Calculating groundwater availability, for Texas groundwater conservation districts changed due to new state legislation passing in 2005. Rather than each groundwater conservation district calculating groundwater availability, the legislation mandates that groundwater conservation districts convene to develop a shared vision of management goals for what they desire their groundwater resources to be in the future. This vision is translated into an availability amount by a state agency, the Texas Water Development Board. This availability amount will then be used by the districts for permitting. The challenges with this approach that have emerged include: the stakeholders do not trust the decision makers to make the policy choice that they desire; the stakeholders and decision makers may not trust the state’s groundwater models or understand hydrogeological processes; the decision makers are unclear about permitting because they are required to permit the entire amount each year, if possible, and do not believe that they can account for un-permitted uses of groundwater; and stakeholder and decision makers believe they need to perform more studies and get better data in order to make a valid decision about their aquifer. In order to solve these concerns, the stakeholders and decision makers need to follow a new process. A better decision-making process should include filming and summarizing the stakeholder’s narratives for decision-makers in written format. District managers should develop current pumping estimates to input into the groundwater model, eliminating concerns over using older data in the models. The decision makers should have GUI in order to run the groundwater model themselves so they can trust the model inputs and outputs. The decision makers should know the groundwater economic value to help develop their understanding about the economic impacts. This new process is currently being tested in Groundwater Management Area 9 in the Hill Country of Texas.