Travis County Commssioners Court
March 16, 2004
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Item 28
Number 28 is to consider and take appropriate action on the deloitte and touche consulting phase I report on the subdivision review process in the extra territorial jurisdiction of the city of Austin.
>> good afternoon.
>> good afternoon.
>> with regard to the report itself, you had the entire report presented to you two weeks ago. The same report was presented to the city council last week by the city staff and so we are back this week to get direction from the court on what to do with the second phase of the deloitte study. You should have a one sheet summary of some of the options that tnr has looked at. It's basically a spreadsheet on one sheet of paper, large sheet.
>> joe, for some reason I don't have that in my backup.
>> okay. I just wanted to briefly go through these options.
>> thank you.
>> as you know, we have a basically an agreement with the city of Austin for the review of subdivisions in the etj. And that is the agreement that is required by law to determine how we will do business. When we certified that the process conforms with state law, we partially certified pending the outcome of the deloitte study. One of the options today remains to go to binding arbitration over the remaining issues of duplication and the fees derived by the county and the city for review of subdivisions in the etj. That is option number one. Option number 2, is that we somehow come to an agreement with the city of Austin regarding the splitting or duties by function within the etj thereby eliminating duplication of effort.
>> that would require the agreement of city of Austin, I take it?
>> that's correct.
>> uh-huh.
>> okay.
>> the third is a -- an entirely different approach, would be going to back totally redoing the interlocal agreement to say basically the single office concept is option four. We want to go back to an option 3, or we divvy up the responsibility by geography. Which would be, for instance, the city would take full jurisdiction in the two mile etj and the county would take full jurisdiction in the 3 to 5-mile etj. So there's no overlap at all, we just divide it up by geography.
>> joe, would that also include the near term annexation area which may or may not...
>> most of the near term is in the two mile etj.
>> okay.
>> I would have to say that almost categorically.
>> all righty.
>> so be broadening that concept but doing it by absolute geography. The other is not really a -- it's something in between, basically if you don't -- if you continue to duplicate, is there some way to at least reduce the amount of time it takes to review by two different agencies. It's a concession to the stakeholders that says time is money. And if neither the city nor the county give up jurisdiction and we both continue to review in a duplication type of way, is there a way of doing that much faster and so that the reviews get done, still save the stake holders time and money getting through the process? What that is is in the eye of the beholder. I mean, what does that mean? I'm not sure what that means at this point, but it is perhaps an option. If we can expedite the reviews instead of the length of time it currently takes.
>> I don't mean to interrupt you, but what are the stakeholders in all of this? In other words, I recall a lot of testimony that was given when we were going through 1445 things and I can still recall the testimony from the stakeholders and all from the city of Austin.
>> yeah.
>> and right now I'm trying to determine what are they basically saying in all of this and even you have a do nothing between item six here and of course or administration is something that we talked about earlier but I guess I'm trying now to get a sense of what have they said the stakeholders and if they did say anything, did they make their concerns voiced before the city council this last -- when ever, last Thursday, I guess, maybe?
>> they did not.
>> okay. But the stakeholders left on the table right before we certified or peartially certify odd the process.
>> all right.
>> the stakeholders had an option on the table which more closely resemble number 2.
>> number 2?
>> where we basically divide up the areas by function and do that absolutely. So I don't want to speak for the stakeholders but I think number 2 would probably most closely resemble the option they were advocating for before the certification took place.
>> hmmm. Okay.
>> number 5 would be to amend the interlocal agreement to strike references to the fee where the city and the county both agree to look at our fees, revise our fees based on the elimination of duplication, if we're not going to do that, then perhaps we go back to the interlocal agreement and just say, okay, we're not going to do that and take it out of the agreement. The fourth option is do nothing. Basically continue to -- continue to go on with a single office, continue to both review the subdivision plats as has been pointed out by the deloitte study, continue to charge fees, as we are currently charging them, and basically say that's as good as it gets.
>> number 6 may also be called let's stick our heads in the sand option.
>> [laughter].
>> do we think that the city would agree to number 2?
>> no.
>> well, as a country boy from tyler Texas...
>> oh, I love these.
>> ... Strikes me that the next move maybe ought to be who are the stakeholders? Maybe we ought to go to them and say, "we've got the consultant's report, we agree with much, if not all of it, we have chatted with the city informally, there's not enough movement, we presented these six options to the court and now the court wants to know if you have a position one way or the other. And after that meeting it seems to me someone needs to inform, touch base with the Travis County legislative deligation. Third, don't we need to know what the other urban counties are doing with their major cities in complying with this law?
>> I can find that out.
>> it's one thing if we're having a very, very difficult time complying. It's another thing if everybody else in the state seems to be happy, at least the large areas, urban areas, but not us. Those are three things that I guess we can get done in a week.
>> yes, we can.
>> seems to me no matter what we do we need some idea of what the answers are to those to those three questns.
>> judge, in addition -- probably in addition to that also, and I guess, tom, I guess if you can help me with this one, the first option, you know the binding arbitration that we looked at, I think we visited that once before in the past, but what type of merit does it have right now as we sit here on this issue, is there still anything that would trigger this binding arbitration, the arbitrator coming and saying, well, you're going to do it either way, y'all came one the study an did this, however, how would that be implemented? Is that something that we need to consider as far as the binding arbitration phase of this thing.
>> technically we're supposed to be in arbitration now because we haven't resolved our disagreement with the city, the grounds for not going forward is we're trying to resolve the disagreement, basically trying to settle the dispute. Basically on joe's charge I would look at arbitration not as a stand alone option but it's really your way of trying to achieve two or three, if that's what you want to do.
>> would be under one is your suggestion?
>> I wouldn't -- because -- unless you simply want to go to the arbitrator and say we can't figure out how to resolve this, and we don't care how to resolve it, you just do it for us, really you're looking at it as a second step. If you want to go with number 2 and split the function, you would say to the city, this is what we want to do, if the city says no, then go ask the arbitrator to enforce number 2. That's what you're asking the arbitrator to do.
>> exactly,.
>> or if you want to go with number 3, the same thing. Say to the city we want to get rid of the dual jurisdiction thing and split jurisdiction geographically, and if they decline you can go to the arbitrator and say, "we're going back to square one, an arbitrator, this is the way we think this should be done." Of course you have no guaranty that's what the arbitrator is going to do, but sit, you know, it's a dispute and in dispute each side is supposed to basically present to the decision maker here is how we want to resolve this dispute.
>> in good faith effort I know that we as a court have continued to -- tried to do the necessary things as far as coming to resolution on these particular things that have been brought to us by tnr, and I don't know if that has any merit or has any substance when it comes before an arbitrator, and maybe -- maybe not, I don't know, I just think that is something we still need to consider even if we still go through the Travis County deligation, that that is still something we're up under right now is the binding arbitration aspect. This is something I want to put on the table probably for consideration since we're still under that particular umbrella.
>> to me I feel like we need to get our own house in order. When people say, karin, are you doing everything you can to stop being duplicative with the city of Austin or any other entity, I have specific reports that say there are areas we're being duplicative in. I have a good sense in any mind looking at the list of things that seems a reasonable person would say we're being duplicative on a few things but in relation to drainage and transportation where those areas are clearly Travis County's responsibilities, we're not the ones being duplicative, I feel like we've got to get our house in order, so that not if this goes to the state legislature, but when this goes to the state legislature that at least we can say we did everything we were supposed to do. We cannot force the city of Austin to change their fees. We just can't. But we need to make sure that the fees that we are charging are for the cost of that service and that we are not double charging or not -- or charging for no value added. So to me I'm already at number one, which is go to binding arbitration. I'm at number one. You know, it's like we have been talking about this forever and it at some point it's like binding arbitration seems to get the attention of the city of Austin, just ask the Austin firefighters and the police department. You know, at some point the okay, fine, we'll get a third party to settle this is the only thing that will give movement on something because other voluntary actions have failed. Sorry.
>> if we were before the arbitrator and give our preference would it be number two?
>> that would be my recommendation, yes.
>> number 2? If we take the status quo off the table, tnr's recommendation would be number 2?
>> that's correct.
>>
>> (one moment, please, for change in captioners...)
>>
>> we're talking about the next Tuesday or --
>> I think we can probably do this in a week's time. If I -- as you know -- I should know by Friday. If I can't meet with stakeholders with the delegation before Friday, i'll let you know and if you want to make it by Tuesday.
>> let's meet with the stakeholders first because if we need to, members of the court can call various members of the delegation and get the answer. But if we don't do it on the 23rd, I'm afraid we're looking at April 6th. The other thing is that, I guess, after this week, before next Tuesday, though, if the county would know what they're doing.
>> we'll do that research as well.
>> a different worded letter that you run past Commissioner Sonleitner.
>> and Commissioner Daugherty. I mean, this is a sad state of affairs that we're having to go to this point, but it's like at some point this item needs to not be on our agenda because we are in compliance with the law and in compliance with the interlocal. They signed an interlocal that said we were going to look at fees. And if that's not what they meant, they ought not have signed that. Sorry.
>> anything further on this item? In binding arbitration are third parties free to join in or would it require the agreement of the two main parties or the arbitrator?
>> my guess is it had require the parties to agree, but I can look into that. I'll also look into the issue of schedule for how long it would take.
>> we'll have it back on next -- do we need that in the form of a motion or is that pretty good directions from the court?
>> or just direction from y'all is fine.
>> I ask not just you, but what's the strategy here? Is that okay? Consensus? No objection? Okay.
Last Modified: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 7:22 AM