regulation, and it has that authority under the water code, not under the subdivision regulations. So I would submit that since that is essentially an environmental or water quality provision as opposed to a pure drainage, flooding, flood control regulation, and besides the fact that it is very subjective and vague in terms of what it means and how it can be applied in ways that don't relate to anything other than land use. We objected to that and thought it was appropriate that the county exclude that. It won't mean that those things don't get regulated. They will be regulated in the same manner they are now under the city's regulations, but didn't think that was an issue that the county needed to take on. In the final comment -- and the final comment is really a observation, and that is that while all of these in and of themselves may be fine with those two exceptions, what essentially we'll have at the end of the day is you will still have two sets of regulations. All that the county is doing is modifying and amending its regulations to be consistent with or in some cases verbatim with the city, and we're still going to have two sets of regulations, which we'll get into later when we visit about some of the big policy issues.
>> tom, could you address mr. Haywood's concerns about the reference to the amatp? I'm doing a quick and dirty of the new draft and under 82.202 f, which talks about street right-of-way and construction, they've added under number 2 a specific mention of the capital area metropolitan organization planning, and b, the next piece of it, they specifically mention the campo plan and take out a reference to the amatp. Is there anything still left that could be interpreted as meaning the amatp versus the campo plan because the county recognizes the campo plan?
>> it comes down to what applies inside the city of Austin's e.t.j. And what applies outside the city of Austin's e.t.j. F-1 is the provision that applies inside the city of Austin's e.t.j. It basically says do whatever the city of Austin transportation criteria manual requires. And we're doing some cleanup changes there, but we're not making a substantive change. Basically because it's one of those major policy issues. City of Austin transportation criteria manual has the amatp in it. So that's the existing county provision. Two is the provision that applies outside the city of Austin's e.t.j. That's where, again, sort of by way of a cleanup change, we're going ahead and referring to the capital area metropolitan planning organization plan. So I guess -- I mean, alan's words were defer, and this does defer the issue until -- essentially the county's request to the city is, in your transportation criteria manual, which is what the county currently goes by in the city of Austin e.t.j. Change from the amat fovment the campo plan.
>> you are saying we haven't made much progress toward one standard until we deal with the nine major issues.
>> true.
>> yes, sir.
>> sorry, judge, but mr. Haywood covered it all. You know, I'm going to yield my time.
>> okay. How important is it for us to take action on this today? The silence means not very important, I take it.
>> judge, I mean I think --
>> what I'm about to suggest, if we could delay this, what harm results? There are other things underway anyway, right? This is posted as action item number 12.
>> may I respond?
>> yes, sir.
>> we're kind of looking at this as a phase process. We would like to get behind this as much as possible to bring closure by adopting this, we kind of do that. We have agreed to these things. The council has adopted it. If we can at least adopt this much, we can say, okay, now we're done with that, let's move on to the other issues that have not been resolved. So, I mean, I'm not sure what we would wait for if we didn't proceed to adopt it.
>> can we get the two issues clarified by this afternoon? Two issue raised even as to this document before us?
>> one is a legal issue, so --
>> well, on one I don't think so, judge, because the city council voted last week that they wanted the county to continue to adhere to the amatp in the city's e.t.j. So right now, unless you want to go ahead and agree with the city on that, it's still an unresolved issue, and I don't think the staff could resolve it this afternoon.
>> my --
>> commissioner daugherty?
>> I'm certainly not in agreement with it. As far as I'm concerned, it's a major sticking point for me in precinct 3 because it is in direct contrast with what I think some of the things that need to happen in southwest Travis County. So I mean to deviate from the campo plan, it's, you know, not a spot where I'm going to come down and be very comfortable. So if we can't resolve that, which it sound like to me that you told us that we probably cannot, tom, you know, I think we're at an impasse with this.
>> and I'm landing at the same place. You know, when amatp and the campo plan were one and the same, that was a good thing. Now there's a substantial difference, and to me the place where you resolve those regional issues of our regional roadways is at our regional planning organization, and the campo plan is the one that we recognize where we have to all come together and look at it not simply from our own viewpoint of our own individual little precincts and cities and counties, we look at it as to what's good for the region. And there are times that we win on some of those cases and there are sometimes we are on the losing end, but that's the way the process works in terms of looking at it as to what's good for the entire region. My other uncomfortableness is that mr. Nuckols just passed this out to us in terms of what the latest version is. And you know I love to pick through and read these things, and I also would like to see a cleaned up, not legislative version of what does it look like once all the strikeouts are stricken to make sure we have not missed anything. This is a very, very important document, and so when I see something as referred to as the city of Austin transportation criteria manual, this lay person would not know that embedded within that is the amatp, which this member also has serious issues as to that being very different from the campo plan, which, you know, I'm going to defend. That's where we fight those battles related to what's good for the region.
>> okay. Being able to hear and count, number 9, which is the action item, will be on next week. Anybody else to give comments during this public hearing before we go to commissioner Davis? Yes, sir.
>> judge, I was going to be silent, but just one inning. I want to reinforce the natural and traditional character issue that mr. Haywood spoke to again. It's something that my members have been subject to abuse -- what we perceive is abuse by the city of Austin where, for example, they have gone out and tried to enforce a tree ordinance -- the city of Austin tree ordinance outside the city limits of the city under that phraseology, or that was the rationale given to our membership. Again, it's something that we would ask -- we recognize the importance of transportation planning. Please don't take these comments as diminishing that, but we believe that that issue is also very important.
>> what subsection is that language in, again?
>> that's 82.208, and i'll give you a page number as soon as I get there.
>> 82.208?
>> sorry, 82.207. It's on page 12. 7 at the top. To the greatest extent feasible, preserve the natural and traditional character of the land --
>> I found it. Thank you. Anybody else to give testimony during this public hearing? I got a full week to read that. Tom, you will hear from me.
>> I look forward to it.
>> there being no further testimony during this public hearing, I move the public hearing be closed. All in favor?
>> I didn't get a chance to say anything.
>> go ahead. Sorry about that.
>> withdraw the motion.
>> > thank you, judge. I would like to say I would like to have an opportunity to review this too, and I think next week would be something that we need the time, plus, we don't have a full court here this morning. And I think everyone should have an opportunity to participate in this. And let me ask this particular question. As far as the amrp is concerned and has differences with the campo plan itself, does the campo board recognize any aspects of the amrp? As far as the Austin plan is concerned? Is there any recognition at all in that?
>> well, I think --
>> [inaudible].
>> by and large, they are the same, and I think what is up there on the easel is an illustration of the differences, so it may be useful to have someone point those out. I think there's maybe six differences between amatp and campo.
>> but they are big differences.
>> anyway, I just wanted to know the variances. I'm sorry, what were you going to say, joe?
>> I would like some clarification on the council's action last week, whether or not in that distion they were deferring -- decision, they were diseeferg that for further -- deferring that for further discussion. Was there a policy issue so we go negotiate about bringing the two plans together? I'm trying to understand a little better the vote that was taken last Thursday.
>> I would characterize the vote as the council giving their position and us identifying what the conflicts are. They did also identify that mayor gus garcia and councilmember slusher would try to take the lead and work with the commissioners court on a compromise. One issue I would like to raise, and that's why we brought this map and also i'll leave this map with the commissioners court which shows its differences and there's five. I think there's one that's been resolved with the county and city. All of those roads that are in those plans have partial jurisdiction in the city of Austin and partial jurisdiction in the county's e.t.j. So even if the city and county take different positions, the issue raises a conflict, it does not resolve the issue because they are partial jurisdiction and some of them even start in the city, go in the county and come back in the city. So we've that on this map. It shows the e.t.j. And it shows the city corporate limits and it demonstrates that for you. So I think there are two representatives from the city who are willing to work with the commissioners court to see if there is an agreement that can be reached. And that was one of the issues. But judge Biscoe had sent the letter over to the city manager and to the mayor and council requesting they take action on Thursday, so they went through the issues and they did come down on policy issues. And I can give you a overview, the three main issues are the transportation plan, which I think there is room for negotiation and working out an agreement. The second issue was the variances and waivers, and the decision was to have the county do transportation and drainage and the city do water quality, but that the single office would review those variances so that there would be kind of coordination and a joint review of those proposals. And then the third issue was the preliminary plat expiration. And the city said four years in the drinking protection zone and seven years in the desired development zone. And I think the county's first position was five and 12. And so those two remaining issues, and all the other issues they came to a decision that was similar with the staff joint recommendation between the county and the city. So the city has brought forth their position on the policy issues, but there is further negotiation that I think needs to occur, and they are willing to work with the commissioners court.
>> lisa, I need to have a better understanding as to when does water quality equal or trump concerns and decisions that need to be made on drainage and roads. Because a lot of that has to do with what may be additional set-asides on the construction of not only subdivision roads but county c.i.p. Projects and it can vary greatly in what is going to be the cost of the project. If it's something that's going to be anticipated to be annexed within the city of Austin within x amount of time, that's one of those things, hey, we get it, it's going to be moving over, they are going to be taking care of all of that; as opposed to something that's going to be way out there and not. And all of a sudden you do have some [inaudible].
>> I think -- would it make sense to try to have a work session-type meeting next Thursday on this issue? I don't see us resolving this in 45 minutes to an hour on Tuesday. It makes sense to me for us to try to set aside two to three hours on Thursday.
>> that's their council meeting.
>> well, I don't know that it's necessary for all of them to be here, but one of you can be here. If we do it that morning, we can have a city representative here, right?
>> Thursday morning.
>> I mean, I don't see us getting it done otherwise. And no matter how much we stud think issue between now and next week, on Tuesday I still see us needing probably the better part of a couple hours. That says to me rather than do it on Tuesday, we do it on Thursday, have this posted at a time when this is the only issue we take up. Unless I'm -- it's more complicated than what we're talking.
>> but I think we are moving much closer, and I think a work session would help maybe perhaps come to final conclusion.
>> I think we do what we can to resolve all the issues we can, and the ones we cannot resolve, we at least know what they are. And do that and try to get a response back to the city council. We could have the council put this on the agenda for Thursday of next week. We would have our work -- well -- if we can have our work session that morning, we could post a voting session that morning, but let the city council know around noon what decisions, if any, we take that morning. If it could be on the city council agenda next Thursday.
>> okay. I will post -- see if I can post an item for next Thursday, but one of the things -- maybe I can ask one of the commissioners -- not commissioners, councilmember slusher and maybe the mayor if they are available, maybe they could come for some portion of your work session to discussed the issues further. I think one of the issues that we talked about in the single office is the single office can kind of weigh and balance the issues as relates to the impact on the city and the impact on the county. But if we do the reviews independent of each other, but we both have joint jurisdiction, there is no hope of having subdivisions laid that even balance those interests. That has been the concern from the staff perspective.
>> let's look at our calendars over lunch and see if we can meet next Thursday at 9:00.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:25 AM