Travis County Commissioners Court
February 14, 2006
Item 38
38. Authorize the starflight manager to accept first aircraft purchased on contract no. 05c00297bf, from american eurocopter, llc, unconditionally when aircraft is in compliance with contract, and to accept it subject to completion of all items needed for compliance with contract immediately after inspection. Good morning.
>> good morning.
>> good morning.
>> good morning. Pete baldwin as the interim emergency services coordinator. With us we have program manager casey and director of aviation operation will culberson. We asked this item be placed on -- I’m going to let casey explain exactly what is going on. It has to do with accepting the helicopter, the first one under the current conditions so get training started sooner I will let casey finish that up.
>> the contract doesn't really specify, just says that Travis County will accept the aircraft and the contractual date is February 15th. We are currently mapping on inspection tomorrow with willie and stan, the director of maintenance. There are possibly some outstanding items that we think are not substantial. And that we do have substantial compliance with the -- with the -- that would be --
>> sorry about that. We do have substantial compliance we think with the contract. We did inspect the aircraft last week, they are continuing to resolve the issues. We did feel that there were some things that were in Travis County's best interests to delay. As an example, [indiscernible] battery requirement in the contract. They are prepared to do that, it's going to take them a couple of days to do that. We felt in looking at where we were with training. That it was more important to delay the [indiscernible] battery and allow the pilots to get on with training to get the aircraft in service as soon as possible. There are a couple of things that are not substantial that we would like to accept the aircraft as is with the -- knowing that those things would have to be completed before final acceptance. But we do need to be able to make a preliminary acceptance so that the pilots can begin trilingual training.
>> so we actually test the aircraft before we start training in it?
>> yes.
>> the aircraft is flown already [inaudible - no mic]
>> pull your microphone there toward you so we can hear you.
>> okay. Then if we move forward with this, it would come to euro copter in arlington Wednesday morning. We will do our inspection, they would do their completion flight, then we will start training after that. So the things that we are talking about is we asked for a-- [indiscernible] battery, nicad battery, still need to be completed on this aircraft. It won't of course any operation or safety irs on the aircraft.
>> we will make a note of that and give them to eurocopter.
>> we will have a list of anything that's not complete per contract attached to the acceptance.
>> did we ever work out the specifics on the trade-ins?
>> we currently have a specific amount that's in the contract for the trade-in. They are working in fact on Friday we will have a company in town that's going to look at our aircraft, right now we are anticipating those aircraft, the value of the aircraft to have actually gone up since we made that decision substantially since there are no ec 135 or 145 aircraft available through 2007. So that has driven the used ec 135 market up. We are anticipating the number that's been discussed with that potential purchaser is 2.2 million. And if you remember I think the contract was 2 million -- 2,008,000. So that is a substantial increase over what was in the contract. Until eurocopter actually has a contract with that particular purchaser we won't be able to define that. But it is looking positive.
>> the requested action today is to accept the first helicopter, test it, inspect it, then start our training.
>> I think what we are asking for is tomorrow we will do a detailed inspection using the contract as our guide and based upon substantial compliance with the contract we would like to have court approval to accept the aircraft so that the pilots can begin training. With any outstanding items being noted that they will have to be complied with.
>> somebody locally is looking at --
>> Friday. It's not locally, they are coming here.
>> I heard it was christian smith [laughter]
>> purchasing that thing to go out to his place out in rosanke. [laughter]
>> one of the things that I wanted to have you all touch upon is one of the reasons that we wanted to try to keep the schedule so compressed in terms of moving on to the training is that the longer all of this process takes, the more hours that continue to accumulate on our current bird which can have an impact on the resale value in terms of with wanted to keep those hours did a certain number, certainly a lot of runs with December and January with all of the fires, we wanted to be a account to get out of those birds and into the new birds and keep the resale value. Correct, casey?
>> that's a very good point. Exactly what kind of drove our decision was to get on with the pilot training as opposed to having them take a couple of days to do the battery. Where we feel the battery can be done at a later date and not have the overhead of the flight time risk.
>> com pliengs and full accept answer -- compliance and full acceptance.
>> I didn't understand your question.
>> the agenda item he is to those star flight manager to accept the first helicopter unconditionally when aircraft is in compliance with contract. So the question is how do we evidence compliance with contract? We will know at that point that the helicopter has been accepted unconditionally. On valentine's day this is an appropriate word for us. [laughter] you see what I’m saying? If we have three items that we think need to be fixed, and those three are fixed, how is the court supposed to know so we can say okay we owe the full amount for helicopter 1 because all of the conditions have been met?
>> I think what we were proposing, we would come back to court to authorize the payment. When we were authorizing the payment, at that point the conditions would have been met. We are just making an acceptance tomorrow so that the pilots can start training on Thursday and come back to you the following --
>> something in writing from you all to say that hey, this thing is ready to go, let's pay it 100%. So there would be an official record of the conditions having been met.
>> we will provide that. When everybody is done.
>> okay. That was a softball, you know. I thought the wording of the item was such that --
>> we had not actually addressed that procedural aspect, but what I would propose is that they do a letter with whatever the situation is tomorrow from the county to -- to you're I don'tcopter that says we accept subject to the following if there are conditions that need to be met. If it is -- if it is completely in compliance tomorrow, then we accept this aircraft as in compliance with the contract and I would assume that we would do that in the same way that we do notices within the contract just so that it's covered very efficiently and very legally.
>> something in writing that we can make of record.
>> I would assume this language is word the way it is for a reason.
>> yes.
>> completion of all items needed for compliance with contract. And we just evidence that in -- that way we will all be singing the same song.
>> yes, sir.
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> discussion? Comments? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you all very much.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, February 15, 2006 11:17 AM