Travis County Commssioners Court
November 25, 2003
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Item 23
23 is to discuss amendments to capital area metropolitan planning organization joint powers agreement and take appropriate action. Commission are Sonleitner's -- Commissioner Sonleitner's item.
>> judge, other members of the court, there are three of us that have been here, done this already, because this is something that's been flowing out of campo. We're at a point that it is time to update the joint powers agreement. And until everybody signs on, there are some things that -- in terms of membership of campo and cleanup of the old agreement which was last signed in 1996 that cannot occur. And so what you will see here is the biggest changes have to do with getting some member functioning counties on to campo and adding somebody from the regional mobility authority. Those appointments cannot occur until all of the sig signatureters to the agreement sign. We had a very spirited discussion at campo when this was brought up in terms of who should be given membership, who should be -- quite frankly this thing has been batted about for more than a year. And without there being some kind of resolution and moving on related to this, we have an out of date joint powers agreement. And we'd like a diversity of opinion, but when it came down to a vote as to who should be granted extra membership, this is what passed campo with the majority in terms of our best work, but I did want to make sure that everyone knew that there was another motion offered by judge Biscoe, but it was not successful. It had to do with whether somebody from Austin or Travis County should get an extra seat. Austin felt that they should have that seat. I think the judge was pushing for us.
>> actually, I was pushing for the city or county, and I think my advice to the group was we could get with the city of Austin and work it out and maybe we could alternate each year or we could have a joint appointment. I never understood the rationale for giving one more and the rma one and Travis County and the city of Austin zero. The reason given was that the percentage of population ended up being 1.7, and we had rounded down to one. Austin and traibility were 2.7 -- 22.7 and we rounded down to 14. And the rationale given that night was we ought to round 1.7 up to two and give hays one more. And my position was if that's true we ought to round 14 hi 7 up to 15 and give Austin and Travis County another. The other thing is that if you look at representatives from Austin and Travis County, and there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven -- I guess there's 14 of us, as I just mentioned, but four or five of those typically vote against the other eight or nine. So it's not like we all vote together. I think all 22, 23 members of campo vote together on 80, 85% of the issues. But on the other 10 to 15 percent there's great division. And right now all the votes are very, very close, and my guess is that Austin and Travis County loses more than we win. So I certainly don't see putting two members who will vote against us in all probability. The other thing is that I think that there's less justification for the rma to have one on campo than Travis County to have another one. And based on what I heard, it doesn't make sense to me to roundup to two for hays and not roundup to 15 for Travis County. So we requested a fairness in equity. You cannot look over the fact that the votes on controversial issues are close and we lose more than we win. And I see it as adding two votes to the other side on real close votes. And in my view Travis County's side and Austin and Travis County. A lot of the transportation projects boil down to what's in the city of Austin transportation plan versus campo, and their projects involve water quality issues and some involve other stuff that is probably more deer to the city of Austin and Travis County, but in the past our position has been to try to be supportive -- kind of like -- weognized over the end, but in the end I basically supported Austin's position because I thought it was in their plan in the city of Austin. I had already voted to support that because I thought the city of Austin was supportive of it. So I do see some kind of issues like that coming up in the future and I certainly don't think that we ought to go along with a strategy that would end us up, almost guarantee us being on the shortened of votes is what it boils down to. And that's -- I don't really propose to give rma a vote or hays county another. I opposed giving them one and not giving us another one. So my position out there was that in fairness all three of us ought to get one, but also in fairness, if we don't get one, they ought not to get one either. And I think that's what this county ought to vote today.
>> the only thing I would add is that related to hays county, they in part lost a potential of somebody being there to represent them because now with senator ogden being in second place in terms of who had most in the senator al district in terms of population, it flipped from what had been senator wentworth up to senator ogden. So you have all of hays county is now within the campo boundaries. That is a big change from before. In terms of the rma, there has been -- because of the presence of capital metro, adding and considering large transportation providers. And it was kind of in that category of has the rma earned a seat? And the answer -- the recommendation from campo was yes. The recommendation was not to extend an extra seat to carts in terms of the other one. It was like no, capital metro rises to that level, but carts does not. And a decision was made not at this time to offer any membership to the commuter rail district. It's another one that in terms of being another transportation provider. The only thing that I would add is that -- I respectfully -- I'm just trying to get to a place where we've got to get a new joint powers agreement. And if indeed this body chooses not to sign it, what's going to wind up is it's going to go back to campo and in terms of presenting another document to send out, the feeling of the folks who right now sit on campo was that Austin-Travis County is not underrepresented on campo.
>> I'm going to disagree with that. The other thing is that the rma on paper is three from Travis County, three from Williamson county, one appointed by the governor. The rma in reality today is three from Travis County, three from Williamson county, the chair from Williamson county, which gives them four, and I guess a new executive director from Williamson county who has been a member of the Williamson county Commissioners court. That is five to three against us. So I don't know how you look at that any other way. I know they would try to be fair and I like Commissioner hilgenstein, but the reality of it, though, is that right now the rma is more Williamson county than Travis County. That's the fact of the matter. The other thing is why should Travis County vote against its own interest by approving this document? We could get another five years without this document being changed. We will continue to meet once a month and we will keep making the same decisions pro probably. The same decisions will keep coming up. I don't think this document is that big a deal. What's the big deal is whether hays ought to get another vote, whether rma should get a vote and membership and we get zero. And I'm saying that makes no sense to me.
>> no, it doesn't. And becker elementary, I was taught to roundup rather than round down. Especially when the second figure was over five.
>> and if you round down, round down for everybody. That's what we did.
>> and like I said, you're right. You could go back to just the way it's been because we have been bouncing this thing back and forth since it was, I think, September and October of 2002. And it's just at some point you either vote it up, you vote it down or you move on. I would move approval of the joint powers agreement that has been presented to us by campo.
>> is there a second?
>> i'll second.
>> any more discussion? All in favor of the motion? Show Commissioner Sonleitner and Commissioner Daugherty. All against? Show Commissioners Gomez, Davis and yours truly voting against. Move that the county judge be authorized to communicate to campo this vote.
>> second.
>> any discussion of that motion? We'll do so in writing today. Thank you very much. All in favor. That passes by unanimous vote. We didn't give you a chance to say anything. I didn't mean to put you in the hot seat, but you were outvoted.
>> in the meantime it stays at 23 because it could be that this body or the Austin city council, any one of them could do it. The thing is that it still stays at 23 with Williamson county having five people. They've picked up extra representation because of the inclusion of Williamson county as a whole with representative krusee and representative gat advertise and senator owe (indiscernible).
>> 26, that's the 14 if I have?
>> yes. -- 1445.
>> yes. The city and the county and the stakeholders met yesterday to go over the major issues with regard to the -- [ inaudible ] under 1445. I don't think we had any consensus on resolution. We did agree to meet again next Monday. (indiscernible) we're contracting back with a recommendation to the Commissioners court and the city council and -- by Wednesday of next week. And that's kind of our timetable on the single code. I would like to report that we're doing an audit today as well.
>> before we get there, if that means that the city council meeting of next week is out, if you're not even going to meet until Wednesday, so they would only have one more shot for agreeing on that code. So if it doesn't get done in the meeting of the 10th, that's it. There are no meetings after that.
>> we understand that. And (indiscernible). We'd like the extra week. All right. I'll let carol -- carol's been talking with the county auditor and the city. I'd like for her to explain where we are in that process.
Last Modified: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 8:52 PM