Travis County Commssioners Court
July 8, 2003
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Item 12
Number 12 is discuss and take appropriate action to delete certain contract terms and conditions as requested by american eurocopter for ec 135 support agreement. We had received from ms. Wilson this morning language pertaining to the waiver and subsection 32.004 f. And if this there is a procedure that we follow to make this decision. And ms. Wilson's position is that the county approve procedure -- county-approved procedure has not been followed in this case. Is that correct?
>> right. You can interpret what i've brought to you today as either a request for your guidance on whether to seek a waiver or you can say that it wasn't followed. And I would assume that it was a request as to whether you would entertain a waiver if the full procedure was followed because it takes two postings on the Commissioners court to get to a waiver.
>> so this could serve as the first?
>> no. Because the policy specifically says that you have to put it on the agenda as a request for a waiver of the ethics policy, and this was put on as -- it didn't mention the word waiver of ethics policy which was necessary in the --
>> well, I would just say I wish you would have clarified that with us because we did consult out this.
>> I think I did, cyd. Here we are and it wasn't done right.
>> can we discuss it today and then post --
>> yeah.
>> so we don't have to come back?
>> we're asking us to waive the ethics policy for what reason?
>> barbara has been --
>> I haven't talked to eurocopter at all.
>> why do they want us to waive the ethics policy?
>> well, they want -- they are willing to sign the ethics affidavit statement, but if we were to terminate, they would not want in accordance with the policy all the money that we've spent with them. The ethics policy says within the course of the contract if they violate the ethics policy, that they have to give us back everything that we've paid them up to that point. So it's punitive. It's not just we terminate today and there will be no more service. It goes back to the beginning of the contract and they have to reimburse us. So they didn't want to do that portion of it. But they said they would agree to sign the ethics affidavit. [inaudible].
>> for the portion of work that they provided.
>> so they want us to leave in place the -- the part of the policy that doesn't have any teeth.
>> right. And there's several other ones, as you can see on this list. If you would like for us to, judge, perhaps I can get involved personally with barbara and lollie and eurocopter and we can post it correctly and come back. If you would prefer us to do that. They want us to delete the hub policy. They say it's not applicable. They are a manufacturer. We have some certifications in there that they paid all their taxes. They want us to delete that. So I asked did we check to see if they owed us taxes, we haven't, we need to do that.
>> this is Travis County taxes.
>> right.
>> we don't care about the other counties.
>> Travis County. They are not doing business in this county, but they still could own property in this county, so that's something we need to check out.
>> do we have time? Is this time sensitive or do we have another couple of weeks.
>> we've been trying to get this done for a long time.
>> do we have another couple of weeks?
>> yes.
>> we'll have it back on in two weeks. How is that? I do agree that some of these things that they are kind of irrelevant anyway. I don't know why we ought to insist they are in the contract. But we start off with the presumption that they are meaningful and therefore we put them in our contracts. But if the circumstances are so different in this situation that some really are irrelevant, then I can live with that. Now, on the waiver policy, I’m having a hard time recalling when we ever really invoked it and --
>> we never have. Not in 10 years that i've been here.
>> have we ever done anything like that?
>> try to return to the county anything --
>> oh, no, we've never -- we have never been in a situation where someone has breached the ethics policy and it was necessary for us to enforce forfeiture.
>> I think we ought to have something there besides ability to terminate the contract.
>> I will personally call and handle this one.
>> okay. I always felt that the fear factor was so important to actually doing. That I thought we would have a real big fight on our hands if we tried to enforce it anyway. Thank you. Two weeks from today.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> that will be July 22nd. Thank you all.
Last Modified: Wednesday, July 9, 2003 5:52 AM