Travis County Commssioners Court
October 21, 2003
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Item 2
Number 2 is to consider and take appropriate action on request to discuss reprogramming of a portion of the surplus 1984 bond funds and an amendment number 1 to the advanced funding agreement with the Texas department of transportation for the construction of a new bridge and approach roads on cameron road in precinct 1.
>> all right, this -- in March of 2001, Travis County entered into an agreement with the state of Texas [indiscernible] bridge replacement on cameron road. Basically it's a -- box culvert with a sufficiency reading of 40, which qualified it for a replacement. Typically the state would just replace what's there, which would be a two-lane bridge within the 100-year flood plain. Because cameron road is an arterial in the capital master plan, we asked the state to consider building a larger bridge that would accommodate the arterial, the future arterial. They agreed to do that. This new bridge will be half of a six-lane bridge, basically a three-lane bridge on a [indiscernible] location. We will be required to pull the approach road to the main bridge so going from about a 200 to $300,000 bridge to a mlion dollar bridge. But it will serve long-term purposes. It will be to -- in order to accomplish that, we will need to buy the additional right-of-way for the bridge as well as to build the approach road to the new bridge. The court has already authorized $790,000 for the engineering design of the bridge and right-of-way acquisition. We are now at the point where the engineering design is near completion, should be completed next month. The work for the bridge and approach road. So we have a little bit better estimate on the cost of construction for the roadway and the bridge. Txdot is coming to us now with an amendment that would basically obligate our sharing in the construction of the road and the bridge. [indiscernible] $898,000. That's just the construction cost. In addition to that, we have the right-of-way cost and the cost of engineering. All totalled, it represents about a $1.9 million expenditure on the part of Travis County. Of that, a portion of right-of-way if we get [indiscernible] as we expect, the cost of the project can be considerably less. But at this point I don't know how much property will be donated. So I am requesting the court to auorize an additional $1.2 million in 2004 bond money to be used on this project in addition to the $790,000 already authorized. And with that, to enter into an agreement with txdot for the total project, which includes the bridge and the approach road. Now, we expect that this project will go to bid sometime later this year either mid-summer or by September of '04. Which is in actually fiscal year '05 for the state. But we expect them to be able to bid the construction within the next 12 months. And so in the meantime, we are going to be acquiring the right-of-way for the project. Txdot will [indiscernible] the construction of the bridge and the approach road that's about 4,000 feet of approach roads. When we're finished, we will have a new bridge and about 4,000 feet of two-lane rural road approaching the new bridge.
>> and joe, I would like to thank you and your staff for doing such a great job on this, and I know we went out and looked at that area some time ago. It was quite fascinating to see how all this will interconnect. We have s.h. 130 coming on line with a lot of this stuff here and we are kind of under the gun to move things in a hurry. So again, I want to appreciate what you are doing. Staff, t.n.r. Staff is working on this, and I move -- move cautiously forward, but optimistically forward in this. My concern as far as -- and I think I did get that question out -- was the portion that txdot was going to be putting on the table as far as money is concerned, and I got an answer to that, we've got about $1 million. So, again, I think it's an effort that we're looking forward to as far as working and having a relationship with txdot as far as it's concerned because we really do need to be following this as far as the bridge replacement program especially with those approach roads that are coming online and the right-of-way acquisition. So all of these things have to work simultaneously as we move forward. I would like to move approval of at least $1.2 million in bond money and authorize staff to enter into an agreement with txdot to ensure that we get the necessary bridge replacement and approval of item number 2.
>> second. Second, golly. A real frog.
>> what's the balance of the '84 line item?
>> we have about 3 opinion $2 million that is in reserve -- $3.2 million that is in reserve that is not allocated to any project. This 1.2 million we will take from that.
>> any more discussion?
>> joe, tell me how that works. That's kind of a interesting question that I get asked about these are 1984 bond dollars. What takes place, and is that something that didn't get done obviously or we got something done a lot better price? I mean how do you come about 18 years later you have money that was passed?
>> we're completed with all of the projects that were in the original election order. We have had surpluses. They have been reprogrammed into new projects. And these projects [indiscernible] there is yet additional surplus. So we've been continuing to work down on the money, the surplus money that is still available for tpr those bonds. And most of these moneys have been allocated to precinct 1 because they were the precinct that came up short overall in the program. The -- we downscoped some of the projects in precinct 1 early on in the program, and as a result, any savings that have accrued because of completion of projects go to precinct 1. We have other projects in the wing we hope to spend all the surplus money very soon.
>> do you ever have a problem -- I mean and maybe susan's camp would answer this. I mean -- or p.b.o. Is there ever an arrest bye traupblg kind of an issue with things like this? I mean is there a time that you've got to spend money or maybe these things aren't in some sort of an escrow where they are electing interest -- collecting interest or does your office ever come into play, susan, with these kind of --
>> the answer is kind of all of the above. When those moneys were initially issued for the bond funds, the first major issue, what happened is all of a sudden there were problems with procuring right-of-way and so some projects moved a lot more slowly than the county might have contemplated. And so some of that money was then moved to other projects so that we could proceed on those. But the arbitrage is never really a penalty, so so to speak. What arbitrage is, if we in fact earn more interest than the interest we pay and we keep it for so long, then we simply have to give that to the federal government, so it's not really a penalty, so to speak. But all of that has been managed. We contract out with the arbitrage to make sure Travis County is in compliance. But what has happened is when the money was -- when there has been a problem with a project that kind of sticks, we've been moving the money to move forward other projects. So that's really what's happened. The other thing is that that money was not issued at once. You know, it wasn't as though when the bond was issued all of the money was issued and then what we have done is since the passage of that, we have issued that in stages. And then to complicate matters more, when there was a problem with southwest Travis County road district number 3, Travis County could no longer issue road bonds because of the financial situation in that particular road district. And so what we did is we replaced the bond authorization with certificates of obligation and issued those in lieu of bonds. So it was the same borrowing, but they were in the form of certificates of obligation.
>> and one of the other reasons this thing took so long is a good portion of these funds were wrapped up in a very long and involved condemnation case. And until that was resolved and we knew exactly how much precinct 3 road was going to cost, those moneys could not be freed up.
>> okay. Thanks.
>> any more discussion?
>> I would like to thank staff again. Thank you.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you, joe.
Last Modified: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 7:52 PM