Travis County Commissioners Court
March 9, 2010,
Item 28
Number 28 28.
consider and take appropriate action on request for Travis County to approve modification of composition of capital area metropolitan planning organization (campo) policy board as required by the joint powers agreement.
the back up that you have boils down to a couple of important facts.
up is, that the state elected officials clearly wanted off of campo.
that's been done.
second thing is we promised months ago bastrop and caldwell counties that they would have a seat.
they have never been represented on campo not during the modern times, so the second change is that, and the way that works is campo had to ask txdot commission to approve expansion of the geography, so the commission has done that, board it is then joint powers people, six of us have to approve those two things.
the third thing that happened is -- by the way, we -- the three of us supported what we call option 4, and what the campo board did was to approve option 2.
and what option 2 does, in addition to eliminating state elected officials, it gave a vote to Pflugerville because Pflugerville would be close to 50,000.
it is close to 50,000 today and we will probably achieve that in the next census, and by rule, once you reach 50,000 you have an automatic slot, so we went ahead an gave Pflugerville that automatic slot.
we took from hayes county one of the slots that hayes county had, so in terms of harm, Travis County picked up one, which was not injurious.
hayes county lost one.
but where we are today is if we do not, as a member of the joint powers agreement, and by the way, that is hayes, Travis County, Williamson county, city of Austin txdot, capital metro, that is six, each of us has veto power so if it doesn't get approved, it won't get done.
i think the other counties are waiting too.
i was told a couple of them are waiting for the election to take place.
that happened last Tuesday.
so mr.
canalopo asked us to put this on Travis County's agenda and that's where it is.
the vote was 14 -- 14-6, I think.
the vote to support option 4, which was our option was 7 in favor, 1 against, so and the county judge of Travis County switched his vote, 4 defeated, 2 there, so I switched and voted for it basically.
that's where we are.
the two more members of campo -- there are two more members of campo with us today.
any comments?
>> my only comment is that -- well, I do think that it is definitely a con in -- in option 2, which is the one that is before us today, that the small cities representatives have removed.
i also think under option 2, hayes county has more to lose than any of the other sigtories of the jpa and that it might be good for us to wait on them since they are the ones with the most to lose.
that said, I also don't want to be a sore loser of those at campo.
the clear majority was in favor of option 2 rather than 4, although the subcommittee that brought forth the options was heavily in favor of option 4, which the subcommittee compromised representatives from the joint powers agreement.
so I suppose I am expressing ambivalence at this point.
>> well, the problem that I have is I am chair of campo, and so if you were to promote reasonablism, I don't think it is necessary to fight back every time you lose a vote.
>> that's right.
>> if the vote had been 11-9, I guess I would feel a whole lot stronger about fighting for option 4, which Commissioner Huber and I really kind of put together and I thought our purpose in putting it together was to increase the percentage of our -- of Travis County representation on campo -- Travis County plus the city of Austin.
we were thereabout 60% of the population, but only 50% of campo representation.
so both of them actually increased our percentage a little bit, up to 52, 53%, which is still less than the 60%, but even after all of these changes, Travis County is the only one whose percent of the campo representation is less than our percent of the population.
even hayes, after losing one has a representation on campo that exceeds its population percentage.
>> I -- I just have a few comments myself.
>> okay.
>> I don't -- I don't consider being opposed to this being a sore loser.
we put a lot of thought into the option 4, and the -- there was a lot of last-minute discussion and I am not sure there was as much good analysis in the process that took place between the committee recommendations and then the ultimate campo vote.
and I -- I would like to read into the record a letter I got from mayor dave deon, from the mayor of lake way written on February 24th addressed to me, honorable Commissioner Huber, please vote against the campo board restructuring proposal and insist on restructuring proposal that preserves a small city representation.
it is my belief that the restructuring proposal voted on by campo does not foster regionalism in any way.
this vote is a significant disappointment to the city of lake way.
i would appreciate your support.
respectfully dave deon mayor of lake way.
i also would like to add that numerous cities and small towns and hayes county have written letters in opposition to this to their Commissioner's court.
mayor jeff mills from sun set valley was -- has led opposition to this in a strong way with very good rationale and I don't think it would hurt campo to reconsider this competition because, indeed we are moving towards the centers approach that needs the input from the small regional centers and we -- I think we are cutting off our nose to spite our face by reducing the small-town representation when we are moving in that direction for need of representation.
so I make a motion we need approve the modification of the composition -- the new modification proposed for the campo area, capital area metropolitan planning organization.
>> is there a second?
i should add that, in my view the leader of the fight for 2 was the city of Austin.
mayor leffingwell was chair of the composition committee.
i was -- was I the lone Travis County representative on there?
>> yes.
>> I led the fight for 4 and it passed 8-2 in the committee but 2 had been approved previously by the same committee by a vote of, say, 7 to 3 or 7-4, something like that, and on that vote, I was one of the four.
but I thought the big fight on two really was state elected officials and I wanted them on because the state projects are the most problematic ones and when you go to the txdot commission, if you don't have state leaders with you, you are not really disrespected but you are not respected as much but the state elected officials say whenever we needed -- whenever campo needs them to go with campo representatives to txdot commission or the legislature, then they would be 110% behind us.
and based upon that commitment, it was my view that we maybe could have our cake and eat it, too.
if you wanted them off and to increase low local representation and that was an argument that was made, so we -- more local representatives, and state leaders, with us when we go.
the problem is that we also reduced total number by two, so I don't know that we really increased local representation.
Travis County got one more, though.
not one more for the Commissioner's court but one more for us to probably work with the city of Austin and choose in Travis County and my view on that was that it should be one of the leaders -- one of the officials in the small cities, so it still doesn't help hayes county but it does help us.
so my motion, that one died lack of a second.
my motion is to go ahead and approve 2.
we only have one -- one vote of the 6, but I think that we should take the lead and try to get that done.
i don't know that I would feel the same way if I were not chair of campo, but I am the chair.
and I think that that will help promote regionalism more than anything else at this point.
>> judge.
>> yes.
>> hold on.
>> wait.
>> does that have a second?
>> I will second it.
>> I was about to say, this is lack of a second day.
second by Commissioner Eckhardt.
now your statement?
>> with regard to the Travis County appointee, the thing that gives me most heartburn over option 2 can regard to option 4, option 2 is a decent option.
it is not as good as 4, in my opinion, because of its effect on the small cities' representation.
one argument that was made at campo is that we, as Travis County representatives also represent the small cities.
while that is true to a point, I would never presume to step into the shoes of the city councils of the small cities in this country.
additionally, our current small cities' representative has been -- I have got to say this about jeff mills -- he has been the most prepared, the most active, and a very, very helpful member of the board.
so I agree with the judge, that we should take a look at our Travis County appointee as an option for remedying what is a deficiency, I believe, in option 2.
>> I agree and I should drop this bad news, mayor mills is not running for reelection.
>> yes.
>> so he thinks after the election, he will be off of campo and probably the new mayor will be, if there is a representative from Sunset Valley, right?
>> yes.
that's true.
>> I would just also like to add, though, in opposition to the motions that on the floor is that we have a lot of small municipalities and cities that are growing in our precincts and as we grow, there is not a mechanism to increase the representation in this program.
until they reach a certain threshold and it is pretty far out there.
50,000.
>> and I agree with you.
i believe the desire for a smaller board was -- was a false -- false issue, particularly in light of the research that jeff mills did about the size of boards for mpos for metropolitan areas similar to us.
we are on the small side, even -- even if we had taken the 23-person option.
even under that scenario, we were on the small side.
>> and we are only talking, what, a four-person spread in the number of -- on the board.
it is not that significant.
in my opinion.
>> I think we ought to use our one vote to make sure that a small city in Travis County is on campo.
we only have one, but we certainly can use it that way.
>> I -- I would -- in light of the fact that mills isn't running for mayor --
>> [laughter] -- are we -- I would like to put it out there, not for us to decide today but to consider whether the small cities' representative must be elected?
we could charge our appointee of representing the cities without being elected.
there is no requirement.
>> so it is open ended.
yeah.
any more discussion?
all those in favor?
Commissioner Eckhardt, yours truly and Commissioner Gomez voting in favor of the motion.
those in favor of the motion.
>> abstain.
>> Commissioner Huber, Commissioner Davis abstains.
and chair I will communicate this to the director of campo to be shared with the other council members.
>> I would like to say
>> [indiscernible] to be included in that.
i have always advocated and thought they should be included but there are some circumstances here that I am really not sure of, as far as the representation that I think should be realized in this particular action we are taking here today so I want to make sure that that is notated to support that.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, March 9, 2010 2:53 PM
