Travis County Commissioners Court
June 28, 2005
Citizens Communication
Citizens communication is next and one citizen has signed in. This item is to give residents an opportunity to address the court on any matter not on the agenda for up to three minutes. Mr. Bob barstow.
>> good morning. I知 bob barstow. My family owns and manages windy point park for public use on Lake Travis at windy point. We've met many times before. I have safety issues and I want you to listen carefully to the background of this because I think there's some great deal of misunderstanding that -- as to how this problem came up. And I知 going to read it so that I don't misstate it in any way. My parkland includes an easement to reach anyplace along the entire water's edge of the lcra's adjacent serve kwrepbt land. But to leave the easement to go into unrestricted use of the whole lake and return. When the public uses the easement to launch boats, it is using my property to reach the water's edge, not the county's or the lcra's. Any thought that I should launch boats elsewhere as Commissioner Sonleitner once said at an earlier session is bad blowny. It's a smoke screen to blame safety problems on my family. The lcra originally deeded my easement out of its land. 37 years later, Travis County ignored the easement and contracted to manage the lcra's servient land. They started bob wind park at windy point as a joint venture underneath my easement. They called their contract a lease. The public's unwanted consequence is that the lease is a catalyst for off-shore dangers, confusion, and lawsuits. Today the county and I are hostile competitors, when in fact we should coordinate. There is a need for my kind of park, there's a need for your kind of park, but we ought not to be fighting over who is managing which property rights. As competitors, we supply dangerously incompatible markets with lake access. For example, the county prohibits motor boating from under my easement, and I run a free motor boat launch promotion from over the easement. Now, how impractical can you be? More specifically, a judgment requires those easement users who trailer their boats to use a boat ramp should the county build one on the servient land if required to use it. Now, the county elected to build one in the midst of the most popular swim area on the windy point peninsula. It doesn't let its customers use the ramp but lets them get in the water to swim. And here we have a bad problem that results. It's dangerous to swim and to use boats in the same place. And we have two authorities. The lcra -- and I知 leaving my notes here. The lcra has responsibility for safety in the water, and it has a regulation that prohibits swimming within 50 feet of a public ramp on its land. The county takes the position that that regulation is not applicable because it built this ramp for my private use and calls it a private ramp instead of a public ramp. Well, so be it. In fact, it puts the public in danger every time it lets people get in the water from its land management which it does have control over. Near the ramp. Now, I知 asking you to tend to this safety problem and manage the land to keep people from getting in the water near the ramp. When we go to launch, we have to bring in our boats and our cars and turn them and back them and when we get there we find people from your path laying on blankets in the midst of the ramp area, doing barbecues in the midst of the ramp area, whole families assembled. Some of them speak english, some of them do not. And they are in the way, and they dash back and forth across the area, children do, where we're backing up. That's not a safe condition and that is a condition that could be managed only from the land, and you must take responsibility to management and you have no one down there to manage it.
>> mr. Barstow, can you reduce to writing a one-pager that outlines when you think a good coordination safety plan would be and let us respond to that?
>> judge, i'd be happy to do that, but I believe it's your responsibility.
>> but I know you have specific ideas.
>> I do.
>> if you would just give them to us in a one-pager, something real simple, send it to me or Commissioner Daugherty, we'll share it with the rest of the court and we'll get with staff and see what we can work out, then put that on the agenda and we'll have more than three minutes to discuss it. If you will do that within the next week or 10 days.
>> i've probably got something like that back in my office.
>> a one-pager or a page and a half?
>> well, i've written this out and double spaced and it reduces to one page. But I do want to say this.
>> specific things that you would do, specific things you want the county to do. Let us put our heads together and try to promote safety. That's what you seem to be suggesting.
>> that's right.
>> seems to me this ought to be a mutual goal of ours. We ought to be able to put our heads together and work that out.
>> it should be, but it's a real estate problem and has to be dealt with as a real estate issue. It has to do with property rights that are property. And no one wants to deal with that. Now, I do want to say that the 4th of July weekend is coming up and this problem is going to be very much multiplied. I知 going to have more boats in the water, you are going to have more swimmers in front of the boats. And if you could take some special effort to have someone with authority, they don't pay too much attention to your people who don't have the guns on their hips, have someone down there to keep that place under control and safe particularly over this weekend.
>> they can do that. Joe? Can't we? Thank you, mr. Barstow.
>> thank you.
>> I知 serious about that little plan, little coordination safety promotion plan. We'll work on it.
>> and I知 serious about it too. I want to see a safe condition out there and as long as we are hospital style competitors, I don't know how it's going to happen. I知 willing to compromise. But there's an awful lot of hostility in [inaudible].
>> okay. Thank you. Anybody else for citizens communication whether you signed in or not?
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.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, June 28, 2005 5:23 PM