Travis County Commissioners Court
September 1, 2009,
Item 7
>> joe, since we have you there, 7 is a list of fees, consider and take appropriate action on fee increase proposals by the transportation and natural resources department, including, a, assessment of fees for recovery of Travis County storm water management program and development review costs; b, increases in on-site wastewater fees for fiscal year 20:10; and c, proposed park fees and refund policy.
>> these are all fees that we hope to either implement for the first time or change for the upcoming fiscal year 2010.
the revenues arrived from these fees may or may not be recognized in time for the 2010 budget.
but if they are collected throughout the year, they will end up in the ending year balance and be available for the 2011 budget.
so today we're just going to lay out what are those proposed fees.
we expect you will want some input from the public at some point in the next couple of weeks, and so with that said, I'll go ahead and start with the storm water.
the storm water, as you recall, is a new authority granted by the last session of the Texas legislature.
in addition to harris and bexar county, Travis County was included in the enabling law that allowed us to levy a fee to off set the cost of managing the -- what is a mandated federal program.
it's described in Texas as a Texas tbdes plugs discharge elimination program and basically is to regulate the storm water as it enters into the municipal water system, which in our case are the ditches of the county road system.
that is our system, and what this law, the federal law requires us to do is control the runoff and the pollutants that are -- come from adjoining properties and enter into our storm water system.
any number of various federal requirements of that program.
we have submitted our plan to tceq, that plan has been accepted so we're in motion right now.
and so what this fee will do is help off set the program cost of that program.
and I'll let tom webber, I believe, lay out what the proposed fee is.
>> okay.
for the record, Commissioners, tom webber with t.n.r., program manage he for environmental quality.
we've got a slide presentation that -- that covers all three parts of this agenda item.
i'll be discussing part a, which on this -- on this slide here, see proposal summary, first two bullet basically relates to part a.
10% increase in development permit review fees and the three storm water management fee proposals.
your backup material which you received previously, attachment b describes the fee increase proposal in more detail than what I'll summarize here.
okay.
next slide.
storm water management fees.
of course, this is -- this comes as a federal clean water act mandate.
the phase 1 cities in this state included jurisdictions like the city of Austin, city of san antonio, city of houston and one very urbanized county, harris county.
Travis County and a couple other counties and many cities in Texas came in under phase 2.
Travis County must comply with a tceq issued permit.
we are substantially urban and we're becoming more so and that's the reason for this mandate.
the basic standard behind this -- the goals of this permit and what we're trying to do is to reduce pollutants in urban storm water to the maximum extent practicable.
attachment c has a lengthy list of all the things that are requirements for us to fulfill.
there's seven minimum control measures, minimum -- I think control measures.
we have identified that we have eight full-time equivalents and about three-quarters of a million dollars in annual costs, salaries and operating costs.
and these are described in more detail in attachment d.
37% of these costs we believe we can connect in some way with -- with the regulated community.
and that includes things such as the review of permits, site inspections that we have to conduct, ensuring that storm water controls operate as intended, and then 63% of the cots serve more broader, public purposes.
and because not everything that tceq requires that Travis County do is associated with some permit applicant.
the first of these three fees that I'll brief you on are the -- is what we're calling development review fee increase.
the goals that t.n.r.
has identified on the first of these three fees is to have full cost recovery of about $205,000 in storm water costs, and also a 10% increase in the existing application fee.
unrelated to our storm water management costs, but related to our development services costs.
so together we believe we can achieve better cost recovery.
this $205,000 is just that part of the three quarter million that's associated with permit reviews.
a little bit more on cost recovery, these development fees have not been increased since 2004.
we -- the program costs that we have are putting -- you know, we've got new staff or I should say we've got existing staff that is putting a new emphasis on storm water management.
our operating costs have steadily and constantly risen since 2004 related to tort reform water and development review costs in t.n.r.
>> how would the expenses compare to the $315,000 this total revenue?
>> the expenses are about $205,000 and the development services program is not getting full cost recovery of existing staffing.
>> I'm looking for a number.
so if we collect 15,000, would we spend 400,000, 500,000, about, just roughly?
that's our justification, right?
we're trying to recover more of our costs.
>> yes.
for the development services costs, what we've shown you that's in table 1 of attachment b of our backup material total cost of approaching 100% on some of our permits but not all of them.
i don't have the dollar costs on development services dollar amount, but you can see that our total costs -- there's an actual permit cost and actual swmp cost in that table.
and we recover the swmp costs but not fully yet the development services costs.
>> get me an answer next week.
>> I'm sorry?
okay, yes, yes, we can certainly do that.
as I was starting to say, our existing cost recovery varies by permit type as is shown in table 1.
this ranges from about 5% cost recovery to 78% recovery.
and it varies from permit to permit.
the increase for storm water program recovery, we base this on what a typical year of permit applications might be and giving us 279,000 might be something that wouldn't occur in a year like the current one due to the -- due to the recession that the state and the county and the nation is currently under.
so we do warn you about the revenue estimations that they are based on a current year.
the next slide, in terms of an impact on permit applicants, the increases are based on county staff time and operating expenses.
we -- we have put together a fairly progressive fee schedule in that the costs won't be -- the increases won't be as harsh as on people less able to pay fees.
for instance, and we use an example of the new homeowner, because the land development costs would typically be passed on to a new homeowner.
looking at the series of five fees that you might have, and we list them here, preliminary plan, final plat, et cetera, these fees are typically paid by a land developer or the home builder through a series of steps.
the fee increases would be higher for more large or luxurious development.
but in trying to be progressive, we're trying to have the least effect on the less significant projects.
and as you can see here, we believe that's about $82 increase in the cost of a home could be attributed to this fee increase.
that is handled through the joint permitting office and the expertise and staff of the city of Austin.
bexar county, they -- in the past year or two they promulgated a fee which just adds $500 to any tract of land greater than an acre that is going to be disturbed or development, so they have kind of an across the board approach to raising revenue for their storm water program.
as another comparison, the edwards aquifer program of the tceq, a single-family dwelling on a less than 5-acre lot has a fee of $650.
so those are a couple of comparisons there of other jurisdictions.
i'll move on to the second of the three storm water fees, and this is what we're calling the storm water maintenance fee.
this would pay for the tceq requirements to inspect and ensure that storm water ponds, detention pond, you'll falls, things like that are maintained.
we -- we'll be looking at this fee sort of prospectively on applications that come in from the time the fee would be in place because we think there's about 600 ponds and 600 outfalls out there already that we wouldn't be able to charge this fee to.
but the future actions would -- would be assessed this fee.
the revenue would therefore increase over time as new developments completed and as renewals of these fees occur.
essentially what we're -- we're also -- we also think that the structures that would be assessed this fee are largely associated with -- with subdivision developments and commercial developments.
this would not be fee that would be applied to the typical single-family property that -- that someone -- where someone built a house, those types of detention structures and storm water management requirements are not required for real small tracts of land, for instance.
the fees are sort of modeled after what harris county has in place under the same statutory authority, and that would be to issue -- issue a permit when we accept a subdivision or we accept that a development is done and be assessed a $300 fee with a renewal fee of $150.
if we did inspect a storm water control and it was not meeting the maintenance requirements that's expected, we could -- we are suggesting a reinspection fee of $50 could be both the deterrent and help defray the costs of a county inspector having to go back out there and check on it.
the next fee, the third of the storm water fees is what we're calling the general drainage fee.
in this case it takes into account that the storm water program costs are not completing associated with the regulated community.
there's sort of a general water quality benefit to all citizens in the county from this program that enhances our quality of life, and some of the things are listed on this slide which -- which -- which are things that were required by our tceq permit.
we have to have a cohesive program with education and outreach and public involvement.
in terms of county operations, we have to ensure they don't pollute.
we conduct storm water inspections of our own county operations at some cost to the program.
we review and inspect county capital improvement projects such as road and other facilities.
the tceq permit specifically requires that we set up standards for our own county construction activities.
and illicit discharge detection and elimination.
here we have to have a program where we're looking to see what plant ants are coming from unauthorized discharges, spills and other things that go into the county storm system.
and so a lot of activities and requirements pertain to keeping that -- that program up and running.
in this case, the fee -- this is sort of modeled of a what bexar county is doing.
they have a similar general drainage fee.
they collect it through their appraisal district annually.
what -- what -- I think there's a lot of, if you looked at the backup and some of the scenarios we developed, there's a lot of different ways in which a fee like this could be -- could be set up.
what we've shown is kind of a progressive fee schedule based on impact with the presumption being larger operations with greater impervious cover and a greater development footprint would be responsible for more of the general fee.
also this is an urban runoff program and we exempted agricultural properties completing from this fee.
in the fee scenarios, we emphasize commercial, industrial and multi-family development.
and, for instance, the fees that we put in the scenarios are 500 or $300 a year for an industrial operation, 250 or less for a multi-family development.
at least two of the scenarios we developed have no fee identified for a single-family or a ranch residential property.
one of the scenarios lays out how that fee could work for just $10 a year for those type properties.
in terms of -- in terms of other jurisdictions, I mentioned bexar county just so you know what some of their rates are on this annual fee.
$9.95 for a residential tract.
multi-family fees just, for instance, are about $22 and upward, commercial $57 and upward.
and as many of us know who live in the city of Austin, we pay a residential person pays $145 a year for drainage fees.
that -- that summarizes the three storm water fees.
i want to -- I want to emphasize that there's -- we've laid out a lot of proposals that can be kind of mixed and matched and modified.
i think the judge pointed out correctly that some of our estimates are of the revenue that come in are actually higher than what we think our program costs are, and I think it's to show that any of these that the court might disagree with or have an alternative on could be cut out and we could still potentially make a fairly decent revenue estimate.
>> yes, sir?
-- questions?
>> move on to sewage.
>> we have four full minutes to cover it.
what's staff's expectation or desire as to these fees?
court action when, 'em implementation when?
>> I think probably a public hearing would be in order.
perhaps in two weeks.
and then effective date at least 30 days out.
>> if the court is inclined to increase these fees.
>> that's correct.
>> let's see how much we can get done in the next four minutes.
>>
>> [inaudible] for t.n.r.
the on-site wastewater fees vice president been increased since the mid 1990s.
they've remained stagnant while county costs to produce this service have increased.
cost of personnel, transportation, technology, all of that has gone up, but our fees have remained stagnant.
currently we only recover about 50% of what it costs us to produce the service.
just a comparison, most other jurisdictions recover 60 to 65% of what it costs to produce a service.
what we're proposing for the on-site wastewater fees is to do a 10% across the board fee increase.
restructuring some of our fees, mainly our engineered and standard permit fees.
to accommodate larger systems so they can -- they can pay a higher cost because it costs us more to review the larger, more complicated systems.
we're also looking at some new fees.
the first one would be a reapplication fee.
this would help some of those 2,000 folks in the county operating their septic systems without licenses.
what's happened is they haven't completed the permit process within a year's time frame.
so we're proposing a sliding fee, 10 to 100% of the original fee based on the cost of what it takes to reissue the permit and get them on their way.
the other new fee we're talking about is a surcharge basically for systems that require maintenance.
it costs the county $16 per year, per system for each septic system that requires professional maintenance.
over the life of a system, that could be as much as $300.
so we're asking for $100 surcharge to be put on these permits to cover the cost of processing these maintenance reports and contracts.
basically the highest increase in fees would come on our engineered permits.
these are professionally designed septic systems.
the fee would go from $450 to $495.
basically the restructured fees, increased costs recovery for larger systems, these are over 500 gallons a day, to give you an example, that's something larger than a seven-bedroom house.
new fees, infees cost recovery for systems requiring maintenance and provide relief to homeowners who found themselves operating systems without licenses.
for f.y.
10, this would produce a little over 19,000 in increased revenues.
we did our cost drivers based on an average year's permit.
the projection we made for on-site water is based on the actual numbers of applications we're expecting for f.y.
10.
this would bring us up to recovering 55% of the cost to produce these services.
>> and can we finish up quickly?
>> really quickly.
first slide up there.
>> the parks is proposing a fee increase for the following day use and that's hamilton, hippie hollow, loop 360 boat ramp, tom hughes park, space man park, sandy creek and arkansas bend park.
the last time we had a fee increase is October 2003, which was fiscal year 2004.
what we're proposing is changing our day use from $8 per vehicle to $10 per vehicle.
day use at hippie hollow, which is currently $10, would go to $12 per vehicle.
annual day use would go from $75 to $100 per vehicle and that's for unlimited access during the course of the year.
a duplicate annual would go from $25 per vehicle to $50 per vehicle.
the next slide.
okay.
and this slide here shows the comparison of what other agencies charge in the market.
city of Austin during the weekday charges $5 Monday through Thursday and $8 per vehicle on Friday through Sunday.
they have an annual pass -- they have kind of a discount annual pass.
75 bucks or dollars which allows you 20 entries per vehicle.
the lower lcra charges $5 per vehicle for certain parks and other parks, premium parks they charge $4 per person.
we figure about two and a half people per vehicle on a visitation to that type of park.
they have an annual which is $60.
texas parks and wildlife charges $5 per person with a $60 annual.
and Travis County currently charges or is proposing to charge $10 per vehicle for the -- all the parks, day access park except for hippie which would be 12 and $100 for an annual pass.
>> so we would charge significantly more than three jurisdictions we compare ourselves to?
>> well, if you look at it, on the surface it looks that way, but on the per person cost for parks and wildlife, they charge $5 a person and there's two and a half people on average coming in in a vehicle.
you can see our prices are actually in the market.
>> okay, so --
>> if they came into the park, average visitation numbers in a vehicle is two and a half people.
so you are looking at on average $12 per vehicle for those types of visits.
>> but if there's one person in the vehicle we still charge --
>> $10.
>> $10.
>> yes.
we have discussed, we have discussed having per person charges in the past but we're kind of set up for vehicle charges.
>> okay.
yes, sir.
>> my only question why are hippies more -- it's more costly to be a hippie?
basically.
>> well, it's the only clothing optional park in the state of Texas.
and we do have, it seems, appears, from incident reports, we have more incidents at that park so it requires more attention.
higher labor costs.
>> okay.
>> freedom costs, mr.
reeferseed.
we charge money to take off your clothes.
>> just speaking for hippies, I'm thinking oh, wow.
>> it's an extra attraction.
two bucks for the extra attraction.
>> the next slide is the cost recovery rates.
and I'll quickly go over there.
the five-year average, lcra is -- on the lcra parks that we manage, our collection rate is about 69% cost recovery rate.
Travis County averages around 12% and combined, which is the yellow item on the graph there, is about 33%.
that's our cost recovery for the whole park system based upon our fee structure.
i have two more slides to go.
i will hopfully make your four-minute deadline.
our refund policy for athletic fields, we would like to modify that.
we are proposing that we'll offer a full refund if we are notified, reservations is notified 12 business days in advance of the scheduled event will receive a full refund including all fees.
and we also
>> [indiscernible] make changes altering hours or reserve provided it is done four business days prior to the event.
we do allow athletic organizers to -- if they don't get enough teams registered for an event, they can move their time, their reserve time to another date.
and so basically we're asking them to allow us four business days prior to the event.
other park fees, the last screen here, mansfield dam currently has a concession building that we had an operator in there a couple years ago and we have not been able to get a concessionaire back in there.
what we propose is add under a pavilion rental fee and charge a $10 reservation with a $10 an hour, four-hour minimum fee which is basically $50 for four hours.
similar to our free structure at bob wentz park.
a $50 deposit on all shelter rentals.
this would basically effect likes like moya and webber vial.
the fee would be returned provided the user returns the structure back into a clean fashion so park staff won't have to spend a lot of time cleaning it up.
>> okay.
now, it seems to me we ought to give ourselves time to think about these fees and if we're going to do them have some public hearings.
if we're thought going to do them, I don't think we ought to have those public hearings and invite that agony.
i hear people saying now this is not the time to increase fees.
but what we seem to be trying to do is shift more of the cost to the users and I guess the same amount are left to those taxpayers who don't use the parks s that the thinking?
>> that's the thinking.
>> how does that sound?
one week or basically two weeks we think about this.
it may be we pull the ones we think we ought to do.
everybody likes the idea of refunds.
my guess that would be over womaning support.
if we're adding to costs, there might be objections.
i would say we would have to go through the public hearing process and take that.
if not, though, why go through it.
on some of the other drainage recovery fees, it makes sense to me that if the public subsidy has increased significantly because we've not increased the fees in several years, then for the average taxpayer it may make sense to go ahead and do that.
do we need a week or two to think about it though?
>> judge, what you are considering is that
>> [inaudible] all three subject matters on the agenda as far as a public hearing is concerned or separate public hearings on each one?
>> I'm suggesting we bring them back to look at and decide by vote which are inclined to do then have public hearings after that.
if we're incleaned not to do it, we take it off the list.
others I hadn't thought about a whole lot except in the meeting we had last week and today.
if we give ourselves another week or two, I would be able to land out.
how does that sound?
>> okay.
>> one week or two?
>> one.
>> one week?
okay.
we will -- you know, for those who are impacted, they will wonder why the timing on this.
and the answer to that is the public sub I did I did has increased and we are trying to --
>> regionally this type of stuff is done in the budget cycle as parted of your hearings on the budget, we normally bring a fee schedule to the court.
it's somewhat abbreviated this year because of financial constraints.
it would normally be part of the budget process.
>> the other thing is in the past the public hearings have taken some time and we've had meetings here in the court and people have come.
we've taken time to consider their comments.
i would think that it would be highly unlikely for us to implement something by October 1.
in fact, we may ought to -- in my view we may think the first of the year on those that we want to increase.
but we can decide that next week if --
>> I don't think it's critical, I mean, that we have the -- well, quite frankly, I don't think the auditor's office is -- they will be able to certify the revenue in time to get it in their 2010 budget.
i think we passed that deadline.
i think we're really talking about whether or not we charge the fees at all and at what time in the fiscal year we start the fees.
i don't think you are under any deadline.
>> on the storm water management, if we take a f.t.e.
hit, the costs --
>> well, those fees are currently budgeted.
it's a matter of right now it's the general taxpayer, they are paying for the positions.
>> okay.
i can hardly wait till next week, y'all.
thanks for bringing us these fees for our consideration.
it's a little bit after 11:30.
judge burns.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, September 1, 2009 3:14 PM
