Travis County Commissioners Court
January 29, 2008
Item 22
The only other item is number 22. Are you ready for that one? 22, consider and take appropriate action on directing county staff to develop doirksz the Travis County code relating to disposition of certain types of Travis County owned real property unrelated to road construction. Maybe this is not yours after all.
>> lisis is going present e im.
>> [one moment please]
>> I値l just go through the steps and chime in if you need to. We know that the first step is to always conduct an assessment of the utilization of property and determine an appropriateness for its sale. Do we use it, will it be valuable in what we're doing in the future, how is it utilized now. If we sold it, where would we move, how much would that cost, those sorts are things are issues that we take a look at. A detailed list of all those steps was provided by t.n.r. Last week and have been put together by t.n.r. And facilities management that talked about ownership and identifying encumbrances and evaluate potential county and public need and current and future value, those sorts of things. So you have the specific guidelines for that particular step. Once we have looked at a piece of property and determined that we are not using it to its highest and best use, that in fact it is part of inventory that could be disposed of and either proceeds brought to the county or a better use for the property is proposed because sometimes that will happen also. We bring that issue to the Commissioners court and get approval to sell the property. We then go out and hire a broker, and that's number 3. We get approval from the court. We have a pool that was put together in purchasing along with facilities management of brokers that have submitted proposals and are part of a pool. So we use that particular pool. We contact that broker pool, we ask them if they are interested in this particular -- in helping us dispose of this particular piece of real estate. We partner with purchase to go negotiate the broker's fees. Usually 5, 6%, depends on what the property is. And what we can negotiate. And then we request purchasing send a notice to proceed and a letter to the broker. And that's the process that we use, for example, with farmers market. We establish terms of the sale of the property and listing price based on one of several of the things that are listed, either the broker's opinion of value, internal value assessment, or sometimes we ask for formal appraisal. We haven't always done that, but at times we have done that, ask for formal appraisal of the property. We also added d under 4 to make sure from is acknowledgement by the broker upon him taking this particular contract or this assignment that potential buyers acknowledgement by potential buyers that the county requirement for neighborhood comment. In the last couple of pieces of property or when we looked at farmer market, I think the input by the neighborhood was important to the court. So we want them to make sure that that may be part of the process. And that the broker and any potential buyers see that as part of the process. We request proposals. The broker would request proposals. He would post a sign on the property. I think Commissioner Davis, you wanted to make sure that that had been done with some of the properties that we had been looking at sale and we want to make sure that that is part of the process. Broker advertises through mls and their own means of advertising. And then he receives letters of interest from potential buyers. Brokers presents receive l. Oi., letters of interest to Commissioners court. Court may accept what comes in and sometimes you'll say no, we probably need more. One will come in, no, we want a little more competition so we wait and ask again. The call goes out and see what comes back in. The objective criteria that will be used in proposal and what we are also presenting to you for consideration is that you have objective and you have subjective criteria. The objective criteria would be for the highest and best use. Purchase price, earnest money offered, duration of feasibility period, proposed closing, feasibility extension, and then closing extension. But price, earnest money and then when do they want to close. How fast or slow do they want to close. Then we bring in neighborhood comment. Again, this is a proposal. We put it together on Friday and it is meant for discussion item.
>> what's the difference between input and neighborhood comment?
>> one and the same. We want their comments on the ploam. We can change that comment to input. We were thinking the same.
>> in my mind, input means a whole lot more than comment. That's what I知 thinking. Take me back to law school, john, or kindergarten?
>>
>> [inaudible].
>> county holds a neighborhood meeting to review proposals. By this time we have -- we have gotten the proposal, we have discussed them with members of the court. Some may have more interest than others. If it's in your particular precinct, have you more interest. We always try to touch base with the county judge, or if there is any express interest from any other members of the court. We share that with them. You know what's in there. The county holds a neighborhood meeting and review proposal. Potential buyers, and this is what we did in farmers market so we put it down as a procedure. Potential buyers present to neighborhood meeting their plans and news of property. They make their presentations, each of the people that are being -- that are proposing. Staff would be at those meetings. They would put together the -- what one would call the subjective criteria and bring it back to the court for approval. And that's number 7, approval by the Commissioners court of objective criteria gathered from neighborhood comments. Now, we discussed this a built because there are some things that you as a governing body may say we don't want to have sexually oriented businesses, for example, on any of the property that we sell. That could be something that you state as a policy up front. That would already be in as a deed restriction. There may be other things you say under no circumstances would we consider.
>> I guess -- and I notice that -- and I know we're under another deal at this time, but what I was thinking is that there needs to be a category by itself as far as deed restriction. Maybe adding number 11 to our deed restriction. I saw the evaluation and I thought about what are they going to use. And then again, also flipping the property. You know, you may have someone that buys the property from Travis County and they flip it to someone that are worse land use -- inappropriate land use that's not acceptable at all. So somewhere along the line a deed restriction, in my opinion, needs to be part of this process. I hate to say a sale of a property and the neighborhood and things like that and then lo and behold they flip it next week or next month or whatever and sell it to someone else that we have no control of seeing what goes there at that time. So I think a deed restriction I think is something that needs to be included just as a farmer market, certain things couldn't go and happen at that particular property that was sold. I just thought it mayen another component. I saw on the evaluation here, but I知 looking at a deed restriction somewhere in this whole scenario, which I think we're going in the right direction.
>> point well taken. That's something that we discussed. When we did farmers market, the court had some idea of what they wanted to put in deed restriction. Those may not be the same for all properties.
>> exactly. I think we need to make sure that that happens because the worst thing in the world I think we can do is sell county owned property right in the neck of a neighborhood, they flip it next week and my god, the neighborhood is left with something there that, you know, they will be throwing rocks at us.
>> would that have to come prior to item number 3? It seems before we put the property on the market, you would have to --
>> we would have to let them know were willing to do that. Some folks may not be interested in purchasing property.
>> so I think we would have to -- I mean what do you think, john, or also alicia, it appears to me that we would want to have the deed restriction in place at the time we put the piece of property on the market.
>> my whole point is that it be made available. Procedurally it needs to go up front and let folks know exactly what we're talking about.
>> well, I mean I think in the case of the farmers market there was some pretty strong feelings about certain uses that the county did not want.
>> clearly identifiable.
>> and there are some
>> [inaudible] on this johnny morris property.
>> but that would presume that we know what those are at this point enough to put deed restrictions in before we go out to public meetings.
>> I知 going to let the neighborhoods do that because I知 not going to --
>> we are in some part relying on public meetings to identify what other -- unless the court already knows, for instance, a particular property they want to even close these deed restriction. If they go out for public process, find out there are other things you would want to deed restrict for. For us to know exactly what to put in before it even gets --
>> that would come in before the -- that probably would come in probably under 4-b where you have neighborhood input. We said neighborhood input. I think it would be neighborhood comments. Somewhere along there.
>> neighborhood input. 6.
>> and 4. That would probably be more appropriate to put it there.
>> well, and then at some point does legal look at that what we're restricting and say to us you can't restrict that? And you can restrict this, but you can't restrict that. Wouldn't legal do a -- look at it?
>> that isn't in here, but the drafting of the deed restriction form or putting it in the deed and even attached to the policy could be to form deed restriction that we would be using in most cases. I知 sure they would be consulting us and getting the proper language or even, as you say, the appropriate deed restrictive.
>> that is the question -- the question you bring up, Commissioner Davis, is the same question we had and Commissioner he can hard, is do you have the deed restrictions before you meet with the neighborhood or do you have them after. And if you don't have the deed restriction, then will you have a better ability to get -- real look at what the market will bring. And then impose whatever restriction or neighborhoods and then see how that changes so that you have an idea as we go along and sell more property what impact some of those restrictions would have.
>> two questions. We refer to it as subjective criteria gathered from neighborhood. Why is that? Why wouldn't we respect objective criteria as much? And my second question so you can be thinking about it, we say approval by, what if we disapprove? Why wouldn't that be consideration and action by the Commissioners court in response to input from neighborhood. Or in response to neighborhood input. Whether it's objective or subjective, if it's meritorious, we ought to consider it. They may recommend five things and four may be -- make all the sense in the world and one may not so we would disapprove the one and approve the fourth. But if we say consideration and action as appropriate, then I think we just would cover all the bases.
>> and we can do that, judge. I think that's quite appropriate. In terms of subjective and objective, I think we were just trying to discern a difference between just the price, the proposal, and I don't want that in my neighborhood. So that --
>> words in their mouth. It was my wording and we could dump it. It's actually -- you actually phrased it better than the objective criteria is actually the market driven criteria.
>> yes.
>> whereas the subjective criteria is the public input.
>> you may mean input unrelated to market conditions. That's not the same as subjective.
>> we're just following your lead.
>> subjective has kind of a negative connotation.
>> it was my wording and it can be dumped because it does have connotations I didn't intend and they may not necessarily be input related to market consideration. The neighborhood may come back and say, you know, this is a market consideration for us, you know, we want to see -- for instance, they could come back and say the highest and best use under market restraints right now are gas stations, but we have a neighborhood plan that envisions that to be a community center. And that may be the highest and best use or retail center, which may be the highest and best use five years from now. Objective is a bad description.
>> input would cover the good, bad and ugly without saying so in the policy.
>> we would use, I think the preference market and non-market.
>> just neighborhood input which is what it is. The residents will assume that if we come and answer their -- come and ask for input we want them to give it. They are not going to want to come if we tell them, don't you address these issues right here. Normally we throw it wide open. We say here's the subject, xyz is owned by Travis County, we're thinking about selling it, we want to get input on anything you think we should take into county.
>> what we have not done is disclose price or anything like that. It kind of takes a competitive edge.
>> let us maybe come back with different choices of words for that. I知 not sure we right now -- I think exactly those two words are not good choices. We'll come back with different choices that represent the sense of the court.
>> I知 visualizing the old Sam Biscoe sitting in the neighborhood audience wondering how he would respond..
>> 8, evaluation, a scoring sheet must be developed based on and we'll address that whether it's market driven -- we'll come back with word, but on both we take into account price and neighborhood impacts also. We make recommendations for Commissioners court regarding the best proposal using the criteria at hand, and then based on the total scores that Commissioners court selects potential buyers. And we know that the score is just a guidance for you and ultimately it is the pleasure of the court.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>> that's just staff recommendation. Stay out of the small stuff and focus this policy on large stuff. Or valuable stuff.
>> how long do you think it will take to get that and come back which has that included?
>> I think we could probably come back next week. And I guess the only other question for me is, do you want us to codify this in terms of putting it in language that would be adopted as a policy?
>> I知 sorry. Would you repeat yourself?
>> would you like us to work with the county attorney to put this in the format of a policy?
>> I would agree to that. As far as the record is concerned, I would like to see it more and some other legal things as far as policy. I would think there would be something we would need. I don't think it's something to be disagreeing with.
>> two weeks.
>> yeah.
>> two weeks will put me out. Two weeks from now.
>> the 11th.
>> 12th.
>> 12th, ok. That's going to put me out-of-pocket.
>> can we do it in one week?
>> sure, I think so. I think -- well, we'll work with the county attorney. You may not -- you'll have the essence and the meat of the policy before you, judge. And then we can work on bringing it back and putting it in legal format.
>> thank you for your dedicated, hard work.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> so you'll be at work between now and next Tuesday, won't you?
>> our work is more simple. I知 more concerned about the county attorneys.
>> will that be too stressful?
>> we'll get it done.
>> ok. As long as they can get it done. You heard it from him, judge.
>> what an incredible staff!
>> that's right.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 8:09 PM