Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, November 9, 2010,
Item 16
Number 16 is to discuss and approve issuance of request for services for redistricting services for Travis County.
>> good morning, judge and Commissioners.
sue grimes, county purchasing agent.
as you all are well aware there's a redistricting effort going underway and our igr director deece has taken a lead on getting a group together to start that process.
they've been working on developing the request for services to hire a consultant to help us redraw those lines for the four Commissioners' precincts, redraw lines for the five justice of peace and constable precincts and redraw lines for some 200 plus election precincts throughout the county.
we've included a timeline.
we would like to issue this and receive proposals in December and then move forward with a timeline that y'all had approve originally.
so we're here.
I understand that -- I talked to dan smith this morning.
he had some questions and I do need to consult with our county attorney having to do with software.
I’ll let dan explain.
but we need to research that and maybe make an amendment to that wording and then move forward.
>> okay.
mr. Eckstein, we'll give you a chance to have your say.
>> I have nothing to add at this time, judge.
>> okay.
mr. Young and mr. Smith.
>> good morning, judge and Commissioners court.
nice seeing you again.
we just had a couple of questions about a couple of items on page number 21 and page number 24 under scope of services and under warranties and services.
section 4.5 indicates that the proposer needs to have hardware and software necessary to support computer maps and computerized data files and provide Travis County with a copy of the software.
the mapping software must be compatible with our view 9.3, coordinate systems, a data d north america 1927 and including matching latitudes and longitude coordinate systems. The way this is written, I don't believe a license agreement would allow us to give you a copy.
>> I’m sorry, what we need to look at is we need perhaps -- we're going to research this.
read only access so that you as Commissioners can actually can staff look at those lines and figure it out.
so I’m not sure we're asking -- and maybe we are asking them to provide us a copy, but I think what we need is read access only.
so we need to consult with the attorneys.
>> yeah.
>> 10 years ago did we have --
>> members of the court and judge, the reason I was asked up here is because since the vra was passed, I in some capacity have served as the redistricting consultant to the Commissioners court in Travis County.
and the short answer is that traditionally we have provided the court with an ability to draw their own lines independently of anybody else.
in the last go round 10 years ago, what that meant is that my firm, which just at that time, provided the court with a terminal and access to all software and all of the necessary data so that literally a member of the court could go in to a room and prepare their own plan.
print it out and look at it with all the necessary calculations and so forth.
if that's the intent of this, then of course, there's never been a time when a Commissioner could not privately request their own permanent mutation of lines going back to the days when we did it with calculators and grease pencils.
it would be silly to not have the Commissioners have their own confidential versions that they could draw up on their own.
the way the language reads it appears to also request that the county be given a copy of the proprietary software and that's the issue.
because whoever does this for you would by definition either build their own software, which is one version of what I did in the past through my company when it existed, or the more common thing today is to buy licenses for packages of software, which is very sophisticated now and probably have -- depending on the -- we have to buy software specifically to be able to meet y'all's requirements.
but the license with the very firm requirement that you obviously cannot share without buying another license.
>> I think it's probably safe to say that we can meet -- meet and overcome this hurdle.
>> yes.
I assume.
but the language has to be modified.
and my suspicion is that what you really want is what you had 10 years ago, which is access to your own terminal, which is tied to all of the data and software so that somewhere you can go privately and with some minor amount of training draw whatever you want to, print it out and go take it and cuddle with it and do whatever you wish to do.
>> and the language -- and the language that long ago was the same.
so the intent was --
>> we had the same language as we had a decade ago.
>> this is easily solved.
>> we can -- cid and I have already talked about some language that we can add to change it to either purchase a copy or to provide the access to it that would -- where we would meet the legal requirements of not violating any copyright laws.
>> in this day and time it's easy to provide simply a lead to the master package of whoever the company is that you're using because frankly, there's not going to be any Commissioners' court that's not going to require access through their consultants' master package so they can draw their own lines.
that's just going to be given.
>> but what I’m trying to get to is this, is that -- we're probably on some kind of timeline to get somebody on board to start looking at this stuff.
>> well, in fairness --
>> hold on.
>> go ahead, Commissioner.
>> and of course, we're looking at modifying the language.
my question now becomes how long will it take to get this type of language --
>> I can do it today, commission he.
>> you can do it today?
>> well, see I didn't -- okay.
you're on the fast track.
okay.
because I didn't know how long it was going to take.
okay.
I’ve said that.
but anyway, that was my concern is the expediency of what we're trying to do because this thing is right in our face.
and of course, we need to start getting the folks on board of what we're going to do to select a service.
so okay.
>> with all due respect, this timeline is the shortest I’ve ever seen for selecting a consultant.
you're going to hire a consultant and the data won't be available until March, which is the traditional time it's available.
and you all asked for proposals in December.
traditionally what you've done is you've taken proposals in January, hired somebody in February and they go to work in March.
I’m talking about for 30 years.
now you're going to hire -- ask for a proposal in December and unless you intend to spend the christmas holidays huddling with the thing, I don't understand why you need it in December because the truth of the matter is you're not going to have data before March, I don't care when you hire the consultant.
and the consultant, other than getting together with you and discussing what your timeline is for hearings, which is about one meeting, that doesn't -- I don't understand what the rush is.
this is the holiday season.
there's not going to be a lot of meetings.
I mean, I’m just reacting to -- I’ve read the proposal and that is not what you have traditionally done.
like I said, I’ve done it for 30 years.
>> and that's -- excuse me.
that's a segue into one other request that I think the court might want to consider.
since this is only 22 working days with all the holidays over the next month and a half that the return of the request for services be changed to either the 7th of January or the 14th of January.
>> what is staff's response to the schedule?
comments?
>> it's not on the agenda for today, judge, but it's some -- the court sets a schedule and the court could move the schedule back if it wanted to obviously.
I don't think it hurts us much in the long run provided that we still stick to a schedule where we have -- court has made the decision about the ultimate contractor, preferably in the first half or middle of February.
>> 10 years ago the court approved the contract somewhere around the last week in February, first week in March.
>> jan 7th?
I move approval of the it as its written.
I think to be to be quicker to the punch is usually preferable than to wait.
>> second.
>> with the modification of the language with regard to the software.
>> can I request that the county attorney also look at the language in 8.5.2?
>> that protects us.
that's a software license.
that says that the software that they're using, that they have a copyright and a right to use it and if they don't, we are not held accountable if they are sued for using software without appropriate license.
so that's our indemnification.
>> because the way it's written now, if we give you the software, and we get sued, we have to defend you and pay any claims. The way it's currently written today.
>> okay.
what's that again?
>> 8.5.1, judge.
the warranty.
>> it's the same issue, which we can also --
>> [ inaudible ]
>> well, do we need to see the language that fixes these?
if we can do it so quick, why don't we just get it done between now and when we adjourn today?
>> I don't think there's any fix to the 8.5.1.
I think that needs to stay.
I think the only thing we need to do is change the wording to, and provide Travis County with access to the software.
and we can expound on that, say, for whatever purposes or we can leave it short.
>> or unless the Commissioners' court wanted to purchase their own copies of the software and the vendor could be the means of billing the expense.
>> no, I wouldn't recommend that.
I would recommend that we change it just that they have to tell us what software and hardware they're using and they provide access and training to y'all to understand and use it.
that's what we're paying the consultant to do.
>> what I would like to see happen -- this is redistricting.
it's a very, very -- I guess very not controversial, but it's a very involved you subjectmatter.
we as Commissioners have to make sure that we have an opportunity to review our -- the district in which we reside and the future growth which will determine future district lines.
and it just appears to me we do not have five people on this court that need to see exactly and hear exactly what's going on.
each one of us have to be involved with this particular redistricting process.
the judge, of course, represents the entire county.
so regardless of what comes up, he will have to represent all of it.
but each Commissioner up here has a district that we are responsible for.
and of course, that we are elected from.
so it just appears to me that, judge, it would be -- in my mind -- I’m not ready to act on this today n my mind until we have each Commissioner up here to vote on this particular contract since each Commissioner has a responsibility, a stake as far as redistricting is concerned on this issue today.
>> you make the one week professional courtesy request?
>> yes, sir.
and hopefully we can get that when Commissioner Gomez is here because she has something to say as far as what goes on here, as far as redistricting is concerned.
>> why don't we do that and just clean up the language?
>> I withdraw my motion.
>> I withdraw my second.
>> judge, can I ask a question?
if we postpone a week, do we move the opening date out a week?
>> I would just because if there's no --
>> that's fair.
we've already --
>> there's no harm to us.
I don't know why we wouldn't do it.
let's say to -- to January 7th.
>> 24th you're not here.
>> the judge might be.
>> let's do it January 7th.
>> all right, judge.
thank you.
>> so we'll have this back on next week.
thank y'all very much for calling those issues to our attention.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, November 9, 2010 11:00 PM
