Travis County Commssioners Court
June 29, 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 32
Number 32 is to consider issues raised by bob barstow in the county's management of bob went park in relation to windy point park, inc. Easement.
>> well, judge, I won't be long today, but I understand there's something here I can plug in. This is my first time ever in an attempt to try to use a computer like this. If it doesn't come on, I'm in trouble.
>> I'm sure somebody from media will run in if that's not the way you do it.
>> and here they are.
>> there's a screen somewhere that this comes up on.
>> hold down function and then f8.
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> I'm bob barstow. I own a public park called windy point park on comanche trail a couple of miles away from this restaurant. And the picture you're looking at here is mostly so you can see about what it is from the air, and then I'm going to go to something else for you to see. But essentially --
>> bob, we can't see anything.
>> media, please.
>> is that the air or is that underwater?
>> try again, please.
>> maybe i'll go without this and wing it. Thought it would be helpful, though.
>> media, can you please switch to the laptop?
>> oops, we're on.
>> oop.
>> I recognize --
>> here again, gone again.
>> looks like you may have just to proceed on.
>> I guess if I can see it up here, I know I'm on. And if not, otherwise. What you will be looking at is an aerial photograph, and I took everything out of it except the problem areas. And as you know, I was very angry when I was last year, and of course I still am, because your parks department had me arrested and I didn't too much appreciate spending the night in jail when I think I was exercising my property rights. And I just don't think that's very american to have a police force fighting a property owner in that way. Are we on now? I believe we are. This shows the windy point peninsula. My little arrow isn't working too well. Do you see my arrow on there now?
>> it doesn't make any difference.
>> it's not working.
>> we wouldn't know what you were talking about if you were looking at that thing.
>> all right. The problem here is I really wanted to rail a little bit, but that's not very productive. And what I want to talk to you about is something a whole lot more positive than just telling you how unhappy I am with this situation. This thing started 20 years ago. In 1980 I opened up my property at windy point, about 13 acres of it, opened it up for the public to use as a public park. One of the privileges of ownership of property is to deny people to come in. You can keep people out. And I opened mine up to the public just as all of your parks are opened to the public. I do exactly the same thing for them. They have exactly the same activities available, only they're at my expense and I don't get subsidies. I do charge fees. Now, there was some to-do when a television reporter came on and accused me of charging the public to get to public land. She never talked to me. I believe her name was lori cowen. And she had a series saying, what are you doing going to do about this? He jumped up and said, well, barstow charged as a public park far too long and I'm going to put a stop to it. Through which I own an easement to use the water -- lake from its waterfront. And we've had problems ever since. He built over a weekend a causeway across the cove, used every truck in the county, turned one over about 1:00 o'clock in the morning, but they finished the causeway over a weekend, and if you can see that picture, there's a dark spot behind the causeway, and that's bad water because there's bad circulation there. But that dark spot also shows you some waterfront that the public can't use because it's so lousy, and that they did use before the causeway was there. We have two major problems here with the lcra. I have a bundle of property rights. For example, i've got, say, five rights, the lcra right now has three. They need some of mine, so they need to come over here and do what? Take one of these, come up with it over there. That would be called my easement, the right to go through their property to use the lake from their waterfront. They need another one. Because my waterfront is also on the park, on my own land, i've got a right to go through that cove to use the lake, and the causeway is blocking it. They have to go over here and take another right away from me. And they now have five rights and i'll have fewer. What this is going from here to here is called a transfer of title. Well, this has never happened. The way to solve that problem in the beginning was the county should have either abandoned their project and allowed my offer to buy the lcra land go forward because I had an offer pending to buy -- expand my park. But they went ahead and did it anyway, and then 20 years since -- that all happened four years after I started, in 1984. And we've been fighting ever since. Travis County parks department sends their police force after me and harassed me, my employees and my guests, who are members of the public just as much as the public that uses your park. It's all the same public. They're all using the same lake. They're all hoping to get the same things. In all that time, no one has attempted to resolve this problem. At one point john hilly and I started talking about somebody the county selling out to me, but the Texas plarkz and wildlife people objected to that because by that time the county had taken in grants and they couldn't do that. And that's a possibility of solving it that's evolved in this thing. You may have to repay parks and wildlife some day for some of these improvements you've made. It's not my place to address that, but that's in the problem. My suggestion is that you've got the same things to do now as then. Your parks department made some misrepresentations when they got their grants made, by the way. They said they controlled the land and there wasn't any competition. And if there wasn't any competition, then how come I lost all the access to the pen anyone sue la that was over my land before the causeway was there to you? You took it on for your parks, so you have that. I also lost all of the swimmers that I was putting in the water on the peninsula to you, and if that's not competition, I don't know what is. But parks and wildlife examined and said there's no competition problem here. You addressed the competition problem and I have been at some of your parks meetings and you say there's so much demand for lake access, therefore there can be no competition. Well, over the same piece of land to do the same thing for the same public, yes, there's competition. And how we solve it, we've got a situation that I cannot satisfactorily serve the public the way I want to, and apparently you can't either. We ought not to need your police force out here. There should be some spirit of cooperation. There's none. We are in an antagonistic situation because we compete to serve the public. One of us has to go out of business on the lcra land. As a practical matter to bring this thing under control. It's a right I have. I can close my park down at any time, build a retirement house out there. You'd have your way, we'd have no conflicts. But I'm serving the public. And I want to remind you what a famous democrat just said, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. I'm sure you all recognize that was john f. Kennedy. What i've did you -- well, i've done for my country. I put my land in public service. I run a damn good park. Even my competitors in Travis County and the lcra admit that. The solution to this thing is I go out of business, that's too bad. You go out of business, I hope so. What do we do if we don't? If I don't go and you don't go, we have a perpetual antagonistic problem and the public is not getting served? What public purpose is there in competing to put the public in the water with my property rights when I want to do the same thing? You're spending an awful lot of money, you're spending an awful lot of effort, and we haven't gone anywhere in 20 years.
>> mr. Barstow, is there a way for us to reach agreement on a more cooperative sort of arrangement?
>> judge, I don't know. I've tried in several instances, but I believe things are so bad now they probably can't be repaired. We are antagonistic competitors. Without the competition we get along just fine, there's no doubt about that. But you do things like you ask the lcra to put a barrier out there that prohibits motor boats to protect your swimmers without my protection. Well, the bowie permit from the lcra requires that you get permission from people who are adversely affected. It's a standard clause in their permit. I called it to their attention that I certainly had not agreed to that, and I wasn't able to get back and forth by motor boat, so they took that provision out of that permit, the lcra did, reissued it. Every other permit they've ever issued has that provision in it. Now, the lcra granted me this easement right. They can't take it away by just giving you a permit to ban my motor boat out there. There's a legal way to take it out of from me if you want to, is to either reach an agreement with me that I convey it to you or if I don't, you file condemnation proceedings to set some reasonable compensation for it. We can't agree on compensation.
>> you don't think we can reach some sort of peaceful co-existence agreement?
>> I don't know, judge. How much do you want to pay me to take my land out of public service? That doesn't sound like a very good idea to me.
>> if we've both been operating 20 years and apparently we'll both be there another 20, it appears we could get along a lot better if -- (indiscernible).
>> I didn't try for a long time, I gave up for a long time, but I'm back in town now to get this thing solved.
>> and that means --
>> I'm going to push my property rights I don't care how many times your parks department or police department says. Sooner or later we'll have to get this thing solved. Sending me to jail isn't going to solve it. A damage suit isn't going to solve it. We'd still be left over with a title transfer for an abandonment of one of our parks. I abandon mine, you abandon yours or we get involved in condemnation proceedings. I don't know how to compromise this. I've made a number of suggestions and ways to do it. And I don't recall any coming from the county. Whatever I suggest is simply denied and everything -- never is anything ever countered. It's left on the table. Now, Commissioner Daugherty I think sees some of this problem. I think he recognizes the problem with the easement, which is a dominant use of the property. You guys are supposed to use your -- what's left over after I'm through using the easement. You've got the tables turned. You think I'm supposed to use what's left over after you use the lcra's property. That's the way dominant and serve yent works. Your parks department is very interested in this turf, and I don't know that you're getting good reports from them on what's happening. I'm not privy to that. But it seems to me that one easy way to get this thing resolved without anybody getting hurt would be the same thing you could have done when you were negotiating this contract with the lcra 20 years ago, well, let's just terminate the contract and let barstow go ahead and expand his easement and let him take the causeway down, return all this -- it's almost 1200 feet of waterfront that the public can't use behind that causeway. Let him return all that to public use and let's take our money and let's put it someplace else and make another park somewhere because barstow is going to take care of the public out there. We don't have to spend the money. That is also in keeping with the Texas outdoor -- what is it, Texas outdoor recreation guide we call it where it says in the spirit of public-private cooperation to bring more public park services to the public. We don't have that spirit. We have a spirit of confrontation, not agreement.
>> mr. Barstow, can you please remind everybody how much it costs to enter your park, please?
>> I charge -- it's not jermaine because it's business, but I don't --
>> it actually is very jermaine.
>> I'm cheaper than you are for a single person. I charge five dollars a person during the week. I charge $10 a person weekends until 3:00 o'clock. And then five dollars a person. And I don't charge children. So you charge eight dollars a carload. I'm not too far off of that, man, woman and children come out. And I'm not subsidized. And it's in keeping with good public policy that people like me put their land into public service as I have to serve the public with lake access. It's not a good example for us to keep doing this. I've already turned down in the last 20 years three opportunities to bring other land into park service because I hadn't been able to solve this. Two of those other lands have gone on to be developed. One of them is (indiscernible). We could have had more.
>> mr. Barstow, this is also an opportunity for us to talk as well. This is not going to be an unlimited -- we've been through this -- with me for 10 years. And I have yet to hear anything new. Here is the situation. You are entitled to your opinion and you are entitled to your viewpoint as to what has happened over the last 20 years related to this case. As is this Commissioners court. You keep portraying it that somehow there are only two options out here, and that is that we sell out to you or you sell out to us, and that somehow there is no other possibility. And I would lay out to you, as I have numerous times in 10 years, yes, there is. We can co-exist together. The reason that I asked you that question, sir, is because there is a price differential between the two parks. I think you run a very fine park. I think we run a very fine park, but it caters to a different group of folks. It has different pricing that would work well for families versus individuals. And that's cool too. You do a good job. But we're not in competition. We co-exist. You are entitled to think that we are in competition, and we are entitled to think that we are co-existing on the same area. Let me finish. You are saying that the public is not being served. I think the public is being served on a daily basis. And yes, indeed, we do get reports from the parks department about what is going on out there. We are not in litigation right now, and a lot of the issues that you have brought up were litigated. The case is over. And you may have a different interpretation of how that turned out and you may have disagreements with how it turned out, but the litigation is over. And we are not in a litigation mode right now. It's been settled. And we all need to move on. Finally, we have taken many of the ideas that you had to our stakeholders, and I do believe they gave everybody quite an earful in terms of related to the wind surfers and other folks out there about what they thought about some of the ideas that you had, and we're required to listen to them as well, and they didn't think very highly of some of the ideas that you had. And we're entitled to say, do you know what, we choose to go with what they're telling us as opposed to what would work for you. But I absolutely disagree that there's only two options here that either one of us or the other of us in terms of for a park goes away because it is simply not true. And i'll say one more thing. You keep saying over and over and over again, when the lcra granted me my easement. I'm going to leave it at this. It's not true. The lcra --
>> that is a false statement.
>> no, sir, your statement is a false statement. It is a false statement and I will leave it at that. You are entitled to your opinion, but so are we. And you are not granted not an easement by the lcra.
>> is a 1947 deed from the lcra for bob wentz and I was granted the title.
>> and you lost the lawsuit.
>>
>> I did not lose the lawsuit. You giend the easement rights and I perfectly go along with that. But you've got a lot of conclusions and you still haven't come up with a solution.
>> the solution, sir, is you go back to work, we go back to work. We're all serving the public and we all have a good life, and I hope you are extraordinarily successful. And I hope you wish the same thing for us. Because you've got satisfied customers, so do we. But coming in to ours, I think we would disappoint some of yours customers and vice versa. We both serve a purpose out there, and the public is being served on a daily basis out there. And I hope we don't have antagonism. That may be what your point of view is, but I don't feel antagonistic towards you and I don't think our parks department feels antagonistic, but I respect the fact that you are allowed to have that perception and I would hope that we would work on that. And if that's a perception or a reality from your viewpoint, we can work on that. But I can tell you I have no antagonism towards you, not at all, nor your business. I wish you the best of success.
>> you've left me in the position that I got into a business that I didn't want to get into, which was the jet ski rental business because you didn't leave me any alternatives. It's the only economic use of my property that I have after you took my swim access.
>> the lawsuit is over, sir.
>> that had nothing to do with the lawsuit. This has to do with owning property, Karen. And if your parks department has designed a park that exceeds the property rights of the land they've leased, then they didn't do a very good job, and that's exactly what happened. They talk about historically this and historically that, they weren't realistic when they made their plan because I own property. And that's the american way to own property and to use it.
>> mr. Daugherty has some ideas.
>> yes. I'm committed to continue to work on this thing. I'm the new guy on the block. It's in precinct 3. I think bob knows that I'm committed to trying every avenue that I can, working with john hilly, we are working on some things. There are some -- there are a couple of things that I do think practically that we need to try to help mr. Bar stow with in particular. Whenever there is water over the causeway, in order for the jet ski people to really get out to the lake -- I didn't understand this as much until I went out there and saw not being able to get vehicles out the causeway, you do have to launch, you know, whatever you're going to launch from, you know, near where the causeway starts, which means that you've got probably a couple hundred yards before you can really get that motor craft to the part of the body of the water -- of the lake where you can then turn it on and then use it. I mean, and it is not practical to take and expect people to load that machinery out to that water. Now, that being said, whenever I talk to our parks people, they did bring up a point that I thought was credible, which is there are a number of projects that a county has whenever -- or a municipality has whenever you have high water. And when you have high water, there are restrictions that are put on certain things that you just can't use because it's high water. Be it a road or whatever. Now, I'm still willing to try to work something with parks that would allow mr. Barstow to be able to allow his customer base or some of his customers that want to use jet skis to get from that spot out to the open water. Now, that means that you do have to go through an area where there is swimming, whether there may be sailing of some sort. I mean, I'm not on anybody's side on this thing, but there is a practical problem that he has. Now, does it present a practical problem for swimming in a particular area or for sailing in a particular area? Absolutely. But I'm just as willing to be as protective of that group as I am mr. Barstow, but I think that we are asking something -- and i'll work with you on this thing and bring it back because I know that the court has spent a lot of time on this and there are lots of issues and lots of feelings on this. And I know you brought it back because you wanted to give him his due time to speak to us. I'm not worn out from trying to build with mr. Barstow. I will continue to try to practically come out there. But there are a couple of things that are really funny about this thing. You're right, the causeway I think something needs to happen with the causeway. The causeway creates a little body of water that all it does is stagnant and all that's in there are snakes and all sorts of, you know, things that we really wouldn't want. If we had to to do all over again, maybe we wouldn't have built that causeway and we would is have done things differently. But given that we do have some of these things that are in place, I think that the only thing we could do is continue to work with it. My office will work with it. I mean, at some point in time maybe i'll yell calf rope. I can't do it any more.
>> and Gerald, I would hope that one of the solutions that you would look at is whether there is a solution on mr. Barstow's property related to the proper building of some kind of a ramp or boat dock because the assumption always is the only way to get to the lake is through this disputed area. And that simply is not true. Mr. Barstow does not want to have those boats interfere with the other large stakeholders within his own park. And I get it in terms of the divers. People love that area there, but there's another solution that mr. Barstow could do to completely avoid this problem. And that is completely within his hands to completely resolve. And might I also tell you that whatever we do, bring this back -- I kept the wind surfing community from packing the chambers today to give you a second viewpoint about what goes on out there. And I said no, let mr. Barstow have his say and if there's an action item to be brought forward, and there is no action item before us today, we'll let you know, but believe me, we can pack these chambers with folks that have a different point of view related to the park operations out there.
>> I understand that, Commissioner. And because what you have is you have very conflicting needs out there, period. I mean, that's -- that is an assumption that all of us know. It is a funny little spot. Now, that's not to say that we can't come up with something -- and I am willing, Commissioner, to talk with mr. Barstow -- if you get me to the point where I just practically can't deal with a person, then that's when i'll raise the flag and say I'm not going to get there and whatever the thing is, it is. And right now is not the greatest situation for anybody, but the truth of the matter is that there are things out there that are creating hardships for somebody, be it wind surfers, be it swimmers, be it divers, be it jet skiers. And that's the challenge we're going to have. So mr. Barstow, if you wouldn't mind, I'm more than happy to continue to work with you on this thing, but unless there's something else --
>> I would just like to answer in one respect. What people's opinions are and what people's property rights are are two different things. I'm people can have an awful lot of opinions about what they want to do, but in this country they have to be supported by the property rights. I have the property rights that support my opinions. I want to read this and then i'll close. Some of you have seen it. It's a letter from the general manager of the lcra. It concerns the causeway, because I think it's an issue. And he says this, it should have been up on the screen, but it's not. He says: the only public access being available by water from Lake Travis, and he's talking about between the lcra's peninsula and the mainland. He's talking about the causeway. He goes on to say about the causeway, and he says -- this was written in 1984, five years before the causeway. He says, in addition, -- in the same letter -- a causeway would block an adjoining waterfront property owner, that's me, from his rightful access to the waters of Lake Travis, which would violate state law. Now, there's never been a transfer of any title to that right out of my land. So the causeway is encroaching on that right. Now, if we can deal with that, good, as well as the easement problem. And I just recently uncovered a letter from your lawyers at the time the judgment was being written, and you may recall that there's a provision in there that if you build a boat ramp that I'm required to use -- easement uses. But the lawyers asked for those particular words, your lawyers, to be included in the easement, and they included their admission or their explanation. It says, if Travis County builds a boat ramp for its park patrons, then it would be patently unfair for barstow to still be able to lawrchl boats from anywhere along the water's edge, and therefore disrupt our operations, and therefore he should be required if be build a boat ramp for the Travis County's patrons that require barstow to use it. There's no boat ramp there now. It's submerged under at least six, maybe eight feet of water. And even if it was, you keep telling me that that ramp is for my use and not public use. And there's an lcra statute that says if it's for public use, then swimmers have got to stay 50 feet away from a ramp on the lcra land.
>> bob, bob, i'll work with you on it. We're not going anywhere on this thing. [overlapping speakers].
>> this doesn't have anything to do with litigation, Karen. That's over with. Litigation is over with.
>> you're right.
>> but the problems remain.
>> we've gone through all of these things related to your property rights and it's all been litigated. If you had outstanding issues related to your property rights, we'd still be in litigation right now. It's over. We need to move on.
>> you're wrong. All the litigation is -- [overlapping speakers].
>> it just defined what the easement meant. Now, do you have any questions?
>> any closing statement? Commissioner Daugherty will continue to work with you. Let's see if we can work it out.
>> let's try. I need a lot of help on this.
>> thank you.
>> thanks a lot.
>> next time we'll have them work with you on that. Sometimes it takes awhile.
>> okay. It will take a second to turn this thing off. I'll turn it off and get out of your way here.
>> that's all right.
Last Modified: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 9:28 AM