Travis County Commssioners Court
August 26, 2003
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Item 34
Now, on number 34, I put together a little number late yesterday and circulated that. Actually, mr. Meeks has visited with me several times and he came in and said let me check with our facilities people and see what their position is and then i'll get some leading from the court. What he wants to do sounds simple enough. What he wants to do is put a portable shoe shine stand in the historic courthouse and also at the cjc, try to catch the traffic during peak hours. He's been in the shoe shine business for years, he says, and he's an entrepreneur. I was kind of touched because when I was 11 years old, that's how I made my fortune. Back in those days, though, you only needed a fortune to get you haircut and a bag of chips. But I have not talked with the sheriff's security people and I thought I would hold off on that until I got some reading from the court. There are plenty of places where you can kind of set up, and who knows whether people get shoe shines. It seems like the most commonplace for them today are airports. And it seems like if you've got a little time -- they do cost a lot more now than they used to, but I see people getting them all the time. To me the question was can we locate a stand in such a place that we don't affect -- adversely affect traffic? Broderick things they can. I went over and kind of looked around. We can. And I'm assuming that as long as we don't get in the security officers' way, they wouldn't have a problem, but I haven't chatted with them yet. If they said no, my guess is not that I would just insist that they do it unless the court wants it.
>> because it's mutually -- it's a mutually acceptable location for both facilities and jamie page, who is right now head of courthouse security. Because they've got things in terms of right now we've got an elevator bank down so we would need to make sure that it doesn't back up into the elevator lines or back up into the security area. But it seems like there's got to be someplace -- I don't even know if it's going to fly, but i'd certainly be willing to try it. And the county gets a piece, so it's not like somebody is is --
>> the county gets a dollar off of every shine. And if we have it in place for, say, a week or so, and it looks like it does disrupt traffic, my view would be we beafkly tell him that it isn't working. So my understanding is let's set it up wherever we think it ought to be and see if it works for a week or two. And if we think the effect is not as positive as we imagined, then basically we say sorry. Deal?
>> judge, my only comment is that we have people calling the office all the time wanting to set up these type of concessions. And I think it would be wise if we had some sort of policy or some sort of competition when we chose people because there's other people that might want to do this. So I just have a concern that there's other people that want to do these things and there's no process to go through to decide who we're going to pick.
>> let's check and see what our policy is going to be. Because they might want to put up a hot dog stand.
>> if we had -- my first thought was is there a similar service that somebody might want to put up. Foodstuff I get all the time. I tell them, look, we have a concessionaire and we bid that contract. So you would have to catch it in the cycle and submit your proposal. I understand.
>> that's my only concern, other people are going to want to do this and so it's just a consideration.
>> I should probably refer my callers to you.
>> if we truly handle this as a pilot -- because I'm not necessarily convinced that there is demand for this, but i'd certainly like to find out. And if mr. Meeks wants to be our begin any pig to just test the market, let's see. And then we can make a decision at that point as to whether to continue on with him or if we think that it's so overwhelming to concession it out and see who else wants to be a part of it. We've got two big buildings.
>> mary ellen?
>> of course, what you would expect our office, I would think that there would need to be some kind of agreement in place before this could be done.
>> absolutely.
>> what I thought what I would do is maybe just let roger designate somebody, we run this by the sheriff's office, especially the people working security, and then maybe have mr. Meeks go there and look around with -- on a slow afternoon, and if it looks like it's a go, maybe have a little simple agreement, do it on a pilot basis with the understanding that if we think that this really is disrupting traffic causing problems, we would have to terminate it. So he wouldn't go out and buy a new shoe shine station, I mean. But like you say, it could be one shoe shine a day -- lawyers have changed since I was in private practice. I used to keep my shoes shined.
>> you told me you wore hush puppies.
>> that was in law school. But they've gotten away from the old spit shine. Maybe mr. Meeks will elevate the dress.
>> and desert boots. I remember the conversation, judge, it was desert boots.
>> [ inaudible ]. I told him to go ahead and continue it. I didn't have no opposition to it.
>> I can go with a two-week pilot and then we come back and evaluate what we want to do with anything.
>> how long would it take to get that type of an agreement?
>> I'm not presuming that we're there.
>> how far do we get to do that before the -- what comes first?
>> I think even if you're going to try a two-week pilot, I think you've got some liability issues that you would have to address even if there was that much that you looked at and then went on and did a more complete agreement after that. This is the first i've looked at it. I don't know if anything in my office has --
>> (indiscernible).
>> i'll see what I can find out for you.
>> a can of shoe polish exploding or somebody getting up out of the chair.
>> the glare of the shine? [ laughter ]
>> it gives people permission to use our courthouse in a licensing situation related to filth and yes, I'm bound to meet tommy lee jones out of that deal.
>> i'll get with someone who has worked on those and see if that would apply here.
>> okay?
>> now, that leaves us to executive session.
>> do we need a motion? What are we trying to do?
>> I assume that we are giving directions to get with facilities, maybe the security people and locate a little space for a pilot deal. If we can fine tune it and get back with mary ellen and come back to the court, it would be a pilot deal.
>> I wouldn't be comfortable with a pilot more than about two weeks.
>> that's fine. I have no idea what the security people will say. They may not agree and we need a little more homeland security.
Last Modified: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 7:52 AM