Travis County Commssioners Court
March 18, 2003
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Item 30
30-a is to discuss proposed amendments to chapter 82 of the Travis County code to resolve inconsistencies with the city of Austin code as required by hb 1445 and take appropriate action. 30 b is to discuss major issues regarding Travis County and the city of Austin's subdivision regulation and amendments to those regulations. And take appropriate action. The question is what, if anything, must we discuss today?
>> if we could take 15 minutes to narrow the issues based on the resolution that the city council passed I believe it was on March the 6th. Basically they sent us in response to your letter, they sent us this resolution. We did not go over the resolution last week. What I would like to do is see if we can walk through these nine provisions. I believe probably half of them we could agree to and get them off the table so that on Thursday we're focused on discussions on how we resolve the last remaining issues. I think it would be the most productive use of our time.
>> joe, do you have this collapsed down to some bullet points? Because otherwise I'm working off of a legislative form of code amendments, and this is not really the best way for me to follow through.
>> I'm sorry. I'm talking about item b at this point.
>> here's extra copies for all of us.
>> copies. You should have it it in the last week's agenda, but anne is making additional copies as we speak. I can start going through the nine items, and I will describe them to you. I think they will be familiar to you when you hear the issue, but in the meantime anne is making copies of the three-page resolution.
>> exactly what are we asking for today?
>> I would like to go through the night issues and quickly brief you on where I think we can agree with the city and where I think we need to go ahead and talk further on Thursday.
>> and you think that that's going tow narrow it a lot better than you're doing in writing and get to it -- [ inaudible ].
>> in some respect I was expecting members of the city council to show up to our discussion on Thursday, so I thought the intent of the March session was more of a final reconciliation.
>> I understand, but you think us trying to cover it orally now is better than doing it in writing so we --
>> that's your choice.
>> it would help me to have it in writing. If you've got nine points and you have several points to make on each one of them, by the time you get to point number 4, I'm not going to remember what you said on 1 and 2. But if I had in writing I would have a chance to look at it before Thursday morning and get to it this afternoon and i've got all of Wednesday. In my view that's more productive than now. Of course, I'm willing to sit here and go through it.
>> can you organize that in terms of where you think there may be agreements? And when I say agreement, I would also include the stakeholders that are out there in the community that have given us 'input from the various groups of whether they think it's reasonable or not. Kind of claf them in terms of here's where we may have agreement, here's are things that are small points and here the biggies.
>> you need time to do that anyway, don't you? I just think --
>> I want to be productive. Whatever is most productive is the way I would go.
>> I'm saying the five of us can give you a whole lot better feedback if we got something in writing, especially in view of the -- 9 is not a great big number, but it's more than one or two.
>> what would you like to do on part a?
>> what do you need from us on part a?
>> adoption. The city council has already adopted those things. They're waiting for the county to do likewise.
>> I'm not going to feel comfortable to do a partial on this. I'd like to get the other piece of it on Thursday done before I'm ready to sign off on the other stuff because I don't want to have these inadvertent, unintended consequences. I need to have a full understanding of what is being done, what is not being done. And this is all to the backdrop and darryl can probably give us a better backdrop on this and what is happening at the legislature that is also framing all of our discussions about whether we can get conclusions or not. But the big item for me is going to be the campo plan or the Austin metropolitan plan and that being imbedded in these documents because quite frankly, Austin is the only one that's putting out there that there's a different transportation plan than the campo plan. And if they do it, what is going to stop any of the other 21 municipalities from saying, well, I want to have my own roadway plan as well? And all of a sudden the campo plan has no meaning other than 12 days out of the year when people want to pull down federal grants. I don't think that's what was intended by the campo plan in terms of that was supposed to be the blueprint for what's going on. So there's my pontfication.
>> it would help me a lot if you could possibly provide it in a layout of format of those particular issues that everybody is in agreement on, city and stakeholders and the county and then maybe two of the three are in agreement on or maybe just one to kind of categorize those in some type of format that can show those things that we can come to conclusion as far as this stuff. I'd like to see mine like that. It would help me out a lot to go to that end as far as that type of formatting. I guess Thursday is the voting session on this thing, a work session, I guess there's an action item too on that. And I would like to see it presented in that area. Because really right now things are getting kind of scattered and stakeholders, the city of Austin, Travis County, but I do know that there are some agreements on this issue with all three parties, and then there are agreements maybe with two of the three parties and then maybe just one party. But point is I would like to see it formatted for me in that arrangement that I just mentioned, if you can do it between now and Thursday. If not --
>> so the discussion of last week left us with the impression that there was agreement that it was pretty routine. If you review the 30 a issues between now and whenever you give us in writing, if there are issues that you know about, just indicate what they are. But I was left with the impression that 30-b was really the big disagreement area.
>> I think that's generally correct. There are two issues, the campo plan that commissioner Sonleitner referred to. There's also a water quality issue that the stakeholders raised as an issue in a.
>> both are those are in a?
>> are in a.
>> those are big issues.
>> they're big.
>> on the others if you would kind refuse state them, if there seems to be agreement between staff and you know there's disagreement, let us know that. And number two that you just mentioned, I think you ought to lay them out in pros and cons for us and let us take a look at them first thing Thursday morning.
>> what has happened is on b, those nine remaining issues, the city council has offered you their position. And what I'm saying is that I believe we might be able to agree to many of the city council's position to bring b down even narrower and even fewer unresolved issues.
>> tell us why you think that. We may well agree. We can expect to see under b nine issues, right?
>> that's right.
>> the city's position and whether you think that position is a good one for us. And whether we ought to agree with it or whether we ought not.
>> that's what I will have prepared in writing before Thursday.
>> I request for a little bit -- my requests were a little bit more specific than that. It was to get them -- [ laughter ] so we would have Wednesday to look at them.
>> we're on a good time here. This is not a late meeting.
>> and it says voting action Thursday morning, so we can take action. Now, will this be back on the council's agenda Thursday afternoon of?
>> I do not know.
>> which is what we asked last week as to why we thought a special voting session on Thursday morning, rather than Thursday afternoon, would be better.
>> what they committed to was trying to get it on their agenda. I don't know if they actually did get it on their agenda. I guess we could pull it up on the web seat and see if it's listed.
>> we had a special request from commissioner daugherty for it not to be on there. [ laughter ] anything further on 30 a or b today?
>> thank you, joe.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:25 AM