Travis County Commissioners Court
February 24, 2009,
Item 10
>> no.
10 is to consider and take appropriate action on additional initiatives by Travis County and other governmental entities and Travis County residents to reduce ground-level ozone in support of the 2009 big push initiative.
morning.
>> good morning.
john white, environmental officer from tnr.
with me today is tom webber, environmental quality program manager and adell noel our air quality manager.
over the last couple weeks we have been talking about very specific initiatives that Travis County can take to deal with the -- the new air quality standard for ozone.
in particular there's a lot of concern that if -- with the newly tightened air quality standard, that our region could be pushed into non-attainment.
in fact, that's likely to be the recommendation from the governor to the epa, which will be coming up in the next couple weeks.
however, the final decision on that won't be made until next year and we have the opportunity to get through this year possibly and demonstrate that we are, in fact, in compliance with the new standard.
so there has been specific actions that we've been talking about taking, but the big question that sort of remains in those discussions, obviously we spoke about those last week.
we will be back before you next week to talk about feedback that we have gotten on those specific suggestions and sort of try to chart a course forward, but in the meantime we need to think about how we can amplify the efforts of Travis County, sort of region-wide, to make the impact of these efforts somewhat more effective, and I think that's the topic of our discussion today.
specific things that we have been thinking about that can be done would be to use the efforts of our elected officials, you, to amplify our activities through participation in various regional organizations, which we are members of already, including campo, camp cog and the like, where we can basically work with our other jurisdictional partners.
in addition there are organizations such as the clean air force, where we can work with private industry partners to try to amplify what it is that we're doing.
so we have specific things that we're going to take on.
we're going to be asking other jurisdictions to do those same sorts of things.
other options that we can take is we can use, to the best of our ability, our own media capabilities but also look at how we can best get attention from the local news media, which will be able to reach a far wider audience than perhaps our own television efforts.
finally, the other thing that we've been talking about most recently will be some of these other things that we can do.
one would be to basically challenge our own employees to start doing things that we would do personally.
basically it's identify a list of things that we each can do individually and make a pledge to do those.
but not only do you make a pledge to do those, you also, as employees in Travis County, take it upon yourselves to go out and start spreading the word at every opportunity that we can to make sure that other people are also aware.
so there's that personal connection kind of thing.
each of these has the opportunity to spread the word for us a little bit better, get more folks engaged.
everybody seems to know a little bit about ozone, but it seems to be one of those things that they aren't real specific about it, and I think if we can have the -- some effective outreach, that we can probably get a lot better impact for the things that we're trying to do.
and I guess we're just anxious to hear any comments that you might have on how -- you know, what are the things we might be able to do to amplify these efforts.
>> well, john, I think we should name you captain ozone.
>> captain ozone.
that's good.
>> [laughter] do I have to wear a big o --
>> I think that would be wonderful, with a cape.
>> I'll pass on the cape.
>> [laughter]
>> so we touched base with the city of Austin?
>> we have been constantly talking with staff over at the city of Austin.
adell meets with staff over there.
they do already engage in some of the things we've been talking about doing, for example, tege working and we talked about oh teleworking, and we've talked about some of the things they are proposing in the upcoming months.
however, they have not necessarily focused on what we've been talking about, which is an intensified effort on the ozone watch days, and I think that's what we want them to at least join us in considering.
>> so I guess as far as submitting what we have come up with on the different updates that we have brought forth and continue to modify what we're trying to do as far as making sure we stay in attainment, what is the timeline of getting this information to these particular folks that's involved, entities, whatever we're dealing with here, to make sure that they have this information and for them to maybe get on board with us to move forward?
is there a timeline that has been suggested?
are you suggesting -- because I mean, time is of the essence as far as I'm concerned, and I think the quicker we get on board with some of these things, I think the better off.
>> right, I agree that the time is an important consideration here.
so that's why we'll be back to you next week to finalize the -- whatever direction you may have on the specific proposals that we've put forward.
i think from there, then we can actively engage our jurisdictional partners and say, hey, look, these are the things that we're proposing to do, concentrating our efforts.
we ask -- we invite you to join us in doing some of these things.
obviously the ozone season starts around April 1.
we don't necessarily have to have everything in place and running at that point, but certainly we would want to have the attention of the public at that point because we could start having conditions ripe for ozone formation at any time after that.
so it will be an intensified schedule to get some of these things in place.
we'll be doing our own things, but we will be challenging our partners --
>> exactly.
>> -- over those next coming weeks, and the venue in which to do that will be organizations like campo, cap cog, the clean air coalition.
so we have to make sure that these organizations are aware of this.
obviously they are aware of it.
we want to make sure that they become actively engaged, that the partners, the members, become actively engaged in this.
it would be unfortunate if we continue to have meetings with some of these organizations -- if they get postponed or delayed for lack of participation, as we saw with one of them recently.
>> and it would also be good, I think to know whatever final product that we end up voting on and it goes forward to them, if they are not -- and I think you brought up an instance a little earlier, an example where the city of Austin, you know, didn't have certain things -- but anyway, where they may not be able to comply -- may not be able to do what we're suggesting as far as feedback to us is concerned.
i think that's pretty important.
in other words, whatever we see -- here it is right here, what are you able to deal with and whether it would be good if they could respond to the things that they are not able to deal with, and list of things that we have on table.
>> Commissioner Davis, what I was going to add to that was that, you know, adell is working -- you know, I'd say informally with these groups, day-to-day, week to week, and then after March the 3rd if you adopt a set of proposals, we could then formally send that to whichever entities, employers in this area in sort of a challenge, so we could do that by letter from the court and say, here is the Travis County plan.
we invite you.
we advocate that you do this or something similar for this push.
>> okay.
>> I wanted to just point out, since you-all are lacking in ego, I suppose, to vanity to point it out, that included in your backup you've already shown fruits of your informal coordination with private partners in this resolution by the home builders association of greater Austin, which is a very good resolution in support of the big push.
>> exactly.
>> and so I'm wondering today, based on the -- what you're suggesting to the Commissioners court to do, is coordination/cooperation with other jurisdictions and agencies, coordination and cooperation with private partners and other organizations, and use of local/regional news media and other means of identified in the future.
are you asking for us to formalize the outreach at this point, although not having definite -- definite programs that we spfl want specifically want to push with other agencies or private partners?
>> well, I think the answer to that is yes, obviously that would be -- you know, there's some caution because we don't know exactly what we're going to propose to these folks, but they're going to be much more receptive to communication from the elected officials than they are from staff.
staff, they're go, yeah, yeah, yeah, and they'll continue on with what they do.
but --
>> to formalize the communication to say, we are -- we are formally entering into a communication and a negotiation about what coordinated efforts we can do among governments, among governments and privates, and in terms of being a bullhorn to the public about what's going on and what individuals and entities can do?
>> yes.
>> I'll give you an example of such -- March 10, next Tuesday -- there's one next Tuesday, a couple weeks, kathy stevens with campo and myself will be going before the city of Pflugerville to present some ideas that invite the city of Pflugerville to join the clean air coalition in our efforts with the big push and diminishing ozone for this area.
those are some of the examples of things we'll be doing.
and we continue this outreach to other areas within the Travis County.
>> and I think it would be useful if they are armed with clear direction from the Commissioners court saying, this is what we're doing.
we're asking you to do this as well.
>> should that direction be evidenced in the form of a resolution that bears the signatures of court members?
>> I believe that would be a good -- a start.
>> seems to me that that would -- that would add to the impact.
>> you yu.
>> uh-huh.
>> good point.
>> even if it's just generally worded, I think that's a good point.
>> good point.
that's really great.
>> should we have that back on next week.
>> we can bring that back in conjunction with the other materials we'll bring next week.
just to give you a heads-up, we have gotten interesting feedback from folks on the proposals we talked about last week.
interesting comments for improvement.
nobody is saying, oh, you're crazy.
>> well, there's a little bit of that.
>> [laughter]
>> not yet.
>> [laughter]
>> but I suspect it will be a little more heated next week when we talk about it.
i can hardly wait.
>> [laughter] thank you.
>> okay.
thank you.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 4:26 PM