Travis County Commissioners Court
October 28, 2008
Item 31
31 is consider and take appropriate action on the funding and the extension of contract number il 070209 vr for regional planning/studying with envision central Texas. Good morning.
>> good morning. Thank you for the opportunity. We're going to load up a presentation here.
>> are the stapled ones straight documents from the folder ones or the same.
>> the stapled document, just a copy of what we're going to show you today and the thing in the binder is a copy of the vision progress assessment that we completed several months ago. Anything we need to do to get it to show up?
>> just say it and it happens.
>> a little faded out, but hopefully you can see it well enough. Thank you for allowing us to come in and talk to you this morning. Just a reminder, envision central Texas has a calendar fiscal year so our year goes a few more months or couple more months and so we still are working on several of our projects. As well as our program of work and officers and such. We have our annual meeting November 19th. We've been working on our next year's work for several months and it's pretty much complete but we do have to have official adoption and there will be some tweaks probably and some more work on some specifics with some specific projects. Just wanted to mention that. I appreciate you letting us come in a little bit earlier than normal. Normally I come in December so I can tell what you has happened rather than what's going to happen. Hopefully that will make that clear. We've been talking about envision central Texas for several years here in the court and we have always looked at the mission of e.c.t. As first creating and then implementing a vision for the region's future that would preserve and enhance our natural resources, economic vitality, social equity and overall quality of living. Recently as we're thinking about where we are today and where the organization is and needs to go, we've come up with a couple other thoughts as far as it's not superseding the mission, but it's sort of a way of looking at it today. One of the things that we really believe is we need to improve the way we are growing. We know we're growing and changing and we are going to continue to do so, I believe. And so to sustain our quality of life and competitiveness we need to improve how we grow. And that means that we will have a focus on what, where and when we build and how that impacts natural resources and mobility. First I'm going to talk about what we've done this year and then I'll shift to next year and a few other items, but let's focus on what we've been doing through 2008. Right off the bat in January and for about five months we spent a lot of effort this year trying to analyze where the region has come in the last five years. It's been about five years since e.c.t. Conducted its vision and created the principles of the vision we were use to go look at how we go forward and so we thought it was a really good time to take stock of how far we've come, what are on people's minds today, has that changed and all those kind of related issues. This was quite an elaborate intricate process. We had eight public outreach forums, two of which were in Travis County. And then in the other counties as well. We had three different focus groups on different topics. We had three online surveys surveying different kinds of population, and then we also hired a consultant so we would get a third party impartial analysis of what people were thinking out in the community, especially major agencies and corporations and organizations in this region. So we had one on one interviews with I think it was 26 different leaders throughout the region. We took all of this, and that blue binder -- I think you've received it before, but that is a synopsis or a report that tells some of the results that we got from that study. We've taken -- we took all those findings plus the results from our retreat to come up with our look forward and what we're doing in '09 and then in the future. Just a couple of things I wanted to highlight from that vision progress assessment that I thought were interesting and relevant to what we're talking about today. Overall I think that we -- it was pretty clear that the principals of e.c.t., that most of you are familiar with, transportation and saving natural space and all the rest, did resonate and still resonate with most of the region. We got strong and encouragement that people did believe in those and continue to think those are the right things to focus on. Some of the other things we learned, though, were that people still believe we need more regional coordination. More collaboration. That there has been progress made, but not enough. And that we need to continue to work on that. Another thing that became evident to me was as we went through the region is that there is a lack of planning resources for communities. Especially the smaller ones. Some of those don't even have a planner on staff. Some of the small towns and communities. And that they were really looking for tangible things that would help them plan for their community's growth. As we talked about the environment and all those related features, one of the things that kept coming up for us more so than probably a few years ago was water. Both quality and quantity. That was pretty universal, though it might have been stated in different ways throughout the different corners of the region, it was a recurring theme. And another theme, of course, which is no surprise to this court is that transportation needed improvement. And especially the idea of a coordinated, comprehensive transportation plan now to get it going. And the other thing that I think was important for us to understand is, well, a lot of people did know e.c.t. Was and what we are about, we feel we need to do put more effort into what it is the role we actually play. There were quite a few more results, but you can see those or maybe already have. So to continue with our program of work, that was our major initiative, we spent a lot of time on that because we felt at this point in the organization's history that we really needed to take a look at where we had come from and where we needed to go in the future. Along with that, though, we did continue on several other initiatives that we had underway. The quality growth toolbox was rolled out this year. It was sort of a test mode for about six months. We learned some things from that. We realized some of the interfaces weren't as user friendly, we're working on that, the filters were a little complicated and we still wanted to add more tools. But the main idea was to get the framework up there. We really are looking to expand that, add more tools. In fact, now actually target tools that would be helpful to Travis County, to the city of Austin, to others who are actually looking for tools to do certain kinds of things in the region. And also maybe look for some partners like the american planning association. They have needs of this kind and we're thinking of ways that we could work together to both get resources from them and actually offer our resources to them. The green print for growth, you know you are familiar with that, Travis County's is already complete. We have always believed the real strength of the green print is have a regional green print. To have the whole five county infrastructure mapped where you could see the synergys between the counties, where they overlap and natural resources cross boundaries so there might be opportunities there. We have, as you probably already know, we are working with the trust for public land and capcog on this project, and we've also raised about $200,000 to do the other -- the rest of the central core of central Texas. We have already -- we're about a third of the way through this process. We've had stakeholder meetings in hays county, caldwell county and bastrop county and we have more work to do, but we're well into it and those are going we value and being well received in those counties. I don't know if you are aware of this, half of the money we got to fund in project came from the federal highway administration, which seems like an odd place perhaps for it to come from, but really not because as you think about developing and development and building roads, you need to understand where you don't want to build as well as where you do want to build. And so the federal highway administration realizes they can save a whole lot of grief in the end to really understand what a community values and where they should not put a road. So that is why they are funding projects like this. The other thing, of course, we always do -- we did our third community stewardship awards. It was larger I think and more successful than ever. We had more than 600 people there. Appreciate Commissioner eckhardt helping give out one of the awards. This is not just an awards event. To us this is a way to show best practices, what it is we're actually talking about when we're talking about the vision in action. And the interesting thing to me is it's always, all across the region, not just Travis County, even though Travis County always has a high level of the awards just because there's more activity here, but it's really interesting to see these ideas really reaching out into the other, into san marcos and lockhart and Williamson county, which is really a positive, I think. We were also quite involved in the c.n.u. Conference, and in fact one of the major events was a presentation by peter, who as you may remember was one of our original consultants on the vision, talking about what has happened over the last five years. Another upcoming event that will be actually taking place in November that I hope you all have received an invitation to and will attend if you can is something we're doing for the first time called the e.c.t. Legislative luncheon and forum. We are putting our toes, so to speak, in legislative issues. We feel like that's an area we need to get more involved in. So for this year we are putting on an event where we have a representation of the central Texas delegation. We're having a panel of six to tell what they are thinking about as far as the large
>> [inaudible] especially as it relates to transportation and infrastructure. Sort of our focus. But other items they think are going to be really important for this region. It also gives us an opportunity to put our perspective out there about what we think is important. The leader -- the audience itself is a very high level audience of leaders across the region and I think it's also an interesting opportunity for this central Texas delegation to have not just, you know, one county or another but a cross-section in the audience. We also had the central Texas planners, we bring them together a couple times a year to talk about their challenges and share ideas as far as solutions as well. We had two of those year and will do that again next year. One more of our projects on our program of work that will be finished before the end of the year, probably November, something we call mixed use matters. That's actually the name of a report. It's really more than a report, though, it will be published online and people will be able to make comments and add to it and we will reinvigorate this report each year with new information. And it basically is everything -- maybe not everything, but a lot that you ever wanted to know about compact mixed use development. Why it makes sense to do it, where it makes sense to do it, where it doesn't and some of the particulars about it. This -- it will be from a range of audiences, but we think it will be a really useful resource. It's quite extensive. I think it's about 100 pages. But we will organize it and we will also make a smaller kind of capsuleized version of it for people to see what's in it. Also we will continue our newsletter and, of course, we continue to add resources to our website. Those were the highlights of this year's activities. Yes, sir.
>> when you complete, I just have a series of questions that I need to ask you. I'm trying to basically see how you maybe dove-tail within Travis County, t.n.r., I guess and the joe geiselman shop. Let me ask this question. And let me ask this question. How do you entertain the concern that an example Travis County has as far as land use? And the reason why I'm -- before you answer that question, the reason why I'm asking this question is because of the fact that we as a court have continually witnessed struggles of growth and how do you accommodate growth? How do you deal with growth? How do you ensure that there are some unwelcome things that maybe are next to residential, an example. Let me give you a good example of what I'm trying to -- what I'm saying here. We have came up with a policy whereby Travis County has initiated a notification process to notify residents within a thousand feet of a nonresidential project that's coming online. That came about because sun coast, who put above ground storage tanks -- this is in precinct 1 -- of johnny morris road and they are proposed to go right across the street from gus garcia middle school and adjacent to residential properties. Which is really not an acceptable thing. And from that, this court approved later on in the process a notification process where folks are notified of any type of nonresidential or industrial or commercial, whatever it is, any nonresidential use. And this is some of the direction I think that this court has elected to move forward with, and thank goodness we were able to move forward with that. Another example that this court has approved was a continued effort to look at how we can address land use issues, and if Travis County residents actually need to use -- have land use authority, any kind of comprehensive plan type scenario. And, of course, a survey done by newstadt gave us very interesting results that hopefully we will take the results to the legislature and, of course, that is made available to the public who want it. But before that happened, my office looked for someone to do such a survey. Of course, we looked at lbj school, we looked at southwest state -- well, Texas state now, university, we looked at areas from Texas a&m and all across to see who could actually do such a survey. Of course, newstadt was able to do that and that's basically to look at to survey Travis County residents to approach how do we address this growth situation where we have to deal with future land growth -- land use according to growth. And you brought up some very interesting points. But my concern is how -- as we move forward toward the legislative year, then as Travis County moves forward with our legislative agenda, one of the things that this court I think is very supportive of because we are all struggling here as Commissioners, is how do we deal with comprehensive land use. So will your organization, as you have originally, be a part of making sure that the proper information assistance is available both from the data that you have already collected to take forward to the legislature when we deal with land use -- comprehensive land use plan, per se.
>> yes. I'm sorry.
>> go ahead. Eye just wanted to -- it is a regional -- it's a regional situation here. And -- but go ahead.
>> no, you raised an excellent point and in fact later on I have that in our program of work, but I realize I forgot to mention this when I was going through some of the conclusions. One of the things that came out of that envision progress assessment, which was frankly surprising to me, I know county land use authority has been on our radar for quite a while and other leaders, but it had trickled down really to the individual citizen level. That was raised in virtually every county why don't we have this, why can't we get it, all those variations and we realized that is one of our biggest challenges. We intend to bring that up for one thing at this legislative forum. That will definitely be something that we're asking the delegation that's going to be there to talk about and where they see it coming down this year and, you know, so we can get a better lay of the land as far as how that will play out. The other thing is -- and next year as I get into the program of work, we are really looking at how we can help on that issue. I mean, for example, I know that the capital area council of governments early next year, I think maybe January or February, are looking to have some kind of event exploring the use of -- the powers we do have. You know, the county use land powers that do exist in Texas and how people have used those probably in different ways than maybe we've even seen. That's one aspect of it is trying to make use of everything we've got to the nth degree. The second thing I think leaked at and are planning to do is do some more research or see what's been done actually out there about other states that have something -- a similar kind of setup as we do. And what have they done. Are there some ways that they have found to augment their rules without full county land use authority. We're trying to do some research on that. And we're also trying to find a mechanism to bring some more support as far as understanding and public input about the topic to the process so that we can lay that out. I know you did the survey and that's, you know, definitely a good piece. But we're trying to amplify that as well. But that definitely is on our radar and it is in our program of work. It's not fully fleshed out yet. As I said we haven't completed or program of work, the step 1, 2 and 3 has not been finalized, but we see that as one of the largest challenges we have, frankly. Because as we know, so much of our growth area is not in the city. It's in the county.
>> why don't we take about 5 minutes and discuss the future work program. Then we'll take questions from the court.
>> all right. Okay. We'll go through this quickly. All right. Well, one thing I wanted to say is we did have a retreat and a couple major things came out of reteeth I think are worth saying. One is that e.c.t. Feels now is the time to move more from an educational to advocacy. We're going to do that in a definite process way, but that is new for us. I mean there's a fine line between the two, but we feel like we're moving more toward advocacy. One, we've tried to do a lot of things every year and we feel like maybe our efforts would be better spent to focus on fewer things each year so we could delve into whatever topics we crews. We are going to reexamine our goals each year and find measurable -- measurable goals that we can report progress on. All right, here's -- here is what we are anticipating as our major initiative. We all know that infrastructure and all its various guises is one of our biggest challenges especially in times of limit of limited resource. If they were limited six months ago, they are more limited now. So we have the idea of having a multi-part initiative where we would be gathering information about this from experts. For example, I would like to see a study or an approach given to really documenting the fiscal differences between different development styles. How does it financially make sense to grow in a compact way rather than a sprawl way. And there are -- if there aren't study already out there existing that would fit this within, we're going to see what we can do to get one done. We're also thinking about having two or three infrastructure forums where we gather those key leaders who are actually doing the infrastructure development as well as other supporting leaders to work together to look for strategies to have a comprehensive plan and a way to prioritize these. For example, campo is -- is looking for ways to do that. Along with that major initiative, we're going to continue to plan round tables. Three issues that we're looking at examining advocacy on, the rail initiatives we know are coming up, the regional activity centers with campo and the county land use powers that Commissioner Davis mentioned. Again doing our community stewardship awards and continuing our other projects. We're going to ramp up our growth toolbox more. We're also going to encourage and try to promote comprehensive planning in all the smaller cities that don't have them. Try to finish up the green print for growth or get close to. That and also continue the work and hopefully finish our project rating system that we started work on this year. And then again as I mentioned find goals that are appropriate to measure for the end of the year. I passed this out earlier so you've seen the list of contributors from last October to today. And that we are asking for a $25,000 contribution in our approximately $300,000 budget. And again, that pretty much sums it up. Jim, did you have any final hot?
>> the one thing I would add is over the years that e.c.t. Has been going on, I think part of the we'll call it a credibility gap with e.c.t. And the issue you are talking about is that we need to get back to the front lines of what the issues are that people are talking about. The major infrastructure initiative. Other issues like that are things that we hear through the vision progress assessment, the conversations going on and our move toward advocacy is being done in a deliberative way. We're going to use the 60 person board we have as our strength. Land use powers are being discussed across the five-county region and farther than that. And what will work for everybody is probably some optimization cross what any one partner actually wants and needs. County land use powers are being discussed in hays county but from a different value set than in Travis County. Our role is that we derive value for our individual funders such as Travis County or the city of Austin by focusing on those things that connect the funders. That are the big regional issues that connect them, go across the jurisdictional lines. Because growth is something that crosses jurisdictions, as you are well aware. That includes -- could include rail, could include rail, could include county land use powers, could include water, but we're going to do that with our board in a very deliberative way. That is the value add that e.c.t. Brings to any single jurisdiction in the region. I want to note we have several board members, jim skaggs, craig smith is here, any other board members?
>> david salazar. And the judge.
>> did you see the report generated from the survey by newstadt? Did you have a chance to review that?
>> I did and we're not a survey entity. We don't do survey work like they do.
>> but did you have a chance to review the contents of that survey?
>> there's overwhelming support for the idea of moderated land use powers that people aren't ready to go all the way to what some might call zoning. That's going to be true across all the counties. There's different legals of comfort and tolerance for doing something. But everybody is getting to a point where more coordination is needed. We need to get -- some of those things require legislative action and our role is to try to push some of those things but not based on just what I may think or some one jurisdiction may think in the five counties, it's how do we really acknowledge what's going to be best for everyone. What every jurisdiction does affects everybody else and that's the challenge, that's the hard part, that's what takes time. And that's what we've been working on and are going to continue to work on in '09. Did that answer your question?
>> sally, I -- I here what you are saying in terms of essentially filling a collaboration gap. The collaboration gap in our region in regard to land use. And in the 2009 plan the things that struck me particularly and I would like to hear you all expand on them a little bit. On page 4, speak regarding creating infrastructure in a time of limited resources. There are three specific areas I see that coming into play in terms of e.c.t. Filling the collaboration gap. One is addressing in some convener capacity road and infrastructure for transportation dollars and the incredibly shrinking bank account for transportation dollars. The second is -- and you had already mentioned it, jim, the campo initiative for some sort of land use planning within campo as an entity. The third is the effect of -- this is the age-he would issue in our region and becoming much more in the five-county region and beyond, the effects of development patterns on water supply and distribution. Those three are very knoty problems and I wanted to hear you address how e.c.t. Would endeavor to fill that collaboration gap on those three.
>> they are all intertwined. And so part of that being one of our first major initiatives there is coming out of conversations about the intertwining nature of those, the difficulty of how the dollars are going to be spent where there's fewer of them and where the roads and the rail if we have rail needs to be. Our role is probably going to be out in front of the different entities that actually have the ability to allocate funds. So campo actually has its own processes that it needs to follow to adhere to the guidelines of the dollars that it has. As does the r.m.a., has does the county or the city. Our role is probably out in front of those groups to say, things are connected, what do you want. How do you want to grow, where do you want to go, where do you not want to grow. If you make that decision what are the tradeoffs and the other infrastructure things. Some of those conversation, those collaborations are outside the purview of any one entity that has the power to make an investment to shape the growth. But our value I believe is in front of those, trying to tie together so we enhance those individual efforts. Is that -- we're not going to replicate something like the transit working group decision tree, but we applaud the establishment of that kind of process, the same way we applaud comprehensive planning for municipalities. It ties the different things together and thinks been them in a comp hence of way. In a regional scale our role will be out front in campo and others to help them get done what they need to get done. And the scarcity of resources, I couldn't have said it better than you did. Financial resources are becoming increasingly hard for anybody to get. We argued for those on a very broad geographic stale. We're not just competing within ourselves for those. And the land is getting scarcer. I mean, where it makes sense to do stuff is becoming an increasing issue as well. The announcement of the state putting a large complex out just -- that's a region-shaping kind of decision. We need to be out front of those kind of things. Did I answer your question?
>> yes.
>> do you have another?
>> no.
>> Commissioner?
>> could you all give me a summation sheet, if you will, of the spending and where it goes to? That's what I'd like to see. Of what your budget is and where -- your money last year and where you anticipate spending your money this year.
>> little online and open for anybody to down load. You probably answer that better.
>> I didn't bring such a thing. Sorry, Commissioner. If you are talking about '08, we spent about -- between 40 and 50 thousand dollars on a consultant related to this project. That was our largest single outlay, if you will. There's overhead, of course, and then a lot of the work that is done is actually the labor. The actual staff and working with the committees to get the work done. We really try to be pretty lean as far as spending money, frankly, and we try to keep it fairly small so the bulk goes to lab, but that's actual real labor. But we did spend a pretty good chunk on that consultant. Next we're we have not finalized the budget yet so I can't really give that to you, but I anticipate some funds being expended towards this large initiative. I think there may be some outside resources need to do give some expert reports or opinions that come to these events. There is some other particular items on there that will require some funding, but I don't have that yet I'm afraid because we're not finalizing that until the end of November.
>> three staff.
>> we have three staff.
>> it's real simple, if I can pull it up.
>> you can look at last year's.
>> if you say that it's posted, well --
>> well, the '07 would be. I'd like to see where you anticipate spending, you know, moneys this year.
>> I can do that.
>> because you all have spent a tremendous amount of money on consultants since you all have been in existence, right?
>> there's two separate phases. The $2 million visioning phase where we did bring in the consultants. That was the vision in process. That had its own -- and a budget, and the bulk of that, over half of that was outreach and communications and really trying to get people, number one, knowing we were doing such a thing as a region but then to engage in it. Our operating budget, once that was completed, that deliverable was done is much smaller.
>> it's between 250 and 300,000.
>> I'll look it up.
>> 2007 is online, but, of course, the 2008 hasn't been done yet. But I wanted to mention one things, that's the only consultant I've ever hired since I've been here and I've been here four years so no, we don't typically use that many consultants.
>> I didn't say use a lot. You just use one a whole lot. Use one a whole lot and one a whole lot each year.
>> there hasn't been one we've used each year since we haven't retained
>> [inaudible] or catthorpe. I would argue this kind of investment with the outreach and communication is what this kind of thing takes. I would argue it was appropriate at the time to do that and honestly a lot of those were public dollars. Since then we have a significant amount more private dollars in our mix. And I do think e.c.t. Has affected the nature of the growth debate here. So I would argue that was a sound investment at the time. It's now to the question of how do we utilize that and all the other conversations that are going on, the urgency to do things like a regional vision hasn't left over the last eight years. As I've said, we are doing that is correct moving towards a way to really affect it.
>> three quick questions. Travis County has been a member and a financial partner since the beginning of e.c.t. How important the our membership and presidential participation been?
>> oh, I think it's absolutely essential, frankly. I mean it is the dollars, but it is also the fact that you are part -- you are at the table, you are a partner in this. I think lend weight behind e.c.t. And credibility, but we also need the participation and ideas of Travis County. Which we have been getting. We've had several really key staffers, frankly, involved in our process. I think it's been absolutely essential.
>> yeah, it's absolutely -- you are the core county in the region. It's really hard in any part of this country to do a regional project and not have the core city and the core county engaged the. The irony is they tend to have the largest planning disasters and that will be true in any m.s.a. In the country. There might be a need for participating in a regional conversation isn't as great because you have the expert on staff. What we believe is -- and I said it earlier, we derive value to the original funders by focusing on big regional issues that affect everybody else as much as they affect you all. The decisions you make in housing and transportation, in water, in any of those kind of things have ripple effects, very real ripple effects. You all know that. But not having the core communities is a hardship for a regional project. So I would say that your involvement historically has been crucial and your involvement going forward is crucial.
>> city of Austin has not been a financial partner.
>> for the last couple of years.
>> last couple of years. And -- why is that? What do they say?
>> when we have conversations with a lot of folks at the city, we continue to have dialogue with the elected officials as well as the staff and new city manager. They utilize the vision document. They -- as we just kind of talked about, that significant investment delivered a product, if you will, in terms of a vision that reflects a lot of different planning principles. They have rolled a lot of that in where the lines with Austin values into their plan process, into the t.o.d. Station planning. They referenced the vision quite frequently. I would go back to the -- what I just mentioned in that they have a lot of planners and they do a lot of talking about planning in house anyway. So it might be that they don't every day see how the ripple effects are affecting everybody. That their decisions are affecting everybody else. I think it's also a fair critique of envision central Texas that when we were doing the big visioning process, we did not do as good a job as we should. This is our credibility gap right now of saying if and what and how are we going to promote this thing once it's done. To manage expectations, financial and otherwise for groups like the city of Austin and Travis County about what is the value going forward, why you should keep investing. But those are ongoing conversations with the city of Austin. I am optimistic that the city of Austin will become a funder again.
>> when they were a funder, at what level were they?
>> I think they gave more than half of the money for the original visioning. And then they were -- the first two years I was here they gave $65,000 a year.
>> okay. When I look at the vision progress assessment, I am surprised to see social equity and race so far down on the priority list. Have we declared victory or --
>> no.
>> e.c.t. Believes some other entity ought to -- no, I think when we go out and talk to folks, what they are bringing to the room is not always the social equity race issues first. We may not be in the right forums, but what we are hear is the water, the land uses, the county powers. We are not going to abandon social equity as an issue. We are going to talk about it, however, perhaps in a more of a context of land use transportation as those connections affect things like social equity. But we're really just trying to reflect what we heard in that document.
>> on the active participants, of the active participants, what percent would you say are from Travis County and what percent from the other pour counties.
>> participants, you mean in the committees or just in general?
>> active on committees.
>> you know, I'm not sure. It's hard to divorce that from the function of where you hold the meetings sometimes. What we really try to get out to have, whether they are green meetings or any other committee meetings to rotate around the region because that does matter. You know, when you have a regional meeting in san marcos, you don't expect a lot of Williamson county attendance and vice versa when you are in georgia town. We try to spread ourselves around. We get higher attendness from a particular county when we have a meeting in that county.
>> I would say if I listed every committee member we had in the last year probably 50 to 60% of them would be Travis County.
>> we did assign staff, but I understand that their participation has been average or less.
>> well, one of the more active committees for a while was open space. That effort has been going towards green print in this last year so that has a very -- because it's a grant and there are specifics -- hasn't been as much of a committee process. But wendy, for example, is on our technical advisory team which is just ramping up to be kind of an oversight for the other county green prints. David has been involved in social equity. Sherri fleming, there's been some others that have been. I wanted to make one more comment about the social equity comment t social equity committee itself has been kind of wrestling with the idea of what is the best way to approach the challenge. We know it's still out there. And what I think they started believing and coming up with is there is a social equity component to every topic that we discuss. There is a social equity component to land use and transportation and every other one. You don't -- they felt that having a social equity committee was almost sing to go the choir in a way. That they felt like they -- there might be more effective use of the people on the social equity committee, for example, by injecting themselves into the other committees and making sure that those issues were raised within each of the other topic areas. We're recapping how to approach it. It's not we're abandoning it. We're trying to be more effective. I'm sorry, I switched subjects.
>> seems to me ought to be a member to get social equity closer to the top of the list. It's number 13 or 14 over here. It's next to last of a long list of priorities.
>> it wasn't our priorities.
>> I understand.
>> that's a survey effort. I think you have to report what the survey tells you and then integrate it and see what you can do with it.
>> it's still way down there.
>> use education and investigation and move it up the list.
>> judge.
>> yes, sir.
>> they brought up another point that I don't think we really hit enough on. Of course, we talked about land use, Commissioner eckhardt brought up the transportation needs, but they brought up water. Now, let me tell you this. With about a two-year span we had meetings right down on that floor where you are sitting now with c.c.n., such as the lcra, aqua water landfill,
>> [inaudible] Creedmoor and others. We met for about two years. And the reason for those meetings were to discuss water. They all have their jurisdictional within their boundaries. We want to make sure we had enough water to accommodate growth in that area. You brought that up. It's very important that there are happens. Now, but we actually have the findings and all of the reports basically in-house, carol joseph and t.n.r. Has the results of all the presentations of the amount of water that's going to be needed for the kind of growth that's going to happen in the area. Along that corridor and beyond. But an example of how things can change very quickly, and I don't know if you all are aware of it, but there is one water supplier, c.c.n., that is now in a position where they have to purchase water from another water supplier because the wells in the water supply table are getting so low, they've gotten so low. So these kind of adjustments folks need to know in the area because what happens is the rates probably will end up on those persons getting water from that current provider within that jurisdiction. So that's information that you need to know about as we look at this regional, water is very key. Development and homes and businesses and everybody else is not going to go where there's no water.
>> absolutely.
>> when we have those kind of challenges, I think this should be the point of the whole regional approach to deal with growth along these corridors,sh 130 and everything else. We have about two years right down there where you are sitting.
>> water is very much climbing the list, quantity as well as quality, and we want to extend the value of those kind of conversations that have already had. I don't know exactly yet what e.c.t.'s value role is in water because there are so many entities. It's very much an active issue that we're exploring.
>> though I think it will be part of this infrastructure initiative that we're talking about, this major initiative for next year.
>> t.n.r. Brought to my anticipation our membership is not covered for next year. We have been funding that in the budget. Are we ready to act on this today is this.
>> I'm ready to act, judge.
>> I move that we continue our membership and our financial participation.
>> second.
>> discussion? All in favor? Show Commissioners Gomez, Davis, eckhardt and yours truly in favor, Commissioner Daugherty against. Thank you for coming down.
>> thank you. Appreciate it.
>> thank you all.
>> sherry, hold on. You've been here with us for all morning. We promise we'll get to you before noon. There are a couple of items that should be shorter. And those deal with the ones we discussed at the work session last week.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, October 28, 2008 1:38 PM