Travis County Commissioners Court
August 2, 2005
Item 35
35. Consider and take appropriate action on the appointment of a Travis County committee on security issues, including members and an appropriate charge. Anybody been working on this item?
>> dana is here. Anything new and different to tell us.
>> well, yes, sir, this may be the time to in a kind of a comment. There are other people working on this issue, maybe more to the point, more to the point, people who know far more than I know about what is appropriate security for a building and what isn't. I would just like to remind the court, how did we get in this position, it was because we bought a building and moved two large offices into it. In the course of us trying to work cooperatively together, to make that building functional for large numbers of people to walk into every day, you asked for our input, you asked for our advice, you asked for us to point out things which didn't seem to be working right, which we did. That became the basis for the responsibilities then of several improvements that were in fact made. But to continue to -- to use us in the building, the attempts, the guests in your house as the barometer by which you decide whether you have done a sufficient job or an insufficient job on this issue is probably the wrong way to look at it and the wrong approach. It ends up being reaction ry instead of thoughtful. The only people who are really going to know about whether or not we have addressed all of our issues are not are people who are experts in this area. Me pounding a shoe on a pin and it occurring to me gee why am I having to do this is probably not considered, you know, an expert's piece of advice. Yet because I am a user out there, I can be in the position to tell you here's what I think here's what I saw. Valuable input, I’m happy to do it. But it wrongly places those of us out there in the position of appearing as experts on this issue when in fact we are not and we exceed our authority in I think even perhaps a little -- in a little rude way telling the court what it should do with its building. Its property. Not the county clerk's property, not the tax assessor/collector's property. With that in mind, we, I strongly support the idea of a committee that is chaired by I think the sheriff is probably in our organization, the most qualified person to tell us what does work and what doesn't and where we need protections and what all we need to do to make sure that we are doing the right things and then tied in with p.b.o. Who can then help us assess the costs and all of the other players who I think would be better, we would better serve county government if we worked more collaboratively rather than just trying to respond to -- I don't want to see this get typed as you know dana's problem or dana's issue, it certainly is not. In fact I would be the first one to point out to you that I’m no expert in this field whatsoever.
>> I’m a little surprised at that.
>> I can only tell you what I see. And I’ve done so. Will continue to do so, but this may be a time for me to take a step back and be a part of a group that helps with this effort rather than being -- being thought of as the -- the sole source of the problem or the sole source of any kind of response to an issue.
>> I think that I always intended that of course facilities and the sheriff would take the complete and total lead on this. But it was just the thought that should a user, it doesn't necessarily have to be you, but should somebody coming from the perspective as a consumer, a customer, who has customers should they be brought in on the front end and to be there as all of this is discussed and worked on. Or to be after the thought because I’m also sensitive to the fact that sometimes people feel like something has been thrust upon them or they haven't invited us into the process and how could they have forgotten that and sometimes it's just the idea of do we want to be more inclusive or less. I can go either way. I just wants to make sure at the end of this rainbow that we have something that people go excellent work, we're there!
>> and I feel the same way that you do Commissioner. I just don't want to see this get pigeon holed.
>> it's not just your problem [multiple voices] -- [speaker interrupted -- multiple voices]
>> there are issues everywhere, we have issues in this building. It is not at all a county clerk thing. It's just the idea that somebody other than the security people be part --
>> well, absolutely. We are certainly willing to haul our share of water in this.
>> we have nine persons that the court appointed. Number 10 is supposed to be a user slot. We have comments from two or three people. About an appropriate charge. I move that we ask roger el khoury and chief doyne bailey to take the input that's been e-mailed to me and try to come up with a -- with an appropriate charge to recommend to the court.
>> second.
>> get this off dead center and we did say the 10th would be a user department representative.
>> that's the right balance, I think.
>> so I need to name the people again? I see half of them in here. Judge [indiscernible], lloyd evans, roger el khoury, walter la grone, sergeant benny cureton, michael [indiscernible], pete baldwin, simon brussard, doyne bailey and 10 would be the user department rep.
>> I recommend nelda lawchtd.
>> does she know that.
>> no.
>> of course not, she's not here to defend herself.
>> well, woakd use two if you or nelda want to be on there. Strikes me most of the concerns that we had were the judges. It would make sense to have a judge or.
>> deborah hale.
>> somebody that communicates with the judge on a regular basis to at least be the contact person as from the j.p.'s to county court at law to district judges, they all have had a variety of issues that they have expressed over the last couple of years.
>> deborah hale.
>> if I may make one other suggestion, I do believe that you should end up with in my opinion a single chair of this committee with the authority to set the agenda and propose items for Commissioners court.
>> doyne bailey.
>> doyne bailey.
>> by the county judge. Actually I appointed sheriff hamilton. But doyne is standing in for him, I believe.
>> judge, p.b.o. Did come up with a proposed charge because I recognize christian's font and it is wonderful and all inclusive, I’m just wondering if there's further work to be done on this or whether --
>> there is because I got ideas from two or three other places. I think we ought to get all of though to roger and doyne and it may be simpler than they seem to me. But -- I say look at them and either incorporate, delete, add, et cetera, and maybe with a draft charge for us next week. My idea was to have this committee in place and have an executive session discussion in this courtroom that we could close off to discuss the security issues and the committee would figure out who it needs to chat with and when. I’m hoping that we will come one a list of security issues, some sort of prioritization, with each issue you almost have to have an estimated price tag. Because I think we need to start working on basically addressing those issues.
>> I agree with you. I think it's --
>>
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>>
>> …i'd be happy to send you a copy too.
>> as far as the items that have price tags associated with them, does pbo have a list of those?
>> those have come to the court and to the security commission the last two or three years. My thinking is the court's comment hit with the jp's request here, some for this building here, the historic courthouse, airport boulevard, cjc, and my thinking is that we need a committee in place to take a more holistic look at these issues and figure out of the different requests what needs to be done to address them some effort to prioritize so we can figure out based on available funds which should we work on. And we'll have to do them in prior order, I’m thinking. So a more systematic addressing of county issues is what we favored.
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> I never call you that, dana.
>> we've fortunately gotten a lot of good out of it, but it's not the way for us to proceed for the future.
>> [inaudible - no mic]. We're working on the charge, but certainly there is not an expectation that this committee finishes work by the time we hit budget markup three weeks later on September eighth, ninth and 10th.
>> I’m hoping by October 1. A lot of these are capital purchases. That would be some manpower requests, I’m sure, but a whole lot of it is manpower so we've got some flexibility on that part.
>> we set up a set of reserved and start working on it on priority order. If the sheriff hasn't grabbed most of the money, this would take care of the rest.
>> and we have given written recommendations before. So some of it it may be that the committee needs to figure out where the priority listing they would go. I don't know that the committee would have to start everything from scratch. I do hope that at some point they would vet some of the recommendations they've made because in some cases we have got a whole lot of them.
>> [inaudible - no mic]. The assessment -- they asked for assessment for all the security for their buildings, and we get the assessment and we've already jumped ahead and have costing on those capitals and we will be ready on the 15 when we come out to present the numbers, but again, we have all the committees meet and charge from the court with our task. I think it might be tight right now, but we will work with the 15th. I already have most of the buildings costed out as a matter of priority right now and we will move forward with it. I will work with the sheriff to get all the comments you receive and all the input, and it was what the charter should be and we'll bring the recommendation to you, judge, next week.
>> maybe a little longer than that. I think the sooner the better. If we can get sort of a figure for an estimate, that would help us and what we're kind of working on.
>> okay.
>> do you want to try to have the charge back to you by next week?
>> I do think we can get the charge back from next week, then that would help. I’m thinking that on the charge it will be a matter of reviewing recommendations already submitted and sort of figuring out which to keep and whether we need to add more to them. Some of them I thought were pretty good.
>> so by next week for court you want a total dollar figure of the capital cost?
>> I’m just looking for the charge next week. And we have made two recommendations for the -- did we suggest, nelda, for the s 1, you as department rep and ms. Hail for the judges? We need to see if they accept this opportunity and if so that will give us the full complement of members. That would bring us to 11. But we could say boom on the charge to the membership and turn the committee lose, I think we'll get a lot done over the next three oaks weeks or so.
>> without the actual -- [inaudible - no mic].
>> if you need more than the small group that normally meets in executive session conference room, we can accommodate them here.
>> if we have that many requests, we probably will need this room.
>> I would suggest fixing one door where you can't get in and an entrance through one door and that way if you're not coming in, they could actually leave. But we could set aside this room for four hours, however long the committee needs it. This idea is sounding better all the time. [ laughter ]
>> that's good.
>> we'll have it back on the agenda next week. How's that? [overlapping speakers]
>> next week if we approve the whole deal I think we'll be in good shape. I don't have anybody that objects.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, August 2, 2005 10:01 AM