Travis County Commissioners Court
December 6, 2005
Item 3
3 b, review and approve requests regarding grant proposals, applications, contracts -- that passed by unanimous vote, right? >> yeah. -- contracts and permissions to continue: a. A grant application to -- b. A grant application to the capital area council of governments (capcog) for a capcog fy 06 recycling grant program. The grant provides resources to increase awareness of recycling opportunities for electronic materials.
>> judge, I have a few questions, maybe they can flush that out as far as how that would work. I see the funding, thank goodness we did get the funding for this. But really how will this actually be implemented? Folks, can somebody basically go there for me on that.
>> melinda with the natural resources division. Commissioner, this is a grant application, so we haven't received the funds yet. We are hopeful that we can get them. What we would like to do with these funds is conduct four electronic waste recycling events. One in each precinct of Travis County. Charles williams will be in charge of the effort, already very enthusiastically planning them.
>> okay. There's been a lot of questions on some of that recycling efforts. Of course if anyone asks me, I would like to know this is the way it's going to be done, da-da-da, I know it's the grant phase, but after those thing received, spend the money, stuff like that, implementation I think is very vital, very key and I think the point that you brought up that it would be in each particular precinct, location, stuff, a whole lot of other stuff that will have to be flushed out when you get to that point. I知 trying to get to that. I知 pleased with that response but I want to make sure that we get that publicly, letting folks know that we are interesting in the direction that we are heading on it in this recycling efforts. That's basically why I知 pulled that for that particular phase of discussion. Judge, with that I would like to move approval of 3 b.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. 3 c?
>> yes, sir.
>> on 3 c, you know, it's been a lot of -- of concerns in the community about the illegal dumping aspects of things, the way they are happening throughout the county. In fact just the other night we were going to a christmas event down one of the streets, sure enough a -- you could see the activities and stuff. Can't get light in place, but there was some illegal dumping activities. I guess what I知 trying to figure out here is how will this help us and enforcement, equipment supplies, a whole bunch of other things as far as curtailing this particular type of activity that's going on throughout the county? Can someone maybe address that for me?
>> be glad to take that one Commissioner. This grant we applied for at least every two years, often, you know, they come around annually, we use them to fund all of the people in Travis County that are working on illegal dumping enforcement. So that includes the activities of the two investigators and the county attorney's office. The deblght active in the sheriff's office, inspectors in the health department, we have four inspectors that are out in the field. We've used these funds for constables and inspectors in the transportation and natural resources department. And the grants are typically used for equipment and supplies. In year we have g.p.s. And gis equipment that will help us work with capcog on developing a new illegal dumping data base. This is a -- this is -- well, early stage of the project and we are trying to populate the data base, so we can make it useful to all of the members of the regional task force, so that would be the 10 county area, capcog area. There will be a public section of the data base where people can go online and look at maps of illegal dumping patterns and chronic illegal dumping sites. Throughout 10 county region. There's quite a few bits of equipment and supplies, another thing that's notable is solar power for surveillance equipment for illegal dump sites. The county attorney's office is going to try out this new system.
>> okay. This may be out of the ordinary, it may not be, but what does the person could in the mean time that witnessed something like that, a telephone number that says look I just witnessed this, I have the license plate number, the make of the vehicle, they are cutting up, doing this thing right now, would this assist those type of citizens that are interested in reporting this kind of stuff?
>> yes, sir. We would like to encourage anyone that ever witnessed an illegal dump or wants to report an illegal dump site to call 877-no dumps.
>> 877 no dumps.
>> that's the illegal dumping hotline.
>> 877 no dumps.
>> okay, thank you. With that I would like to move approval of 3 c.
>> second.
>> can I ask a question.
>> gentlemen, Gerald. I mean Commissioner.
>> belinda on page 50 of our backup it shows that the county attorney has I guess fined $25,642 worth I mean of I guess that's illegal dumping or whatever has been done. Between 1-10-05 and 6-30-05. Do we know how much of that has listen collected? I知 sorry, I don't know the answer to that question. But I would be glad to get it for you.
>> that would be real interesting to me because again I hi that we find -- I think that we find ourselves here like we do so many places in the county, we are pretty good about fining you, pretty good about telling us that you owed us something. We are not the greatest at following up and being able to collect. I tried to, you know, find it in the backup and I couldn't see whether that was something. So if you wouldn't mind, I think all of us would probably be interested in that.
>> well, if the money has been received and whose money it is, how much to the counties, how much to the state, normally the state gets a cut.
>> good point.
>> anything else on this item? This subpart? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Now 3 d.
>> Commissioner?
>> judge, my question was just basically looking at the incar rehabilitation of the illegal -- incarceration of illegal immigrants, I don't like the term illegal aliens.
>> that bugs me. [indiscernible]
>> pardon me, Commissioner.
>> I assume that it's people from -- who are beings from other planets other than earth.
>> I知 going to say illegal immigrants, I知 not going to say illegal aliens. But what I知 trying to suggest here is for the persons that are, that we receive grant money for in the incars rehabilitation of illegal -- incarceration of illegal immigrants, do we actually have an idea of -- of -- in other words, where are these persons held? Are they held in the Travis County facilities? If so, then can you tell me how -- how have this -- have the number I guess is for the number of persons that -- is there an average where we have broken these off, broken these out in our jail overcrowding type of situation because if they are there for a period of time, of course, that also adds to our cost and so as this -- is this money sufficient enough to cover the length of stay until these -- until the illegal immigrants are adjudicated in the proper manner so -- are those figures related in this overall cost figure here. Receiving from the state, is this something that we have flushed out and categorized accordingly? Please can I get an answer to that question.
>> Commissioner, [indiscernible], Travis County sheriff's office. Kind of without going through the formulas of how the program works in its entirety, we submit to the -- to the federal government as required under the program a list of every individual who claims a foreign place of birth that meet their criteria. Now, again, that means any country other than the united states of america. That is submitted. We are not supplied with the data as to individuals who are deemed by ice, immigrations customs enforcement, which is the replacement for the immigration and naturalization services. We are not supplied with a listing of individuals who met their criteria. We are not -- do not have access to their data system from a law enforcement perspective that allows us to know which persons in our custody are of -- of -- deemed of non-legal status. By their agency based on the d.o.j. Formula they reimburse, based on the cost for providing correctional officer staffing for all of our inmates, so it's a fairly complex formula that they utilize in doing it. I can tell you that we submit this last program year approximately 1,000 names to the department of justice for their review. Again, we typically do not find out how many individuals they deem meet the criteria and again we are not advised as to who those individuals were.
>> okay. I gets -- well, since we don't know the actual number, I know -- I see the amount of the grant that we have, [indiscernible] but -- if this particular program and I guess my point is does this cover the expenses that Travis County has to endure in the overall scheme of things as far as providing the necessary funding to deal with the -- with the jail population? And that's my question. Does it exceed it? I really don't understand.
>> -- kind of refer back to my previous response which was that since I do not have information that tells me out of the individuals that we submitted how many were not of lil status it would be -- legal status it would be different to answer your question.
>> we have never, your honor, protested the appeal, the award that we have, the members of the court and yourself have entered letters of concern as to funding levels at the federal government on this. As far as elect officials --
>> christian and I were chatting about this the other day because a couple of weeks ago I read an article in news week, I believe, where the governor of arizona, it was not quite this kind of program, but it was an immigration problem. That arizona was suffering and the governor's complaint was that the fed was not picking up 100% of the cost. And really they fought, fought, fought and -- and arizona received a substantial amount of additional money. Of course the governor was selected as a -- one of news week's best governor's in the nation and -- but the point that brought home to me was that arizona is just -- just refused to receive any amount that the federal government sent and that's why I asked well have we ever protested. That's not quite the same ascending the money back that they send us. I知 suggesting that we hold on to that but I would demand, I guess, if we think we spent a million dollars and they sent us $750,000, I would save the $750,000 here in Travis County, but I would demand the other 250 and see what happens, you know. They may just write us a check for the difference.
>>
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>>
>> ...that would be a valid argument. Unfortunately, since we do not have access to a data system that tells us who those individuals are in our custody, it would be difficult to formulate a claim based on any empirical data.
>> how does arizona do it?
>> again, I don't know if we're talking exact same program or some other program. Again, I値l defer to legal research on it, but to my understanding the federal government is not legally bound to pay for incarceration.
>> but I guess the point is there is a shortcoming that has to be picked up by Travis County taxpayers. Then that's what we're we're focusing on is who is going to make up for the shortcoming? Right now I don't know if there's a shortcoming or not. I just know what the grant is paying for and I don't know if -- you plug in a number, so we have this many inmates that are illegal immigrants here in Travis County jails, but of course it just appears to me that we ought to have a cost associated with those inmates. And if it goes over that amount, the longer they stay, the more we pay. And it just appears to me that we can not divorce ourselves, but separate ourselves as far as being cautionary and see if there's any infringement on the Travis County taxpayers in the federal government not fik piking up that tab. That's my concern.
>> I think what he's saying is they don't share with us. --
>> I know what he's saying.
>> I知 saying if you divide a thousand people into that particular number it's 658, and the answer would be no, we're not getting our fair share there, but if that's one very special prison, can he continue to stay in our facility? There's no way for us to verify what the number is and whether the answer is something on the low end or the high end or whether we're being appropriately reimbursed because they do not share with us the denominator.
>> we may have a discussion at some point soon to determine our legal rights under the contract. That's how we get to it. When I read the article,, california's approach made all the sense in the world. Did I say california? I知 sure california is following. The governor of arizona was the one that received the praise for actually taking the action. Arizona just kind of put it's foot down and said hey, you owe us this amount of money and have got to send it to us.
>> and with the border, we've got a really big border --
>> I know it was a federal responsibility that the state picked up. And they said it cost us x amount of money to do this as you direct --
>> kindly remit.
>> and here's what we want you to send us.
>> [ inaudible ].
>> let's look at our contract and figure it out. It may be that we're happy with the amount that we're getting.
>> but we don't know. I壇 like to move approval of item 3-d and with the possibility of scheduling an executive session item for this particular --
>> I have a question for you.
>> in the future.
>> second.
>> I need to be clear on whether your approval or denial of -- in this case I have a time limit to hit a button on the computer system to accept or decline -- I want to make sure --
>> we moved approval. This motion passes in 10 seconds, then you have authority to sign t.
>> I値l do it as soon as we get done.
>> don't get carried away with this discussion.
>> I知 suggesting at some point we'll look at the contract and see what our legal rights are and whether it would make sense to send a letter that says, by the way, you owe us x amount more than you sent us and here are the reasons why. And we don't know how they'll respond if we never send that letter. I値l try to find that news week article and send you a copy. I felt a whole lot bolder after I read it.
>> we probably need a conversation with the governor from arizona.
>> or the staff.
>> any more discussion?
>> yeah, judge. What is the terminology -- I see there's some difference on the court on how you refer to these folks, illegal alien,, illegal immigrants?
>> I think the feds want to address it that way, but I think it's all in the language and how important we all think language is.
>> this is the name of the particular program.
>> so illegal alien is the term we're going to use.
>> that's what the feds use.
>> I refuse to say it. Illegal immigrant.
>> what is I am flamtory. If you look at websters, alien --
>> [overlapping speakers].
>> here's the issue as far as I知 concerned, I知 surprised that the feds give us any money. We can't tell them how many people we have here that are illegal, mainly because a lot of us don't want to know that. And that's very confusing to me. If you want Travis County -- citizens to pick up the cost of this, fine. If we don't want them to pick up the cost or we want to make sure that we're being reimbursed the total amount, then we need to ask some tough questions and find out who is here legally and who is here illegally. So you're right, maybe that's an executive session deal, but something's not right about the whole process. I mean, again, this is one of those things that everybody thinks that the federal government is just as casey as other parts of the government. They'll dole out all this dough to us. We couldn't tell them statisticsly if we're covering costs or not, but I think if we really want -- I would like for us to have our cost covered, but in order to do that, we're going to have to say how many people are here illegally? And you may have to ask somebody, are you here, or you may have do some research and find iew if somebody is here legally or not.
>> well, I want to cover costs. And I don't want anybody doing anything criminal in this community and getting away with it, but I also think that I can do those things and then also be careful about the language I use, make sure it's not I am flamtory toward other -- inflammatory toward other human beings.
>> so you think to the average everyday person that the word alien is an inflammatory?
>> it is here in Texas.
>> okay.
>> there's just more precise wording that can be used that can describe the situation. And alien is et and mork. We're done.
>> when I pulled this for discussion, I knew it would be a lively discussion.
>> thank you.
>> all in favor? That passes unanimously.
>> thank you very much.
>> let's get that document signed, mr. Hamby.
>> it already sun electronically. We did have somewhat of a related issue, and I知 not sure if this is the vehicle that we need to post it as a secondary is pbo had some suggestions and the sheriff had some smaller suggestions on allocation of these funds. Is that something that we should repost or handle?
>> I think we need to repost that.
>> thank you, sir.
>> we may get a little backup, pros and cons.
>> we'll make sure that that's taken care of.
>> thank you.
>> yeah, we are going to run short on our out of county inmate fund, and to me it's like, I know where I want to dump it.
>> we can have it on as early as next week if it's ready.
>> yes, sir.
>> thank you very much.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, December 7, 2005 7:31 AM