Travis County Commissioners Court
April 12, 2005
Executive Session Items
We have people here on number 43, the executive session item. They may want to address the court before executive session. Comments? John, on 43, do we want to address the court before we go into executive session? Is that what I understood while he's here?
>> judge, you're talking about 39.
>> yeah, 39.
>> let me ask and i'll be right back. Does anybody want to address the court about 49 before we go into executive session? 39?
>> 38 is to receive briefing from county attorney and take appropriate action on settlement demand in excessive force claim against michael botel lo. That's the that's the consultation with attorney exception to the open meetings act. 9, discuss and take appropriate action on contract with republic of Texas biker rally for 2005 event. That's the consultation with attorney exception to the open meetings act 40, discuss and take appropriate action on security issues at the gault building, the security issues exception to the open meetings act. 41, consider and take appropriate action on acquisition of land for the development of Travis County southwest metropolitan park project, cip number 01-b 02-31-3 pa. That's under the consultation with attorney and real property exceptions to the open meetings act. 42, receive legal advice and take appropriate action on request to deed to the oak grove church and cemetery on bull creek incorporated, 2.889 acres of fee simple property maintained by said cemetery organization in precinct 3. That's the consultation with attorney exception to the open meetings act. And the final executive session item will be number 43, receive briefing from county attorney and take appropriate action regarding compliance by Texas disposal systems landfill incorporated with the terms of the license agreement for the solid waste transfer station facilities at 4001 state highway 620. That's under the consultation with attorney and the real property exceptions to the open meetings act. We'll discuss these matters in executive session, but will return to open court before taking any action.
we have returned from executive session where we discussed the following items. Number 38 involving the excessive force claim against michael botello. I move that we counterclaim in the amount of $15,000.
>> second.
>> any discussion? All in favor? Show Commissioners Gomez, Davis, Sonleitner, yours truly voting in favor. Voting against, Commissioner Daugherty. Number 40, security issues at the gault building. I move that we approve the security issues presented to us with the one exception that we discussed in there. Do we need to make the exception for the record?
>> I think it was subject to -- [overlapping speakers].
>> okay. And that is part of this as well, so approve the budget transfer from allocated reserve in the amount of 41,000 and change. The exact amount will be in the budget amendments today. And those are subject to approval by the sheriff. If they're not approved by the sheriff, they'll be sent back to us. Discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Number 41 involving the Travis County southwest metropolitan park project, we did get directions to staff to -- give directions to staff to proceed. Anything further than that? There's a motion to proceed by Commissioner Daugherty.
>> second.
>> seconded by Commissioner Sonleitner. That is to proceed to perform the necessary due diligence to move this project to a successful conclusion and keep the court posted of developments. Discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. The last item we'll have back on the court's agenda next week, that is number 43, involving the Travis County owned tds transfer facility land on state highway 620. And in the meantime, I will make a call to mr. Gregory indicating basically the need for us to take another week to further deliberate some actions and possibilities, probably tomorrow. Now, we did look over number 39, and that involves the republic of Texas biker rally for the 2005 event. And that's because we have a representative here who can give comments. And if you would come forward and have a seat there, get real comfortable and give us your name, we'd be happy to get your comments.
>> I知 jerry brag and my official title is co-honcho. I am a partner in this venture, as we are all partners in this venture. And as a good partner, I have to tell you that our revenues this year are going to be down, our attendance is going to be down. That's the bad news. The good news is we're not going to be down as much as we were. Our business was off 40% two weeks ago. And as any businessman knows, when you get that kind of news, you've got to look and see why is your business off. So we started studying it a few weeks ago and we determined what we feel like are the real issues that are affecting our business by reviewing all the e-mails we got from our attendees and customers, listening to their concerns. And it kind of boils down into three areas. They're concerned about traffic, the congestion. They're concerned about the price, getting value for their money. And they're concerned about, as always, we get hate mail about the food and beverages, the quality, service, the availability and that kind of thing. Well, I知 happy to report that based on what we have control over, we have taken some measures, and that 40% has now shrunk down to 34%. So i've made a six percent impact. I知 fully confident I can get it to where we're only down 20% by rally day, which is in about, what, seven weeks. We've got a series of announcements and hype and buzz that will be coming out that is going to be pretty impressive. Unfortunately, the really big news that I wanted to announce in 10 days or two weeks, we missed that window yesterday. As you know, we discussed an opportunity I had, and I had asked them to hold it open and they couldn't any longer, so they took another job. And what that means to us, you and i, is that discovery channel will not be filming the rtb rally this year, which we could have had a lock on if we had had everything in place on time. So moving beyond that, my goal is to work with you and to start early enough that we can cooperate in achieving a contract or a commitment or an arrangement whereby we can go forward for the next few years as good partners. I知 willing to spend the time it takes to negotiate that contract. I respectfully request that we start without delay. My timetable is very short. In order for me to be happy with any arrangement we make, I need to know what that is by July, about three weeks after the rally this year ends is when we really go after the '06 event. So all that being said, the one thing that I do not have control over that continues to nag us and be an issue is food and beverage and service and price. It's better, but it's still not good enough. People are not happy with it, I知 not happy with it. If there's any control you can exercise over that, I would appreciate it. That would be a huge contribution to our event. We need the quality to be better, we need the prices to be better, and we need delivery to be better. If there's some way you can impose standards or hours of operation or minimum food standards or whatever, we would be very appreciative of that. So I知 here today to say I understand that you're not going to accept the proposal we had made, which we felt like would be a really good way to experiment at a cost that wouldn't be great to either one of us. The only couple of ideas we had on improving service, pricing and getting more attendees there is if I can get more people there, they spend more money and we both benefit. So that being said, to go forward from this point, I would ask and respectfully request that without delay I be given a copy of whatever basis you have you want us to work from, let me have a chance to read it, comment and begin a dialogue with whomever to get something set so we can go forward for three, five, 10 years.
>> well, we considered meeting with you early after this rally in preparation for this year, and if we need to get it done by July, we can work toward getting that done. But we were hit with some last minute requests for this year, and we still are kind of firm on the beer sales because that's where we get most of our revenue. We were pretty flexible on the food concessions as well as if you need to expand the concert area on some property outside our lease boundaries, we thought we could accommodate you on that also. But we had a hard time giving up the biggest piece of action that Travis County receives. We didn't think we were doing the people of Travis County justice by doing that, but I thought we were pretty flexible on the other parts of your -- what we consider to be a counterproposal.
>> I appreciate that. The food piece of that, it's too late for me to do anything. I would probably mess it up worse than your current concession person.
>> well, let us work with our vendor on food and beer sales, and see if we can improve on the areas that you mentioned, quality, service, availability, hours. I don't know exactly what they are, but it seems to me that if there's money to be made, for you, the vendor and us, then we would want to take maximum steps to do that. And so we can at least commit to do that. But as to a contract in place for this year, though, there are just minor adjustments that need to be made, right? We ought to be able to get one in your hand if not today, then tomorrow.
>> I think we have an '05 agreement that is acceptable for what we're doing.
>> we have heard of some of the concerns and complaints. What I was looking at is make sure I have the full list and make sure I can get with the vendor directly because I do think that there's enough opportunity for all of us to want to give it our best efforts. Now, I was told last year the number in attendance greatly exceeded expectation, so that mattered some. So my question was can we beef up this year? But if you've got --
>> that was the point of what I was telling you. Last year we had hank williams junior as our main entertainer. And early on as the attendance -- we track that very carefully and we have 10 years' worth of study done. And we can almost predict -- you tell me how many I have preregistered today, i'll tell you how many will walk through in June. I can miss it a point or two, but I知 pretty good at it. And when we saw that begin to slip, first we thought, well, it's the hank factor. We don't have hang junior this year, we have george thoroughgood. But when it continued to slide and we continued to get the mail we got, we knew we had a real problem. And it wasn't our fault or your fault. Briefly, one of the areas that people are really upset about was the traffic. Someone on the front gate at 8:00 o'clock on Saturday night told the people controlling the traffic that we had closed and not let anybody -- to let anybody on the street in because they didn't want them stopping traffic. That wasn't true. We had not closed. 300 cars got through and jammed up our traffic pattern. That's all people remember. They don't remember that Friday was good and Saturday was good until 8:00, they just remember between 8:00 and 12 I couldn't get out of there, couldn't get in either. So we've taken steps to take care of that. Working with the sheriff's department, we've come up with a terrific traffic plan that would accommodate even more than we had last year. So when people got word of that, they see we're trying and things are improving, our attendance is coming back. So that's what I知 working on now.
>> we want to work with you. I think it will be a win-win for us for the most part and we want to keep it that way, don't you think?
>>
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>>
>> ...we can ride through the parade together. We ride through your districts and throw out little firemen hats for the kids, they love it, you need to be there.
>> we don't actually have a contract to approve at this point? I was going to say because I知 not quite sure that I know what is or is not going to be in this contract. But we are kind of basing it on -- going back to where we were when we first signed this in 2003, we are not doing any substantive changes from it because we can't get the concessions that we need in the time frame that we have got. I知 with you in terms of we need to start early making it really clear what the parameters are going to be in terms of the use of that facility. Not just the republic of Texas, but anyone else using in a massive way a publicly paid for and publicly supported facility. Kind of like Austin city limits festival, south-by-southwest just, you know, name your festival. The public has to make sure that its investment is being protected, not being loved to death. A whole lot of people are making money, none of whom are the taxpayers. Who support that facility.
>> let's give mr. Brag the most recent revision, if that's okay with you, we'll have it on the agenda next week to sign. I don't anticipate any problems.
>> I would move to -- I will have moved to Austin by the time you meet again probably. I'll be here, i'll be available. I'll be happy to work in any way I can to --
>> we'll be even happier to see you next time if you will be a Travis County resident.
>> yes, sir.
>> thank you.
>> all right, thank you.
>> thank you.
>> did we do the 42? Cemetery? We did approve. No we didn't. I jumped over 42 for some reason. 42 involves the deed request by the oak grove church and cemetery on bull creek incorporated. Move that we deed to them the land in question. Conditioned upon its use, continuing use as a cemetery.
>> second.
>> and if there's an issue with that, bring it back to us.
>> okay.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. And we did leave off the budget amendments. The one that we did not discuss and we did discuss this [indiscernible] one in executive session, there was another one. What's the number of that item?
>> 16.
>> 16.
>> no, because we had the j.p. Collections.
>> you have discussed that.
>> number 33.
>> and move approval.
>> second.
>> of the budget amendments, transfers and discussion items. Including number 40 and number 33.
>> right.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Melissa, according to my records we have no further business today.
>> move add scrowrn.
>> second.
>> -- move adjourn,.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, April 13, 2005 10:09 AM