Travis County Commissioners Court
May 27, 2008
Item 9
9 is to consider and take appropriate action on the following: a, park fees for the community pavilion at east metro park. B, proposed park fees for athletic fields. And c, signature a public hearing relating to proposed revisions to park fee schedule. On 21 we'll call it up next if we can get the right folks down. Yes, sir? We're waiting on county staff to get here. >> good morning, judge, Commissioners. My name is charles burg, division of park. And I have the parks operations manager for the east side of the county and dan perry, who is the parks operations manager for the west side of the county here to make a presentation on park fees. And today's protection we're going to talk a little bit about the proposed fee structure for the east metro community pavilion and also for some revised fee structures for how we manage our fees. On Thursday, we had a presentation during work session with powerpoint, and wield like to re-present our powerpoint to -- we'd like to re-present our powerpoint to the court and our viewers.
>> do we have to see it again?
>> do you want to go through it again?
>> no. I remember it vividly.
>> we can do that. We'll just do a highlight of the discussion and then talk to you about proposed meeting dates out in the community before we bring this back for adoption by the Commissioners court.
>> (indiscernible). I知 not comfortable about the fees that we're putting on the pavilion, and I think I致e said that. I didn't want to go into that discussion during work session. We need to look at that. I guess somewhere along the line, the east metro park pavilion, somewhere during the line in the public hearings where we'll have an opportunity to have citizens participation, then I値l be glad to hear what the citizens are going to say, but in the meantime I知 trying to figure out when you're going to have the public hearings, where you're going to have the public hearings, and how many are you going to have before it come back to the court for us to decide on the fees? And having an opportunity for them to have input in that process. I知 still kind of lost when it comes to those questions. Maybe you can help me out.
>> well, do you want us to -- before I address those, do you want us to give you a quick overview of our proposed fees at this point?
>> well, you can. As far as the pavilion is concerned, I知 concerned about all of it, but I知 also concerned greatly about that fantastic east metro pavilion we have out there which has generated a lot of interest in the community, but again I want to make sure it's affordable to the community that really have pushed hard to make all of this happen. In that neck of the woods. So I don't mind you going over that. Maybe somebody will hear this and have ideas. I guess when they end up having their public meetings.
>> charles, if I understand it, what you were proposing, all of this is going to go into public hearings for the public to have an opportunity to comment if it's too expensive. And that's true of ab and c, is it not, of the whole proposal. So it gives us an opportunity to take us out on the road and invite people -- mail this out to people that I know would be interested in this and then we can gather all that information. It will be brought back to us and we'll make a final decision.
>> we have looking at June ninth to meeting in the community and we can add more if you want. 9th is Monday, the 10th Tuesday, 11th is Wednesday. Then we'll bring it back on June 17th, a court session for adoption.
>> and for those who can't attend the public meeting, but want to make comments, to whom should they make comments?
>> to Travis County parks. And we can put that up on our web page.
>> that would be great.
>> okay. So today we're only ratifying proposals to take to the public.
>> okay. Here are the dates -- so what times are the meetings?
>> we have not set those times up. I would -- I will go ahead and just acknowledge that 7:00 to 8:30.
>> I think that gives people time to get home.
>> good point.
>> it lets them be stabilized.
>> tell me the dates again 96 June ninth, 10th and 11th.
>> the location is to be determined, but generally when we have these meetings we have them like the southeast rural center there in del valle, satellite one. We've had them at the east rural center. Pflugerville I need to check and see, but we'll -- since these fees primarily affect the eastern parks, we're thinking we will have them -- two meetings out in the county and then the third meeting downtown in this courtroom on a Wednesday night. Unless the court wants us to have some additional meetings, which we most certainly can do.
>> recommendations?
>> okay. Just a quick overview. We're looking at establishing fees for the east community pavilion at east metro park. It's such a unique facility and it doesn't really fit any of our current fee structures, so we're looking to establish fees for that facility. Our recommendation is $100 per hour with a two-hour minimum and $750 for an all-day rental. We're also look to go make recommendations for changes to our athletic field fees. We currently have 63 sports fields that the public can rent out. Right now our fees are on a per day basis, and we're looking for management reasons, the issues that we're having are some of the fields are being underutilizes because they can be tied one a small reservation fee, so we're looking at going from a per day field to a per field, per hour fee. Our current fee is $50 per day, and we're proposing that there would be a presidentvation fee of five dollars per hour per field. And that would also enable us to track usage to keep thus compliance with our court approved turf grass policy. Without getting into a lot of the details, the impact of these fees, we would see an increase in our revenues from approximately 123 -- approximately 124,000 to 220 -- a little over 220,000. The issues and opportunities, the proposal we anticipate will increase revenues, it will increase accountability from our user groups that when they make a presidentvation that they will follow through and use the fields for what they've reserved. I think that's a quick overview unless anybody has any questions concerning that.
>> so how would the proposed fees compare to fees charged by other Texas counties?
>> well, we have a table, and we called several other counties and communities that run athletic fields and really, judge, it's all over the map on how other facilities charge. A lot of them charge by the hour for practices, and then have tournament fees for organizations that come in. And all the of municipalities, like the city of Austin have their own tournaments at times. They sponsor them. They run the feels. Whereas they really -- they run the fields. Whereas we don't really run the fields. We rent them out to users who run their own tournament. So it was really hard to make a comparison.
>> if you look at attachment 2 in the backup, there is information there that gives you what we can glean as comparables for the city of Austin, dallas, georgetown, city of houston. I think from a monetary perspective our fees are probably cheaper or right in the ballpark, excuse my pun.
>> the recommended?
>> the recommended.
>> between now and the 17th can we make a comparison of proposed fees to county fees?
>> we did go with the county of houston, and --
>> harris county? See, you're saying city, I知 saying county.
>> oh, city.
>> we'll do that. We'll pull that information together.
>> we can pull t I know we tried.
>> there's not a lot of counties that do the kind of park operations that we do, but we will glean it from Texas and get that reported back to you.
>> okay. For residents that want to know specifically how we arrived at these amounts, what's the answer?
>> well, we took our current fee structure and really just broke it down from a per day to a per hour, so in a way it is comparable to what we're charging now, it's just designed differently. And we really wanted -- we based it on trying to make sure any of our user groups are currently coming out, it was definitely affordable. And really that's -- that's what we based it on.
>> we don't have a standard pavilion fee?
>> we do, but we don't have any pavilions that are anything like the one that was put in at east metro park.
>> what's the current pavilion fee?
>> for a large pavilion at, say, richard moy I can't or webberville park is $60 for the day. $50 plus a 10-dollar reservation.
>> okay.
>> judge?
>> go ahead.
>> I think we know what we're going to hear from people. You're charging too much. You don't even have to have the public hearing to do that. What I think we need to concentrate on is justifying what we are charging. I mean, I realize that we're not in the business to recapture every penny of dollar because after all, we have taxpayers and we have these facilities. But I do think that we need to be able to look somebody in the eye and be reasonable whenever we're putting a fee on there. Now, I used to be in this business, so I know it. And I think that you've done a good job with the reservation part of this because, quite frankly, it is too easy to tie up all of our facilities with almost no money, and when teams don't have -- when the organizations that are running this -- because we're really more in the rental business, like you said, curt, versus what the city of Austin -- not to say they don't rent their facilities as well, but they put on a lot more events themselves, whereas we really have the fields there for individual teams to go and to make money for their organizations. And there's nothing wrong with that either, but we do need to be able to justify when we say here's what this fee is. Obviously if you're talking about 750 bucks for the facility, yeah, you're probably going to get some push back on that. But you need to be able to say, well, if this is the reason that we put this and have some sort of a logical explanation as to here's what we're trying to get out of this. Because quite frankly when you have a facility like this and have you large numbers of people, the usage and the wear and tear on these facilities, I mean, can be pretty great. So I think as long as we're able to explain to people why we are charging a certain fee, then we're going to be able to get somewhere with folks. But we all know that what people really want is, we're taxpayers, we want to be able to use the facilities. Well, I mean, that's one way to look at it. And if we don't mind pulling out the general fund, I think we can look people in the eye and say there is a reasonable amount of money that we ought to be able to justify to charge. Just kind of be ready for that because that's going to be the thing that I would ask you. And I think that you probably will have those asking, knowing that most people are going to say I don't want to pay that much and I don't want to do those things like give you the reservation fee on the fields. But unfortunately, the reason these things are being set at this is because history is telling us what people are doing. And I know that you all are looking at this and staying here's the reason that we're doing this. And it's still a reasonable amount of money, I think, so I think you're moving in the right direction. Let's get the input from the folks and just be able to look people in the eye and say here's a reason we put this fiat this amount.
>> and then there are some new facilities being developed to address the kinds of activities that take place at pavilions, and so that -- but it's the private sector that's doing -- that's developing those facilities. So do we know what they charge so we can compare what we're trying to do?
>> yeah, we also have that in our packet. We did some comparisons of what we could find out there that would be similar facilities being used for what we anticipate the use of the east metro pavilion. Like you say, it is -- it's hard now to compare because I知 not sure what our current pavilions -- how much they cost. It over a-million-dollar facility that we have at east metro.
>> because people do love the pavilions for wedding receptions or graduation parties, and those things, but what are they charging and how do we compare to them?
>> in this particular pavilion in east metro is unique. It's the nicest facility we have. It's got a kitchen, a separate kitchen and restroom facility. And our other pavilions really are kind of open space, kind of shelters. So it is going to require kind of a unique fee structure that reflects its unique nature.
>> would you all say that this fee structure is designed to cover costs or more to create a distribution mechanism so that people treat the property with respect and treat others who are looking to use the property with appropriate utilization?
>> I don't think it will recover cost. Really it's trying to establish accountability of users. The thinking is right now for 50 bucks you can come in -- or for 10 bucks you can reserve all the fields at a given park and you don't have to pay until 48 hours before the event. Well, if they don't pay or they come in and only pay for a few of the fields, we have a lot of fields that go unused during that busy weekend. And we get calls from other user groups saying, hey, you guys told us these fields were unavailable, but we went out this weekend and 10 fields were available. So we're basically trying to create accountability for our user groups.
>> so the major question that we'll be trying to address in the public hearings is whether we've hit the appropriate tipping point for affordability and accountability.
>> that's correct.
>> so kind of in a way you're also addressing accessibility of those facilities for more people.
>> correct. We want more users to be able to use them.
>> well, if there's something we can compare this to, if you want to compare apples to apples, there's nothing in my park system in the state of Texas, I don't think, as far as county parks are concerned, that has this unique pavilion, east metro. So again, we kind of are left on the board with that as far as apples to apples comparison. But then again, utilization I think has to be brought into play. And if you notice, this weekend in particular, with the high cost of fuel -- and I don't think fuel is going to come down any time soon, folks are beginning to localize their activities using our park systems more so now than ever. Parks were just overwhelmed all across the board this weekend basically. And that's telling us a lot right there that we're going to really have to focus and concentrate on the type of fees that could accommodate the overwhelming interest in localizization of our park services and park system. But not only that, I think we will have to focus and concentrate to make sure that it still is affordable because, like I say, the taxpayers have put this into play, and of course they would like to see things provided accordingly. So it's kind of interesting to see how the public hearing will come out, but I basically know where I知 going to land right now. I think it's a little too expensive for the folks out in that area.
>> for the pavilion?
>> yes, it sure is. But anyway, we'll see what they have to say. The fishing ponds were just crowded this weekend. I mean, 20, there was people fishing around the fishing pounds this weekend. So there's a lot going on.
>> the preliminary reports we're getting from feel staff is this was one of the busiest weekends in the parks.
>> right.
>> so the date is June 17th.
>> that is the date that we would propose to bring it back for adoption.
>> c says public hearing.
>> so it would be a public hearing, plus action.
>> correct.
>> the other three that you mentioned really are public meeting.
>> correct.
>> and --
>> so the 17th. So we'll have the public meetings on the ninth, tensth and 11th, 7:00 to 8:30 and location to be determined, and the public meeting and the adoption would be on the 17sth.
>> judge, I move approval of a, b, c.
>> with c being June 17th.
>> for us to proceed with the public hearing.
>> an we'll just give directions on those -- to have those meetings publicize them as much as possible. We know for a fact that a 7:00 hearing is more convenient for residents than 6:00.
>> generally it is for us. I mean, it allows people more time to --
>> it's kind after compromise.
>> we get a better turnout.
>> [overlapping speakers].
>> second the motion. Discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank y'all.
>> thank y'all.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 8:51 PM