Travis County Commssioners Court
March 16, 2004
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 30
Number 30 is next, one of your favorite subjects. 30-a is to consider proposed elements of the Travis County real estate asset disposition policy and take appropriate action. And 30-b, consider disposition of maintenance and storage facilities at satellite three on hamilton pool road in precinct 3, and take appropriate action.
>> good afternoon, judge, Commissioners. I'm with tnr. And as you may recognize, this item has been on the agenda before the court a number of times, several times over the last month or two. Tnr staff, just to kind of go over very briefly the issue with 30-a, tnr staff worked with facility staff to pull together kind of the rough outline, if you will, of a process by which Travis County could evaluate the proper -- the optimum disposition of any real property. It's on a case-by-case basis now. We did look into how other urban counties in Texas handle this, and they do it on a case-by-case basis. We are not able to find a county that had a formal policy in place. That doesn't mean that it wouldn't be a good thing for Travis County to undertake. However, that's kind of the background. We did work with the issues that evolved in the decision-making process and designed eight steps that we felt critical to evaluating and coming up with a recommendation for disposition, whether that be the sale of an asset, the lease of an asset or retention and do nothing. So we come back to the court today with this framework and ask the court to give some direction on the matter. And I would like to point out that this is kind of the -- this is the basis of a policy. If the court decides to move forward with this, the basis of a policy that would necessarily need to be designed and carefully worked through by the county attorney. He wanted that point made to the court. So what we're here to discuss under 30-a today is really the framework and the steps for process, the rough process that's been outlined to the court.
>> do you have to do a before you can make a decision on b?
>> no, absolutely not.
>> judge, I would -- I would move that just as tnr has put in their summary that we the putting together of the formal policy that pretty much aligns itself with what tnr has done to date. I don't think there are not any flaws that I can identify for that. I mean, if we want to have the definitive policy, and i'd say that that's not something that we continue to work on if we find that -- because sometimes you find out later on that we need to tweak that particular part of it. But I can't see anything that's glaringly wrong with directing them to pretty much comply with what they've put forth presentation wise to us.
>> can somebody tell me where under 1 through 8 we stick in the idea of compatibility with surrounding properties? Because there are at least two properties that I can think of both in precinct 2, that are both within the city of Austin. And therefore the words compatibility standards are here. I would say that that standard also needs to apply out in other areas as well that are in the unincorporated as well as do we choose to want to -- I'm just going to make up the worst possible example here. Let's sell a piece of property and turn that into on landfill. Now, if that's something we would choose to want to do and to know in terms of the capability standard in terms of that being in a neighborhood, in terms of being the worst possible example, that it wouldn't be true.
>> you brought up land use compatibility three months ago and it was at a point where we were wrapping up the discussion, but I would draw your attention to section step 2, and identifying conferences under c, fiscal. The third group or category there, physical characteristics, that encompasses as we designed this with facilities and tnr, that encompasses the land use issues you're discussing. The physical characteristics of the property, and it's easy to misinterpret that and think that means just the topography or just the vegetation cover, something like that, but everything associated with the physicality of the property, and that embraces land use capability issues adjoining properties, if you've got a potential buyer that wants to put in an inappropriate use at a school, there's a whole myriad of issues that fall underneath the physical characteristics component of this step number two.
>> while in the city of Austin you do have zoning and therefore tha is a legal encumbrance that is associated with the asset when you were out in the unincorporated there is no zoning and so I wanted to make sure that something didn't slide out of -- out from under us because it was not precise language. But as long as we have said for the public record that including in the definition of encumbrances is the whole concept of land use capability, I am satisfied.
>> do we just want to put that in there? Just put it in in parenthesis or something? Do y'all have a problem with that yeah, I want to state the obvious and that will be a question that we state, where does it say that?
>> yeah, I don't have a problem with that.
>> because there may be some of our other assets as well that may be within a city...
>> based on what you've learned from your research, we better come up with a policy or without -- we are better off without a policy or without one or dealing with a prone other a case-by-case basis.
>> I believe that a framework is very useful. I think that there are so many variables and issues that cannot be addressed in a quantitative format that it is not necessarily beneficial to the county to have a hard and fast policy. So the short answer to your question is a recommendation or a framework or consideration of and arriving at a decision, I think it is excellent. To carry it beyond that, I don't necessarily believe it's a good idea.
>> so for policy you think maybe we need just a framework.
>> something of that nature.
>> in Travis County we're much too sophisticated to call it framework. [ laughter ]
>> deadlines.
>> it's an assessment. You're assessing.
>> it's an assessment, yeah.
>> you don't really have a policy. You're not establishing a policy. We're going to sell this regardless of land use compatibility or we're going to sell it even in the neighbors object.
>> that's my concern -- [ inaudible ].
>> this piece of property, here's the situation on this piece of property.
>> right. And my concern with the notion of a policy is that that can drive an improper decision or a decision that isn't best for that particular situation. Joe was, I believe, about to state that it was guidelines. Frapz that's a little more sophisticated than framework.
>> we find them to a set of guidelines we would use to guide us in the future.
>> use whatever word you want.
>> the thing we want to guard against is that it would would say, that is just a sweetheart deal. You only listened to somebody that was whispering in your ear and you didn't even consider. No, there's a thought process and that case by case we will weigh each situation, but it says, do you know what, we did think about all those things that you wanted us to think about. It doesn't say that one will have more value than another, but it basically says that greg and them are protected from anybody coming in and saying you didn't look at all the issues. This very clearly says they will make a proper assessment and then give advice to the Commissioners court as to what they suggest might be happening on a case-by-case basis. It's for their protection more than anything else, and ours.
>> I think we take Commissioner Daugherty's suggestion that we take the three pages of guidelines and put them io a form of [papers shuffling - audio interference] and move to adopt what you recommended earlier.
>> it could be adopted into formal guidelines.
>> where would those go. Is that part of the green book? Is this something that becomes part of our policies and procedures? I mean, give me a sense here so that people know where it resides and they know who to ask questions of.
>> this is back and forth between the staff and the Commissioners court, my feeling is it wouldn't be part of the Travis County code because you're not establishing a formal policy other than just to say before we make a decision, we want the property assessed and we want these factors analyzed.
>> if the court wished, I could incorporate it into the right-of-way program within tnr. And there are manuals and guidelines that are provided to the right-of-way staff at tnr. Likewise within facilities in the real estate function, there are guidelines and procedures that staff and facilities follow. And it could be incorporated into that -- at that level.
>> the added language, though, as far as getting a final version of what we discussed here, when can you have all of that. When would that revise and be available?
>> within a week. It's a matter of adding land use as a separate category rather than physical characteristics, but that's nothing. That's typing in three words or what have you. So if the court would like to have this on next week to consider adoption of formal guidelines for tnr staff and facilities management, is that what I'm hearing?
>> yeah.
>> and unfortunately, I just thought of one other possibility in terms of on the last page. It's either delay, sell, lease or retain or a combination of anything above. What if it's a swap? What if there is a property that we say, do you know what, that's cool, but do you know what, we can swap this for something else and there's no dollar amount out. How would we go about evaluating a swap?
>> well, I would put that under a sale asset. The consideration doesn't have to be cash, it can be in form. It can be the way of the land -- owe.
>> the sales could include a swap.
>> actually, I'm with the county auditor's office. There are accounting rules that we would have to go by.
>> could you speak up louder.
>> there are accounting rules that we would have to follow in that situation, where we would have to value both pieces of property.
>> and I believe that's for the actual conveyance. For the evaluation and the recommendation to the court, we can modify the sell asset to say sell or exchange assets.
>> thank you, kimberly.
>> that covers a. Any more discussion of the motion? That passes by unanimous vote. Are we ready for b today?
>> just as ready as we'll ever be.
>> I do have one question on a. Y'all had talked earlier about a panel or a group. Did y'all -- the composition of a group of -- is this just going to be facilities and tnr? Is there anyone from purchasing or the auditor or county attorney is going to be on this group when y'all start doing these evaluations?
>> we're not -- this is a way in which -- or a framework guidelines to do what we already do. And that is to look at the possible disposition of an asset when someone comes to the county and requests it. So there is no formal group that's planning on addressing these different issues and we're not going out and trying to decide what to do with different assets that the county has. So it's not that formal in that regard. And this is for the recommendation on what to do to bring to the court, not the actual conveyance.
>> so if there is a particular case property in question, we may need a committee, we may not. We'll address that on a ad hoc basis.
>> correct. It would come to the court.
>> anything further on a? What about b?
>> b is dealing specifically with the satellite free maintenance and storage facilities located on hamilton pool road. And particularly two structures that are underutilized at present. The direction of the court, tnr and facilities looked at what could be done with those two vacant buildings. And we had two proposals submitted to the county or leasing -- for leasing and sale. And what we did was we went through this draft policy, 38, that we've been discussing. We applied all of those steps or criteria to just structure or these structures. And came up with a recommendation, and that was to lease the facility. And there are 20, 30 pages of backup on what -- the steps that we went through and what was recommended, and what the lease rates are and so forth. The net result is we anticipate approximately $100,000 rental income -- potential rental income to the county in any given calendar year.
>> do we have somebody standing by to lease it now if we notify them that it's available for lease?
>> we don't have -- no, we do not.
>> because I recall a request to use it for a, quote, other purpose, which I read to be free of charge, right?
>> big time.
>> I think that was one of the -- that was the genesis of where we are today.
>> but there was another proposal about the potential lease of that. That facility. Did they put a price tag as to what they thought they would want to pay for that lease?
>> I don't know which proposal you're talking about. No, I have not seen anything in writing. I have not seen anything to that effect. . There have been a number of things ban died about, but nobody has put their pen to paper.
>> I would suggest given that we very definitive about one thing, I'm interested in selling the property. Number two, we're not interested in selling the property, we're interested in income generation. So as far as I'm concerned, I mean, -- and we probably still have until the end of the year before I think that we can really legitimately or that we should go out to see what we can do with that because we still have the constable out there. Even though somebody might come along and say i'll take that if you're not using it, I think that would be a mistake because there may be someone come along that would need a larger facility. And we ought to have the flexibility to do that. But I don't think there's any reason in the world why we shouldn't start letting it be known that we are going to market this project for a lease. And I would probably feel more comfortable with a five-year, you know, lease. I guess maybe I might be able to get comfortable with a 10-year, but I wouldn't want to go out any further than that. And if anybody is going to do anything less than 10 years, they're going to be pretty antsy about putting any sort of improvements or what to do and that would have to be okayed by us. But obviously what we want to do with this project is we want to generate income given that we don't have something that we know that we want to do on it county wise. I've never heard of anything entified that we would go out there and do that, so I think that where we need to move with this is that look at probably -- by the first of year we're pretty much assured that we are going to be in the new precinct 3 facilities, southwest. So start getting our ducks in a row with regards to here's what we're going to want and let's find out -- obviously this thing is going to be dictated by the market. And so I would see us moving in that direction, judge.
>> any more discussion? You understand that motion? Market the property.
>> market the property.
>>
>> and look at it for really -- perhaps hopefully some sort of occupancy starting at the first of the year, 2000.
>> not more than 10?
>> I could, I guess, you know, if the market comes to us and says we can't get any bites on five years, but we can get some bites on 10. But I think we'll find out real quick because there are some very sophisticated people in the interesting in this town that can tell us exactly what's going to be able to be done there.
>> that clear enough? All that is in the motion. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you very much.
Last Modified: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 7:22 AM