Travis County Commissioners Court
October 19, 2004
Item 12
12-a consider adoption of amount number 3 with the city of Austin relating
to platting of subdivisions within the extraterritorial jurisdiction, e.t.j.,
And take appropriate action. 12-b is consider amendment to f.y. '05 general
fund budget and adoption of the f.y. '05 fee schedule for review and inspection
of subdivisions within the city of Austin e.t.j. And take appropriate action.
>> good morning. This is joe geiselman with the transportation
and natural resources department and carol joseph also with t.n.r. Both a
and b had about on the court agenda three weeks ago and we deferred action
until the city council, the Austin city council had a chance to be briefed
on the content of the interlocal. That has happened. There is only one change
that I need to make the court aware of from the earlier interlocal agreement.
That is in the initial draft presented to the Commissioners court robinson
ranch was declared as a near-term annexation area. That has since been struck
from the agreement and the city management and t.n.r. Are in agreement with
that change. What that means is robinson ranch would be subject to the --
to Travis County review and comment when subdivisions came in irrespective
of the fact the city has an agreement with robinson ranch with regard to annexation
of that property. Otherwise, the interlocal agreement is pretty much following
the track that we had set several months back. It divides up the review of
subdivisions and the e.t.j. According to a division of labor. The first split
is between the drinking water protection zone and desired development zone.
The city would be the case manager and the predominant force in making sure
that subdivisions are reviewed in the drinking water protection zone. Travis
County will be the case manager and take the lead in the remaining part of
Travis County. That is a demarcation line that's set up basically by a watershed
so we can see on a map just where those subdivisions align. Mind you, this
is only within the e.t.j. Of Austin. We still have the other e.t.j.s of the
other municipalities of Travis County to finalize agreements with. But this
is the final step in bringing closure to the largest e.t.j. And that is with
the city of Austin. There are some other provisions I want to go over real
quickly. Based on the division of labor that we have, the fee schedule is
basically divided up likewise. No duplication of effort and there's no duplication
of fees. One or the other charges for the review. The inspection of all subdivisions,
no matter where they are located in the e.t.j., Is going to be done by the
city of Austin. Travis County reserves the right to approve all the change
orders that may take place to construction plans once they are approved by
the city or the county. If they are changing subsequently in the field, the
county would have to approve those. We also have agreed to do a recording
of the capital fees that we collect during the subdivision process. For instance,
there is a per claim dedication fees, there are fees for regional storm water
detention. There are various fees collected. And one of the things that we've
heard from the stakeholders is they wanted an accountability for where have
those funds gone and what projects. So the county and city both have agreed
that no matter who collects them, we will do an accounting of those fees and
we will report on where those moneys went, what capital projects were they
used on. They were used in the county park, if they were used in the city
park, how were they used. And likewise for the other fees that are collected.
We also because there is somewhat of a new organizational design for us, we
have agreed to set up an ongoing review process with the stakeholders to see
what we're doing. 1445 and 1204 were set up primarily to reduce conflict between
the development community and the review agencies, the city and the county.
We believe we have gone [inaudible] to consolidate our code, to extreme our
process to bring the city and the county closer together as we review those
subdivisions. If it is not working, if the single office is not going what
it is supposed to be doing, we'll let you know about that sooner than later.
We have agreed to set up periodic meetings with the stakeholder and report
to Commissioners court and city council how we're doing. So if any corrective
actions need to take place, we have an opportunity to do that. So it is our
intent to make this single office work and to achieve both the letter and
the spirit of the state law. Now, with that, I would like to turn it over
to carol. Care can walk through the change -- carol can walk through the fee
change in Travis County.
>> joe, let knee ask you a question with something you just
said. So it is your opinion that the stakeholders issue has been more of the
-- the complications that come about because of the county and the city, that
is more of an issue than the cost? I mean because I think that there -- I
mean isn't it true that they are also expecting to receive no more costs,
not necessarily they are expecting a lot of fee reductions, but they certainly
don't want to see more costs given we're going to be doing this single office.
>> I think what they said is no duplication. They don't want
to be double dipped because both agencies are doing the same thing.
>> and I know we're trying to get around that.
>> and I think our point to them was we'll charge the actual
cost of business, I mean from Travis County's perspective, that we do a cost
of service analysis and charge them only what it would actually cost to review
that. We would not say they would go up or down, but I believe they are okay
with that as long as they were charging just what they owed often nothing
more. I think what we have done is done that. We've looked at our direct costs,
we've looked at our overhead. We are charging what it takes for us to review
their plats, and we have done that on the basis for what is fair. In other
words, we're looking at how much time it takes to do the type of subdivisions
that we do. For those that may take more time, we charge more. But those that
take less time, we charge less. And so I can assure you from the county's
perspective that we are doing what we said we were going to do. >.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>>
>> ... Related to transportation and the drainage aspects
with the floodplain. And it respects that. It's stuff we've always been doing.
It was a little irritating to see our work being duplicated over at the city
and now they're not doing the transportation piece other than in the near
term annexation area. And that is appropriate.
>> so how did we evidence responsibility to show capital
investments?
>> there are things collected -- there are fees collected.
Depending on who has the closest park to where the subdivision is, we're saying
extraction of either land or fees in lieu of land for parkland. And depending
on whether the county is the closest park to the subdivision, then we could
have either land or a fee in lieu of land. So we would have an accounting.
Let's say we received $20,000 for parkland from the subdivision. Every year
we would need to account for that $20,000. I will need to show the stakeholders
where that $20,000 went, what park, what improvement within the park so that
they can see there's a direct connection between the extraction and what the
fee was intended for.
>> so is that an accounting and contract responsibility?
>> it is my this agreement, yes.
>> I?m having a hard time finding it. Of course, I have four
or five documents here. Where is that?
>> number 3. The city and the county show annually prepare
and publish a summary report of fees collected from applicants for capital
recruitment associated with subdivisions, including but not limited to parkland
fees, transportation improvement fees and regional storm water management
program fees collected and a list of capital improvement projects for which
the collected fees were used or programmed to be used by the city and the
county.
>> that's it?
>> that's it.
>> so it a contract amendment?
>> yes, it's amendment 3.
>> all right. This third amendment is amendment to the agreement
that we approved when.
>> April 2002.
>> okay.
>> so what if one of us fails to do this? What's the enforcement
of it?
>> Gerald's calling. [ laughter ]
>> if you want to go as far as the contract, there's no specific
remedy.
>> are the stakeholders happy with the right question? Are
they informed?
>> they are informed. And I would say they were -- they'll
see how it goes. I think they've come a long way with us in this, and I wouldn't
go so far as to say they're clicking their heels, but I think they're going
to give us an opportunity to prove that we can do it.
>> as for Travis County and the city of Austin, we believe
that the outstanding issues that we discussed I guess during the last couple
of years have been addressed in one way or another?
>> yes, we do. And I think there's still work to be done
with how the single office functions. The real work now begins in making sure
that the office is really doing what it's supposed to be doing. And there's
some training that has to take place among both staffs. We have to set up
computer networking so the county has access to the same information the city
staff does. So there are some things that need to take place, but I think
the program and the amendment there to sets up a framework and I think we're
in agreement in principle on how we need to proceed.
>> last time we said let us supplement this plan, see how
it operates in six months, then we'll basically look at it and see what need
to be modified, etcetera. It's the same approach to this one?
>> yes, we have a semi annual review, so every six months.
Then we also have a codification deadline whereas we adopted the code by way
of interlocal agreement, there were these changes that made the division of
labor are amendments to the interlocal agreement. The stake healeders -- stakeholders
asked that we actually codify that in chapter 3 of the code and we have agreed
to do that by October of the first of next year. So first we want to try it
out to see how the division of labor works, and then after a years' experience,
we'll move in and actually hard wire it into the code.
>> we're collecting these fees after October 1? And what
steps do we need to follow to perfect fee adoption?
>> we should adopt them today. There will need to be a certification
of revenue by the county auditor, which is possible post budget adoption because
it is an interlocal agreement. And there may need to be a budget commitment
as well.
>> do we need to advertise these fees in a public hearing?
>> I think you need to do a newspaper notice.
>> that's why I?m here.
>> i'll check into that, judge.
>> let's do that.
>> we've done changes before, and usually it's just a matter
of you all adopting it, but if we need to do an advertising, that's not an
issue.
>> if we did it before we violated the law, we didn't know
[ laughter ]
>> the changes before we've trotted it out both times and
so have the stakeholders. As a result of our cost analysis and to be able
to perform the duties that we'll need two additional employees, and we'll
leave the hiring of those for at least six months. Part of it is to be able
to get our single office up and running and to be able to find out where everybody
is going to be seated, in addition to the fact that we have some -- 20 something
other entities to do the same thing with. As you look at the exhibit on page
3, that shows you all the additional fees in red here that we -- all we basically
did is changed it based on the division of labor, so you have all the different
plats and plat reviews within the drinking water zone or within the desired
development zone so that you could see that we've added the four dollars per
notice, public notice. We talked about that before. The renewal fee we just
clarified that the 10% to 100% it was really just vague, depending upon the
extent of changes, and all we did was clarify that 10% of the original fee
if there is no change in the application after six months, because what happens
is some fees -- they have 180 days and they can get extensions and sometimes
we have to start all over again. So if we come back within -- there's no change
within six months, then it's just a 10% additional fee. If not, then you start
all over with the original cost of the fee and you keep whatever you paid
the first time. We've also added a flat fee of $250 to just process. What
we have, if a plat comes in that's only 10 acres are oas, just to be able
to collect the money to transfer the funds and to process the accounting of
the funds, there's a flat fee of $250. Beyond that you normally charge whatever
-- it's per acre depending upon the type of fee. We've trotted these out to
the stakeholders sometime ago. I think it's been a couple of months, and it's
the same fees. We compared -- the same fees we compared to plats within the
e.t.j., The city we showed them what the changes and local entity for the
fees before and we used in these current fees. To my knowledge we've had no
major issues other than the fact that everybody thought they went up. But
where we went up, some of the city's went down, so they understood that. And
as I said, there's no duplication of fees. That's quite clear. The line drawn
in the sand as to who does what, I think that has helped immensely. There
was a lot of detail for the auditors, deloitte and touche, to be able to come
up with a cost of services, but we're fairly certain that they're as accurate
as we know. And we're proposing we review the fees at least annually and look
at inflation adjustments within every three years.
>> the six-month delay in hiring those three people begins
when?
>> October 1. That's when the -- yeah, the fiscal year begins.
>> several of our state representatives have had a keen interest
in this issue for some time, maybe since the last legislative session. Do
we plan to let them know what we've achieved?
>> we can certainly do that. I haven't done that yet. I certainly
can visit with the sponsors of the bills.
>> I think they ought to know and they ought to ask and let
us know if some of the stakeholders are not as elated as we are. That may
give us some indication of what may happen when the legislature arrives in
town. That's the realist in me.
>> so are there pieces of this we can do today, judge, at
least the a part? And it sound like -- I would go ahead and pass both of them.
We'll see this again anyway on the fee for the final deal, right?
>> depending upon the legal requirement for public hearing,
you may want to take that out. If the legal opinion is you need a public hearing,
defer it until that time. If not, then this afternoon adopt a fee schedule.
>> or approve it to proceed.
>> well, we can't charge it if there's a public hearing before
adoption. We'd have to wait.
>> but don't we normally approve what's to be the subject
of the public hearing?
>> yes.
>> at the public hearing we say here's what we plan to do
and get feedback from them. That's what I had in mind basically. The other
thing is even if we can adopt a fee without a public hearing, my good government
mind says we really ought to tell somebody, here's what the Commissioners
court is thinking about doing. If you have different ideas, come let us know.
And we can have it as soon as 10 days from now, can't we?
>> it's your choice.
>> that's what I would do. I would have a public hearing
in two weeks anyway.
>> all right.
>> it's not required, but that's what I think. We always
do.
>> not November second, please. [ laughter ]
>> I think so. [ laughter ]
>> well, the cool thing is that seriously in terms of the
folks that would be the ones most likely to show up for the public hearing,
they are not unaware of what we're doing. But I agree with you, if we need
to put it out there that this is what we're going to do, but the reality is
that the stakeholders are more than aware of these numbers.
>> well, i'll agree with that. They're aware. Obviously we
need to -- from a legality standpoint.
>> is this a question for tom to answer?
>> do you want to think about that and let us know this afternoon?
>> I can give it a try.
>> we'll pull this item back up. How's that?
>> judge, can I get one more clarification? Exactly what
is the robinson ranch agreement? The robinson ranch agreement per the city
of Austin is not in the near term annexation area.
>> no.
>> therefore we will be the ones responsible for review of
the robinson ranch. What's this deal about the city has some sort of an agreement
with them?
>> the city entered into an agreement with robinson ranch
regarding the annexation of that property. The city subsequent to that asked
us to approve robinson ranch as a near term annexation area in this interlocal
agreement, therefore we would defer all subdivision decisions on subdivisions
within that ranch to the city. We disagreed. Ultimately the city withdrew
that request, so we are -- [ inaudible ]. Travis County still has Travis County
for the subdivision plats within the robinson ranch.
>> and the term near term annexation area really is a very
technical term in terms of what it means, in terms of the schedule the city
of Austin has within a three-year time period of you shall be fully annexed.
That was not going to be occurring on robinson. It's a huge tract and it was
going to be a phase kind of thing and it was the kind of thing that they were
talking about treating it like a near term annexation area. What if it didn't
get annexed in the time prorpz, it meant that we would not have been at the
table related to things that would have fallen back to Travis County to maintain.
So they decided no, it will not go into a special category of near term annexation.
It truly would not.
>> I was just wanting to bring that up because I was not
foggy on that interpretation. I want to make sure that the other side is also
as clear as I am with regards to it. Because if somebody has an agreement
and then it's all of a sudden generally thrown back, oh, but did you not know
that we had an agreement? So we've said it and it's on record, but I just
wanted to make sure that that is what you articulated, Commissioner, is exactly
how we feel about it.
>> it's either near term annexation or it's not. You can't
say it a look alike.
>> we'll call this item back up this afternoon.
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Last Modified: Wednesday, October 26, 2005 3:33 PM