Travis County Commissioners Court
December 20, 2005
Item 6
Number 6 is to consider and take appropriate action on the transportation and natural resources department road and bridge fiscal year 2005 through 2006 work plan.
>> we laid this out last week, and I’ve had a chance to get some input from members of the court on individual roads. So unless there are further questions...
>> it's pretty straightforward, joe, on some of this. I did have a follow-up question, and I think we may need to look at it overall in how to deal with it from the perspective of cost. We ran into the cost overrun deals this year where we actually had to appropriate whether it was $4.8 million or whatever, but dealing with cost overrun. My concern is even within the work plan itself and because of the increasing cost for material and all these other kind of things, is there any type of method that we can utilize to latch on to projected cost increases for material or for this or for that or whatever? Is there any way we can deal with a situation like that or are we doing it piecemeal, muddle through with it? How can we deal with it?
>> it's really best done before tnr submits its budget in March. We would be able to get some pretty good information with regard to forecast of prices, construction prices. Before we submit our budget, so that we can provide pbo with the documentation that would support any type of increased allocation for road spending. It really is at that point an issue of availability of general fund and road and bridge dollars. And what comes to the court in aggregate from all of the departments with regard to the budget, even with increasing prices, if there are other demands on the budget, it may be that we have -- tnr has to decrease the number of roads that we pave in order to fit the budget. So you could either raise the allocation if prices of petroleum are going up, and we can tell the court that when we submit our budget. The court can certainly authorize additional funding to cover the price increases or it can ask tnr to reduce the miles of road that we pave to match the budget koch r. Constraint. Either way by the time we get to October, by the time we get to this work program, we should be in agreement on just how much money has been allocated and how many roads will be paved. So I believe for this particular work program, we're pretty much fixed. If we put out contracts in January, whether they're just totally off the wall in terms of prices, then we come back to the court and ask to amend our work program to lower the number of miles that we can pave with the available budget.
>> so in essence what we have here before us now within the work plan itself is not -- well, it's something that you can lean on, but unless we are able -- if Travis County is not doing the work and so many else is doing it, there may be hidden costs out there that we may not have anticipated. Is that what we're saying here? If you issue the contract in January to start a lot of the work in paving season and all of that stuff, there may be a hidden increase out there because of whatever?
>> we should be doing our homework in the first of the year to be able to forecast out what we expect prices to be in the next year and a half. At least the next year. So that when we get to January -- when we bid these projects, we should have at least we should be in the ballpark with regard to the prices of construction. Unless there's just something totally outstanding that has occurred that interrupts supply or increases demand that surprises everyone, we should have a pretty good grasp on how much our cost of business is. All I can tell you is we'll try to do a better job at tying down what those are before we submit our budget to the court for fy twourch. '07. I do think there are some structural changes in the oil market that will not be doing away any time soon. I think the more I read on this subject, I think we're in a longer term trend towards upward prices than anything that might have just occurred because of katrina or short-term interruptions.
>> okay. I’m looking at the -- I guess something may be off a little bit, but I’m concerned about that study also for that 500,000-dollar comprehensive study to look at our watershed and throughout all of Travis County. We're really wanting to make sure that that gets kicked off at a time frame whereby we can have some type of results so we know how to position ourselves on that.
>> we will bring back a scope of work before we put it out for rfq. You can see exactly what we're asking for and we'll try to kick that off early in the year so that a study can be underway as soon as possible.
>> okey-doke. Thank you, joe.
>> any other questions, comments?
>> thank you. It's sometimes more helpful to individually go through that. I appreciate you taking the time with them to kind of go through all the program areas yesterday.
>> I move approval.
>> second.
>> discussion of the motion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you, joe.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, December 21, 2005 11:44 AM