Travis County Commissioners Court
May 2, 2006
Item 37
Number 37 is to consider and take appropriate action on request by emergency services district 4 for a strategy to relocate 10220 i-35 north to another county site. Yes, sir?
>> judge --
>> please come forward.
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> I think in terms of strategy that's an open court discussion. The court has not -- we need to formally hear the request. We did get a letter from -- two letters basically. The first was about selling the property on i-35 north. And my thinking was -- after I received that that the court needs to hear the tragedy strategy. I know you came down to my office and discussed it with me and the court needs to hear the proposal on it.
>> my name is kevin mcdonald. I知 president of the board of emergency services district number 4. We currently have on the long-term lease a former filling station property at the corner of braker lane and i-35 and it's used as a rescue and support station. By support station it means that it's the second end unit that's called out on large fires and large events where hazmat may be involved or extra oxygen bottles are needed. It's not a primary responding fire station, but it's a critical part of our overall fire protection plan and it serves both the eastern and western part of our district. We need to buy up -- nearby the road up lamar we have our main district offices, which are currently rented. One of the things I致e tried to do in our district are getting away from renting properties and get us into owning properties. I think it's a better use of taxpayer money. And it's more economically where we are in terms of providing efficient service. Because we have that property in the long-term lease and you're aware that the county was considering the sale of some property, I don't know if I can mention those in open session at this time and that you were also considering building -- designing buildings at the east side service center. We thought that might be an opportunity for us and the county to solve some of our problems. And one of them is we operate a training economy that's been very successful. I couldn't tell you which class number we're on now, but we're graduating about 25 cadets out of each class, and a lot of them are being hired right here in Travis County, so we are providing Travis County with the steady supply of extremely well trained, higher motivated people who are in the fire service for the first time. And that's been a very successful program. We'd like to be able to continue it. And we thought that by combining the support and rescue station function along with a main district office function and the cadet class function into a single building or location, we'll be extremely efficient and this might be a good time to try to achieve that goal. One option and one that we would prefer would be to acquire the building that the county has on johnny morris road. We realize that the amount of money that would be available from the sale of the property at braker lane and i-35 --
>> are you abandoning that?
>> if we release you from that long-term lease at braker and i-35 that property would become available to the county to lease, sell, do with it what you wish? We could get into executive session and talk about particular strategies and numbers about what kind of money that would on yield the county. The second option would be to take whatever monies were realized from the sale of that property at braker and interstate 35 and the county to build a building that would be suitable for the use I just described and then lease us that building under the same long-term lease that we have on braker and i-35, which essentially doesn't --
>> let me interrupt you. What made you divorce or step away from your original from moving to the johnnie morris site? Because when I talked with don smith he basically told me that there was something that was still -- that was still maybe one of them or that could still happen.
>> it's still our first option. It's still our preference that we do that.
>> still your first option?
>> yes. It would require us to put in a substantial amount of money to remodel and renovate the building. It needs some work in order to convert it to our purpose for fire response and for office space. And for that reason we prefer to have title to the building in order to put that kind of money into it because our budget, as all government budgets are, our budget is somewhat restricted. We would have to look hard at what kind of money we would have to invest in that building to suit our purpose. We also looked at the value of that property versus the property at braker and i-35 and we saw a substantial difference in the value and we wondered what kind of proposal we could make that would make up for that difference in dollars. And one of the ideas that we had were partnerships. We didn't want to get the cart ahead of the horse, but we went out and we did talk to Travis County sheriff, Austin e.m.s., Austin community college, Austin police department, Travis County, and we talked about the possibility of a backup emergency communications center being located there, the sheriff's office still having a substation there, Austin police department perhaps using part of it as a substation, Austin e.m.s. Possibly building on that site a station for e.m.s. Response. Noartdz, making it a multiple use facility. And we could go into more detail on that later on and look at the details and the numbers and how that would work, but our idea was that to make up for that difference in the dollars and what would be realized from the sale of the braker property versus the value of that johnnie morris site, but the one way that we saw to make that perhaps work or at least make an offer that would be entertained by this court would be to offer those partnerships and put together a package that would be a multiple use public service facility. My fire chief and i, who works for our district, visited with several county Commissioners to get a feel for where this proposal might go. And we got mixed reactions. We got discouraged because we realized that the budget is stretched and that you're looking at money. So we immediately found that there were two or three Commissioners that were working hard at the budget and were not -- not amenable the partnership and the most use as we thought they might be. And so we kind of went back to the drawing board and that's what prompted our letter to say, well, we would at least as a first step like to look at getting that property at braker and i-35 appraised to get an idea of what it would bring, get a dollar amount assigned to that. We know what the county appraises it, but we also know realistically know that it would probably bring substantially more in the real estate market. It's a corner location. Then with that number open up a discussion on whether the county Commissioners would like to move into a discussion with something on johnnie morris or something that we call the turkey farm, the future site of the east side service center. But we didn't want to get too far ahead. We didn't want to get into distinct proposals and map out a detailed plan on either one of those options. That's why we backed off of the idea of johnnie morris because at that point in time we didn't feel that the things that we had to offer or bring to the table in terms of partnerships would offset the substantial difference in the cost -- substantial difference in the value of the johnnie morris property to the county versus the value of the braker and i-35 property, which was all that we had to offer in terms of hard dollars and cents.
>> I really don't know where we're going to land at on this particular issue. I guess the appraisal would be something else that we could look at. I do know this, that on johnny morris road with the emergence of -- I知 looking at subdivisions in the area. (indiscernible). Got all those folks in and around that. What we want as far as this is concerned is to have an unreliable facility in this area with the children and everything else. That's really a big deal and they talk about quantitative life and all this other stuff. That's a good prime example of not having anything going on negative, undesirable to the community. I really don't know what's going to end up happening in that, but I know at the end of the day I知 not going to support anything unresolvable going in at that site anyway at johnnie morris or the other one either. You mentioned that in your second option. My concern is -- I think the judge brought that up earlier, since you went and spoke with the judge on that particular appraisal type of aspect. But at the end of the day again, my concern is that I知 going to fight to keep undesirable things from locating in that community.
>> we think d-4 is highly desirable.
>> I知 saying overall. I知 not saying you're not desirable. I think that folks are looking at this that are not desirable.
>> seriously, we think that -- [overlapping speakers].
>> ienl not talking about you.
>> I understand that. I was kidding with you about our being desirable. What we propose was a partnership public service site that would involve -- we had preliminary discussions with a.c.c., with Austin e.m.s., with a.p.d., with Travis County sheriff, although I understand their shooting range now will be located at another site. And we've discussed with some Commissioners the possibility of a backup emergency communications center out there, which it was that way previously when the communications center wasn't available, they did use it as a backup communications center. But a.p.d. Expressed an interest, Austin e.m.s. Expressed an interest, a.c.c. Was interested in using some facilities out there as classrooms. The large conference rooms out there that we'd be using for our cadet classes could be used by a.c.c. On certain days for our cadet classes at other times. We just looked at partnerships, but again that's not a decision for us, it's just something we put on the table for the Commissioners to consider. We thought that was one way to make that plan work, right, because we realized that the difference in dollars alone, just what we could bring to the table in materials of dollars by freeing up that braker and i-35 location, converting that into cash doesn't get you there where you need to be for the cash you would get out of the sale of the giant work site so. We thought by offering public service partnerships, it would offset that. Our second choice, of course, is the turkey farm. And that's what prompted our letter. But I think in either case the first step before going too far down the road in one direction or the other for other proposal is just to get that proposal on the braker-i-35 property so at least we have a number to start with and then we can go from there.
>> well, when we brought the consolidated, consolidate the office for one and four concept, we were told that it would be affordable if we sold precincts 4 and one and took the proceeds and applied it towards the cost. So from one day my thinking has been we would build the consolidated office and we would sell one and four. Of course, ultimately we decide whether to sell, who to sell to and at what price, but one is a lot more valuable than four, because four is in the floodplain, part of it, right? So we would want to get as positive a buyer as possible. That's kind of a way down the road because now we're designing the turkey farm. But on this I don't think we appraised the property unless we buy into this notion. That's why I thought the court should hear the proposal. When you brought it to my office, it sort of hit me out of the clear blue, I of course had no initial objections, and I知 trying to stay open, but at the same time it involves just a whole lot, selling the property on north i-35, building a facility' the turkey farm with the others out there. I don't know how that would fit in, but I thought the court should hear it. So in my view we ought to mull over it a short time, then put it back on the agenda and let you know whether we're interested or not. Now, if somebody has moved away from selling precinct 1, then I think that ought to be put on the agenda too. But then the question becomes do we create a financial shortfall and how do we make that up? So from the beginning my thinking has been we would sell one and four and get whatever we could out of them unless the bids came in so low that we took the position that we would be giving it away. Then I think we would be obligated to find another public use for it. That's kind of down the road, though.
>> it's not our place to advise you or suggest you take any particular action. It's your property and your court and it's your decision. We just wanted to make a proposal on one, and then when we saw that that proposal might not fly, we made a second proposal that was outlined in our letter. And by having an appraisal made on the braker-i-35 property did not marry Travis County to either one of those proposals at all. All it does is generate a number whereby an intelligent discussion can take place when we refer to the property at braker and i-35, we can even use some of that money to buy a new light bulb that just went out or something there. But that would be the purpose, just to get a solid number on that property so any further discussions would at least refer back to a reasonable number on that particular property.
>> oart thing we need to factor in is a fairness related to other emergency service districts because we had a proposal come in from hudson bend about wanting to have use of our precinct 3 service center, the old one, before we moved to the consolidated situation. I think the answer we gave back there was we can't give anything away that's extraordinarily away. That's extraordinarily valuable property. If you want to show us an offer, bring it on. We need to be fair in how we treat all of our esd's that are coming forward and esd's that do have a tax base and an ability to bring dollars to the table, however difficult that might be.
>> why don't we ask the court to mull over this, bring it back in a couple of weeks and give you feedback.
>> okay.
>> thank you for coming down.
>> thank you.
>> where is chief smith?
>> he's off to another training seminar. He just got back from one this weekend and he left this morning off to the other one. He and I exchanged e-mails yesterday and that's all I致e seen or heard from him in the last few days.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, May 3, 2006 11:17 AM