Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission
Finance Committee
January 19, 2000
Commission Hearing RoomTexas Parks & Wildlife Department Headquarters Complex
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, TX 78744
7 BE IT REMEMBERED that heretofore on the 19th
8 day of January 2000, there came on to be heard
9 matters under the regulatory authority of the
10 Parks and Wildlife Commission of Texas, in the
11 commission hearing room of the Texas Parks and
12 Wildlife Headquarters complex, Austin, Travis
13 County, Texas, beginning at 1:50 p.m. to wit:
14
15
APPEARANCES:
16 THE PARKS AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION:
17 FINANCE COMMITTEE
Chair: Ernest Angelo, Jr.
18 Lee M. Bass
Carol E. Dinkins
19 Nolan Ryan
Dick Heath (absent)
20 John Avila, Jr.
Alvin L. Henry
21 Katharine Armstrong Idsal
Mark E. Watson, Jr.
22
THE PARKS AND WILDLIFE DEPARTMENT:
23 Andrew H. Sansom, Executive Director, and other
personnel of the Parks and Wildlife Department.
24
25
.0002
1 JANUARY 19, 2000
2 *-*-*-*-*
3 FINANCE COMMITTEE MEETING
4 *-*-*-*-*
5 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Call to order
6 the Finance Committee meeting. And as far as
7 approval for the minutes of the previous meeting,
8 are there any changes? Modifications? Do we
9 have a motion?
10 COMMISSIONER RYAN: So moved.
11 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Do I have a
12 second?
13 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Second.
14 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: All in favor
15 say aye. Opposed? The motion passes.
16 (Motion passed unanimously.)
17 AGENDA ITEM NO. 1: BRIEFING - CHAIRMAN'S
18 CHARGES.
19 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Evidently we
20 have a briefing on the chairman's charges.
21 MR. SANSOM: Mr. Chairman, if I
22 might, I would call your attention to the fact
23 that you will be receiving today a briefing on
24 our automated licensing system. This is a part
25 of the charges in that we are basically in a
.0003
1 situation where a contract with our current
2 vendor will be up in about a year and a half and
3 so that relates directly to the chairman's
4 charges.
5 In addition I would like to call
6 your attention to the fact that some of our staff
7 had been meeting with members of the legislature
8 concerning reciprocal licenses for other states.
9 And we will be bringing to you, perhaps as early
10 as the next meeting, a proposal to sort of
11 rethink the issue of reciprocal licenses. It
12 seems to me it's primarily coming from citizens
13 from Texas who are senior citizens who are
14 fishing in other states and now being charged for
15 it because of reciprocal agreements.
16 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Excuse me.
17 MR. SANSOM: No, sir. Go ahead.
18 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Did you
19 conclude that?
20 MR. SANSOM: Yes, sir.
21 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I believe you
22 have an introduction you would like to make,
23 also.
24 MR. SANSOM: Yes. I would like
25 to -- at this time it gives me a great deal of
.0004
1 pleasure to introduce to the Commission and other
2 members of our staff and the public, Ms. Suzy
3 Whittenton. Suzy has joined us from the Animal
4 Health Commission. She's worked at the Racing
5 Commission and in Governor Clements' office. She
6 will be our chief financial officer as of
7 February 1. So welcome, Susie.
8 AGENDA ITEM NO. 2: BRIEFING - FINANCIAL
9 REVIEW.
10 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: All right.
11 The second item is a briefing on financial
12 review, which we will ask Jayna to present.
13 MS. BURGDORF: Thank you. We will
14 have the updated financial information on major
15 accounts, including license sales comparisons,
16 and the operating budget status.
17 Account 9, Game, Fish and Water
18 Safety. Boat registration and titling and
19 license sales are the two primary fee sources.
20 50 percent of Account 9 revenue is from license
21 sales, which is almost a quarter of the agency's
22 total revenue.
23 Boat registration and titling fees
24 are on track. We base our projection on a range
25 of time because registrations are good for two
.0005
1 years. We have only collected about 15 percent
2 of the original revenue estimate at this time,
3 which is typical for this fee stream. And no
4 revenue adjustment is recommended.
5 We have collected a significant
6 portion of our license sales. And so we have a
7 lot of information on a lot of data at this
8 time. The super combo sales are up 11.2
9 percent. And as a matter of fact, the super
10 combos crossed the 250,000 point, which is
11 basically half of the combos back in 1996, when
12 we were querying customers as to whether or not
13 they'd be willing to purchase the super combo
14 license at $50 price range. And so because of
15 our marketing efforts, we're actually 20,000 over
16 what we had ultimately projected we would hit.
17 In addition, we have an 11 percent
18 increase in the nonresident hunting sales, which
19 is driving revenue. Interestingly, 11 percent is
20 slightly less than 2,000 hunters and yet that
21 account is for $460,000 in revenue. So
22 nonresident hunters are a significant driving
23 source of our revenue increase at this time.
24 Total hunting sales are up .3
25 percent, to 976,000. While these total hunting
.0006
1 sales are below a million at this time, they are
2 still ahead of last year and we did cross the
3 million mark. We expect to see increases in
4 resident hunting, nonresident five-day, and your
5 nonresident spring turkey.
6 By all accounts, good fishing on the
7 coast has resulted in all resident fishing
8 licenses and stamps being up. Resident fishing
9 alone is up 6.5 percent. Total fishing sales up
10 almost five percent. Total fishing sales last
11 year hit $1.6 million for the entire year. So
12 what we need to determine over the next few
13 months is, did our customers buy early or do we,
14 as a matter of fact, have new customers?
15 In addition, as we reported at the
16 last meeting, Big Time Texas Hunt sales were up
17 207 percent to 70,000. And so total license
18 revenue is up $2.3 million to date. Very good
19 news.
20 Okay. License sales revenue. This
21 chart just basically reflects the doubling of our
22 license revenue over the past ten years and then
23 at the next meeting, the increase that we'll be
24 proposing in a minute will be reflected on this
25 chart.
.0007
1 Okay. So our projection -- if our
2 increases hold through the fiscal year, we should
3 hit almost $64 million. We've collected 79
4 percent of our original revenue estimate at this
5 time. We are recommending a revenue adjustment
6 of almost a million, which reflects the super
7 combo increase and the nonresident hunting sales
8 gain. We are not recommending any adjustment
9 related to the fishing revenue.
10 And this brings us to our estimated
11 financial statement on Account 9. Cash balance
12 starting at $32 million. You add your license
13 sales revenue of $62 million, which does reflect
14 the adjustment, boat fees at 14, your federal
15 funds at $38 million, which include the sport
16 fish and wildlife restoration grants and
17 $4 million -- actually $5 million in the BCCP
18 grant that is flowing through our agency to
19 Travis County. Other reflects fines, interest
20 earnings, the collection fee for boat sales tax,
21 and magazine sales.
22 And then we subtract our
23 expenditures. The operating budget for Account 9
24 is $117 million, which includes 15 million in
25 employee benefits. The capital budget is
.0008
1 primarily made up of that $19 million but it does
2 include three and a half million for dedications
3 that cannot be spent on any other items other
4 than what they were statutorily authorized for.
5 Prior year obligations are
6 subtracted and then we reduce by $4 million the
7 revenue in Account 9 for the biennial
8 allocation. This is money that we will use to
9 help fund our appropriation next year.
10 And that leaves us with an ending
11 available balance of $3 million. When the budget
12 was approved in August, we discussed authorizing
13 adjustments based on revenue estimates coming
14 true. And indeed, they exceeded our
15 expectations. One of the items that we discussed
16 was the completion of the Rollover Pass
17 restoration. And we do have appropriation
18 authority of $1.8 million remaining for
19 Account 9. And, therefore, we'd like to propose
20 through our standard budget adjustment process
21 that we increase the capital budget by $500,000
22 for Rollover Pass.
23 And we do have some of the pictures
24 that we had at the August meeting that we shared
25 with y'all. The budget adjustment process that
.0009
1 was -- is part of our operating budget policy has
2 been, I think, over the past five years, is the
3 approval of the chairman and the vice chair for
4 finance.
5 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Obviously if
6 any of the commission members had any questions
7 about it or wanted to change their opinion, they
8 could certainly do so. Otherwise, we'll assume
9 that it's -- the approval that was given in
10 August is still valid. Is that everybody's
11 feeling?
12 Andy, you might point out what you
13 were telling some of us earlier. Is that what
14 this is, we're looking at?
15 MR. SANSOM: Yes, sir. These are
16 the remains of the bulkheading along the inward
17 reach of Rollover Pass. This is a principal area
18 on that part of the upper coast for bank
19 fishing. And these bulkheads not only cause a
20 problem of security with respect to the Pass
21 itself but a tremendous safety issue with respect
22 to anglers who are standing along the bank. This
23 work needs to be done.
24 We would execute this through an
25 agreement with Galveston County, and thus, be
.0010
1 able to do it for this amount of money. And I do
2 strongly recommend that we go forward with it.
3 COMMISSIONER AVILA: What's the
4 amount of money?
5 MR. SANSOM: About a half a million
6 dollars. And what that would result in would be
7 a -- would result in the stabilization of the
8 bulkhead, the creation of a walk and handrail,
9 and the removal of this dangerous metal,
10 protruding metal. And complete our obligations
11 of Rollover. We've already done the seaward side
12 of the Pass.
13 CHAIRMAN BASS: Andy, before we can
14 go on to Fund 64, the Big Time Texas hunts, we
15 generated gross revenue of, I guess, about
16 $700,000. And it's my recollection that out of
17 that we net about four to five hundred thousand
18 dollars?
19 MS. BURGDORF: Almost 400.
20 CHAIRMAN BASS: $400,000.
21 MR. SANSOM: And principal expenses
22 being in direct mail.
23 CHAIRMAN BASS: Direct mail?
24 I'd be interested in -- at our next
25 meeting, having a presentation and discussion of
.0011
1 what do we look towards next year in terms of how
2 we allocate those funds and how we -- we
3 reorganize our strategy to take advantage of what
4 we learned from our successes and failures, try
5 to get up-to-date on that, get it in the works
6 for the next year.
7 MR. SANSOM: Yes, sir. We'll have a
8 breakdown of who took what hunt and kind of -- I
9 think you're exactly right. I think it's
10 exceeded all of our expectations. But there's
11 also some anomalies in it that I think we can
12 learn from.
13 MS. BURGDORF: Account 64, State
14 Parks, we compare September through December
15 revenue to prior year. It's up 19.4 percent, to
16 over $1 million. The increase is due in part to
17 the fact that we had some bad weather last year
18 that we're not experiencing this year. And
19 specifically we had several high revenue parks
20 that were closed. And those three alone account
21 for $125,000 increase over prior year.
22 In addition, in late fiscal '99 we
23 opened the George Bush Gallery. And at the
24 opening we also increased some fees. And that
25 alone has resulted in an additional $60,000. So
.0012
1 we're making money across the board. And if
2 revenue holds through, we would -- our
3 projections would be at 24.4 million. We have
4 only collected approximately 29 percent of the
5 original revenue estimate. So we would not
6 recommend a revenue adjustment at this time, not
7 knowing if we'll have water in our lakes and our
8 state parks this summer.
9 The estimated financial statement,
10 start with a cash balance of $12 million. We add
11 in the estimated revenue from parks at 22, the
12 sporting goods sales tax at 16, and other
13 revenue, which includes the conservation passport
14 and magazine at 7. And we subtracted our
15 expenditures, which is our operating budget,
16 which includes 5 million in employee benefits,
17 the capital projects, and the bond payment at
18 $9 million, prior year obligations of $4
19 million. And, again, we're subtracting out our
20 biennial allocation or our one-time funds that
21 we're spreading over the entire biennium. That
22 leaves an ending available balance of $1
23 million.
24 Our operating budget status. So far
25 with one-third of the year behind us, we have
.0013
1 obligated 31 percent of our $177 million
2 operating budget. And with the commission
3 approval tomorrow and final encumbrances on all
4 improved grants, we will have obligated all but
5 22 percent of the $29 million in grant funds that
6 were authorized at the August meeting.
7 And the bond status. Tomorrow,
8 while you're meeting, the Public Finance
9 Authority will be meeting. And they will be
10 awarding the bid on both the general obligation
11 conservation project bonds and the revenue
12 critical repair bonds. And Melanie Callahan has
13 informed me that she thinks in about 15 days,
14 then, we will have the cash to start those
15 projects.
16 And I'd be happy to answer any
17 questions on this review.
18 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Any
19 questions? You can proceed to your next part.
20 AGENDA ITEM NO. 3: BRIEFING - TEXAS OUTDOOR
21 CONNECTION LICENSE POINT OF SALE SYSTEM.
22 MS. BURGDORF: Okay. The bullets
23 I'm going to try and hit is an overview of the
24 current system, an analysis of the alternatives
25 that was conducted by Spectrum Maximus, Mike
.0014
1 Easley and Cindy Jochen, with that company, who
2 are our consultants, have been here, are here at
3 this meeting and were here earlier and have
4 provided us with lots of information. We'll look
5 at a review of what other states are doing, the
6 recommendations for both the current system, our
7 future options, and some recommended policy
8 changes, and then next steps.
9 Texas Outdoor Connection is our
10 on-line point of sale system for hunting and
11 fishing licenses. We do operate a five-year
12 turnkey contract with Transactive. Just a little
13 history of the contract. Initially we started
14 this in January '95 when we issued an RFP. It
15 did, at that time, take a year and a half before
16 the system was fully implemented. We don't
17 expect that that would be the case this time. At
18 the time we did that, we were one of the first
19 states to have an on-line hunting and fishing
20 system, so it was very new to the industry. And
21 now there's a lot of players in the game that
22 are -- that have other states up and running.
23 In October of '99, Transactive gave
24 us official notification of their intent not to
25 renew and their contract does expire on August
.0015
1 31, 2001. And we have quickly conduced a study
2 of the existing system and the alternatives.
3 Current numbers, we have 3200
4 licensed deputies, 3900 terminals, although they
5 are not all out in the field. Some are in
6 various states of repair. They use the Verifone
7 equipment that's shown below. It consists of a
8 terminal, a keypad, and a keyboard. We have
9 about 3.2 million transactions in a year. Up so
10 far this year, we're at 2.2 million
11 transactions. The time for sale varies on
12 whether or not the terminal makes a connection
13 with the host. And the primary difference there
14 is, do the name and address data pop up or does
15 an individual have to sit there and enter the
16 data?
17 Total payments to Transactive,
18 $3.1 million in fiscal '99. And that was based
19 on 96 cents a transaction.
20 Thirty-nine percent of our licenses
21 are sold by 246 Wal-Mart stores. Fifteen percent
22 of our licenses are sold by 49 Academys. Six and
23 four-tenths percent are sold by state parks and
24 law enforcement offices, and 1.5 percent of our
25 volume comes from telephone sales.
.0016
1 Almost 25 percent of our licenses
2 are sold in September alone. The Saturday of
3 Labor Day is our busiest day at 74,000 licenses.
4 And last Labor Day weekend was four percent of
5 our sales for the year. So one weekend. We
6 definitely have peaks in this system.
7 Transactive manages this process
8 through four primary functions. They have a call
9 center in Florida; they have field service and
10 supplies that deals with repairs; financial
11 management, which relates to merchant reports and
12 revenue transfers; and then operations and
13 software development.
14 We do have some current issues.
15 We've had system reliability and response time
16 problems since we started this license year.
17 We've had inconsistent management response to our
18 ongoing concerns. And, again, the contract does
19 end in about a year and a half.
20 So we contracted with Spectrum to
21 conduct this study. The study process included
22 focus group meetings with key stakeholders, a
23 survey that was sent to all licensed deputies, a
24 review of other states, and interviews with key
25 staff from Transactive and Parks and Wildlife.
.0017
1 We had a 23 percent response rate to
2 our survey. The survey included agree, disagree
3 questions, rankings, and a place for written
4 comments. 59 percent find the current process
5 acceptable, and 73 percent agree that the look
6 and feel of the licenses is acceptable.
7 This is how they ranked the
8 following criteria in order of importance. They
9 included written comments, and some of the more
10 frequent ones were comments such as, they like
11 the small footprint. In other words, they like
12 the fact that the machine and the terminal, the
13 keyboard slides under the machine, it doesn't
14 take up a lot of their counter space. They're
15 concerned about the poor service at the help desk
16 and in the field. A number of them mentioned a
17 decline in paper quality, so that's something
18 we're going to investigate. I'd say most of them
19 noted that they were happy with the system when
20 it worked as designed. So when it's working,
21 they like it.
22 And finally, a few of them would
23 like to see an increase in their commission of
24 five percent. I think some of the smaller ones
25 feel like when they accept credit cards for
.0018
1 license sales, they almost lose money on the
2 transaction because they're paying the credit
3 card company two, three, four percent sometimes.
4 So one of the most important things
5 that we looked at was what do other states do?
6 There are 22 other states, plus Alberta, that
7 have either telephone, Internet, or point-of-sale
8 systems, or all of them. Thirteen have the
9 full-scale automated point-of-sale systems.
10 These are mostly smaller states. Arkansas,
11 Tennessee, Wisconsin are some examples.
12 Central Bank automated license
13 system provides point-of-sale services to more
14 states than any other vendor. They're known as
15 ALS in the industry. There are other options
16 which include EDS, Compaq, and some states have
17 actually developed systems in-house and operate
18 them in-house.
19 System costs. Development costs
20 have ranged from nothing, which is what we did
21 here in Texas. We had a no-cost pilot. And
22 that's the same thing that Tennessee did very
23 recently, to $3.3 million in Oregon.
24 Annual operations and maintenance
25 costs range from $250,000 in Maryland to
.0019
1 $2.2 million in Michigan. And one thing that's
2 interesting about Michigan is, they have
3 roughly -- not only are they roughly two-thirds
4 the price of what we pay on an annual basis, but
5 they have about two-thirds of the license
6 deputies, so real proportional there. They are
7 the second largest state to Texas that has an
8 automated system.
9 Telephone sales. Over half of the
10 states that have phone sales use Bass Proshops.
11 And they have 24 by 7 availability. They
12 charge --
13 CHAIRMAN BASS: What is that?
14 COMMISSIONER AVILA: 24 hours a day,
15 seven days a week.
16 MS. BURGDORF: They charge the
17 customer between three and four dollars for
18 shipping and handling. And just a reminder, at
19 this point we do not charge a fee for our
20 telephone customers, although Transactive charges
21 us double, basically $2.96 cents for each
22 telephone transaction. And they do claim that
23 they're losing money on that piece.
24 Less than five percent of total
25 sales purchased by any state. No one brings in
.0020
1 that much revenue on telephone sales. And
2 one-fourth of the states actually manage
3 telephone sales in-house with their own call
4 centers.
5 Seven states have Internet sales,
6 and these range from very simple electronic
7 request forms that are sent to the agency or to a
8 vendor and then manually fulfilled and mailed to
9 a customer. There are complex systems that
10 process and produce the license and they issue
11 security numbers that allow a customer to print
12 their license on their own home printer. No one
13 has crossed the tag barrier. In other words,
14 what do we do with tags in terms of trying to get
15 the tags to the customer just by buying a license
16 on the Internet.
17 MR. SANSOM: So what you're saying
18 is, there's no system over the Internet which can
19 accommodate tags, currently?
20 MS. BURGDORF: Not that we've found
21 yet. Right. And actually the last point there,
22 we did have a discussion in our focus group about
23 are tags necessary. There are some states that
24 don't have tags. Most of those have check
25 stations, which we don't have in Texas. I think
.0021
1 there's concerns about losing the biological data
2 that biologists in the field need. And I think
3 there's a very real culture change that we would
4 have to decide as an agency, are we ready to go
5 forward with that or is that something that we
6 just handle with Internet customers and we use
7 that as almost a means of piloting a different
8 method of collecting that data.
9 Illinois and Kansas are the two
10 states that allow customers to print their
11 license on their own printer. And actually
12 Illinois has a public hunting application that
13 does on-line error, correction, editing, and a
14 confirmation for those who participate in their
15 public hunting process.
16 Recommendations has three parts:
17 The current system, future options, and policy
18 modifications. Current system, Spectrum, right
19 now, recommends an independent operational audit
20 of the outstanding contractual issues with
21 Transactive, a review of the damages that they
22 potentially owe Parks and Wildlife. An example
23 of that would be not meeting service parameters.
24 There's a requirement that they basically service
25 a machine that's down within four hours and we've
.0022
1 received numerous instances from deputies that
2 that's not occurring on a regular basis.
3 Regular reports from Transactive
4 should be required until some of these ongoing
5 issues are resolved. And implementing some
6 enhancements, even in the short term, that could
7 improve our existing system, with software
8 upgrades, better reliability of the database, and
9 improved response time.
10 We have two future options. One is
11 to issue an RFP for a new vendor or vendors. We
12 would allow a vendor to bid on all or parts of
13 the new system. In other words, if Bass Proshops
14 was interested in our business, they could bid
15 only on telephone sales if they wanted to.
16 It has some advantages going to a
17 completely new system. There is the potential
18 for minimal development costs. And it appears
19 that, based on what Tennessee got and some other
20 states have gotten recently in RFPs, that our 96
21 cent transaction fee is not out of line. So we
22 have no reason to expect that on an annual basis,
23 our cost would increase substantially if we went
24 to a new system.
25 We would have ongoing maintenance
.0023
1 support handled by a single vendor. And most
2 importantly, we would have some vendors that we
3 could get references from other states, vendors
4 that have lots of experience in this business.
5 There are also some disadvantages.
6 The vendor resources would not be dedicated to
7 Texas. We would have data transfer issues both
8 with historical information in our current system
9 and potential problems with a midyear conversion
10 to a new system. It's also a longer
11 implementation process. You're looking at
12 probably eight to ten months, not including the
13 RFP process of four to six months.
14 Another option is to purchase the
15 Transactive system and then outsource some of
16 those operations, the service and the telephone
17 Internet sales. The advantage is that we would
18 not have a significant transition for our
19 customer or our license deputy. And, again, that
20 kind of goes back to the comment of, when it's
21 working, they're pretty happy with it. Many
22 Parks and Wildlife information programs are
23 structured around the current system. And this
24 is an issue that came out in our focus group
25 session, is that there are lots of programs that
.0024
1 are built here -- that are written here and that
2 are based on trends that they use to -- where
3 they extract the data from our existing system.
4 And those would have to be written and that would
5 be a time consuming process. We would avoid the
6 procurement and implementation process. We would
7 increase our flexibility to enhance the
8 functionality of the system because we would own
9 the system. Right now we don't own the system,
10 Transactive does. And we would be able to make
11 the kind of needed changes that we wanted more in
12 the time frame that we are comfortable with. And
13 you would potentially lower your ongoing
14 operational costs if you ran it in-house.
15 There is a significant disadvantage
16 and that is that Transactive has priced their
17 system at $4.35 million for the software and
18 hardware. Our consultants have valued the system
19 between $1.2 and $1.5 million. I was told by
20 Transactive today that the 4 and a half million
21 dollar price is a starting point for
22 negotiation.
23 We would have to replace the
24 equipment. All the equipment that is out there
25 in the field is four years old. And in some
.0025
1 instances, it's not in good shape. So that would
2 need to be updated. And if we took over the
3 contract ourselves, then that -- adding that
4 equipment and amortizing that would be our
5 responsibility. We would be managing multiple
6 contracts, potentially either way you go, either
7 option.
8 It requires additional FTEs,
9 full-time equivalents, which we do have a State
10 cap on the number of employees that can work for
11 this agency. And there would be some cost in
12 transferring the management of that system from
13 Transactive to Parks and Wildlife, and you'd have
14 to add that to your purchase price.
15 There were a few policy changes,
16 again, that Spectrum recommended. I want to be
17 clear that these are not proposals at this time.
18 They're just recommendations. One is to reduce
19 the number of licensed deputies that we have and
20 require some kind of minimum sales. Right now we
21 have almost 800 deputies that sell less than 100
22 licenses. So we have a lot of equipment out
23 there that isn't necessarily recouping its cost
24 in terms of the license sales coming back to the
25 department. We should probably require a deposit
.0026
1 for the equipment. And, again, you could always
2 look at a situation where reputable vendors that
3 have been with the State for ages wouldn't have
4 to do that, but perhaps new ones would. We'd
5 also like to look at some kind of service seeing
6 the machines through overnight replacement by
7 mail.
8 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Those vendors
9 that only have a small number, are they generally
10 in a certain type of area, like small towns or
11 whatever?
12 MS. BURGDORF: Well, I think that's
13 another thing. If we're going to examine this
14 further, I think we need to look at, are they the
15 only ones in the county? Well, if so, then we
16 need to make sure --
17 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: (Inaudible.)
18 MS. BURGDORF: Right. You'd want to
19 have someone there.
20 CHAIRMAN BASS: I think some of them
21 are probably hunting camps.
22 MS. BURGDORF: Lodges.
23 CHAIRMAN BASS: They pick up a
24 client at the airport at 8:00 o'clock and go
25 straight to the lodge they want to hunt the next
.0027
1 morning and Wal-Mart is closed.
2 MS. BURGDORF: So the next steps.
3 What we would propose to do is to pursue parallel
4 tracks in a short time frame. We want to make a
5 better decision with better information. We'd
6 like to negotiate with Transactive and determine
7 what really the bottom line price is. We'd like
8 to prepare and issue an RFP in February and have
9 a final decision on which path to further pursue
10 in April.
11 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: If the present
12 system were purchased by Parks and Wildlife or
13 whatever, would there be any market for someone
14 in Texas to -- some company to take it over from
15 us, to buy it back, in other words, and operate
16 it?
17 MS. BURGDORF: I think that's an
18 option. And I think -- I don't know if we would
19 have to go out with two different RFPs. But I
20 think that's something we'd like to look at
21 somehow including in the current RFP. At a
22 minimum I think we'd like to look at having the
23 option of someone writing -- having someone
24 handle Internet sales and writing a program that
25 would automatically interface with that
.0028
1 database. So there are some options of having
2 other vendors help take over a Transactive
3 system.
4 Transactive, I think, let it be
5 known that their system was for sale. I would
6 get calls over the past year -- well, past six
7 months from -- I know MCI was interested at one
8 time. And I don't know if it was the purchase
9 price, if this was the same purchase price that
10 they gave them, or what it was that turned other
11 companies off. I know that what we've talked
12 about and what the consultants have shared with
13 us is that probably an ALS, which is kind of,
14 again, the leading vendor, doesn't want to buy
15 Transactive's system because they have their
16 whole own way of doing it set up for seven other
17 states and they don't want to come in and take
18 over a system that they're not familiar with,
19 that runs on different software and hardware and
20 is known to have had some problems. So there
21 hasn't been a lot of interest in the vendor
22 community at this point.
23 COMMISSIONER AVILA: And Transactive
24 doesn't want to renew because -- I mean, have
25 they told you -- how much money have they lost in
.0029
1 their endeavor here? Have they done this
2 before? Was this a first time --
3 MS. BURGDORF: This was -- what they
4 did is, Transactive was a subsidiary that came in
5 and they basically set up an operation where they
6 tried to get economies of scale by running the
7 electronic benefit transfer system for Texas, and
8 the hunting and fishing sales system for Texas.
9 What happened is, when the welfare laws changed,
10 they lost a lot of money, or at least this is
11 Transactive's story, on the electronic benefit
12 transfer system. So they were getting out of
13 that business. They were also doing the Illinois
14 EBT system. But they basically decided to get
15 out of that business. When they did that, they
16 lost their economies of scale for running Parks
17 and Wildlife system. They were all in the same
18 building, they had the same software people
19 handling both systems.
20 I think -- they're a subsidiary of
21 GTECH and I think they want to focus on the
22 Lottery business.
23 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I would think
24 we would want to think long and hard about taking
25 it over.
.0030
1 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Well, I don't
2 even know that that's an option.
3 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: It doesn't
4 send up any exciting vibes.
5 COMMISSIONER AVILA: This sounds
6 like it's broke and don't fix it.
7 CHAIRMAN BASS: I think it's going
8 backwards, frankly, to take over our own system.
9 And this field of data management and customer
10 data stuff is moving so fast. As we were
11 discussing upstairs with the RFP five years ago,
12 the Internet or the concept of Internet sales was
13 so far out of the realm of imagination that it
14 was never even mentioned. And I think if you're
15 starting from scratch today, that's -- that's
16 something that you'd be in the dark ages not to
17 put in as at least a component of how you would
18 structure it.
19 MS. BURGDORF: Right.
20 CHAIRMAN BASS: And five years from
21 now, that may be the only way anybody wants to
22 buy a license. Whether it's Wal-Mart using the
23 Internet as their way of servicing the customer
24 there in the store or -- can we take a moment,
25 please, if I might, to -- the barrier to really
.0031
1 doing on-line sales is the tag issue, how does
2 one issue tags that are not where you can put it
3 on your printer and just print multiple copies or
4 whatever, et cetera, maintain integrity of the
5 tag doing on-line sales. And, Bob, if you or
6 Jerry Cooke, or somebody could maybe refresh
7 or -- a conversation that we had. Back when we
8 were doing regulatory Sunset, which was about,
9 what, four or five years ago, one of the things
10 that we came up with to review, for reasons
11 completely different from this, was the
12 elimination of tags. And both law enforcement
13 and wildlife felt comfortable enough that they
14 could accomplish their goals without any tags,
15 that it was a proposal that we floated out, and
16 really did not follow through on, as I recall,
17 primarily due to landowner concerns that without
18 tags, they would lose some of their ability to
19 control their lessees. There's also a little bit
20 of -- I think just the status quo and a comfort
21 level, that we all grew up with tags, which
22 really were invented in an era of a scarce
23 resource trying to be allocated amongst the
24 hunting public, whereas now most animals that we
25 have tags for, the biggest problem statewide is
.0032
1 managing overabundance and not underabundance.
2 MR. COOK: Mine is always finding
3 something to tie it on with. I think you're
4 absolutely right.
5 CHAIRMAN BASS: At that point we
6 really didn't see a lot to be gained. But help
7 me remember, and for the benefit of those
8 commissioners who weren't there at that time, you
9 know, how did we propose or how did we foresee
10 being able to achieve the biological goals that
11 wildlife division would have, the enforcement
12 goals that law enforcement would have, in a realm
13 of actually not having a physical tag.
14 And now that we have Internet sales
15 of license being something that's -- we really
16 almost have a paperless license. If they do
17 airplane tickets that way, there's no reason not
18 to do hunting license that way, theoretically.
19 Help me remember how we would have
20 proposed to do all that and be able to achieve
21 that.
22 MR. COOK: And I think it is a topic
23 that's very timely. Because this business, like
24 you said, or like Jayna said, of Internet sales,
25 I don't think there's any question. I think that
.0033
1 most of us agree that probably within the next
2 four to five years, that's probably where the
3 bulk of our licenses and tags and permits are
4 dealt with.
5 The tag issue, I think, and there's
6 a number of people in the audience that probably
7 can speak to this better than I. But the tag
8 issue, I still believe, is primarily -- primarily
9 an issue with landowners, as far as particularly
10 whitetail deer. I think there's a comfort level
11 there in having deer, you know, hanging in camp
12 or out on the road, you know, in the back of the
13 truck, headed home, that having that tag on there
14 and knowing what ranch it come from, knowing what
15 date it was harvested, and knowing what county it
16 was harvested in, is a real -- truly a comfort
17 factor from the standpoint of having control of
18 this resource and being able to feel comfortable
19 that the resource is not being overharvested,
20 et cetera.
21 From a biological standpoint, and
22 I'll just talk very briefly about whitetail
23 deer. There was not total consensus, and it's
24 important that you know this. There was not
25 consensus in the staff that, oh, yeah, we could
.0034
1 do away with tags and no problem. We do utilize
2 that information. We utilize -- for example, on
3 whitetail deer and turkey, both, our guys
4 routinely go into cold storage plants during the
5 hunting season, they stagger across the state,
6 sample about a third of the counties, fourth of
7 the counties each year, and simply by taking that
8 tag off, you can see exactly what -- if you go
9 into a cold storage plant and there's 400 deer in
10 there and you and a couple of guys are going to
11 weigh, age, and measure every deer, because you
12 don't just go in and select certain ones. You
13 just start down the row and start weighing, and
14 aging, and measuring every deer to determine the
15 physiological characteristics of that deer herd,
16 whether or not they're in good shape, poor shape,
17 overpopulated, all those kinds of things.
18 That tag immediately tells you what
19 county that deer came from, when it was
20 harvested. And both of those are important
21 pieces of information to know when you look at
22 the age, and the weight of that deer. So there
23 is some concern about the loss of that.
24 CHAIRMAN BASS: Of course, that
25 could be handled in other ways.
.0035
1 MR. COOK: That could be handled
2 other ways. That is exactly right. We'd have to
3 change some procedures.
4 CHAIRMAN BASS: That doesn't have to
5 be a unique piece of paper.
6 MR. COOK: And where we are today,
7 again, one of the considerations that I've
8 mentioned to staff a little bit, particularly on
9 deer, where we are today is so much different
10 than where we were five to ten years ago, in
11 that -- and you've heard many, many times about
12 all these ranchers who are involved in our
13 management plans, our programs out there. They
14 collect a lot of data. We require them to
15 collect a lot of data, which is very useful,
16 again, to us, in place of the other data.
17 You know, you go almost anywhere in
18 the United States, they have every kind of
19 different system. Certainly not -- I forget what
20 the numbers -- it's been a while since I looked
21 at it. But less than half the states actually
22 have deer tags. I mean, you have a thing that
23 you put on your shoulder or whatever it is, and
24 go hunting, but you don't necessarily have a
25 tag.
.0036
1 In most of those cases they do run
2 them through check stations, as Jayna mentioned.
3 And we don't really -- that's a very, very
4 costly, very, very expensive operation. I would
5 not -- I would never recommend to you that we go
6 big time check stations, manning and staffing of
7 those check stations ourselves. For instance,
8 think about how we do on turkeys in East Texas on
9 the eastern bird. Those check stations are
10 voluntary, local, you know, the guy that sells
11 groceries, the guy that has gasoline. And the
12 hunters are required to check them. And we have
13 lots of people volunteer to collect that
14 information. Fortunately, we've been getting
15 very good information from that kind of check
16 station.
17 So I -- again, and I -- and this
18 does not address at all some of the issues
19 regarding your tags now associated -- your stamps
20 and/or tags associated with fish. You know, some
21 of those kinds of issues would have to be
22 addressed. But I still believe that the major --
23 if we -- and which I'm not sure that -- I'm not
24 sure that we shouldn't. If we roll this out
25 across the state -- and it probably will be
.0037
1 rolled out tomorrow morning as we talk here. I
2 think that the most concern that we're going to
3 hear is from landowners and our ability to
4 enforce the bag limits that we have.
5 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Bob, in that
6 regard about the bag limits, we were wondering at
7 lunch or just talking about it, kicking it
8 around, that -- what's curious to me is how many
9 violations we have of people actually killing
10 more deer than the legal limit, as opposed to a
11 lot of other types of violations. Probably very
12 few, wouldn't you guess?
13 MR. COOK: It wasn't until just a
14 few years ago that we had turkey tags. I mean,
15 we operated for centuries without a turkey tag.
16 And our deer and turkey populations are in good
17 shape.
18 There are species like the eastern
19 turkey that we have the ability to handle that a
20 little bit different. But it would be -- it
21 would be something if we could -- if Texas could
22 get to that point where we could issue -- where
23 our licenses could be issued directly over the
24 Internet, printed at home, put that thing in your
25 pocket, you've got you a number. I anticipate
.0038
1 that, based on what little contact I've had with
2 some of these guys that -- you know, people,
3 groups that have been running at us with these
4 things, and we've all heard from some of them,
5 that they'll be able to assign some specific
6 numbers very soon. I think that ability will be
7 there on the Internet, on your machine at home,
8 to get a specific number where it can't be
9 replicated.
10 COMMISSIONER HENRY: Are there other
11 areas of concerns that the biologists are
12 concerned about that we haven't addressed with
13 regard to the tags or is it strictly mostly a
14 numbers kind of thing?
15 MR. COOK: I believe it's mostly in
16 regarding -- in regards to whitetail deer and
17 mule deer. I believe that's -- those are the two
18 species that it is primarily in reference to.
19 Certainly Rio Grande turkey, I mean, you know,
20 like average hunter nowadays, the average deer
21 killer in Texas, let's talk about that one a
22 minute. You've got all these tags on your
23 license. The average, if you look at the
24 numbers, is like less than one deer per hunter.
25 So, you know, we're stacking tags on top of tags
.0039
1 and they're carrying --
2 COMMISSIONER HENRY: That's going to
3 make Ernest's point clear.
4 MR. COOK: Yes, sir, correct.
5 COMMISSIONER WATSON: Well, you
6 know, it seems like to me we also -- it's sort of
7 a redundancy of information. Because the
8 landowner has to fill out all these reports.
9 Then the locker plant has to fill out a report.
10 And I think a lot of that is the same
11 information.
12 MR. COOK: Yes, it is.
13 COMMISSIONER WATSON: And I don't
14 know how the landowners feel about it but we have
15 to do it anyway. So why not maybe shift a little
16 bit more to the landowner?
17 MR. COOK: Well, most landowners
18 actually don't have to keep any kind of record
19 right now.
20 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: That
21 requirement has been dropped, hasn't it?
22 MR. COOK: Yes, sir.
23 CHAIRMAN BASS: Well, you have to
24 keep one if you run a management plant, which is
25 10 million acres. Most people are not.
.0040
1 MR. COOK: But I think -- I mean, I
2 think all of the issues --
3 CHAIRMAN BASS: But then, again, all
4 you need is a scientific sampling.
5 MR. COOK: Right. All the issues
6 that we're talking about are --
7 CHAIRMAN BASS: You know, if the
8 hunters document that we require -- if I turn my
9 piece of game over to somebody else and take
10 possession of it, is supposed to have my license
11 number, where I killed it, et cetera. That type
12 of a requirement, as far as putting something in
13 locker plants, would solve that particular
14 instance that you recited, where somebody can go
15 in a plant, the locker plant if they need to know
16 what county it came from or something.
17 MR. COOK: The last time we talked
18 about it -- I'd probably have to get Jim or
19 somebody from law enforcement to help me here.
20 But there was some talk about, you know,
21 requiring the landowner, for example, to provide
22 a tag, requiring that. Well, kind of where I
23 come from there is, if we're going to require
24 somebody to have a tag, well, we should provide
25 it. There's nothing saved in that exercise of
.0041
1 saying, well, we're not going to print it but
2 we'll require you to do it.
3 CHAIRMAN BASS: Well, in that
4 instance, you know, it's no more secure having
5 the landowner print it than having the hunter
6 print it because --
7 MR. COOK: I think most of our
8 landowners -- we're very conscientious about that
9 kind of thing. But that's true, there's not
10 necessarily --
11 CHAIRMAN BASS: That wouldn't
12 provide any more security.
13 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: It seems to me
14 we ought to make a significant effort to try to
15 find a way to go without tags.
16 COMMISSIONER HENRY: Is there any
17 significant opposition that you're aware of
18 within the department, to move in this
19 direction? And I was wondering, if so, why?
20 MR. COOK: Yes. I think you'll hear
21 some very valid concerns from wildlife division,
22 fisheries division, law enforcement and all. I
23 think there will be some. And I would -- if we
24 could take 15 minutes here and discuss that, it
25 think it might be well -- we probably should do
.0042
1 it some other time when we've got more time. But
2 I think there are some concerns, yes, sir,
3 absolutely.
4 COMMISSIONER AVILA: But the single
5 impact of that tag is, if I hear you right, it is
6 a passive deterrent to exceeding bag limits or
7 illegal kills. That's it?
8 MR. COOK: I believe that's the
9 primary function.
10 COMMISSIONER AVILA: It's only
11 from -- we have all historically -- you guys
12 better put a tag on it right away because you
13 just don't want to be caught without a tag.
14 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: What game
15 species would you think would be the most
16 affected if you did do away with tags?
17 MR. COOK: Whitetail deer.
18 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: Not any of the
19 fish or anything? I mean, in terms of -- I don't
20 know many people --
21 MR. COOK: I don't really count
22 fish.
23 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: (inaudible) red
24 drum.
25 MR. MURPHY: Red drum is, I think, a
.0043
1 very valid issue.
2 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: That's what I
3 was thinking.
4 MR. COOK: We would just --
5 (inaudible) why to deal with that.
6 COMMISSIONER IDSAL: I just don't
7 know many people that exceed the limit of tags
8 they have. I don't know anybody.
9 CHAIRMAN BASS: The people --
10 MS. IDSAL: I don't know anybody
11 that shoots -- uses up all their tags.
12 CHAIRMAN BASS: In most instances
13 where somebody uses all the tags, it's probably
14 under a wildlife management plan in order to try
15 to accomplish something that's in conjunction
16 with the department approved plan.
17 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: It would be a
18 goal we're trying to support.
19 CHAIRMAN BASS: When you get down to
20 shooting all the does and.
21 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Could I
22 interrupt the discussion for just a second? I
23 believe, Jayna, you had some things you needed to
24 do? Are we through with Jayna's presentation?
25 Does anybody have any further questions for her?
.0044
1 MS. BURGDORF: I've got a little bit
2 more.
3 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Do you? Are
4 you through with what you wanted to present?
5 It's whenever you need to go, is when --
6 MS. BURGDORF: Okay. Okay. I
7 appreciate that.
8 CHAIRMAN BASS: I would agree with
9 Mr. Angelo, that I think -- I don't get real
10 excited about taking over equipment that's five
11 years old. I have a really hard time thinking
12 that's a very good idea. I think that we, as a
13 State agency, are probably never going to be able
14 to provide the service as economically or as
15 efficiently as private vendors are today who, you
16 know, have tremendous competitive pressures
17 amongst one another to provide these kinds of
18 data management services to industry, you know,
19 from EDS all the way to IBM, MCI and AT&T.
20 Everybody is getting on the list.
21 So I mean, I would -- I come to this
22 with a strong bias, that we should outsource the
23 whole thing. And that equipment that's five
24 years old is kind of like a Model T in today's
25 technology world and I wouldn't blame somebody
.0045
1 else for not wanting to take it over.
2 From the other point of view, I
3 think we should really strive to not create what
4 will be another Model T before we know it, which
5 is to say that we should really work to try to
6 get a system that would be compatible with
7 Internet sales. Obviously I can see a date
8 probably sooner now than I would have said 18
9 months ago, where almost all our sales would be
10 that (inaudible) based on... But it will still
11 take a while. We'll have to still have Wal-Mart
12 doing it. But to that regard I think we really
13 ought to look at internally of what are the pros
14 and cons of getting completely away from a tag
15 system, which would let us get completely away
16 from a unique piece of paper system and the
17 trade-offs before we jump into a new distribution
18 system of license that might lock us in to
19 something for another five to ten years.
20 MS. BURGDORF: If I might jump in
21 here. One of the things that we talked about is
22 that one of the potential benefits of taking over
23 the Transactive system in the short term --
24 again, talking two to three years -- is that if
25 the Internet really takes off like we think it's
.0046
1 going to -- as a matter of fact, I think one
2 state and, again, it's a smaller state, is
3 actually putting terminals, computer terminals to
4 use, as you mentioned, having people hook up to
5 the Internet in people's stores. If that's
6 really the way things might go in two to three
7 years, then do we want to introduce a new system
8 and three years later introduce yet another new
9 system. So that was one of the thoughts is, do
10 we take over the Transactive system for a short
11 period of time while we're introducing the
12 Internet, and as the Internet grows, then that
13 becomes the next system that we go to.
14 CHAIRMAN BASS: The other aspect of
15 that is, somebody who comes in and wants to be
16 our service provider, and they are completely
17 Internet driven, may be willing to take over
18 Transactive's equipment as a bridge that -- it's
19 a buggy whip to them but they see in three years
20 they can throw it out.
21 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Any other
22 thoughts and comments on either of these
23 subjects, that are related very closely.
24 MR. COOK: One of the things that
25 y'all might keep in mind just very quickly on
.0047
1 this thing of no tags, one of the suggestions
2 that I saw since the last time we talked about
3 this was that on the back of the license that the
4 person continues to carry, that he records the
5 date, the county, the place, the time, the ranch
6 of where that deer or turkey, whatever species
7 that we're primarily concerned about, or that he
8 might be actually out on the road with, that it
9 is recorded on that license. So that if he's
10 stopped and checked, all he does is show that
11 license and that information is readily
12 available.
13 Again, there's always a situation
14 of, well, I'm carrying two deer for old Fred, you
15 know, or I've got six deer in the back and two of
16 them are mine and three -- but there -- you know,
17 there are ways, I think, to work with most of
18 that, some sort of written pass, some sort of
19 written permission thing can be done.
20 COMMISSIONER AVILA: And the
21 landowners can keep a record, go back to that.
22 COMMISSIONER WATSON: Well, I think
23 to get the kind of information you need, you
24 don't have to record every deer. And I think
25 between the people that have managed land permits
.0048
1 and the locker plants, I think you'd get enough
2 information for your biological queries.
3 MR. COOK: We'll go to work on this.
4 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Any other
5 comments? Jayna, does that conclude your
6 presentation today?
7 MS. BURGDORF: Yes, it does. And
8 Tim Hogsett has the next two agenda items.
9 MR. SANSOM: Chairman, if I might
10 comment here. Ms. Burgdorf is winding up about
11 nine years as the Chief Financial Officer of this
12 Department. And I recall in one of our meetings,
13 Former Lieutenant Governor Hobby, who was a
14 member of this board and probably as
15 knowledgeable a person about the finances of
16 State government as there is, commented that the
17 finances of Parks and Wildlife were as well
18 managed as any agency that he had ever had
19 anything to do with. And a lot of that, in fact,
20 all of that has to do with her stewardship over
21 these years. And I believe that certainly I and
22 the rest of us owe her a great debt of thanks for
23 the contributions that she's made to this
24 Department.
25 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Well, I was
.0049
1 going to make a comment to that.
2 (Applause, standing ovation.)
3 MS. BURGDORF: Thank you. I
4 appreciate it.
5 CHAIRMAN BASS: Jayna, I'll just
6 say, I don't always like what the numbers tell me
7 these days, but at least I can understand it.
8 And that wasn't always true. And I thank you for
9 that.
10 MS. BURGDORF: Thanks. It is nine
11 years on Friday and I have been very happy here
12 and I appreciate the opportunity to be able to
13 stay on and I'm actually very excited about this
14 project. I think it's going to be really
15 challenging. And I'm very interested in just
16 working on the Internet and the electronic
17 aspects of licensing.
18 So I appreciate the opportunity so
19 far. And I'll see you around. I'm sorry, I have
20 to go pick up a kindergartner.
21 CHAIRMAN BASS: At least you have
22 your priorities straight.
23 AGENDA ITEM NO. 4: ACTION - LOCAL PARK
24 FUNDING AND INDOOR RECREATION GRANTS.
25 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: All right.
.0050
1 The next item on our agenda is Item 4 and it's an
2 action item and it regards local park funding and
3 indoor recreation grants. And Tim Hogsett will
4 make the presentation.
5 MR. HOGSETT: Mr. Chairman, members
6 of the Commission, I'm Tim Hogsett, Director of
7 Recreation Grants in the State Parks Division.
8 The first item relates to, tomorrow we will be
9 bringing to you for your consideration our second
10 round of the fiscal year 2000 grants for indoor
11 and outdoor recreation facilities.
12 In terms of outdoor grants we have
13 applications from 34 sponsors in the amount of
14 almost $14 million. And they were all the
15 applications that we had received by our July
16 31st, 1999, deadline. We've done our site
17 visits, done our analysis. You can find your
18 list of proposed projects for tomorrow at Action
19 Item Number 3, public hearing. And we are going
20 to recommend 15 projects for approximately $6.5
21 million tomorrow, the first 15 projects on the
22 list.
23 In terms of indoor application,
24 recreation center and other types of indoor
25 recreation facilities, we have applications from
.0051
1 eight local governments. This will be our one
2 and only award of grants to indoor recreation
3 facilities for fiscal year 2000. We have
4 applications in the amount of about $3.35
5 million. And, again, these are all the
6 applications that were received by our July 31st,
7 1999, deadline. We've, again, done site visits.
8 That's Action Item Number 4 for tomorrow, and the
9 list is attached.
10 We propose, since funds are
11 available to do so, to fund all of those
12 projects.
13 With that, I'd be glad to answer any
14 questions. And essentially we're asking your
15 permission to move forward with these grant
16 proposals tomorrow.
17 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Any questions
18 or discussions or if not, a motion? This item is
19 not recommended for consent because of general
20 public comment. Do we have a motion?
21 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: I so move.
22 COMMISSIONER HENRY: Second.
23 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: All in favor
24 say aye. Opposed. Motion carried.
25 (Motion approved unanimously.)
.0052
1 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Excuse me.
2 Mr. Chairman, since you've got the -- if I
3 understood you, Tim, you've got the same number
4 of applications as you basically had funding
5 for. Do you think that the potential applicant
6 pool is aware that we have this amount of money
7 and that they should be considering
8 applications?
9 MR. HOGSETT: Well, yes. I have
10 thought of that and I think we may should do a
11 little more outreach to folks. But this is a bit
12 of an aberration. Most of the other two or three
13 awards we've made for indoor recreation, we've
14 had quite a bit of competition. It was a
15 surprise to me as well, that it was so close to
16 the amount that we had. And with the increase of
17 another million dollars a year, then your point
18 is well taken. We probably should get the word
19 out more widely.
20 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I wondered
21 about that, too, how many communities don't
22 really even know that it's potentially there.
23 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Well, I like
24 not having to tell people no. But it just seems
25 to me that if we're coming out even, that we may
.0053
1 not be doing as much giving of notice.
2 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: We might be
3 able to upgrade the projects to some degree if
4 you had more applicants.
5 MR. HOGSETT: One of the things that
6 I'm going to discuss with you when we talk about
7 rule-making, also, is we are going to make a
8 commitment to do a couple of grant workshops next
9 year, put out the word in that manner, and we
10 will probably also do some additional public
11 hearings related to letting people know what the
12 new rules that you adopt are and how they work.
13 AGENDA ITEM NO. 5: ACTION - RECREATIONAL
14 GRANTS PROPOSED RULES.
15 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: All right.
16 Item number 5 is the recreational grants proposed
17 rules. Tim.
18 MR. HOGSETT: I guess I can do this,
19 too.
20 As you probably recall from
21 November, we have been, since early September,
22 going through the process of evaluating our Texas
23 Recreation and Parks Account Grant Programs. And
24 proposing some changes in the rules and the
25 administration and in some of the policies of how
.0054
1 we do business. Primarily this was as a result
2 of some increased funding provided by the
3 legislature through the appropriation of an
4 additional $5 million to us, that being the
5 interest money that is made on the Texas
6 Recreation Parks Account.
7 And the other major incentive is
8 passage of House Bill 2108, which made some
9 revisions in the grant program in the Texas Parks
10 and Wildlife code.
11 You probably remember that there are
12 three grant programs that are part of the Texas
13 recreation and parks account: outdoor; indoor,
14 which we just talked about; and the community
15 outdoor outreach program, which is part of an
16 over -- more larger overall outreach initiative.
17 I think Mr. Cook is going to give you some
18 information about that in your outreach committee
19 meeting.
20 Why we need new rules. Again, House
21 Bill 2108 and increased appropriations is a
22 primary driving factor behind this. Besides
23 that, House Bill 2108 did create a couple of new
24 initiatives for us. What's called facility
25 transfers that Mr. Dabney talked to you about
.0055
1 earlier today, the transfer of facilities from
2 Parks and Wildlife management, potentially to
3 local governments, and also a concept that we
4 call the regional park concept that I'll tell you
5 a bit more about in a minute. The last time that
6 we went through a significant rule-making process
7 was in 1993. So it's really time -- and it was
8 time for us to go back to the public and get a
9 feel for how they feel about our administrative
10 procedures and just what, if anything, has
11 changed out there.
12 When the State auditor performed an
13 audit on the State Parks Division last year, they
14 recommended a couple of minor changes that I'll
15 point out in a few minutes.
16 There is a large increase in the
17 amount of the Community Outdoor Outreach
18 Program. And it has been formally codified in
19 Parks and Wildlife code, so we felt the need for
20 public input in that regard. And, finally, most
21 of you are new since 1993, and we felt that it
22 was appropriate that we come back to you in terms
23 of how we do business and get your input and
24 assistance.
25 The increased appropriations,
.0056
1 briefly, again, $5 million over each of the next
2 two years. And it will end after fiscal year
3 2001, unless the legislature reappropriates this
4 money to us or sees fit maybe to raise the
5 capital on the sporting goods tax. But for the
6 next two years, the Outdoor Grant Program will
7 remain at $12.9 million. There will be a million
8 dollar per year increase in the Indoor Recreation
9 Grant Program and in the Community Outdoor
10 Outreach Program. The regional park initiative
11 of approximately a million dollars a year for
12 each of the next two years and then two million
13 is set aside for each of the next two years for
14 facility transfers if they come forward.
15 The major changes that House Bill
16 2108 made into the Parks and Wildlife code were
17 that it set up the facility transfer initiative
18 and defined eligibility and set up a system for
19 grants for that program. It put the Community
20 Outdoor Outreach Program actually in the Parks
21 and Wildlife code. Previously it had been a
22 directive through a rider at the end of the
23 appropriations process in each of the last
24 several sessions of the legislature. So in
25 effect, it legitimized the program in law. It
.0057
1 defines in the code what eligibility is for the
2 program, who is eligible. And that is either
3 political subdivisions or nonprofit
4 organizations. And it specifies the Community
5 Outdoor Outreach Grants will be for programs, for
6 programmatic activities as opposed to
7 construction projects like the indoor and outdoor
8 programs are.
9 The rule-making process included
10 seven public hearings. We had fairly good
11 attendance, some better than others. But a total
12 of more than 250 people came to hearings. We not
13 only took verbal testimony, we also provided each
14 person with a questionnaire with some specific
15 issues and some specific things we asked them to
16 respond to. We got fairly good return from
17 those.
18 And that then leads me to the
19 proposed changes. To be honest with you, there's
20 not a big cry out there on the part of the
21 public, as far as we can tell, for major changes,
22 even as a result of new money and as a result of
23 the House Bill 2108. In general, I think folks
24 are happy with the way that you're making their
25 funds available to them and the program in which
.0058
1 they're made available.
2 One of the things we did hear
3 consistently, particularly from smaller
4 communities, is that they feel that with our
5 current outdoor recreation grant program, that a
6 sponsor who is either a small applicant or a
7 sponsor who only wants to do one type of
8 facility, for example, they only want to build
9 one ball field as opposed to doing a very large
10 development, are not quite as competitive as
11 larger sponsors and sponsors who have very large
12 scope in their projects. I would tend to
13 disagree somewhat with the size of the sponsor.
14 But I think the point is well taken when it
15 relates to people that, again, just want one
16 facility, and that's really all they need and
17 probably all they will ever ask for.
18 So we're going to recommend that you
19 allow the staff to prepare a pilot program for
20 probably one of each of the next two years, in
21 the amount of one -- really one large grant of
22 $500,000, and allow small communities or single
23 purpose projects to compete for that 500,000,
24 just to see how it goes. We would have a scoring
25 criteria for you and would have other
.0059
1 administrative rules. It would be very similar
2 to the way we do business with the indoor
3 program. But this is a reaction to what we heard
4 fairly consistently from some of the public
5 hearings.
6 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Would the max
7 be $500,000?
8 MR. HOGSETT: That would be what we
9 would propose to set aside in total. And there
10 would be competition among sponsors for that
11 500,000.
12 COMMISSIONER AVILA: As a lump sum
13 or parts and pieces?
14 MR. HOGSETT: In pieces, individual
15 grants.
16 CHAIRMAN BASS: Most of the ones
17 that you're speaking to are applications for less
18 than half?
19 MR. HOGSETT: Oh, absolutely. You
20 know, I envision several 50 to 100,000 dollar
21 applications for a soccer field or two or a ball
22 field and rest rooms or maybe acquisition of a
23 small piece of property for conservation
24 purposes.
25 CHAIRMAN BASS: And would your
.0060
1 proposal include some type of a cap on how much
2 of this half a million --
3 MR. HOGSETT: I think we would need
4 to, to make sure that there was a legitimate
5 competition and an appropriate amount made
6 available. Otherwise, it really wouldn't be
7 worth people's time to apply for it.
8 We're thinking probably somewhere,
9 20 to 50 to 100 thousand dollars. I'm going to
10 need some more input on that, I think, from some
11 of the potential applicants.
12 This is a housekeeping measure.
13 It's important to us in that we'll save some
14 staff time. We're required, particularly when we
15 receive federal funds, required to do
16 postcompletion inspections on a five-year basis
17 of all the grant sites that we've ever
18 supported. That's getting to be close to a
19 couple of thousand. Staff and travel budgets,
20 being limited as they are, we're going to propose
21 that we do a self-certification process, where a
22 sponsor would go out and do our inspection, in
23 effect, for us, certify that everything was in
24 order, and then we would do some spot-checking to
25 make sure that indeed they were telling us the
.0061
1 truth. And that would particularly be important
2 when people were applying for new grants and we
3 were doing a compliance check on them to make
4 sure that indeed they were taking care of what
5 they already have.
6 The federal government allows this
7 in several of their programs. A couple of other
8 states I've contacted do this. And it's pretty
9 easy and pretty successful.
10 We're going to propose to add --
11 CHAIRMAN BASS: Excuse me, Tim.
12 Would you then spot check some of those just to
13 have some kind of an audit?
14 MR. HOGSETT: Yes. That's what I
15 was saying. We would just on occasion go
16 unannounced and do a spot check on it.
17 CHAIRMAN BASS: I'm sorry, I wasn't
18 listening.
19 MR. HOGSETT: If we found a problem
20 then --
21 CHAIRMAN BASS: Revamp the program?
22 MR. HOGSETT: Yeah. Look at it
23 again and maybe not allow that sponsor to do
24 self-certification.
25 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Well, in that
.0062
1 process, or the completion of it, do they send
2 you an accounting of, we gave $25,000 and here is
3 the receipt for our 25,000?
4 MR. HOGSETT: Well, we have always
5 and will continue to do a final audit, on-site
6 audit, and inspection before we close out a
7 project. This is more of five years after a
8 project is completed, are they keeping it open?
9 Is it well maintained? Have they done something
10 with part of the property, like sold it or
11 whatever? It's just a -- it's an investment --
12 protection of the investment, basically.
13 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Got you.
14 MR. HOGSETT: We're proposing to add
15 a point for the creation of wetlands in the water
16 recreation criteria. The wetlands are already
17 given advantages in other places in the
18 criteria. But this will be one other place to
19 try to stress a little bit conservation projects
20 that involve wetlands.
21 We're going to -- rather than have
22 status reports due to us on a cyclical basis,
23 based on when a project was approved, we're going
24 to ask people to provide status information on
25 active projects once a quarter, with these
.0063
1 deadlines. Just a minor item but it's a big deal
2 to these folks, to be able to schedule when
3 they're going to let us know what the progress is
4 that they're making.
5 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Tim, could
6 you go back to that slide, please? When we
7 talked about this in November, one of the things
8 we discussed was how important this is as a way
9 to further the mission of the Department. And I
10 was glad to see the addition of the one point.
11 But I question whether it goes as far, certainly
12 within the little category that it's in. And I
13 know that you have other places where wetlands
14 get substantial recognition. But when I found
15 this one in the category about the direct and
16 complimentary park opportunities, the reservoirs
17 got six points and wetlands got one point, and
18 that seemed to me anomalous given the importance
19 of wetlands in the -- in terms of habitat as
20 distinguished from a reservoir in terms of
21 habitat. And so I would ask that we look harder
22 at these rules. And I use that as an example to
23 see if there are some other places that we could
24 really emphasize, using the scoring system for
25 these grants in ways that make sense to further
.0064
1 the mission of the department. Because it's very
2 exciting to see us have more money to give out.
3 It's surprising to see that we gave out -- that
4 we gave money to everybody who asked for it. And
5 it just seems to me that it is time for us to try
6 to refine the process to take that into account.
7 Do you see other opportunities -- my
8 understanding was, because we didn't get a
9 red-line on these. And I didn't have time to go
10 back and try to do that myself. Are these our
11 major changes from the other rules, the ones that
12 are summarized on this?
13 MR. HOGSETT: Basically the major
14 changes are administrative changes as opposed to
15 exchanges in the scoring system and the way we've
16 done business. This is the only modification
17 directly in the scoring system.
18 One of the things I'm going to do
19 tomorrow, when we talk about approval of new
20 grants is, I'm also going to give you a briefing
21 of some projects that we've done in the past.
22 And I hope that you will -- I hope that the
23 message that you will get from that is that
24 really some conservation initiatives and
25 preservation initiatives are already in a lot of
.0065
1 these projects, more than what I think you may
2 expect. But we're certainly open to anything
3 that you would like to give us in terms of
4 guidance on the scoring system, other ways
5 that -- there have been a lot of conservation
6 related projects that have been funded and are
7 high scoring projects.
8 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Which I think
9 is terrific. I just want to make sure that we
10 guide the decision-making through the rule-making
11 so that when we have a lot of applications, way
12 more than what we have money for, that we are
13 really accounting for the natural resources in
14 the park grants and recreation grants. And it
15 seems to me that a point in time where we're just
16 starting to see some increase in our funding
17 abilities and where maybe in the future we'll see
18 much bigger increases in our funding abilities,
19 that if we get it set in the rules now, it will
20 make it easier to administer with that policy in
21 mind, than if we get a lot of money and then we
22 say, well, now we're really going to try to focus
23 people on the mission of the department in
24 applying for their own park grants, that it's
25 going to be too late. And so that's why I would
.0066
1 like to see us think about whether there are
2 other ways we can do it before we put these rules
3 out.
4 CHAIRMAN BASS: I think that's a
5 very good point. I think, for instance, if we --
6 that there are a lot of concepts we could pursue
7 such as one point for wetland per acre up to five
8 points, create a five-acre wetland, you get five
9 points, not one, or that type of a concept. And
10 I'm sure there are other habitat things other
11 than wetland that that model might be applicable
12 to, you know, that includes greenbelt
13 preservation or creation.
14 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Equestrian
15 trail.
16 CHAIRMAN BASS: And things -- not
17 just habitat but maybe also things that help
18 enhance the park user's understanding of what
19 that is and why is that important, some
20 educational parts that might go with that.
21 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: I always
22 notice the write-up has something about A nature
23 trail and whatever. And I always think that's
24 great. And the extent to which we can encourage
25 that more...
.0067
1 CHAIRMAN BASS: Yeah. I think the
2 more we can do that, the more we can leverage
3 these funds into furthering a lot of the
4 conservation missions in the department rather
5 than just being a pass-through agency. And I
6 think we would all be very supportive of some
7 further suggestions in that area.
8 MR. HOGSETT: As would the staff
9 from you, in terms of suggestions of things that
10 you'd like us to focus on, more than we are
11 already.
12 CHAIRMAN BASS: Things that help --
13 most of these are urban by their nature. But
14 things that can help us encourage in urban
15 settings urban wildlife management, the ways
16 of -- the whole backyard wildlife program that --
17 it's almost a way for us to have a model of it
18 brought into a community and a way for us to
19 enhance it. I would imagine that many of these
20 projects have, as part of their site, some land.
21 And the site planner says, well, this is pretty
22 marginal land. It really doesn't fit into what
23 we're trying to do here. So he just kind of
24 sketches something into the boundaries or the
25 borders. And we might be able to, by awarding a
.0068
1 few extra point incentives here and there, have
2 him really make that something that's -- doesn't
3 take away from what the original intent of the
4 program was, but enhances the mission of the
5 department.
6 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Tim, the
7 projects that you're going to give us briefings
8 on tomorrow, is it pretty clear if we look at
9 these regulations, how they were scored, so that
10 if they had been in competition with other
11 projects, they still would have gotten the higher
12 score?
13 MR. HOGSETT: I think so. I think
14 that -- the ones that I'm going to focus on
15 tomorrow were, if I'm not mistaken, all ranges of
16 scores, in terms of in their respective review.
17 Not necessarily the highest and not necessarily
18 the lowest project that was funded in that
19 review, but are representative of some of the
20 different kinds of projects we do, from
21 conservation related things to active recreation,
22 sports complexes. A couple of examples, like,
23 for example, Edinburg tomorrow, which is a lot of
24 both. It has a significant wetland in it. It
25 has a significant lake in it, but it also --
.0069
1 we're also supporting the development of an
2 athletic complex on that same site. So --
3 CHAIRMAN BASS: Tim, may I ask --
4 MR. HOGSETT: You tell me tomorrow
5 if I -- if you --
6 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Like it?
7 MR. HOGSETT: If you're -- you know,
8 if you're getting the message in terms of the
9 scoring system and how it related on those
10 projects. I hope so.
11 CHAIRMAN BASS: Related but a little
12 bit different question, if I might. Is the
13 appropriations process that sets this system up,
14 require that every cycle we expend 100 percent of
15 the available funds?
16 MR. HOGSETT: We have to have -- a
17 grant program is considered, under the
18 appropriations process, to be that: A grant
19 program. And it requires that the money that is
20 appropriated be obligated to projects within the
21 same fiscal year in which it's appropriated.
22 Otherwise, it goes back to the treasury.
23 CHAIRMAN BASS: The reason I ask
24 that is this. Is that every time we go through
25 this, I tend to look at the score and what the
.0070
1 cutoff is as just an indicator of how strong that
2 pool of applicants was. This current one is --
3 73 points is where we run out of money. And, you
4 know, there have been, as I recall, I think the
5 last one or the one before this, it was close to
6 80 something.
7 MR. HOGSETT: In the 80s.
8 CHAIRMAN BASS: It was in the 80s.
9 So there's a little bit of luck of the draw for
10 some of these applicants as to whether they're in
11 a weak class or a strong class. You know, when I
12 went to school, 73 was still a passing grade. I
13 flip over to the indoor recreation. Well, a guy
14 got money with 26 points, which is half of the
15 next lowest score. You know, what I'm wondering
16 is if there's a way that we may not better spend
17 this money and create stronger projects for -- in
18 the end, which ultimately benefits everyone, all
19 the users, if we were able to have some kind of a
20 minimum score that if you didn't reach it, that
21 money, that unspent money might carry over into
22 the next pool of applicants, where a fellow that
23 had a 79 score last time was out of the running,
24 this time he would have been well into
25 receiving. I know people can put in, you know,
.0071
1 repeatedly, et cetera. But they go home with a
2 79 that didn't get money, they have to retool
3 their application probably. They spend some
4 money in the local basis, put it back in. And
5 it's more time for us to review it again because
6 it's been tweaked, et cetera; when if it's simply
7 been on a six-month later cycle, they would have
8 got their money in the first place.
9 MR. HOGSETT: It is much like
10 dealing a deck of cards. We don't know what
11 we're going to get and they don't know what their
12 composition is going to be until the group comes
13 together.
14 In terms of saving money, let me use
15 this review for tomorrow as an example. The law
16 requires that we set aside no less than 15
17 percent for indoor recreation grants. This is
18 fiscal year 2000 money. This will be the last
19 opportunity, unless we were to bring another
20 group to you before the end of August, for us to
21 be able to get that indoor money appropriated --
22 obligated, or we would lose it; it would go back
23 to the treasury. That would be, to me, the
24 only -- to do reviews at a different time or to
25 change when we bring applications to you or bring
.0072
1 them more often would be probably the only thing
2 I can think of.
3 CHAIRMAN BASS: Or perhaps we can,
4 in concert with the legislature in the next
5 appropriations process, be able -- if we study
6 it, be able to show them that if they were to --
7 to allow us to carry no more than ten, 15 percent
8 of the money from one year of the biennium into
9 the second, as long as it was all spent in the
10 biennium, that we would be able to make better
11 use of the money, and we may get support for that
12 type of thing.
13 MR. HOGSETT: Which is precisely the
14 way that we did business prior to the session
15 before last of the legislature. We used to have
16 what was called the authority to bring forward
17 the unobligated balance from one year to a next.
18 The legislature took that away from us the
19 session before last.
20 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: I think this
21 emphasizes the point that Carol made earlier,
22 that we may need to do some effort to get more
23 applicants. That would overcome part of --
24 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Well, another
25 way to do it, but I fear it might be too
.0073
1 burdensome on the staff would be to set a
2 minimum, as you suggest. And if you don't have
3 all of them reach that minimum score, ask for
4 more proposals. But the problem is, that would
5 be quite a burden. But I think, the things that
6 you got --
7 MR. HOGSETT: Not insurmountable,
8 though.
9 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Well, maybe
10 you could think about that. The things that
11 you've got later on in the slide that you alluded
12 to about having workshops, you know, you've got
13 several things on there that might encourage more
14 applications. And I know you work with people
15 very closely to help them with their
16 applications. But I really think increasing the
17 applicant pool might avoid the low scoring
18 award.
19 CHAIRMAN BASS: True. And another
20 approach might be to take that money and go back
21 to the successful applicants and ask them for
22 proposals of how they might enhance their
23 proposal if we made the cap more than $500,000.
24 I mean, the Greenville recreation center that
25 scored 88 may well make better use of the money
.0074
1 in the grand scheme of things than somebody who
2 scored 26 and sloughed off the last $140,000.
3 I'd be willing to bet -- I mean, folks at Hidalgo
4 County might not agree with that. It's a long
5 drive to Greenville, but --
6 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: But they know
7 where you live.
8 CHAIRMAN BASS: But anyway, I think
9 that's something worth giving at least some
10 consideration to and maybe, if nothing else,
11 coming up with a proposal to the next legislature
12 that we had some good, sound evidence of, when
13 you took this away from us, this is what
14 resulted, is that really what you meant to have
15 happen?
16 MR. HOGSETT: Related to the indoor
17 program, we heard very commonly that the funding
18 cap of $500,000 that we currently have on
19 projects is restrictive. Most recreation centers
20 are one to two to three million dollar
21 facilities, particularly in the urban areas. So
22 what we end up doing, when we're supporting them
23 at $500,000, is simply doing a very small amount
24 of a big project. Nothing wrong with that, but I
25 think that they're hoping that we will be able to
.0075
1 increase that. And that is one of the things
2 that we're proposing that you consider. And
3 that's the increase to $750,000.
4 This, strangely enough, when we
5 asked for questionnaires, we asked people what do
6 they think should and should not be funded in
7 various grants, either outdoor or indoor. And
8 very consistently they told us for some reason
9 they didn't think we should be doing steam/sauna
10 and whirlpool facilities in indoor recreation
11 centers. So, fine, we're proposing that we not
12 fund them. That was about the only one that
13 there was a strong consensus on. And they didn't
14 like the kinds of things that we currently are
15 allowing.
16 The community outdoor outreach
17 program, as a result of the infusion of the
18 additional million dollars, and the popularity of
19 and the high profile that that program is
20 beginning to get, we propose an increase of the
21 grant ceiling on those from 20 to 30 thousand.
22 It doesn't sound like a lot but to a small,
23 nonprofit group who is running a recreation
24 program using one of our State parks or whatever,
25 it could mean a very considerable -- make a very
.0076
1 considerable difference in what they're able to
2 do.
3 The regional park concept is, as I
4 think I told you in November, the one that we
5 have, for lack of a better way of putting it,
6 probably the least handle on. When Texas A & M
7 did the study for us prior to the beginning of
8 the last session of the legislature, one of the
9 things that that report that they provided showed
10 was a need in -- as demographics and other things
11 change in Texas, is a need to provide regional
12 concept parks and recreation opportunities in the
13 urban areas of the state. Well, I think when
14 that was done, it was envisioned that there would
15 be a lot more money available for that program
16 from the legislature than ultimately came to
17 pass, as we only got a million dollars a year
18 from the legislature for each of the next two
19 years. In an endeavor to try to make the biggest
20 bang for the buck out of that that we can, we're
21 going to recommend that we do something in the
22 form of a pilot program. I talked several times
23 with Mr. Sansom. We're going to make an
24 aggressive effort to find some projects, either
25 be significant conservation projects in the urban
.0077
1 areas or intensive recreation projects in the
2 urban areas. And we're thinking it may be only a
3 couple of grants, you know, a couple of large
4 grants, maybe one of each in the next two years.
5 And, again, our staff at Executive Director's
6 direction are going to proactively seek some
7 exemplary projects that meet the general criteria
8 of what we think the legislature intended in this
9 regional park concept.
10 COMMISSIONER AVILA: That's a
11 matching grant?
12 MR. HOGSETT: These would be
13 matching grants, yes, 50 percent matching
14 grants. The idea is not only are they large
15 grants in the urban areas but that they are
16 regional in scope in that there are multiple
17 jurisdictions involved in their planning, in
18 their construction, and in their operations and
19 management. There are definitely projects out
20 there already, for example, in the Houston area
21 and in the Dallas area, which is probably the two
22 places we're going to start, that meet those
23 kinds of initiatives.
24 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Does that have
25 to be a governmental agency on the other end,
.0078
1 then?
2 MR. HOGSETT: The ultimate sponsor
3 would have to be a governmental entity. However,
4 as we can with any of these grants, operations
5 and planning and day-to-day things can be
6 concessioned out to somebody else. But
7 ultimately a local government would sponsor the
8 application and get the grant from us and could
9 then decide how they wanted to operate and that
10 sort of thing.
11 MR. SANSOM: This, for the first
12 time, really gives us the opportunity to leverage
13 some large-scale, you know, urban conservation
14 projects, particularly, but also to provide some
15 unique recreational opportunities in multiple
16 jurisdictions. So it's -- it's going to be up to
17 us to try to help -- the constituency needs us to
18 work with them to develop the models that they
19 can then envision doing it again. That's
20 basically what it boils down to. And that's what
21 they're telling us. Let's work together and try
22 some stuff and that will then guide us as to
23 where we go from here.
24 MR. HOGSETT: And hopefully we'll
25 have such exemplary projects that it will
.0079
1 convince the legislature that a million dollars
2 doesn't go very far and that we need quite a bit
3 more to do this in the future.
4 CHAIRMAN BASS: It, at least in
5 part, I guess, is a carrot to try to entice
6 cooperation.
7 MR. SANSOM: Exactly. Leverage.
8 MR. SANSOM: Absolutely.
9 CHAIRMAN BASS: Entities that
10 sometimes have a hard time seeing beyond their
11 own boundary.
12 COMMISSIONER HENRY: You're talking
13 about counties as grantees, probably?
14 MR. SANSOM: Well, or you could
15 have, for example, in the metroplex along either
16 the Trinity or either Dallas or Fort Worth or
17 along Rowlett Creek North, along the bayou system
18 in Houston where you have multiple, you know,
19 municipal jurisdictions.
20 COMMISSIONER HENRY: I'm talking
21 about the grantees, primarily city or counties.
22 Is that what we're saying, governmental?
23 MR. HOGSETT: Yes, sir. It would be
24 a grant to a governmental entity.
25 CHAIRMAN BASS: It could be a city
.0080
1 as a lead agency which could maybe include six
2 different incorporated areas up and down a
3 river.
4 MR. SANSOM: In Houston we've been
5 talking to a city and some nonprofits, of which
6 you're talking to. In Dallas we've talked to a
7 private entity, the city, and the county.
8 COMMISSIONER HENRY: That was my
9 question. Were other nonprofits brought in or
10 considered a part of the mix?
11 MR. SANSOM: Yes, sir. In one case
12 it's the housing authority, you know, is part of
13 the mix.
14 COMMISSIONER AVILA: But a nonprofit
15 could create something -- Eagle Lake area, create
16 a nonprofit. Could we deal with them or would
17 they still --
18 MR. SANSOM: No. You would still
19 have to grant the money to a political
20 subdivision in the State. But I think our --
21 COMMISSIONER AVILA: But it gives
22 them an avenue by which to go. Before, they're
23 just a homeowners association.
24 MR. SANSOM: Let me give you an
25 example. There's a facility in Houston in which
.0081
1 Mr. Henry is very familiar with, where the City
2 of Houston owns a piece of property immediately
3 adjacent to a facility operated by a nonprofit,
4 and up until the present time, they haven't had
5 the ability -- or haven't found a way to work
6 together, even though they're both kind of
7 doing --
8 COMMISSIONER HENRY: Each other's
9 work.
10 MR. SANSOM: Each other's work. And
11 so perhaps with this program, we can strengthen
12 the whole. But the receiving entity would have
13 to be the city, in this case.
14 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Are the
15 regulations anywhere specifically addressing the
16 regional grants program?
17 MR. HOGSETT: No. We have not done
18 that yet.
19 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Are you going
20 to do these pilot programs --
21 MR. HOGSETT: Yes, ma'am.
22 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: --
23 demonstration programs, and then see about
24 writing regs?
25 MR. HOGSETT: Yes. That's what we
.0082
1 envision doing, is doing some pilot projects --
2 MR. SANSOM: We found members in the
3 outreach program, which was -- which is a similar
4 thing, where we work with the legislature to
5 conceive of a new way of doing our work, that we
6 had to do that almost that first round. We did
7 some things totally outside the realm of
8 hard-line set of rules, so that both we and the
9 sponsors could kind of learn our way. We don't
10 do that anymore in that program. But in the
11 beginning, probably half of them we designed with
12 the people, outside the context of a rigid set of
13 rules.
14 MR. HOGSETT: That way you don't
15 limit your options of what you can do.
16 CHAIRMAN BASS: Because in that case
17 we were dealing with institutions that had never
18 received such grants before. And so we had to
19 kind of make it up. And there was some good news
20 and some bad news in that.
21 MR. HOGSETT: Some miscellaneous
22 things that came up in the hearings and
23 subsequent to the hearings, we're being asked
24 repeatedly to see if we can't get funds back to
25 people more quickly, faster reimbursement when
.0083
1 grants are pursued. And we are addressing that
2 through the addition of an additional auditor on
3 our staff and some other procedural changes.
4 This is, I think, critical to us,
5 putting our grant materials and possibly even an
6 application itself on our Parks and Wildlife
7 web. Almost twice a week, I get a call or an
8 e-mail from somebody that says, I'd like to get
9 the materials from you. Well, they certainly
10 should be there, available for them. So that's
11 something we would propose to do.
12 Grant workshops, as I mentioned. We
13 have done those in the past but I think it's time
14 to go do those on a recurring basis, to get the
15 word out and to help people.
16 One of the things that gets you
17 additional points in this current scoring system,
18 if you have a local master plan for your parks
19 and recreation system. It's not required, but it
20 gets you additional point criteria.
21 Lots of folks still, particularly in
22 smaller communities, still are resisting or
23 reluctant to do that because they think it's
24 either expensive or too difficult or don't
25 understand what we're looking for. So to help
.0084
1 promote the master planning effort, we're going
2 to do sort of a how-to guide based on the
3 experience that we've gotten with several hundred
4 other master plans. It's just, you know, a
5 cookbook approach as to how to put together a
6 successful master plan.
7 The State auditor, as I mentioned
8 earlier, made a suggestion that we feel is
9 appropriate, and that's that we publish in the
10 materials that we send out to the public, all of
11 the details of the scoring system as it relates
12 to the ranges of points. If you were to go look
13 at our current publications, you'll have a
14 criteria and you'll have a -- in parentheses, a
15 point range for that criteria. It might be one
16 to ten points. The auditor's office said that
17 they thought that we should show exactly how
18 those one, two, three, four, five, et cetera,
19 points are awarded. And we agree with that. And
20 that's contained within the information that you
21 have today.
22 And finally, just some housekeeping
23 things. Anytime you have a grant document, like
24 a manual, then it probably needs some
25 housecleaning, as ours did. We have the manual
.0085
1 itself available for you today. If you'd like
2 one, Ms. Estrada has those. It's the
3 administrative details on how the program works.
4 The recommendation is that we are
5 asking you to authorize us to publish proposed
6 repeals and new sections concerning the
7 administration of the Texas recreation and parks
8 account grant program, which is at Exhibit A
9 published in the Texas Register for public
10 comment.
11 And then we propose to come back to
12 you in April and ask for adoption. And that will
13 also give us the opportunity to revisit some of
14 the issues like you were mentioning,
15 Ms. Dinkins.
16 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Any other
17 questions, comments? How about a motion?
18 COMMISSIONER HENRY: So moved.
19 COMMISSIONER AVILA: So moved.
20 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: The motion is
21 seconded. All in favor say aye. Opposed. The
22 motion carries.
23 (Motion passed unanimously.)
24 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Is there any
25 other business to come before this committee? If
.0086
1 not, the committee is adjourned.
2 *-*-*-*-*
3 (HEARING ADJOURNED.)
4 *-*-*-*-*
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.0087
1 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE
2 STATE OF TEXAS )
3 COUNTY OF TRAVIS )
4
5 I, MELODY RENEE DeYOUNG, a Certified Court
6 Reporter in and for the State of Texas, do hereby
7 certify that the above and foregoing 86 pages
8 constitute a full, true and correct transcript of
9 the minutes of the Texas Parks and Wildlife
10 Commission on JANUARY 19, 2000, in the commission
11 hearing room of the Texas Parks & Wildlife
12 Headquarters Complex, Austin, Travis County,
13 Texas.
14 I FURTHER CERTIFY that a stenographic record
15 was made by me a the time of the public meeting
16 and said stenographic notes were thereafter
17 reduced to computerized transcription under my
18 supervision and control.
19 WITNESS MY HAND this the 18TH day of
20 FEBRUARY 2000.
21
22
MELODY RENEE DeYOUNG, RPR, CSR NO. 3226
23 Expiration Date: 12-31-00
3101 Bee Caves Road
24 Centre II, Suite 220
Austin, Texas 78746
25 (512) 328-5557
EBS NO. 37595