Travis County Commssioners Court
November 4, 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 18
Now, this morning we indicated that we would call up an item at about 2:00. And that item is number 18 . We need to discuss in executive session the disparity part 18. Receive briefing on historically underutilized businesses (hub) initiatives and recommendations for improving the county's hub program. (purchasing office) the others are open court.
>> good morning.
>> good afternoon.
>> I'm still in the morning. Cyd grimes, Travis County purchasing agent. I wanted to first let you know that sylvia is not here today. Our thoughts and prayers are with her and her mother. Apparently her mother had some sort of attack last night, she can't be here. But she thinks jorge and I can carry on without her. I wanted on introduce ms. Colette holt. She's an attorney out of chicago who has extensive experience in civil rights, representing both private and public entities on diversity programs, she's very qualified, she's worked have I closely with the city of Austin -- very closely with the city of Austin and is familiar with Texas and Austin and of course all of the federal laws pertaining to this. We asked ms. Holt to review our h.u.b. Program and make recommendations, she's here to do that. So I will just turn it over to her.
>> thank you.
>> welcome, ms. Holt.
>> thank you, welcome.
>> we won't hold that northern -- [laughter] --
>> oh, it's not something -- feel sorry for me, it's 40 degrees and rain chicago. And I love to come to Austin right about now through the springtime. I came in August several times and I don't know that I have ever been any hotter except when I was in houston. But thank you for having me. Invite machining to see make a presentation to you and for retaining me to provide some advice and recommendations to you on your historically underutilized business program otherwise known as the h.u.b. Program. I've had several conversations with the purchasing office, with ms. Lopez, as well as county attorney. And would like to walk through what my observations are about the current program. And perhaps at that point you may want to go into executive session to discuss what some of your options might be and what some of the legal issues are that are involved in -- in your program. The first thing that I would like to say is that i've been coming to Austin for about 10 years now. The city of Austin was just about my first client on affirmative action issues on the government side and I watched the development of programs here and learned a little something about this community. I remain amazed at the level of commitment and resources that the -- that the Austin community puts into its m.b.e. Program. I think to some extent the results speak for themselves. For those of you that don't follow this issue let me assure you that is not the case across the country. I have represented numerous states and cities and special taxing districts as well as done some work for the united states department of justice and the united states department of transportation. And Austin has probably if not the most aggressive affirmative action programs, certainly right on up there in the top handful. I'm from chicago. We still kind of do it the old fashioned daly way there for contracting. You can get things done that are difficult to do in a less controlled environment, shall we say? But even in chicago we have been sued over our m/w.b.e. Program which I first wrote when I was a relatively baby lawyer back in the law department in 1990. We continued the program that harold washington had first established in 1984 and had maintained that to this day. However, we were sued in 1996 and for any lawyers in the room will probably appreciate the feat of managing to drag out a federal constitutional case for over seven years. But we did finally go to trial this summer. Chief judge said it was the oldest case on the docket and we were going to try it or he was going to enter judgment against us. So I spent seven weeks on that litigation. So I can assure you that these issues are contentious, there are plaintiffs groups outlet there that are gunning for these programs, often financed by various interests. And it can be an area that is fraught with all sorts of legal concerns. That's sort of the bad news. The good news was this this past February we finally won a case. We had lost just about every challenge to a local affirmative action program for a decade. My 8-year-old niece when I told her that I had won this case in February and I was so excited and it about been 10 years, she's younger than that, she looks at me and goes you must not be much of a lawyer. I said well let's hope that's not the case. There were federal courts that weren't much on affirmative action. This past year we have seen a reversal very heartening to us who support fairness and inclusion. In February we did have the city and county of denver, unified city/county government there, their program was upheld in the federal appellate courts in a resounding, very lengthy detailed opinion. The court I think laid out a road map for us as to what type of evidence they will require in support of an affirmative action program. It was very different than the traditional disparity studies that you may have readbout. I had come to believe that we had to do something differently because if you lose consistently, obviously there's information in that. So we decided to put on a private sector critique and to look at what happens where there are no programs. The court accepted that and said the best evidence for whether you need an affirmative action program is what happens when you don't have one. The unfortunate fact of the matter is if you have no program, you have no goals, you have no commitment, you will basically have no participation. State of missouri is a perfect example. They run a disadvantaged business enterprise program on their federally funded highway contracts as they must as a receipt of conditions of receipt of federal funds. But they put no goals on their state funded highway contracts. They are getting 14% d.b.e. Participation on their federal contracts. And zero, literally zero, on their state funded contracts. So it was that kind of evidence that the court looked at and said, well, we think that that proves that but for the operation of your program you would probably have statistically significant under utilization of qualified, willing and able minority firms. We can go back to that layer. The other good news which I'm sure you followed was the supreme court uphold being the university of michigan law school's admissions program while striking down the university's undergraduate program. For the contracting side what I think is important about that is that the court did say you can have a constitutionally adequate affirmative action program. Some of us are beginning to drought that we could craft such a thing. So within that context, I wanted to lay that out as sort of a -- sort of a blood nt for where you start from -- blue print where you start from when you are looking for a h.u.b., M.b.e., W.b.e. Texas likes h.u.b.s. This is pretty much the only place I see that term used. There's an historical reason for that which if anybody is interested I can tell us, mostly I think we tended to call minority and women programs or disadvantaged programs, some such thing. What I do want to say I was very impressed with the lively of participation -- level of participation that the county has been able to achieve using a totally voluntary h.u.b. Progr. I think this must be a testament to per spaciveness, job owning and a basic commitment in the Austin community to try to be more inclusive. You have a program that relies simply on people's good faith efforts. And that in fact if they don't do them, it really is not much of a penalty there. Contrast that with let's say the federal d.b.e. Program where if you fail to meet a goal or make good faith efforts, you fail to be responsive even if you are the lowest responsive bidder. The city's program, I'm sure that you are familiar with, is pretty rigorously enforced. It has specific goals. An entire staff to monitor contracts, do audits, engage in monitoring contract performance as well as closeout, it provides for sanctions. So I think that the levels of participation that were shared with me in the annual reports are really quite remarkable given the fact that it's all voluntary. So I really have to commend the staff and everyone who is involved in that and doing a lot without much in some ways. Certainly compared nationally to what you would see in a h.u.b. Program. Having said that I do think there are changes that could be made that would help to make that voluntary program run more efficiently, hopefully a little bit more effectively and then I think would -- would probably lay the groundwork for whatever else you might want to do. Now, I -- I have to preface that by saying as a former city official myself I recognize that anybody who shows up, especially from out of town and tells you something that is probably going to cost you some money, may not be the most welcome speaker. I do recognize, of course, that these are terrible budget times for local governments. It's just the city of chicago has $1,670,000,000 -- $160 million deficit we have to plug for next year. These numbers are real, I know that coming in here and saying, gosh, sylvia really needs another couple of f.t.e.'s might not be that welcome. But at the same time the one thing that I can tell you having represented dozens and dozens of governments is you can do not do affirmative action on the cheap. It just doesn't happen. There's a commitment, you are going have to put some resources there. Where you get it from, I don't know. You can't be any more taxed than we are in chicago. We have a 10% sales tax and a 21% hotel tax. So I know how that can feel. But at the same time I think if the commitment is there, you are going have to put some resources to it. So having said all of that, let me just walk through quickly what I think some of the immediate things that you could do. First thing I think that you need to update the forms, policies and documents. Some of them appear not so to have been updated for quite some time. I think that's just a house keeping matter that needs to happen. Both because it's just good government practice, but also because I think that you want to be clear to bidders and subcontractors about what the expectations are. And to the extent that you are not clear or the forms are not clear, that could create unnecessary confusion. Which cost time and money in the sense that people don't know what is in fact required of them. It also sucks up the staff resources into having to answer questions that I think could be perhaps avoided. With improved and revised documents. Certainly the resolution that was passed in fact hired me, I saw, raised or didn't necessarily raise the h.u.b. Goal but suggested that the county wanted to adopt the city of Austin's goals. Will probably need to be thought to have some type of implementation piece to it. Otherwise, I'm not sure what it means really. But certainly that means documents will have to be changed if the expectation for example is that the bidders are going to be asked to make good faith efforts to eat each one of those goals, then I think the documents need to be clear about that. If the thought is, well, we just wants to encourage you to think about spreading your participation around amongst the various ethnic and raises specific groups, and with women, that's a little different idea. But I think for that resolution to have meaning, it will need to be actuallized in some ways. When we were talking about it on the phone, I started whipping through this list of questions, I think it occurred to people what really did they mean by that? I think that's certainly something that's going to be -- need to be looked at. One of the things that I think would be important is if you can to set contract specific goals on larger projects. By that I mean taking a look at the actual availability of certified firms to do the scopes of work of the project. And setting a goal that reflects the actual expected utilization of those subcontractors. Now, I know that this is a lot more work. On the other hand, it's a lot more defensible and it is also, I think, more realistic to ask people to meet a goal that has something to do with the project in front of them. The city of chicago does not do that. I can tell you in the trial that was one of the things that troubled the judge is the fact that we have a 25% m.b.e. Goal and 5% w.b.e. Goal and they pretty much put it in every single contract regardless of the actual scopes of work. I think certainly the better practice and the federal courts would tell that you the better practice would be to try to set them in a more targeted manner. That said I recognize that that will require much more staff input and time than people are used to doing. The way you do it is you talk to your project engineers who will in fact have those scopes of work broken out by estimates, that's how they came up with an estimate for what the project was going to cost. But you will have to plug in those numbers, it's a pretty simple spread sheet. We first started doing it at the city of Austin, they were doing it by handled, now everybody has excel, plop it in, it will give you a number at the bottom. I do think from the standpoint of prime confidentors that's more -- contractors, that's more helpful than the overall goal which doesn't necessarily reflect the actual scopes of work on the project. That's the second thing. The third thing, in some ways I do believe it's actually the most important suggestion that I can make to you is to properly and fully collect your data. What drives the price of these disparity studies is often the state of the clients' data. Invariably, I will go and talk with someone tell tell me oh, we have all of that data, I'm thinking no you don't, nobody has all of that data. In fact they don't. Travis County is doing a much better job of collecting data than most governments that I see. You actually know who the subcontractors are. That sounds pretty basic, but you would be surprised how many entities don't ask. They have a prime contract, that's their relationship, they don't ask who the subcontractors are. So you are doing a real good job I think at collecting that subcontracting information. What I'm going to be looking for, I think anyone who you would try to move the program forward would be looking for is more information about the actual subcontractor scopes of work, who they were and what they got paid. You know pretty much who the h.u.b.s are, but the big hole is also the non-h.u.b.s. Who were they, what did they do, can you give me an nigp code, for example, are they painting subcontractors, are they furnish and install as fault contractors? What did they actually do? I think that is very, very, very important. Without the proper data it's very difficult to evaluate the data, certainly very difficult to try too move forward with adopting any type of more extensive program. The fourth thing is, this again I know requires some resources, would be to conduct some random audits of h.u.b. Participation. I understand sylvia's office doesn't have the resources, but I think that you want to know what people are doing is what they have committed to. I can assure you there will be some slippage, there's inadvertent and then gaming the system slippage where people list somebody initially on the contract and never use them or illegally substitute them out. By the time you get to contract closeout, you might be able to penalize the contractor because in fact he may be in breach of his agreement with the county, but then that is scant comfort to the minority or woman firm that thought they had a contract and didn't get work. You have already paid for it, you are not going to pay for it twice. Doing some random audits, you don't have to audit everything, but it would thighs to know that in fact contractors understood that they could be audited and that's a relatively easy thing to do by providing for it in -- in the general conditions in the contract. Fifth thing is strengthen the criteria for determining whether the bidder made good faith efforts to meet the goals. This is more of an administrative matter than anything else, but I definitely think the checklist and the list of what people are asked to do could probably be strengthened, made a little bit clearer, so that we make it very, very plain what good faith efforts are going to be required. Required notifying -- notification of a reasonable number of h.u.b.s. Well, I count three lawyer weasel words in there. Reasonable, sufficient, and effective, hum, what's that mean? The city has gone to the other extreme. If you don't, you have to provide a written explanation of why you didn't. That's -- that's pretty burdensome, generally people will just contact everybody. So you might want to think about perhaps something in the middle there, but maybe a little clearer to your prime contractors, what exactly, reasonable, sufficient and effective is supposed to mean.
>>
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>> .
>> ... Dollars that were paid to certified hubs. Right now there appears to be in the tracking system self-certification. People tell you they are a hub and they go into one box and if they are actually certified they go into another box and you track those numbers. I'm not sure there's much utility in counting non-certified hub dollars. I think if it's anything you want to be sure your system has integrity. Self-certification is notorious for leading to fronts, frauds. If I were doing a study for you, I'm going to count all those non-certified hubs as non-hubs because that's what they are. If people haven't gone to the trouble to get certified, it's not that hard especially with the state. I mean that's not a big, heavy process to go through. It will cause your utilization numbers at least traoerl fall off because those firms would not be counted anymore. One of the things the courts look at is whether or not people only who genuinely benefit from the program are included and self-certification doesn't tell me anything. And it particularly is a problem with women owned front properties if there is no check on whether or not this woman really owns the business or not. Next is increase the use of the construction manager at risk method of procuring services. Now, I know that Texas just relatively recently adopted that method. I'm pretty familiar with it. We've had it in illinois probably 30 years and it's almost the entire way larger construction services are procured. What's useful from a hub standpoint is allows you more flexibility. It's a negotiated contract, it's not a hard bid, so you can make it plain to people while not dispositive, their commitment to affirmative action, e.e.o., It's something you are going to look at. That construction manager at risk turns around and hires the other contractors and that firm can make those same commitments plain as well. So it's not panacea, but it does seem to have some utility. Then finely, I think that monitoring contract performance is something that needs to be beefed up. Our people actually -- are people actually getting paid, are they doing the work they were supposed to do, are the bidders in fact in compliance with their plans. As I said before, by the time you get to closeout, it's a little late to remedy the situation. So I'm doing that while you are in the process I think is definitely a better approach. So those are my nine -- I think it's nine recommendations for the actual existing program, and we could stop here or go into executive session or whatever is your pleasure.
>> questions?
>> I just have one. In your research, and I think you've done a great job, I really do as far as some of the recommendations are concerned, but in your research, did you -- some of the problems that I know help vendors have had and have expressed is not only the certification process, I guess is one tier there, but the bonding authority. They said I really would like to do more business, but however the bonding authority that's required on some of these things is something that they've had trouble venturing and overcoming. So I guess my question is in all of this research tk-rbgs you ever run into some type of remedy, I guess, for hubs to overcome some of the obstacles such as bonding authority or being certified as far as things like that so things can get [indiscernible]?
>> sure. Bonding is a huge problem. And I do know that the county is in some way or another supports this -- there's a community mentor protege type of program that seems to have a bonding component to it. I don't know how effective it is, but I know it's out there. There are bonding programs that are available. I mean and one of the things perhaps the county might want to think about is banding together with some of the other local governments and funding a bonding and technical assistance initiative. There are some firms that work directly with the surety companies to under write the bonds and provide contract financing. I have seen one for the city of baltimore. I don't know how well it works, but I certainly know it's out there, and I know that the st. Louis agencies, the city, the county, the transit agency and the airport are in the process of procuring a bonding assistance program for small and disadvantaged businesses. [multiple voices]
>> if you do those four, it's a bigger area, but I think the total commitment was about 250,000 from -- split amongst the four agencies. So they are not cheap, but they are not overwhelmingly expensive. And my own view is that providing this type of assistance creates more viable businesses that ultimately, of course, will inure to the benefit on the entire community.
>> thank you.
>> on my backup that I got from you, ms. Holt, I didn't have number 9.
>> that's probably just me and a typo. Doing it too fast.
>> I wanted to make sure I was getting the full benefit.
>> yeah, I think so. I'll have to take a look. I apologize.
>> not a problem.
>> I think that was a delete.
>> right. Right.
>> I was wondering if mine just had it missing.
>> it was a thought I had but it won't work here so there's no point going over that.
>> the second thing is in terms of your work with the city of Austin, what real changes did we see, measurable changes when they did many of the same things related to trying to strengthen and improve? Are they meeting their goals? Is there a noticeable difference? Because I read in fact daily religiously and I'm still hearing about things happening over at the city relating to some of the very things you are talking about here, well, didn't quite work out that way. Somebody got a long contract and four years later the numbers weren't what people had hoped.
>> sure.
>> I just want to make sure because if there is an investment to be made, that we have reasonable assurances that on the other end the investment was worth it and we got meaningful changes. And I'm just wondering did the city see huge swings in their hub participation by doing some of the things that you suggested?
>> well, I think there's several questions perhaps embed understand there. The city I think is in the process of doing some evaluation of some of the technical assistance programs out there. The city has had a lot of it. They've done a lot of things. And I know that there's some evaluation that's going on there and I can't -- not that I can't tell you, I don't know yet what the results of that will be. Certainly I do know that some of the programs like the small contractors support network and some of these, you know, certainly are producing in the sense that firms are coming in, you know, they are increasing their bonding authority, they are getting more contracts, so there's some results. Exactly whether or not they've been quantified, I don't think so necessarily, but that's something I know they are trying to work on because they need to answer that question for themselves as well. What I think that you see is that the problems really are very systemic. And so it's going to take time, I think, for some of them to be corrected. I think the other thing worth thinking about is the limits local government can really do. This was brought home to me in the chicago trial because i've been working on these programs for 15 years and I have a level of frustration the fact we haven't grown as many contractors and firms I would have liked to seen. When I was younger, I would have expected by now. One of the things we proved in the trial and I think this goes a long way towards explaining why we are where we are was about lending discrimination. We hired the former chief of commerce, the federal reserve board, who controlled 156 variables for credit worthiness and found that black firms who were identically credit worthy to white firms were twice as likely to be denied a loan. And when they got the loan, they paid 100 basis points more for it. This is the difference between being competitive and not right there. It's a piece of the system the government doesn't control. So I think that when you say do you get results, I think you get the results that you can support. But the county is not a bank and the city is not a bank. And so it's very difficult. There are loan participation programs out there and there's some models and I would be happy to share them with you that help use government funds to leverage loans to mwbes and that may be of some help. But I think that the problem of systemic barriers to these businesses are really very, very great and they are very entrenched. So, you know, justice-conner in the opinion this summer says in 25 years I don't expect people to be back here argue pw-g that, I myself am not sure that's long enough. Certainly when you are trying to changing business and opportunities, I don't think you are going to get results that quickly. On the other hand, the county's utilityization statistics look to be below what probability is. So you are doing better if you had nothing. But I'm not sure if fact the current program really remedies the problem. So you might see some immediate improvement. You ask whether or not the city has been meeting its goals. Yes and no. It depends what procurement category you look at at. It depends what racial or ethnic subgroup you look at. And so that's not a yes or a no question. Overall getting close. The city is in the process -- this is no big secret, I don't think, of revising possibly its ordinance -- the city's ordinance sunset December 31 of this year. So we've got to do something. And there was a availability study that was conducted for them and there is at least a proposal to adopt some new goals that are based on more current data. So, you know, I think we'll see. One thing about this is that you learn over time and you get new ideas and new ways to approach the problem and new data becomes available, so I wouldn't do anything that looks like what I would have done five years ago. I just think we've learned some things. But I think this lending discrimination piece is huge. And you see that problem everywhere. We've done it now from minnesota, chicago, baltimore, st. Louis, florida, and you got the exact same results. I mean it just is astonishing to me. And the correlary about that that shows that, you know, it's not popular to say it anymore, but that racism is alive and well was the fact that when you do credit scoring with the fico's, for anybody familiar with that is correct it's a paperless transaction. The computer doesn't know the race of the person applying for credit cards. So if you go into, I don't know, what's a big store here, neiman-marcus or something, and you apply for a credit card, they do it over the phone and the scorer doesn't know who you are. When you took the face to face interaction with the loan officer out, you found no disparities. None. So something is definitely going on out here in the marketplace. The results were much less robust for hispanics and white women, but you did see some, but it's just -- I that I that focusing on those pieces now, bonding, lending, the things that allow businesses to actually grow is really at least, in my practice anyway, I'm urging clients to spend more time and resources and perhaps less on some of the mechanics. So we can get these businesses to grow and prosper and maybe they wofpbt won't have to rely on government work so much. I love all my government clients, but they tend to pay slowly. So there's something to be said for people getting out in the private sector and you can negotiate better prices because it's not a hard bid system for construction. So you have a little more flexibility.
>> do you have information that can be used to come up with a formula that would lead to setting goals? You know, reasonable goals. And I suppose it would take your local market area to determine, you know, how many widgets need to be built. And do you know where we can get that kind of information?
>> well, maybe this is a good moment to move to our executive session maybe? I'm not sure what you might want to do about that. If what you are asking is contract specific goals, one way to do it is look at your list of certified hubs, look at the scopes of work of the projects, then weight that by those scopes. And you will come out with a number at the bottom. It's really essentially nothing but a spread sheet.
>> will you have that information yourself.
>> that's what I'm saying, it would be something we could look at. But I know with capital metro there is a certain information that they build in to the local area to determine where the goal should be reasonably set. And sometimes it's 30%, other times it's something else given the contract that was let out, but we do set a goal, and sometimes we reach it. Sometimes we don't.
>> right.
>> and -- but it's -- you have to work with it. Have you to work with the market.
>> I think you could do contract-specific goal setting based to data you in fact have. And you could say, well, on this particular park or whatever it is, you know, 20% of it is landscaping, weight that, it would give you an overall number. Or have it broken out by ethnic and racial or women as well subgroup.
>> but so you don't know of anything that we could use?
>> well, we try to -- because we don't have the resources the city has, we always sort of look to the city and what their studies are showing, so we're real interested in this availability study that's coming out. And we actually went over and visited to look at some of their programs, software that they were using. It's very technical, and as ms. Holt has stated, very resource intensive. We would just need more staff to even use theirs and tphaoeuplt sure they would let us use -- I'm not sure they would let you use it. Learn it.
>> I would think we could partner with them on that par of it.
>> they've been real willing to help us do what we can, so it's something for us to research.
>> given the fact that the city makes up about 70% of Travis County, many of the contractors that seek to do business with us also contract with the city of Austin. Do you see a legal problem with us basically using the city's goals?
>> I would be happy to answer that question, but I think maybe we might want to --
>> okay. We'll discuss that then and the disparity study. So if I were to ask you, history aside, I'm trying to put together the best program that will enable Travis County to increase the number of contracts with hubs in our community, would your answer be basically the nine recommendations plus bonding and lending, or are there other things that you would add?
>> no, there's nothing else I would add other than other piece about what you might want to do going forward. But for the moment, looking at your existing program, the things I suggested I think would certainly help to strengthen where you are. Additional technical assistance either through your own office or partnering with the city or some of these outside groups, I think, would certainly be valuable.
>> okay. Like you, ten years ago I guess I was a lot more optimistic that immediate success was achievable. I'm beginning to wonder about that now. However, i've always thought that the challenge is to get contractors with a set of hubs that they will do business with, and as those contractors grow, their hubs would tkpwro also. -- grow also. And the hubs would be african-american firms, hispanic firms, women firms, et cetera. Is there a community where that model seems to have taken off and achieved success?
>> honestly, no. I can't think there's someplace where it's all working really great and everybody grew and I think our expectations were met. I honestly don't think so. And I think it's because these problems are so systemic that people's better intentions aren't really enough to change the outcomes. I think the big disappoint is that the very same contractors that use hubs on government projects do not use them whether they don't have to. And that -- in every case i've been involved with, that has almost been uncontroverted. They will use the hub they are required to, but they don't if they won't. Or they won't if they don't. So, you know, I too started off thinking if we can just get them in the door, if we can just get these relationships going, that will do it, and it really just hasn't. Why? I don't know. I can speculate perhaps about what some of the reasons are. But for example there's a very large contractor in chicago that is very proud of its mwbe participation on government projects. But both in deposition and in trial testimony was forced to admit they did not use those firms in their private sector work and for their suburban work where most of the suburban municipalities don't have any programs or goals and they don't use them there.
>> i've got one tougher question for knew terms of how one measures success. Let's say that we could meet that goal of 30%. But let's say that that 30% is made up primarily of the hispanic contractors getting their fair share and let's say women get their fair share, but let us say that the black contractors don't seem to have as greatest numbers. Wow say that's because you met the blended goal or is there still work to be done because not everyone within the hub community -z shared equally in terms of success? Because you also brought up in terms there are asian contractors. You know, I'm just trying to get your perspective on that.
>> maybe we ought to talk about that in executive session. I think it goes to some of the fundamental issues that have been attached to these programs.
>> all right.
>> hold on now, james, don't jump out of your seat back there.
>> I know they will have their perspective, but I'm just trying to understand the legal and that's probably a legal question.
>> how much time do you have this afternoon, ms. Holt?
>> i've got a meeting with the city at 4:00. They've got something else first on the agenda so they can manage without me for a little while.
>> because we do need to talk with you in executive session, but we have a couple of quick items before we go in there. When we go into executive session, we'll take you first.
>> what time?
>> I would think by 10 minutes to 4:00.
>> I'm sure we'll be able to get you out by then. Any other questions of ms. Holt in open session? Thank you very much. We'll talk to you again in just a moment.
Last Modified: Tuesday, November 5, 2003 9:52 AM