Travis County Commissioners Court
July 17, 2007
Item 9
Number 9 is to consider and take appropriate action regarding various issues related to east side service center, including, but not limited to cost overruns, scope of work and funding options. And the presentation I received yesterday was so clear that I eagerly look forward to the court hearing it and hearing roger's recommendation and the reasons for it, and we'll give joe and his people an opportunity to back him up -- to respond.
>> good afternoon, judge and Commissioners. Roger el khoury. The east side service center project was approved back in August 2005 for fy '06 and consisted of about eight facility, eight buildings. First is the fleet services ', straifs building, crew service building, sign shop. Covered vehicle parking a and b and vehicle wash facility. Let me give you a little bit of summary of each facility. The fleet services is a 35,865 feet of full service garage with multiple repair bays for both heavy vehicle and light vehicles. Repair bays are supplied with all standard garage amenities, including compressed air, auto, etcetera. Support service include a tire shop, we willing shop, -- welding shop, lube pit and storage for comement equipment and parts. Also in the fleet services there's a facility for personnel that includes offices, locker and changing rooms and break and training room. Administrative building consists of a town hall building suitable for large public gatherings of between 100 and 250 person and then administrative office building of 4,932 square feet. The square feet for the combined administrative building is 8,393 square feet, included in the administrative building is offices for tnr manager and support staff, and a reception area for public visitors to the east side service center campus. Also included in the administrative building is central a command for the campus, including dispatch and inspection service. Building number 3 is the crew service building. With 2,388 square feet, the crew services building provide a meeting place for road and bridge crew serving as both locker room and staging area. The building include the large indoor and outdoor meeting area, personnel storage locker, two manager offices and equipment storage and a small break area. Building number 4 and 5 is sign shop and warehouse, totaling 11,948 square feet. The warehouse is an air conditioned space for the secure storage of all tnr and road and bridge material. The sign shop consists of a large conditioned work air with a garage door access for vehicle requiring signage and delivery of large road sign. The sign shop also has an office with the network capability, restroom and a small breakroom. These support spaces are to be shared with my warehouse personnel as an efficiency measure. Building number 6 and 7 are covered vehicle parking. We call them covered vehicle parking a and b. The covered vehicle parking structures are 6500 queet each. These are intended to protect the road and bridge vehicle from excessive wear and tear. The last facility is a vehicle road facility. Vehicle roads has been deleted from the program as alternate method of vehicle wash has been found, but the equipment are still in the project. These are a summary of the users of those facilities, eight facilities, at this time. Now, I want to present to you for the record that we bid the project back in -- January 2007. We bid the project for only three buildings, the fleet service, the administrative building, the crew building as one lump sum project. It's not divided in basement of bid. And the bid came $5.4 million. I'm rounding off numbers here. Therefore we -- tnr staff and facility management staff went back to the drawing board and we did some scope reduction and value engineerings. And would send the project back on the street with additional buildings in may of 2007. We receive a bid from the -- we received three bids from three bidders. The lowest bid is -- the lowest bid for those three buildings came about 5.2, $5.1 million, which is about $800,000 from the first time we did it in January of 2007. That's a good reduction. I think there's still -- the building will provide the functional space as I described earlier. Then right now when we open the bid on June 6, we have received the bid as follows. This time we did it in a way that we can award the base bid and any or all of the alternate bids. The base bid was the fleet service, 3,005 -- 35,865 square feet. Alter active bid one was administrative building, #- 8,393. Alternative bid number three was the crew building. Alternative bid number 3 was the warehouse and sign shop building, 11,984 square feet. Alternate bid number four, covered parking lot structure, 650,000 square feet. Alternate bid number 5, 6,050 square feet. Alter active bid six was a wash bay facility, 1,040 square feet. I provided as a backup as exhibit 1, 11 by 17 17 spreadsheet shown first, the budget for this project back when we have-- in August when we requested them, August 2005 was $4,920,000. Then in fy '07 and after the katrina issues and all, we came to the court and asked the court for additional funding. We called it fy '07 project escalation fund of 20% that. Had $984,000 to the original budget. So the approval of the revised budget, $5,409,000. And that's what facilities is working from. Working from that number to design and construct all those facilities I just mentioned awhile ago, eight of them. Out of the $4,809,000 there's also some for planning and design. So it's $5,603,450. So that's how much money we have. And again, the bid was structured to have a flexibility of a base bid, an alternate bid based on how much we can afford in our budget, upper budget, 5.61 million. In the same exhibit, exhibit 1, I listed option award a, award b and award c. And including for all those buildings the square footage and the cost per square foot for each building. Facility management department is recommending option number c. Option number c awards the base bid and alternate 3, the warehouse and sign shop buildings, alternate number 4, the covered structure, and alternate number 5, the covered structure b. The total amount is $3,788,000. The schedule for that option c is 210 per the contract that the bidder bid on. Now, what facility management is recommending is an exhibit number 3 it shows a schedule. Exhibit number 3, for the options. What we said is in option c we would like to award the project in July, and the notice to proceed in August for 210 days. So we move on with those five structures. The construction of the five structures. In the meantime, we will redesign the administrative building and the crew building from metal -- prefab ra indicated metal buildings to metal buildings. There's not going to be a prefab ra indicated metal building. We will go ahead and specify the size, the height, the whole thing on the building, just like the precinct 3 office building with or precinct 4 office building. Just like the building is not going to be a prefab ra indicated, just get it out of stock and put it together. It's going to be a better quality than a prefab metal buildings. As you can see from the precinct 4 and precinct 3 office building. I sut here two -- I put here two months on the the schedule and then we're going to put it on the street, the administrative building and the crew buildings. It's a total of a 10,600 square feet, both of them. So smaller contractor or medium size contractor can bid on it because small buildings. And then we will construct it for 160, 180 days, for six months. That's going to make it -- the construction finish at the end of April. We allow two months for unforeseen condition and the rain and all. That will make it in June of 2008. That's option number c. If you look at option number a and b, any way you put contract is 270 days. So you will finish it at the same time in June. So what I'm proposing to the court is this: we will provide tnr with a quality buildings similar or better, quality building for the administrative building and the crew buildings, and we finish at the same time. What we'd like to do is we'd like to award the base bid and the other alternate bid to accept the administrative building and the crew building. By doing so, by doing so, back to exhibit number 1 under option c, we'll be be left in the design -- in the construction budget $1,815,000. Out of that would be $151,000 as a four percent contingency to run and manage the base bid -- the fleet service, the warehouse sign shop and two covered structures. If I use all the contingency, whal be left in -- what will be left in the project and the project construction is 1,000,663 $1,663,000 so to construct the administrative buildings and the crew buildings, which is totaling of 10,800 square feet. If I divide the available fund then would be 1,663,000 by the 10,600. Fufly you will have about -- roughly you will have about 160-dollar per square foot. You can construct those two buildings. In a normal construction process, those kind of buildings would not cost more than $120 per square foot or 110, 120-dollar per square foot. Considering all this escalation, all this market condition with the construction, even if you go up to 125, you still have 160-dollar per square foot, you will end up with a quality buildings, on time, as depicted on the schedule. At the same time, you will save about $900,000, you will save. Where did $900,000 come from? If you award the alternate bid, item number 1, for $1,485,000, plus alternate 2, criewt building for $600,000, that's a total of about $2,085,000. I'm saying that you can build those for $110 per square foot. Let's assume that 110 square foot for the sake of comparison, and that will become -- if you multiply the 10,600 by $110 per square foot, then you will come out with $1,185,000. You divide -- you subtract that from the 2,000,085, that's where the 900,000-dollar savings could be. That $900,000 could be used for next year budget f its, security, furniture, equipment and fixtures, and also the off site electrical and the move fund, which we're requesting in fy '08.
>> and we're sure that we can fill out alternates 1 and 2 and rebid them?
>> yeah.
>> it does not affect the base bid?
>> that's correct.
>> you're saying that you think those two buildings can be built for 1 10 or 120 a square foot?
>> that's correct.
>> although when we put it out to bid we got 10 responses in -- when was that? We got 10 responses for the three main buildings. That was initial bid for fleet service administrative, town hall and building, this is the very end of last year, and of those the lowest bid that came in was for 5,813,000 for those three buildings.
>> but this was changed, Commissioner. Back in January they came about like 5.9 million, the three buildings. Tnr staff and facility management staff reduced the scope and did the value engineering and it dropped. And what happened right now with this existing bid right now, with those high prices, then you can add the $3,032,000 for the three building, that total to 5.1 million. So we saved about #- 800,000 dlap back then. What I'm trying to say at this time is the $1,663,000 would be left in the budget without exceeding the budget. We're still within the budget. It's going to give tnr the administrative building and crew building as designed, except for the structure is going to change because I need to put it back on the streets. I have to do some changes either to reduce the square footage or the type of bid structure. I'm not reducing the square footage. I'm not reducing the mcbe kel or electrical or plumbing. I'm not reducing anything, the enclosure. All I'm trying to do is a hidden structure from the prefab ra indicated metal buildings to a metal buildings just like other beings. 1,000,663, yes, we can make it happen. And within that budget. That's a normal construction process on the outside. I don't know how to explain the 251-dollar per square foot for the crew building, Commissioner. What happened is if you look at this only from this -- from the comparison by numbers, if you look at the wash house and sign shop building, it's about 11,048 square feet. If you look at the exhibit one, the cost as we receive from the contractor is $47.01 per square foot. For a total of 563,000 square feet -- for a total of $5,063,000. When I look at alternative two, which is the crew building, the cost is $600,000. I mean, that's three times larger in concrete volumes to do the slab and the peers, three times larger than the amount of steel you're going to go in the buildings, three times larger than what the inclosure of the building is going to be and less --
>> but 12,000 square feet of the warehouse is unconditioned space. Doesn't that account for the significant difference in the cost per square foot?
>> that's correct. But you still have the sign shop is fully conditioned. The sign shop consists of a large conditioned work area with all this inside offices. We've got a couple of offices on the inside and also it has a break room, restroom, all of them air conditioned. And it's about like 60/40. 60/40 meaning like if we said 12,000 square feet, the sign shop and warehouse, 60% that have number goes for the warehouse and 40% goes for the offices.
>> I guess I would say we would be able to save nine hundred thousand dollars is contingent on actually being able to shrink down the cost per square foot considerably and dramatically from what it has to o. This exhibit 1 and also on the presumption that when we bid it two months from now that we're going to see a significant -- that there will be a significant change in what the providers, the builders will estimate. Aren't those the two conditions that we're dealing with here?
>> yeah. Two buildings, the administrative and the crew, we think that in two months when we bid it in two months, I think the dollar amount we're estimating will be 1 10 or 120.
>> what if there's a hurricane in new orleans between now and then? Hypothetically.
>> hypothetically for every -- the 900,000-dollar savings comes from we say will be $110 per square foot. It could be #- 800 or 750. But it's going to be a savings.
>> it came up before and we budgeted and we wanted to go out and try to find a way to bring this thing within some kind of range where we could afford to move forward on a particular site. And we've had a lot of ups and downs through this whole process. Of course, it just makes sense to me in my opinion to receive as we're going, looking at option c. And if we can go ahead and construct that -- and I guess in-house will be the a and e portion of this and we still -- it appears that we're still on the same time line, even though you say 210 days, but actually when you go through the process, it's about -- it would be about the same time as far as completion date is concerned. And it appears to me that we should move forward, I guess, looking at the two buildings, the administrative building and also the crew building, which is not a part of this. Let's proceed with what we have now, which makes sense to me. Proceed with what we have now and these other two buildings allow the work to go in in-house as far as the design and stuff like that and also get it put on the street for construction. The money's here, the saving's here, the amount of north Austin is here, the $1.6 million that we have here as far as part of the budget and stuff like that. It makes sense. I really don't see the sense in it. Before we were out of line with what we were trying to do. And we asked you to come back with us because the square footage for the amount of the square footage that we looked at earlier in my opinion was ridiculous as far as how much it cost. So we've come up with a better way to reduce the cost of the square footage and thing like that, and then also proceed accordingly with what we have here now as far as the construction and moving forward with that stuff, and then look at those other things that we had challenges with, eliminating the two buildings as far as letting them be pulled aside to let us do in-house the a and e portion of it. And then get the thing on the streets for construction. And it appears that the way this thing is, we're not going to lose any time because it's going to all come together at the end of the road. So I'm not understanding all the controversy here except for the fact that I think we need to move forward.
>> mr. Gieselman, explain the controversy to us.
>> thank you. Actually, it boils down to I would rather have a bird in hand than two crickets in the bush. This project has been -- this project is overbudget. We agree it to that. And it's a matter of we put this thing out twice and the bids that were received are fairly comparable. So it says that quowf got some pretty good bids back. Roger contends that the unit price of the two buildings he can improve upon that. That's a promise. That's future. I would rather address the overruns now and get some commitment to fund this. I have watched 970, $940,000 of contingency money be allocated to other project. You don't have $940,000 anymore because it's been used on other projects. So I'm fear thafl tnr is going to get short sheeted at the end of the day and not have the quality of building that we currently have or perhaps not have them at all the next time we go out. So I'm just expressing my fears here that at the end of the day we won't have what we currently have in the bid. Now, if I have some assurance that after we go out and try roger's attempt at getting better prices, he doesn't get those better prices, then we'll still have a court commitment to fund the project and get it done at the same quality we have right now. So I'm lying out what my concern is and I'd rather deal with these up front, but if we want to do it one more time, then I've stated my case and what tnr wants. We're interested in a quality product without any diminish. Of the quality of the product that we get out of this process. And at the end of the day I would like to make sure that there is money available to do it.
>> joe, and I hear what you're saying also.
>> joe wants your assurance that the court will do the right thing.
>> exactly. And we're committed to do that. I don't think anybody on the admissioners court is not committed to quality. I don't think roger would state that he couldn't bring this in within a budget range and not also allow quality. I think -- I didn't hear him say that. So roger, if you're saying that, I think you ought to let us know. Joe is talking about quality, he's talking about being overrun as far as the cost and all these things are concerned. You say you can do it within the budget range that you have. And if you can't do, we'll have to come back to the Commissioners court. Everybody be wants to know if we can be reassured with what's going on, roger?
>> I want to state that one fact for the record, that all the facility management project so far we're bringing on, all of them with good quality, with great quality. And we're not going to short the quality for east side service center. East side service center will be the same on a quality perspective as the others. Quality is expectation of the user. Expectation of the user is that if we build this building, it will be exactly like they approved on the plan. I'm not going to change the square footage, I'm not going to change equipment, I'm not going to change a knob on the door. I'm going to change it even better. So the quality is there. We commit to the quality.
>> let me hear your explanation of why you believe that if we design a metal building that the bid will come in lower than this 176 and 251.
>> judge, --
>> that's what this boils down too, right?
>> the $251 per square foot, I cannot explain. I don't think anybody can explain this. Nobody can say that because of the market value of the construction increase in material, it went up to 251.
>> what you're saying you can do is reduce it by a third. 176.9, by a third. You said you could do it 110 to $120 per square foot?
>> yeah, 1 be 20 at the most. I mean, all our buildings we did so far, with all this escalation and increase, I provide a spreadsheet for that. Precinct 3 office buildings, we did 37,000 square feet after structure, metal building, lots of brick, all bricks and all this nice finish, and it cost us $3.4 million.
>> the square footage cost was how much?
>> 37,000 square feet for a $3.4 million.
>> how much that was a square foot?
>> let's say a little bit over $100 per square foot.
>> that was when?
>> that was two years ago. And then you get the precinct 4 office buildings, it was $85 per square foot for 60,000 square feet.
>> so you would be real surprised if we don't come in around 110, 120?
>> that's the most you could do.
>> or at least significantly below the 176.
>> that's correct.
>> and so you can try that if you want to and the court can approve it, but if it comes in closer to 176 than 120, then you just want to know whether we will fund it. I guess if we go out, if we try this strategy and it doesn't work and we have to pay closer to 175, two dollars, then we'll have to do it. You're asking for a chance to try this other strategy and you think that we can get two contractors on this tract building separate projects, right? And finish at about the same time?
>> that's correct.
>> anybody else here on this item who wishes to address the court?
>>
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> would you like to come forward and give us your name and comments?
>> stewart miller --
>> come up to the table. He. Ian sprowl.
>> you heard our discussion. And what we are dealing with here is I guess our expectation and anticipation based on recent projects that if we design a metal building, the cost per square foot will be significantly lower than the prefab ra indicated metal that we asked bidders to build on previously.
>> for those two buildings.
>> for the administration public building and the crew building.
>> yes.
>> for the whole project. The project was really one big project with a bunch of -- all the buildings broken out into one big piece. And the only thing I'll say is just looking at it -- I'm going to go back and talk to our people about it, but what's happened is we cherry picked a lot cheapest ones. On bid day you're getting, I don't know how many different subs bidding in the last 15 minutes and we're putting together a spreadsheet that's got six different alternates. And some of those buildings are moving around the square footage numbers, moved around.
>> > will the bidders lose their councilmember alvarez of scale by -- their economies of scale by having the more expensive buildings cherry picked out?
>> I don't know. There may somebody smaller contractors that couldn't bid on a five-million-dollar job that will be bidding on a two-million-dollar job. And that sort of thing. Those are -- that's true. The square footage numbers were at a lot smaller square foot, so our dollars per square foot are going to cost more for a smaller building. So I don't know about comparing the buildings on a cost per square foot. But this bid originally went out, I think seven bidders bid it the first time. Three bidders bid it last time. Now you're going to go out again. So I don't know.
>> that's the reason I asked him do you think that the base bid at $84 a foot will change if these two come out. In your opinion it may. Hey, we're government. You expect us to -- quite frankly, if we can build it for 1 10 or 120 and I think we'll find out, it would be -- we'd be foolish not to. This is what kind of gets us in trouble, I think, from Travis County standpoint with the industry. It's not that it's roger's fault, it's not any of our fault. We know that we're in a period where it is expensive to do projects like this, but we either have to rescope the living dick ens out of a deal or we have to -- and sometimes rescoping means you can't have that big a building. So I don't want the industry to feel like okay, it's happened to us again because I've gotten more than one call on stuff like this. But it's none of our fault. It's not like we're out here trying to mess anybody over. We're trying to get -- build what we need for a price that wealth afford. And my major question would be the question that I ask. Because obviously the base bid is the largest part of this deal. And if you can maintain the base bid, somebody can still say that's fine, I still want to do your 35,000 square foot building for three million bucks, then okay. I can see where a guy like you that says, okay, I might have felt differently about this had I known it was going to get cherry picked and I think that's probably a pretty decent way to couch it.
>> it's just difficult to be completely accurate on a bid that has seven different alternates. Like we had mechanical bids that came in that were right at low, but it was one number for seven buildings. And you're scrambling to try to get that broken out in the last few minutes. Bid that's not got to go in writing and all that kind of stuff. So it's -- I've got to go back and look at how ours come together. When you look at the whole numbers it looks -- hey, we were all looking at the same job. When we were looking at individual buildings, it's all over the place. There's a reason for that. It's not that we weren't looking at the same thing. It's that you're scrambling.
>> it's legitimate for you to shake your head and you can be frustrated by this. I can see that.
>> let me ask you this question. Generally speaking, not for this project, but just generally in central Texas you, would you expect higher bids for a prefab ra indicated metal building than for a metal building that is designed in metal?
>> you mean like a structural steel frame? Structural steel frame is typically going to be more expensive, it's a better quality building. In a lot of ways. Metal building people might not agree with that, but I think it builds a better office building and you don't have to hide large structural members that metal buildings have and that kind of thing. That would be my opinion.
>> any other questions? Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
>> now, if I may continue on the source of funding right there. Joe mentioned awhile ago that -- let me mention the source of funding. I gave you a copy of this right here. What it is is the the project that's highlighted, one, two, three, four, has been completed, done. We spent 1,607,122. You can see in that small box I also highlighted for the project. They were completed out of the 20% escalation fund, which is total $2,000,491. That's how much 20% for the project. We spent $1.6 million. What's left right now is 883,730. That's a second line from the small box. Here's what the problem is. The 20% escalation for go right now is 129,000. The 20% escalation for precinct 2 buildings is $322,700. What's left for the tnr east side service because we bid with it right now before the other two projects is $362,030. Short of 621 -- 621,000, the shortage on that came out from if you look at the -- if you look at column g, additional fund above, below 20% escalation. Some project went below the 20%, which is gardner-betts and heman sweatt courthouse. But the buildings used up the $621,000, so that is a found the east side service center right there went to. When we ask -- when we asked back in December to have funds for the -- above the 20% escalation for the ruiz building and the airport boulevard, pbo came and said let's use the escalation fund because those are reserved. Let's use the reserve first right there on that. And let's see if at the end we'll come back to 2.49 -- 2,000,491. So that's why we use some fund was allocated to some project to salvage -- to leverage the other two projects. Now, the 621907, what I'm proposing at this time is this. In attachment number two, exhibit number two rks I'm saying go ahead and use all that's left to leverage the 984 needd for this project. Let's leverage whatever is needed now for the reserve, which is 8 gee thousand 730. -- 883,730. That's under option c, source of fund, option number 2. It has a real savings, we just finished post road right now where the saving is $144,000. We completed this project. So I'm saying that 883, 730, let's use all the reserve, plus the 1,270 from the saving budget, saving project, then you come out with the $984,000. This way you don't go for allocated reserve, you don't go find money somewhere else, you still find the money within the allocated budget for the reserve and for saving from the project? In awarding the base bid in alternate 3, 4 and 5, I still have $1.36 million so I can move forward with those two projects. That's.
>> what project did you get the saving from in line 14?
>> that would be -- line 14 would be post road building.
>> how much money is in allocated reserve. Do we know? Roughly? Except for whatever happened today, because I didn't take that into account, we have $2.1 million in ear marks of 1.16 million with a balance after ear marks of just under a million dollars in allocated reserve.
>> he's not asking for allocated reserve, though. He's saying he wants us to use the escalation reserve plus the surplus from the post road project. But we may have to use the allocated reserve on other projects for the end of the fiscal year is the way this may leave us.
>> will we finish those in fiscal --
>> the buildings we're already sending to purchasing to put them on the street. It's going to take two months to have the bid back. And I believe the gold buildings I do not have. The precinct 2 office buildings we'll put on bid in August, so we'll receive the bid in October or September.
>> if those two miraculously go and we need the money this year, you're looking at about 410, 420.
>> $400,000.
>> we don't know. We don't have bids then.
>> basically. That's an unknown.
>> you're saying the bids would be in our on control? Move approval of the roger he will core recommendation of c, and that basically is to design and rebuild as metal alternate 1 and two.
>> joe, you have my commitments that if these bids come in closer to whatter now, -- closer to what they are now, this court will stand behind to you get the projects done.
>> if it comes out to be closer to the 2 million for the two buildings, I think we should revisit our methodology for cost estimation.
>> okay. The methodology or the person doing it?
>> the methodology.
>> this going out for bid, come back to see where we actually really are, after you do your adding and be all these other things that are necessary for the crew building and also the administrative building, when will we have some inkling of what we need to hear? Give me some idea.
>> it could take a month and a half from now. It's going to take two months until we open the bid, so sometime in October.
>> sometime in October we'll know where we are.
>> and I think it's going to be below $1.6 million.
>> this messes up their time line if it's October, and if we had to -- not saying that you're going to go back to them, because if we're going this way, we're going this way. We're effectively taking the two buildings out of the mix and hopefully everybody is going to stand pat with the base bid because we can't go back. If we go back to them, then they really are upside down and they probably have messed up their whole building schedule.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>> .
>> I want you to where we are coming from, it's not a flipant decision to get you guys out of the mix.
>> for those in the pup that maybe not know, this thing has been hard around a few times. The ease side service center is to accommodate precinct 1 and 4 services combined and also 2, I believe. Just 4? No portion of 2 at all. One, two and four, I think of some portion of two in one location for the service center. So this is what this is all about for those wondering what we are discussing.
>> really all the parks in Travis County involved.
>> exactly.
>> how crucial is this to do this right now, if we don't have the money and the way the economy is, I mean, very rich. What happens if we wait? Can we wait ?
>> I don't expect that the economy will go back to where it was two or three years ago. I don't think we will see lower prices by waiting. I think that the construction prices tend to ratchet. I don't see us going back to the same environment we were working in years ago. I think it may stabilize but I don't think we'll be a we'll lot better off waiting you know, for a recession to come along.
>> I know it's not going to go down, probably continue to go up, but what I was alluding to is if the numbers get big and we have done enough volume engineering to try to meet all of the financial needs here, is it something that can wait until the bond election?
>> certainly is a choice. We still currently own the other two existing satellite offices and right now we're negotiating for the sale of one. So if that were to happen, we would need to pull it off the market.
>> if we pass this motion we are putting out these two alternates and rest of the project goes forth. On the two alternates if the prices come in higher than we can afford, we are hoping to save money, a significant amount. Otherwise this vat--strategy would not make sense . We are put ago lot of faith and trust into what you are telling us today. And joe, not ignoring you either.
>> we are concerned with that. I know we need the facility, but I just wonder if it couldn't wait for the bond election when we would really have all of the, ask the public for all the money that we need, and gives us time to really discuss what we may need, to include all of the stakeholders.
>> 1.6 million, though. We have 5.6 million in hand.
>> are we depending on that money, selling the two properties so that we do have that kind of money ?
>> that is actually, the budget amount is authorized. We hope to offset that by the sale of the two satellites in the future. So you will be getting money back once we sell the other facilities. Right now this is cash in the till and can be used for in purpose.
>> we are trying to figure out way to get everything built for that amount or less. That amount is there. If we have to augment, it shouldn't be by that much.
>> I guess we need a way for the bids to come in to see where we will go or will head.
>> that is what roger is promising he is going to do.
>> all right, roger.
>> we're going ahead with the bid, with those things, Margaret. Don't be confused by that part of this thing is moving. It's just those two buildings.
>> the other thing that I was concerned about, I just don't want the efficiency to be lost in the combination of the two two precincts. And the other thing is the response time in what needs to occur in all of the parts of Travis County to which we serve, provide services. That is really the highest priority I have to our liability. It may well turn on which steps we take to verify adverse impact that we may have caused, and then what legal remedy the property owner is entitled to. So it may help if we maybe shared that letter with you because he did send us a letter. See what I'm saying? That is what it boils down to.
>> sure.
>> I was uncertain as to exactly what the specifics were so we posted for open court but really is a risk management legal question matter.
>> what I suggest is that we get the information in risk management and then be prepared. If you have some questions you want to ask up front, I imagine we will try as best we can. We really need to read everything and be prepared to answer.
>> a lot of this may be what steps do we need to take. We may have to go get some, in order for us to answer causation questions, get an engineer or somebody like that to look at some of this. Especially when you start looking at adverse impact on the well. It's easy to say no but experts can probably put us in a better position.
>> the you're ew process whenever someone makes a claim against the county it goes to risk managementment they are trained to deal with it. I guess I'm confused on how this got on the agenda.
>> I asked risk management to come in. That was the question I was to ask. I thought we needd to ask in a legal way. That is the reason I asked the judge.
>> we'll try as best we can. Without knowing any of the facts we are not going to be much help.
>> okay.
>> right now.
>> number 20.
>> 25 and 26 I don't have any issues with but lately these matters have been controversial whether we want them to be or notlve--or not.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, July 18, 2007, 18:30 AM