Travis County Commissioners Court
July 10, 2007
Item 10
Number 10 is to discuss and take appropriate action regarding research for potential sites for a new Travis County regional medical examiner's center and associated issues and a couple of weeks ago we did get from staff a list of county-owned property with a I guess a priority listing and one that appeared to be preferable. This item back on because we said we would consider giving further direction and it seems to me appropriate for us to broaden the net and look for potential privately owned sites that the county might acquire, and after that search, I guess bring all of them back and let us decide.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners...]
>> six acres, judge, is 330,000 square feet or 270,
>> [indiscernible], that gives you a lot of parking spaces, if you can use it. You just can't get into one of these crazy things where you go out and you find six acres and 2.8 of them is a creek or a cliff or something that you can't --
>> or for water retention.
>> yeah.
>> yes. Yes.
>> good morning. Roger el khoury, director of the facilities management department. The number that we gave you on three acres is specific to a suburban and watershed area. Meaning that, you know, 65% of the site has to be in
>> [indiscernible] we cannot go beyond that. Our calculation right here to come up with the three acres, based on the suburban watershed area. If it turns out to be in a ruler watershed area the numbers will be different. If it turns out to be in the urban watershed here in the downtown area, the numbers will be less because you can go up to about 95%, 98%. So this change, the calculation change, so what we are saying here is when we look at all county-owned buildings, county-owned land, most of them, they are in the suburban watershed area, that's what the population comes out to be. We have three acres, including ample parking, the buildings we say that's about 47,000, 50,000 square feet the new buildings. At this time before we go further into the plan that -- that -- and parking space also for the impervious cover. That's why where he come up with the previous of about 83,000 square feet, which is about 1.91-acre and perch vows cover -- not impervious cover
>> [indiscernible] total of 128,000, square feet, which is about three acres. We like to have the buffer zone for the future expansion, in case we end up as non-suburban area, to require more impervious cover so we have enough land, so this is the calculation. The existing site alicia said 45,000 square feet including parking space area, because this is on
>> [indiscernible] 0.5 less than 43,560, which is like plus or minus 23,000 square feet.
>> currents site on half an acre.
>> about half an acre. The building is 14,000 square feet, the rest of us is 10,000 square feet with the parking, that's what alicia mentioned, 24,000 at the site.
>> it's very small. Parking inadequate really for the visitors.
>> I have a question which some ways dove tails with what Commissioner Daugherty was talking about. We service 45 counties. We are not a medical examiner's district that Travis County, it's a Travis County entity and -- and --s so of course this is kind of a touchy topic of those 45 counties we have the 10 capcog, nine star flight, then 26 out of region counties. In order to pay for this infrastructure, because of course the charging structure we have for out of county -- out of county forensics doesn't include the infrastructure costs, just includes the costs to do the forensic examination, correct?
>> actually, if you look at the pricing formula that we are utilizing, it does -- actually it does include the building itself. It does include infrastructure as well as the actual costs if from the medical side.
>> would we be in a -- in a -- we would be advantage -- would it be advantageous to pursue a medical examiner's district?
>> we have -- we have done that before. When we did the overall study on the medical examiner's office, we -- we talked to the -- to the judge and -- in Williamson county and leslie we talked to some j.p.'s also. In order to pursue a district. There's only one other one that I'm aware of in Texas, that's tarrant. And -- frangdly there was just not a whole lot of interest.
>> so this is -- this is one of those areas in which we are providing a service to -- to a much larger region than our own for understandable and laudable policy reasons. Is there any chance in the future as far as -- we are urbanizing so fast from laredo all the way up to the north of dallas. Is there any chance in the future that our service area may contract because other areas develop their own more robust medical examiners?
>> that's always a possibility. When counties grow to the size of 500,000 population or whatever and are capable of having their own medical examiner system that can always happen.
>> but we don't see any hard evidence of that happening any time in the future?
>> not that I'm aware of, no.
>> there's only at the medical examiner's office, all of the state of Texas, the largest one, houston, dallas and tarrant all service the surrounding counties. And so does bexar. It is indeed a system, a lot of your rural counties and your smaller urban counties are very dependent on the larger counties to provide the services in their -- and therefore fees are chicagoed to those -- charged to those counties. The other issue is just a shortage of forensic pathologists.
>> nationwide.
>> nationwide, yes.
>> when we were down to one medical examiner, we sort of hinted to the other counties that -- that now may be the time for you to -- to develop a relationship with another county with the medical examiner's office. I don't think we got a single taker, did we? The other thing is that we have kind of bumped our fees up to make sure that we cover our costs. And -- and I hate to say we leave it in the field. We are one of the top two in terms of the fee that we charge, right?
>> yeah, we are.
>> [indiscernible]
>> you almost have to target some of the heavy users. But just based on population, Travis County would need a larger facility if we just did our own, wouldn't it? We could gradually increase it so -- so --
>> I think that's the other side of it, that you have to look at as well. As the doctor mentioned, you know, you are always looking for the signals and the signs of what the communities are going to be doing around you. But -- but in the same way, you are also looking at what's happening within your 10 counties, what's happening within Travis County? And we do see that growth potential. Which encourages a bigger facility. However we are moving forward based on two reasons if you remember from court. You directed us to go towards accreditation and also you gave indication that you were satisfied with serving the 45 counties. So based upon that, that's where we are headed. Of course the study itself will give you an opportunity to look to see if that's definitely where we want to go. But -- but that's where we are right now is trying to go forward with the study.
>> do we know whether the district and tarrant county serves counties outside of the district on the contract basis, kind of like -- like non-district. But if he can further, we can study -- further look at that, I mean I forget what we did last time. But if we want to do more of that to see the feasibility, that's fine with me. Now, but in terms of the search, what I'm hearing is six acres rural area, three acres urban.
>> suburban area is about like three acres what we need, plus three acres for buffer zone -- judge, I'm sorry.
>> it needs to be accessible. But what other kinds of search criteria do we need to -- to put?
>> we have zoning considerations that would have to be taken into account because you have -- because you have gases that are used on site, because it's a very special use, medical examiner, forensic facilities doesn't show up on the city's list of -- of acceptable uses for the different zoning ordinances, it's a -- it's a special classification. We would expect at whatever site we end up on to rezone it public. But nevertheless there would be concerns about immediate adjacencies with other uses that are not appropriate to be next to a building that has hazardous gas in a bunker.
>> so zoning we would look for commercial industrial and plan to change that later on to public?
>> yes, sir.
>> but in materials of the search, though, commercial industrial does that get it for us?
>> commercial industrial neighborhoods would be preferred.
>> access to major highways, the other --
>> yes.
>> yeah.
>> why is that? I mean, I --
>> why do we need access to major highways?
>> I know that you want a major road, but why is it that you have got to have a major highway.
>> to -- the medical examiner can speak to the need for access county-wide by their investigator staff and also access county-wide from the other people who come to -- to the me's for various reasons.
>> I know that you don't want a jeep trail. I mean the fact that you have a county road or something that's -- that's black top, I mean that's -- wouldn't -- wouldn't -- isn't that really what you need? We don't need i-35 or 183 or 71 I mean do we?
>> well, at a minimum a paved road would be good
>> [laughter]
>> we are getting there. Honing in on that road.
>> but certainly we do have a lot of different types of visitors to our office, including funeral homes, transport personnel, our investigators and -- and out of county law enforcement and transport personnel. And it is -- it's just a lot more convenient being off -- or at least in proximity to a major highway rather than to -- to be a few roads off of a highway with a few turns.
>> the investigators also need to have quick access to accident scenes and crime scenes, they don't want to put them way far away where it will take them a lifetime to be able to get to the scenes that they need to be at.
>>
>> [indiscernible] there would not be a paved road to it anyway, in Travis County. I asked this question before, but I can't remember the answer. Where are the medical examiner offices located in the other urban areas of Texas?
>> let's see. I could name a few.
>> okay. Dallas, currently there are offices off of i-30, their new office is going to be across the highway off of i-30.
>> how far from -- from say downtown or --
>> probably about three miles from city center.
>> okay.
>> tarrant is -- is right in the hospital district and that's relatively close to the downtown area. Nueces county is -- is right where the major hospital facility is. A lot of the -- of the medical examiners work in part of the hospitals, so you have them in the core city areas, just like ours is, as a matter of fact. So -- let's see that's harris county, harris county is also in the medical complex. Bexar county is also part of a medical complex. All of them are part of a medical complex because they are represented to a hospital or a teaching institution, again they are all in a medical area.
>> that's another aspect that we haven't discussed with you yet, which we will later. The medical school. That's a -- you know, if we had a medical school here in Austin, it would be a perfect thing for this facility. So -- so I don't think we are just looking at billing a facility -- building a facility that's going to be it. There's lots of other options that you can develop with it later on. I will say in regards to the major highways, there's tons of reasons why you want the major highways, we travel on the major highways because it's transport. You don't want to be transporting through, you know, neighborhoods and through areas that maybe have -- have people around them. It makes people uneasy, even though you don't have it labeled, most people can figure it out. So -- so but also the amount of people that -- that they utilize, such as a funeral home, et cetera, you will find that the major highways are used most often.
>> judge --
>> we have given up on expanding where we are.
>> in executive session today you are going to get the reason why. One it's pretty limited. We look at that, too, with the children's hospital as an opportunity, alicia and I visited with -- with jesus, her ex-boss and talked about it, are there options, are there things which maybe we could do together. Of course he already has plans made for the nursing which is going to immediately start taking that space. I think, judge, that will be part of the study, too, depending on the information that you get today in the executive session, what are the limitations for that site. We think if we stay with 45 counties, continue to grow, that -- that the available site certainly will not fit the needs. Are there other alternatives that could be looked at, even in that locale that we didn't get good indications, a very brief conversation that looks like they have already started making plans or have made plans for the dell hospital where it used to be.
>> the study last year addressed the ability to expand at the existing site because we have completely covered the existing site with building an existing parking. If you were to expand building area on the site, you would be displacing parking. And -- and it's already short on parking. It's critical that all of the morgue activities, body cooler, body handling areas, be located on the first floor, those are nothing that you can handle very well at all in a multi-level situation. There's just limited capability to expand that first floor area to the -- to really the only place that you could do it is a parking lot to the north. There's not sufficient area there to put enough expansion on the morgue surfaces to meet the future needs.
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> I'm going to have to check the site plan and get back to you on that.
>> about 10, isn't it?
>> about 10.
>> there was one other criteria, a minor one, always one that we have to look for in new county site. Is that we have access to the gap network, if it's not there cost for steps of the gattin network would be part of the site acquisition budget.
>> did you say that you gave us a report -- feasibility of expanding at the current site before?
>> I believe that was addressed when -- when the -- when the forensic center report was presented in February of 2006.
>> if you find your pertinent pages, could you give us a copy?
>> certainly.
>>
>> courthouse.
>> from the courthouse. It's a point of reference for generally doing county business back and forth, the medical examiner is part of the county government. They have ropes they have to come -- reasons to come downtown, but also they testify in court.
>> okay. I mean what interests me on that one is, number one, I mean, I think where we got into a little bit of a, you know, controversy, was -- was in precinct 1, and it was nine miles. And I said, well, how about let's look at the other place that we own, you know, adjacent to our precinct 3 office building, it's only 11 miles, so it's only two more miles. I mean, is there a -- I mean, now the other one is next to star flight, I don't know maybe star flight meant something to the -- to the equation. But if -- if we are looking for something that we own, now I know that we have some challenges on three because I think, you know, we are under s.o.s. Rules in three, but, you know, maybe we could work something out. But -- but is -- I know that that's, you know, going the other direction and it's got some challenges. I mean it's on a couple of major roads. Unless you have a helicopter, can't get there real quick because you have to get to oak hill. Is that -- I mean I think we need to hone in on something here, that being does this thing really need to be close to hospitals, center city, if that is, well then let's just say it so that we know and -- and, you know, let's identify that area. Now, obviously we are for the going to own a lot of pieces in there. Whenever you start buying property within the areas, if that is the criteria, then you are paying per square foot. And, you know, I mean to the tune of maybe 50, 60, $70,000 an acre and if you are talking, you know, then maybe you are going to be forced to spend a minimum of a half a million -- I think that you are going to have to spend a lot more than that. If you are really going to find three to four acres, you know, inside, you know, the -- the cbd or at least somewhere close, I mean you're talking about mega dollars per acre. I mean now -- I don't know I mean maybe we need to have a -- you know, something from us saying you know what that cost factor is not going to come into play with this I mean if this needs to happen, so be it. If the dirt costs you a million bucks, I would at least rather get it out so we kind of know what we are talking about. Otherwise we really are talking about going outside that 3, 4, 5-mile radius and going into the 10 to 11-mile. If we are doing that, then I would push like the dickens to say let's have it in precinct 3 and have it. I mean if we can do something, you know, in the oak hill area. You at least can go out there and start buying, even if you are having to buy another piece of land. You know, you have got a chance of going out there and buying something that's -- that's affordable. But I know that you all are -- are uneasy about this. Because it's kind of like okay we brought you this thing back and quite frankly you all tell us what criteria you really want to use to determine. Isn't that what you all are really asking us? We went back and did our due diligence, we need for you all to tell us what we need to do.
>> I thought it was kind of a good idea. It is a county function no doubt. To keep costs down. Let's say we isolate what we already own and try to do that, approach it that way. We have already made a commitment for accreditation, I think when we interviewed the -- the candidates for the different medical -- examiner positions, we mentioned that. That was part of the interview process. That would they be supportive of the -- how they felt about the accuratation process. Accreditation process. We spent time doing that, it was time well worth it. But I don't think we need to let that time go to waste either. So we need to get on to make a decision here so we don't delay this process any more than it has to. I think it needs to be non-political decision making as well. We need to go back and forth on this, to where it goes, doesn't go. It is a county function that affects every citizen of this county.
>> no matter where we want to take it. The nearest people want to know what the other possible sites were.
>> of course.
>> in my view, we ought to see if there's a privately owned site that we can use. It may be that after a search we come back negative. But the first step I guess is trying to figure out how much land you need and then taking a map, moving ahead, right. We can get a current map. Then sort of driving by that property visually observing it, see if in fact it looks as good in person as it does on the map. No matter where you try to go, even on county-owned property, the nearest people want to know how did you end up with this one. We need to say we looked at public and privately owned sites -- we looked at privately owned sites before. One of them is not available because there's a hotel on this site. But I can't recall the other sites that we had. Before we narrowed down to that one which became our preference. So I would take a look. I don't know that it takes that long, does it?
>> well, I think when we look at the real estate issues, there's so many places we need to look at, I would like to engage in one of our brokers, they have better
>> [indiscernible] about where are the land could be and I think -- see we don't pay anything to our brokers, 0 cost in there. And if they found the land, they will decide on it, then the sale of the land they will get the commission from the seller. Commissioners court direction I would like to engage the broker to look for land for us at least, you know, out there to see what's going on.
>> makes sense to me.
>> all right. From my viewpoint, the more of -- the more criteria a tract or site meets the more I'm willing to pay for it. If we have to just settle for something, I think affordability ought to be a positive. But we know is that the closer that you get to a downtown complex, probably the more expensive it is.
>> absolutely. It's going to be the real estate here in the downtown area,
>> [indiscernible] it's just like Commissioners court said, it's mega dollars. Just the land.
>> if we ask a broker to turn this around for us in -- in say 46 weeks, is that reasonable?
>> I think it is reasonable to find the land, you know, for within six weeks. If we engage brokers say let's immediately we will do it. All that we have to do is just -- just ask -- after the court approve, we ask purchasing agent to -- to
>> [indiscernible] one of our
>> [indiscernible] brokers, then the process starts at that time.
>> we rotate that list of them.
>> that's correct.
>> should be pretty easy to find out who's next.
>> absolutely.
>> any objection to that?
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> let's get it done.
>> okay.
>> has to be formal. I move that we authorize staff to get with purchasing, secure the services of an appropriate broker, services provided free of charge for the Commissioner later on, to help us identify potential sites that meet the criteria that we listed today.
>> second.
>> discussion?
>> that is county-wide.
>> that's county-wide.
>> county-wide.
>> Travis County wide.
>> Travis County wide. I will agree with that motion then.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> thank you all.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, July 11, 2007, 11:00 AM