Travis County Commissioners Court
May 12, 2009,
Item 20
Now, 20 is to consider and take appropriate action on update from golf smith regarding nomination of golfsmith as a Texas enterprise project and a request to set a public hearing date on may 19th, 2009.
if representatives would come forward, we appreciate your patience this morning.
i think we said before when you were here that on these items we never know whether they will take five minutes or 50, and we just kind of go with the flow.
y'all did have some visits with some of the court members and hopefully had a chance to get some of those questions answered.
and what the county judge did a few days ago was to go ahead and send a letter indicating that we were scheduling a public hearing next Tuesday because of the timing of that.
and also y'all purchased an ad in the statesman, right?
>> correct.
>> advertising of that hearing.
and the date was such that we kind of had to do it, but I did indicate in my agreement to do that, that if the court voted otherwise, then the money for the ad would kind of have been down the drain.
but does the court have additional questions today?
>> I had a couple of questions, judge.
i'll yield to whoever else has a question right now.
i'm the only one?
>> anybody else?
>> I'm ready.
>> hold on then.
i just had one question.
and I did get a chance to review the information again that was brought to me, and it was quite intriguing.
i guess looking at the investments, the capital and looking at the projected investment that you would be bringing forth for the next five years, a little more than $5.5 million, my question is is there going to be any future expansion?
because really the way we capture some of the money that we have, of course your taxes that the county collecting taxes, which goes to our general fund, from the facility, is there any future expansion plans other than you basically wanting the county to nominate you for the particular setting here?
is there any future projection as far as build out or building expansion, per se?
>> jeff wilson, director of disfor golfsmith.
nothing for the building at this point.
most of the things that we need to do are internal sort of processes and things like that.
it's a pretty big facility.
it looks like it can handle the growth that we'll have as an organization for a few years to come.
so the physical plan probably won't change, but there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be updated.
we were a mom and pop shop for years and years, so we're growing.
there's a lot of infrastructure that we really need to grow that we're way behind on.
so the physical plan won't change that much.
most of the other stuff will be internal.
>> and I guess retaining the current level of employment that you have there, I guess this is quite a positive thing.
you've got folks around here that are laying off persons, and I think you retaining them I think is another positive so that they can be part of the economy that we need to have here.
so that is something good I don't think that was really fleshed out a lot and the multiplier effect that goes with the employees that you have, it's a multiplier effect according to the payroll that you yield to these particular individuals.
>> absolutely.
we just did an earnings release call for quarter 1 and exceeded our plan.
we don't see anything but positive results for us in the future.
i think we're past the dip that everybody went through last year for sure.
looking at building stores, growing the organization.
it looks like it's a good upswing for us.
we'll be adding jobs, that's for sure.
>> and lastly was the disclosure of the ethnicity break down of the organization.
is there any opportunity to improve some of the low percentages that are right there in your face right no you?
>> absolutely.
our program right year was trying to bring women into the organization.
if you look at women golfers and tennis players, they make up the largest growing populous in that sport.
so we went out and targeted them, to be honest.
and we have a woman coo, senior vice-president is a woman.
we have a mentoring program we put in place.
we've done some things to make that happen.
and that's been pretty successful.
we haven't done a good job in looking at diversity in the organization.
we really haven't.
but I think if we take what I learned was from the women's initiative and apply it to the other part of the diversity aspect, we'll be pretty successful.
so there's a lot of stuff there to do.
so it's really not where we want to be.
if you look at the hispanic numbers, they're pretty high.
it's 28%.
that's basically from a referral program that we have in place where they get money for referring friends and neighbors.
and they refer a lot of people to us.
that's been pretty successful.
so from the african-american community it has not been so successful.
we'll have to broaden that net.
we really need to open up on how we go out and recruit.
we haven't done a good job with that.
>> that was very obvious when I asked for that disclosure, the african-american -- it was a little more than three percent or something.
that's really significant in my mind.
but it's not significant enough, I guess, to know that -- you're going to try to do something about it.
and that's what I'm really wanting to harp about.
you're really going to try to improve in this setting.
i'm not going to hold up, but I have no other questions, judge.
i will second whoever want to make the motion.
>> I do have a couple of questions.
sorry.
>> motion and second to approve.
Commissioner Huber?
>> it seems like I recollect that golfsmith had a layoff in the past year or so.
is that a fact?
>> we had two layoffs last year and one in this year.
the one this year was about 12 individuals ranging from a vice presidential level down to some supervisory positions.
we took some steps and that's why key one has been pretty successful for us.
no plans, nothing in budget for any future layoffs.
we're adding jobs now.
we've run ads preently.
we're looking to hire -- we had a few layoffs last year, absolutely.
>> would you be hiring people in new positions at a lower rate than what they were making before?
>> no, we called back the people we laid off to see if they wanted to come back.
we will bring back people at approximately the same rate for sure.
we looked at productivity, not tenure when we did the layoffs.
so some would be below, some would be above.
>> that's all.
>> any other questions?
so what we need to do is basically to -- a motion to approve proceeding, and I guess to ratify the judge's decision of the posting on the public hearing next Tuesday, give the public an opportunity to come down on this.
and this is the designation.
any financial incentives provided would be provided by the state of Texas.
what we do basically is put golfsmith in a position to take advantage of a state program.
and with the -- hopefully with the increased value of the enterprise, county residents will benefit.
benefit long-term.
and as long as golfsmith is productive, those avid golfers like dusty mccormick there have l.
have a fine place to do shopping for golf-related items.
>> that was all part of my motion.
>> [ laughter ]
>> could I have this in executive session this afternoon?
>> this afternoon?
>> or whenever you get into executive session?
>> can we approve this while they're here and still get the briefing?
>> yes.
no problem.
>> all in favor of the motion?
show Commissioner -- that passes by unanimous vote.
thank y'all very much.
we do appreciate your patience again.
>> thank you.
>> if you ever run for political office that patience will serve you well.
>> [ laughter ]
>> I was about to call the legislative item up.
is that what you were saying?
>>
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> I move approval.
>> second.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 2:30 PM