The potential cost of a new civil and family courts complex in Travis County could be less than anticipated as a result of the Travis County Commissioners Court’s vote Aug. 11 to lower the overall budget for the project. The court voted unanimously to approve reducing the bond amount by $4.3 million to a new price tag of $287.3 million, compared with the $291.6 million budget that was set in February. Voters will decide this November whether to support plans for the new civil and family courts complex, which would be located in downtown Austin. There are also plans to develop an adjacent office tower along Fourth Street between Guadalupe and Lavaca streets. The existing Heman Marion Sweatt Travis County Courthouse, 1000 Guadalupe St., was constructed in the 1930s when Travis County’s population was more than 77,000 people. Today the Travis County population exceeds 1 million. The court has been seeking ways to offset the cost of the construction of a new courthouse, including selling under-utilized county-owned property and the parking revenue from the new building, Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt said. “We need to set this dollar figure and we will not be able to move off of it for the purposes of the election, but if we find considerable cost savings in negotiating with the developer, for instance, this sets the ceiling of what we can borrow. If it turns out that through a very favorable negotiation we do not have to borrow as much, we will not,” Eckhardt said during the Aug. 11 meeting. The reduction comes from the sale of underutilized county property as well as eliminating interim land use from the budget. The commissioners court also voted recently to seek requests for proposals to develop the “South Tower,” an office tower that would be constructed adjacent to the courts complex property. The court did not decide on final ballot language for the proposed proposition for the courthouse bond election; Eckhardt said the court plans to discuss that next week. In a news release, the Community for Civil and Family Courts PAC promoting the project applauded the court for “creative problem solving” and strategies to offset costs for taxpayers.