The TDWB’s 2027 State Water Plan Interregional Planning Council held its inaugural meeting on November 9th to discuss the responsibilities of the council, select officers, and discuss agendas. The full agenda, council membership, and recommendations can be found here.

This report is intended to give you an overview and highlight of the various topics taken up. It is not a verbatim transcript of the discussions but is based upon what was audible or understandable to the observer and the desire to get details out as quickly as possible with few errors or omissions.

 

Item 2: Operational responsibilities

  • TWDB asked for additional resources through LAR; none were allotted and cannot provide as much support to committees
  • IPC Member- Any allocation in budget to support needs of the council?
    • Not at this time; very limited funds to support planning group functions, majority allocated to a cost tool
  • Chairs of committees can report meetings and TWDB can then create minutes after the fact
  • Eligible funds in expense categories for planning contracts are based upon request of planning group to support travel; travel to meetings is reimbursable, maybe facility rentals but not confirmed; members of council will decide planning

 

Item 3: Functional responsibilities

  • IPC Report and technical memorandums from planning groups are due 3/3/2024
  • Requirement for documentation of board planning and coordination of regions; acknowledgement that each planning group needs to coordination
  • March 2025 initially prepared plan (IPP) due
  • Board could arrange for logistics and facilitate two milestone meetings to make sure report is progressing; early summer of 2023 would be a good time for a meeting and also in fall of 2023
  • Will be referenced as 2027 council
  • TWDB 2020 recommendations include:
    • Support and facilitate planning groups in identifying issues or opportunities for interregional coordination; haven’t pulled together resources for liaisons but will focus on later this year
    • Will start to develop and maintain an aggregate listing of each RWPG’s active committees and share with all RWPGs for informational purposes
    • Provide implementation status of policy recommendations to the RWPGs and council; hopeful to see early next spring
    • Have not yet started to evaluate planning group voting and nonvoting membership costs of time and funding; will begin next spring
  • Up to discretion of current members of whether or not to implement the 2022 recommendations
  • Past council report forwarded to Senate Committee on Water, Agriculture and Rural Affairs and House Natural Resources Committee
  • Council is only obligated to submit report to board
  • More focus on educating regions; less on the legislature

 

Item 4: Operational preferences

  • Council decides to vote on motions through a simple majority using motion and second
  • Prefer alternate can vote so regions are not ignored in decision process; however, do not want the member and alternate to both vote leading to two votes for a region
  • By rule will have to have a member and alternate who will vote in member’s place in their absence; cannot designate someone else to vote because the TWDB must approve alternates
  • Should have agreement and document in minutes that an alternate’s presence is also good for establishing a quorum
  • Motion for one vote per region, be it the member of the alternate, passes
  • Motion for a quorum of simple majority of 9 members, passes
  • Motion to have a chair and vice chair of the interregional planning council, passes
  • Previous council started without committees; then identified issues during meetings to address and divide into committees at a later date
  • Last cycle; TWDB was able to assign two staff members to committees and will not have opportunity for that this time; will need to keep in mind
  • Having a discussion among 16 people was difficult via zoom last session; having smaller committees facilitated conversations
  • Motion that council can establish committees at a future date as needed, passes

 

Item 5: Selection of Officers

  • Motion to make Mark Evans chair; passes
  • Motion to make Gail Peek vice chair; passes

 

Item 6: Discuss schedule and potential agenda items for next meeting

  • Good information on last council’s work on TWDB website; helpful to determine duties of council
  • Board and staff met with chair and vice chair to determine agenda items for upcoming meetings last session; better to have these items prepared in advance, never had agenda items out in shorter than 8 days prior to the meeting the agenda is for
  • Should use the 2020 interregional planning council report recommendations to guide future agendas
  • Will decide at end of next meeting which committees will be created
  • Chair recommends all council members review the water code for the council’s statutory duties and review the 2020 planning council report for the next meeting
  • Need to define role of liaison for clarity
  • Discussion of creating a priority list for the 2020 recommendations given the number of recommendations; will be goal of next meeting
  • Should determine which recommendations are already being handled by planning groups
  • Should construct something to further emphasize the recommended legislative actions that are most important
  • Need to identify which recommendations should be taken off and which are concrete, then look at if they are currently being implemented and if not should create procedure to implement
  • Discussion of responsibility of council and the ability to make progress on recommendations and distributing a questionnaire to determine top recommendations, could include in report a follow-up on recommendations
  • Should try to meet in March of 2023 next; poll will be sent out at beginning of 2023; should do best to avoid spring break
  • Survey will be sent out to each council member to determine priorities on the 52 recommendations from the 2020 council; want to ensure no duplicative recommendations
  • Should take up new recommendations from this council as well