Travis County Commissioners Court
November 13, 2007
Item 6
Why don't we take up item number 6. To receive update , discuss and take appropriate action related to the following items concerning the capital facilities strategic plan version 1.1, a, summary of space actions accomplished from the strategic plan and those that deviated, b, direction to continue to develop or redevelop a downtown campus to support justice system and court-related activities. C, direction regarding development of a general government campus for county services that do not need to be located in the Austin central business district. D, future campus location of the county seat, and e, next steps to determine the tenant pagup for the downtown redevelopment and generally government campus. You expect an action on this item today sm.
>> I was hopeful that we would have several actions today. Just in support of strategic directions that we're trying to take.
>> I would not be surprised in the county judge were to ask for a one-week postponement of action.
>> okay. My guess is that you will say many things that I need a week to mull over.
>> all right.
>> I promise to be ready next week.
>> I知 belinda powel, capital planning coordinator for the planning and budget office. Just as a reminder, I did, this is what your strategic plan, your original printing looks like. And this is what the reprint looks like. Some of you will have it with a tan cover and some of you will have it with a peach cover. But it has been or was distributed to every office. It lays out a lot of information. Some of it has to do with the way you would propose to allocate space, and some of it has to do with an utilization of your existing assetsinventoried at the time the document was created. It was printed in 2002 but the group started meeting in spine. We spent six to nine months working on some strategic objectives and the rest of the time challenging ideas and putting together the basis of the document. As anover view, the first item on the agenda, you have an attachment to your packet that has a little table that demonstrates where you are in executing the countiwide strategies laid out in the strategic plan and then a detailed summary that follows and talks a little bit about what we mean by generally consistent and deviated to some extent or somewhat. The first thing that I will note is that this is a strategic document. You would expect that as every project is developed for execution, there will be refinement, not only of the data projections but also about what your consents for that development were or are, and what you have actually accomplished is execute 7 of the project that were outlinedrb those were all generally consistent with the direction that was adopted in your strategic plan. One deviated somewhat in the extent that when you redeveloped 50, 51, chaves, which is the weatherization
>> [tkpa] silt--facility, the plan contemplated development, but when looking at drainage at the site and determining to reuse a portion, the foundation, I believe, and part of the sub structure for the orange mall facility, it was determined that it was not feasible to locate ag extension services as well that's an example of how you would expect to use the plan, refine the opportunity and make a project decision. I want to make clear how the document is intended to be used so when you talk about deviations you understand what it is that you are talking about. With that, you also have seven projects that you are making progress on. I致e called it partial progress because many of those are in planning stages or you're getting ready to make various decisions that will lock you in on development opportunities. Substantial progress is for those projects that you've made acquisition, you partially completed in some fashion, or you're in the final stages of completing. So they are not on the col completed checklist yet. So you have made significant progress on the 20-some projects that were identified. Most of your progress has been in precinct or satellite facilities. That's why we have part of the discussion we're proposing to have today, related to the general government campus and the gown town campus and actually identifying what those two projects are. Because you are on the cusp of determining some of the final stages of who needs to move out of the downtown and continuing that process , you have acquired substantial land along airport boulevard. We haven't yet formally designated it as a generally government campus, but you have been work to go relocate services to those co-located sites, so it makes sense to me and would be one of the steps that I would ask you, would be to actually adopt that as the general government location. It helps us from a planning perspective in determining how close you are to completing, what your final stages might be, whether or not you want to go back and look at a long-range specific to that site, and generating that type of information. So I would next week ask for the designation of airport boulevard facilities as your generally government campus. In addition to that we're looking at beginning a significant development, redevelopment in the downtown campus, which has pretty much always been identified by the facilities from the eob to I think it's ninth street and then from new oasis to lavacan as your campus, kind of your campus layout. And looking at, in looking at citing a new civil courthouse you're going to need to make some strategic decisions about the properties that you own downtown before you would want to undertake something of that size. The other thing that is facing you is the fy '09 budget process and identifying that there are a number of services that are still located downtown that have are coming to the end of their internal expansion capabilities and as they request fte for fiscal '09 consideration there will be space challenges ahead of us. So in order to put strategies ahead of you or in front of you that make sense as far as location, moving forward with relocations to the general government campus, looking at interim lease spaces, those types of concerns, we would want to make sure that we were targeting the right strategic areas so we want to continue , you know, you don'those space want to do is lose productivity on on the part of your department by your capital program. And I think that if we are, to delve into this issue, I either need direction next week that we are going to step back and reinvestigate this, or that we are not going to. So that we can really look at, as you have all said, you know, the last remaining piece of this move to the generally government campus, to really have some productivity implications if it is not done well. Even if it is the county seat space downtown and the majority of folks are still moving, or if you are all relocating, there's going to come a time when some of your key folks move ahead of you. I mean, because it isn't likely that given the volume of square footage we are talking about for tnr and hss and all the financial services and yourself and all the administrative services that are still down in this mix, they are not all going to move at the same time. So even if you are going to talk about phasing to execute this plan, we need to look at what the key issues are and what the productivity concerns on the part of the departments might be. I think that is where you actually get a smaller working group. I would suggest smaller working groups and even some crossover groups as you go about the business of interviewing these departments and talking about that particular concern. It would be most helpful if I could say of a certainty, the court is going to stay down or no , the court is going to move. If that is not possible, the next best thing would be that we are re-airing this discussion and trying to determine what the issues might be if the Commissioners court elects to stay downtown. That allows at least the investigative work to go forward to determine, you no e what the magnitude of what would be staying downtown would look lik.
>> no matter when we do it, it will not be easy tell a department, we have decided that you to in the need to be located in the Austin central business district, as we say in c.
>> right.
>> however, there is a way to objectively determine that. I am not sure what factors you include, but I can think of three or four just almost offhand. I questions one question is, why wouldn't we go ahead and do that. Because if you acquire dirt and you have the ability to go up, a big question is do you have three stories, do you have, you know, four or five floors. And I think that current and future meads ought to determine that for you. I guess on c, and I guess c is entwined with e, because once you decide what departments don't need to be down here, you also will know who is left. Then the question is where do they go. When and how do we put them there. And the other thing that we don't address here is that I have suggested a couple times that we really ought to, if we have already identified county-owned property, if I were a taxpayer I would be interested in finding out whether the court could liquidate some of that, put that cash in a property acquisition fund, see what I知 saying, sue we're not really just issuing debt to acquire this. We have not, I guess we have acquired a few pieces of land by cash purchase. But we probably have the ability to do more. If you are looking at a civil court's building on the horizon plus other smaller pieces of land, it seems to me that you could probably generate enough cash to purchase some of the other smaller piecesrb and maybe get way down the road toward covering the construction cost then your major debt would be issued for civil courts building.
>> I do know that several folks are working, facilities is working very hard on that inventory. If we're going to discuss this again next week, I知 sure that we'll probably have something ready by that time. The point would be putting this back on when the court feels that you're ready to provide some direction whnrks that is next week or after the 29th.
>> I think as best we can, some departments were listed in the master plan.
>> yes.
>> I think we ought to look at those departments and figure out whether we think they still are better off in another location, or whether we need to leave them down here. I mean, that should be one of those initial determinations, shouldn't it? Yes.
>> if I were one of those dense --departments and the court should I should move away, the sooner I found out, the sooner I would contact the court members and tell them whether I superintendent support--support the objecttive.
>> .
>> let's get them down here.
>> parking may make it more attractive than initially.
>> for some it may be an issue of it's attractive but. I guess what I would like to say particularly for the remaining departments on the list and to acknowledge that you actually already have relocated an executive manager of justice and public safety, and complications that creates for those offices, that we approach it that it's not necessarily an all or none. A decision to relocate your departments doesn't mean there would not be adequate work space provided for stacestaff downtown to accomplish their day to day operations. I think that is not a consideration that we delved into in detail because we didn't expect that we would be executing this piece of the program in the initial stages of the strategic plan. But I do think it's something that needs to be, you know, at the pleasure of the court, that it would be something that I would want to be able to assure departments that we will keep productivity in mind when you are talking about relocation.
>> you're not asking us to authorize you to tell the departments--
>> no, you would do that.
>> judge, I really don't, I知 not going to be comfortable making a decision next week on most of these things. I really want to do this the 29th.
>> probably should. Kind of makes sense. Once we see everything. More information might come up that helps make the decision.
>> I think that perhaps b and e, we could and should address as soon as possible.
>> that may be impacted by the discussion on the 29th. So if we hold off on this, what is the first Tuesday in December in December 4? December 4. Can you live with that?
>> as long as the an understanding that part of the discussion of the 29th will also include potentially county seat building downtown.
>> ought to be part of it.
>> and that would not necessarily be contrary to your moving forward with just what scenarios might be. I知 sure there won't be any detailed specifics, but in general that discussion may also occur.
>> okay. Why don't we look at the 4th. We mind ourselves of the departments that we thought would better be located else where. See if the same reasoning applies today. And look at that list on December 4.
>> that really is chapter 4 of this document. Starts on page 52. Was distributed to every elected and public officially last week as parts of the backup for work session. If minimum needs copies I have a reprint run. I have a limited number. And I can also e-mail the doubt for those who want to look in more detail.
>> rather than have you and your coworkers remine--remain idle between now and 2004, I had in mind it a 2007 look.
>> I will see what I can do as far as updating growth patterns. We'll do that.
>> anything else on this item today? We'll do that too, look at that, page 52.
>> chapter 4 starts on page 52.
>> 59 has the chart, the makup of the general governmentare those the once you are going to update?
>> I maybe not be able to update. I will update to include what the growth patterns are. If I can get to square footages, if not using the exact same methodology, I will. The only risk is for departments to assume that is their square footage. I wount want them to do that. I would at least be able to look at fte projections and where they are today versus where they were.
>> we'll have will have the emback on December 4 and plan to discuss parts of it at the work session on the 29th.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, November 14, 2007, 18:30 AM