Travis County Commissioners Court
January 8, 2008
Item 4
Let's come up number 4. Consider and take appropriate action to establish Commissioners court committees for a comprehensive capital improvement program for the redevelopment of the Travis County downtown campus including executive level policy and strategy committees, b, working level staff committee, c, citizens advisory committee, and d, public input access. And the one that I think we should discuss today the the, we do have draft charges, right? Provided yesterday. Susan has requested that we spend a bit more time mulling over those, which is fine with me. We study those --discuss those a couple weeks back and I think I suggested it for this week and that's it's here today. If we look at the suggestions for the citizen's advisory committee, we have various groups represented. My recommendation to the court is that each court member would appoint one more, one citizen to be on that committee. I anticipate that if we invite membership on the committee from these entities we will not achieve the diversity we desire. The reason I think we should go ahead and move on this, my recommendation would be for us to contact these entities and see if they can immediately give us the name of a specific individual or if they need additional time. For example, some of them may need another peting. If they need additional time, how much time they need. See what I’m saying. It's kind of difficult for us to promote diversity without knowing what individuals comfort. But if we head in this direction at least we ought to start thinking about it. Even for us it may take a little time to come up with a specific person, is what I’m thinking.
>> I have two other suggestions for discussion.
>> okay.
>> one, I had suggested Austin neighborhood council. On second thought, it appears that we are neighborhood representative heaviy. And in consideration of the judge's recommendation, and in the interest of keeping it an efficient group, I would suggest that we take that off. Unless dana would prefer a and c prefer the a and c represent neighborhoods rather than dana.
>> alicia benedict, executive manager for administrative operations of when we last met we had drafted a letter for the judge to send out to the various entities. And what the letter states is send your nominations, resumes for consideration to appointment. So we thought we would, because of the issue of diversity, we would bring those to the court. I think what you are suggesting Commissioner eckhardt, is probe. What we are suggesting is a big committee. We would like to still allow the resumes to come in, have the court consider along with your appointments to make sure that you have a good cultural and economic diversity also in business and neighborhoods represented.
>> the other suggestion that I wanted to put forth for discussion, again, being mindful that the citizens advisory committee, once it gets over about ten people, it could be very difficult for the committee to be efficient. But also, being mindful of a desire to have the citizen's advisory committee and the executive committee have a link so that they really are working in collaboration, that one member of the judiciary and one member of the Commissioners court not on the executive committee be an exofficio of the citizens add viery committee. Just a suggestion. Wanted to see your thoughts because I thought it would create a bridge between the committees that would be available without stepping on the toes of the citizens because it would be exofficio, nonvotin.
>> that sounds all right.
>> I don't have any problem. What do we do with the bond advisory committee? We have citizens and basically have staff work with them. But we have electioned officials available. I always come to the first meeting but don't get invited back, so I let that be. In an exoff icio capacity, that's fine with me.
>> we usually have them refine and finalize their charter that they bring up and they develop their own subcommittee and run themselves. It's staffed through tnr and we develop the information sheets for them and do various presentations at this request. But they really are a group of citizens who are analyzing the information for themselves and reporting back to you.
>> I wouldn't mind being an exoff iccio member, judge.
>> okay.
>> one of the things, when we were talking about this, judge, you have repeatedly made a point that the need has to be demonstrated and we need input from the community, which I absolutely agree with. I had kind of drafted a letter which I think encompasses the things that you want, and you may not like any of it, but because you just got it, let me read it briefly. Travis County is forming a blue ribbon committee to consider issues involving a comprehensive redevelopment of Travis County's campus in downtown Austin. The Commissioners court would like to invite your organization to nominate a member to serve as your representative on this important committee, or you, which would be your individual appointment, not an organization. Travis County has serious space shortages in its downtown campus and will have to embark on several large construction projects in the near future in order to avoid crisis in its ability to deliver services to a rapped idly growing populationi think it's very important to tie this to need and services because we are not just tired of the buildings we have or think it would like noos--nice if we have something else. It really is impeding our ability to deliver services and I think that's an important message to get to our population. Instead of looking at each building individually to address space needs Travis County is considering a comprehensive multiproject capital improvement approach tor the redevelopment of the downtown campus within the context of the highest and best use of county resources. The county is sensitive to the facts that many groups will have an interest in the project and wants to provide the opportunity for constructive sit inputs. Although the county's goal must be to provide services to the sit as --citizens as the law requires, it is sensitive to the community. I just plain list the structures. You might not like any of that. The county prefers to be respectful of the capital view corridors and its downtown retail and residential neighbors. In order to receive citizen input the county is appointing, I put 11, but it would be pore than that with this list, maybe 12, individuals representing various interest groups throughout the county as well as individuals representing citizens in generally. The committee is likely to be needed for two years with frequency of meeting depending on issues. The committee appointed are expected to be the major communication between the Commissioners court and the group represented. The committee member should be able to openly be able to consider all viewpoints and reach consensus for the good of the whole. There will no down be trait--trade-offs in making recommendations to the Commissioners court. There's going to be a lot of issues, hard work, and need driven. And I don't know, since I’ve not participated in any of this before, whether you would have the organizations just tell you who they want to represent them, or if you would look at resumes and appoint those, and what that means. But I do think that this is a really good opportunity for us to communicate and educate this community on what we do and what we need to do that work. Because this is going to be an expensive project. They need to appreciate that in order to get the support. It will lead, at least, I would say, to a significant amount of bond financing which will be on the ballot. And that will be an issue as well. Hi informally talked to the judge. As you are pointing your members you might consider having the judge appoint the chairman because this will be a very diverse group, and there will be a lot of heated discussion. We almost need to have someone that is accustomed to doing that in this community to bring all of those various ideas together and then to communicate with you. I mean, I just read this because this is kind of my conception after, judge, I heard what you were saying. And also, you know, I have to say, when I’ve testified on revenue caps, my mantra is we need to connect needs to services. This is the same thing. The building, the facilities, the need for whatever, needs to be integrally connected to services which we have to provide. So for what it's worth, that would be my input on that.
>> I think that's true, we need to do that positively off the top and probably keep doing it on an ongoing basis so people will really catch on to it.
>> right.
>> the only other suggestion about historical structures, do you think maybe the little elementary over there? Peace elementary school? I’m just wondering.
>> I had just listed those because this just came to mind. We may want to put that on there. There are people, and this group kind of represents their interest, that are very interested in those structures. This kind of lets them know, for those concerned about the park, we too are concerned about the parks and marion sweatt. Not thinking what is the county going to do, are they going to come in and eliminate these structures that are very important to us. Just what I have written there. We are not saying that, however, is our key objecttive because it can't be. Our key objecttive has to be to provide services as the law requires us to do, unattractive as some of that is.
>> let's think about it between now and next week.
>> okay.
>> do we want to wait until next week to address the citizens advisory committee also?
>> I’m in agreement with the number of people that we would appoint, basically because I think it's also getting the word out to people in the community, the voters. And they are going to be real important to educate in the process. Maybe one person does, I don't know, maybe one person would do that. Is that enough citizens outside of the c b d?
>> you would expect it to be this committee's assistant, basically. I have always said that I think we need to do additional work on the need and that is number one. If you can't sell the need, you don't sell a hundreds million dollars plus. My thinking, though, on most of these groups, if you notify them if I invite them to provide a representative, my guess is they will take a little time. Even for us, it will take a little time too. So, in addition to sending a letter, I also would make a phone call and ask them if they can make it in a few days, fine. If they need more time than that we need to know how much time they need. I don't know that I would suggest asking them to send a resume and we approve the resume. Seems to me that if you invite them to send a representative, you ought to accept the representative. We may want to see the resume and also ask them what perspective they will bring.
>> contribution?
>> yeah, I’m assuming that they will bring the perspective of the entity that they are coming from. So your recommendation initially was, we have the downtown Austin alliance and the neighborhood association. Those are different, right? So what was your recommendation?
>> to take off the Austin neighborhood council in recognition of dana's inclusion can, since dana and anc are neighborhood activists representative organizations, whereas caa is a business entit.
>> okay. Austin neighborhood council. Any objection?
>> new did that, that would be seven. If they each appointed one, that would be five, which would be twelve.
>> when we get the list of them and look at them and see exactly who we have, I would be surprised if we don't suggest adding one or two others.
>> yeah.
>> seems to me we want a cross-section of our community on the committee.
>> right.
>> if you talk about a two-year commitment, we're expecting them to give serious thought to who they recommend. That's a fairly substantial investment of time and energy.
>> that's why I put two years, judge. This is significant. By the time we look at funding and bond, the useful for people who want to make that commitment to that.
>> yes.
>> that should be downtown Austin neighborhood association, dana.
>> the third one.
>> right.
>> okay. Are we headed in the right direction? There were a lot of documents that we looked at. I guess my recommendation would be that we spend a little bit more time reviewing them. And suggestions we have, that maybe we get to leslie, roger or alicia or belinda on Friday so that we get those incorporated into a document for distribution to the court on Monday. Any recommends changes, if we can see those before Tuesday, it would be helpful. That way in court, hopefully when we to --arrive to court on Tuesday, we would have in mind language we want to recommend. Does that make sense?
>> are you expecting comments on the promode letters?
>> everything except me recommendations that go without objection.
>> .
>> I also have a question about the charters. Has it been our practice in the past to have the committees develop their own charters?
>> it depends on what groups you've been working with on that. Some of your committees are very specific like your elected official salary committee has a very specific charter. Your citizens bond advisory committee has a charter outline and have made some suggested changes to that and sometimes have gone with the charter itself. But they also have very finite processes and objectives. In the overall planning process you may want to leave something open to suggestion for the committee, but perhaps express what your priority concerns are for them in writing up a charter or the priority goals for the charter.
>> on the appointment of the steering committee for the civil court project, you did adopt a charter. It was, albeit, a broad charter. Then, you know--
>> we facilitate their work if we propose a charter. At the same time, I think we ought to be open to any recommendations that they have. But I think the understanding ought to be that rather than have them unilaterally make changes, that they just make recommendations to the court to approve. My guess is that we would be accommodating.
>> the reason why I bring it up is that the charges for the committees are undifferentiated and it might be valuable for us in this next week to consider the differences in the charges for the executive committee versus the advisory, citizen's advisory committee, how they complement one another but aren't identical in charge.
>> it's provided as food for thought.
>> yeah. Two weeks ago we suggested having it back on the agenda today am -- today. I didn't know whether we would be ready or not.
>> with the holidays kind of taking--
>> right. Are we missing anything? See if we can get to the point?
>> one other thing as far as the working group. We had discussed last time about the working group being an ad hoc group brought together as needed by the executive committee rather than stating a static membership.
>> what I had in mind was one big working group that would divide into subcommittees if necessary . But we expect the working group to be out there working. The executive committee is meeting once every two months. To keep it moving, the working group really, y'all been meeting once a week?
>> except during the holiday.
>> my only question is that the population of the working group needs to be determined by the Commissioners court or are we delegating that to the executive committee and possibly to the citizens advisory committee as their needs arise?
>> I think we ought to appoint. We are free to add others. For example, if I were an elected official and something was going to impact my space, then I’d want to be part of that discussion. I don't know that I would want to be part of every discussion.
>> she is on the committee and she will bring staff in. There needs to be some ability for us to--
>> I think we ought to appoint the committee, the working group or steering committee. Ought to be on the list of things we do. What we will do on on the agenda item is try to cover, to list specific everything that we need to address. Maybe we will circulate that in draft give court members an opportunity to respond as well as othermenten next week, hopefully, we'll just go down the list and land on it. Is that all right? Don't you agree, the working group really ought to be appointed specifically with the understanding that we can add people as necessary. And there will be times when other will need to be brought into the discussion.
>> if you look at your backup, please. Than would be after page 4. These are all the departments that would at some point in time probably be affected. So I think what you might do with the working group, if the court wants to appoint it, you appoint a core group. And then is it the desire of the court for us to bring back every time that we want, for example, to include treasurer, to include parks or tnr, to bring that back for an appointment? Or will that be a given that at some point in time all these people will be impacted, as opposed to ending up with a group of 30 people of just think about it, about the dynamics of that.
>> you are referring to the support staff?
>> support staff, customer and user departments, and then customer and justice related. Government related and justice.
>> everything in the county, isn't it?
>> yes.
>> we need a smaller working group than that.
>> that is where I’m heading.
>> I think we'll hear from them from time to time but they are not going to be on the work group.
>> we have had a working group in place.
>> it's working. Working well, I might add.
>> may well start with that and figure out whether we need to reduce or add a little bit.
>> my suggestion is start with that group great idea.
>> one other item, judge, I’d like to bring up. We had had an executive committee meeting scheduled for this coming Thursday perhaps given more time to go through some of these things, the members of that executive committee would be better prepared to outline a broader plan for how the program is going to move along and perhaps that meeting needs to be put on.
>> excellent idea. Until at least after next Tuesday. Instead of Thursday this week, Thursday next week, preferably. May as well let the court land on some of this. I know you all love to meet. Anything else on item number 4 today? We'll have it on next week with more specific wording. Cyd, since we have you there, thank you, judges, for coming over. We'll try to have this next Tuesday at 1:30. That will be a little better.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, January 9, 2008 8:00 AM