Travis County Commssioners Court
November 26, 2002
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Item 24
24. A. Receive report on impact of 24-hour magistration pilot project and take appropriate action. B. Review draft plan addressing state variance beds, as requested by the Texas commission on jail standards, and take appropriate action. C. Discuss scope of work on county jail overcrowding issues for potential outside consultants, and take appropriate action. On some of this, we can post it again for next week to get a further update. But I do think it will be necessary for us to get a preview of whatever we plan to tell the jail commission on 24 b. To get some input from the commissioners court on 24 c. And get an update on 24 a.
>> what order would you like to take those in, judge.
>> a, b, c.
>> okay. As you may recall, the commissioners court in fy '03 budget process funded a pilot of 24 hour magistration. We conducted that pilot from the 16th through the 30th of October in central booking with the assistance of the sheriff's office, the municipal court judges and pretrial services. And I would say that pilot was a success. It went off very smoothly. And we today have a report on the impact of that pilot. We are just here today to tell you what happened as a result of the pilot, but not to make recommendations yet as to the future of 24 hour magistration at central booking facility. That is still under discussion by the jail overcrowding task force, we hope to be back within a couple of weeks, hopefully before christmas, to let you know the recommendation of the jail overcrowding task force with regard to 24 hour magistration in the future. I can walk through the -- the summary report if you would like. Essentially --
>> is there a [inaudible]
>> we can read the details ourselves, right, as we have done already, I'm sure.
>> thumbnail sketch. There was some reduction in the population of central booking, especially right at the 7:00 a.m. Counts as might be expected because we had a judge overnight whereas normally we had that gap that went through 7:00 a.m. There was a small reduction throughout the rest of the day in the central booking population? There was a 3 to 3 and a half hour reduction in the amount of time that it takes to get an arrestee from intake through the magistration process. Which we also would have expected by getting rid of that gap in the middle of the night. And we have anecdotal feedback from the operation departments involved which was unanimous that 24 hour imageation made the facility work -- magistration made the facility worth more smoothly. The facility hasn't really operated that way since it opened. Because of the gaps in -- in the magistration and other things that sort of plug up the process sometimes.
>> by gap you mean.
>> the 1:00 to the 7:00 in the morning.
>> not covered. If you get arrested at 12:30, image frustration without the pilot may not occur until after 7:00.
>> you get arrested probably after about 10:30 or 11:00 judge, not magistrated until probably 8:00 or 9:00 the next morning.
>> during the pilot we covered that gap.
>> uh-huh.
>> were we able to make any sort of a cost benefit analysis.
>> we have not been able to do that yet. We had a meeting yesterday of the subcommittee of the jail overcrowding task force to talk about how to get to that point. And we are struggling with that at this point. We are not sure that we can demonstrate any tangible cost savings that will result from speeding things up. I think that there is a unanimous agreement that it's a good idea to get people out of jail faster. It's a good idea to get them out in a lot of cases as fast as you can. In some cases it might not be a good idea to get them out for example in a family violence case.
>> to be clear, we were not, we kept those people until the next morning where the family violence attorney could look at those cases, we were not releasing people. I don't want to leave anybody with the impression that we were releasing family violence cases in the middle of the night.
>> the defendants cool off and further analyze the case before taking action.
>> yes, sir.
>> what the jail overcrowding task force is going to have to come to a conclusion about is whether the less tangible benefits of 24 hour magistration, the interest of having the facility operate more smoothly, et cetera, would merit a recommendation to implement 24 hour magistration permanently, given the cost that would probably adhere that. And I don't think that we have come to any conclusions about that yet. The sheriff's office in the meeting yesterday related to us the -- the continuous struggle that they've had in past years in trying to put a cost on how long it keeps, it takes to keep somebody in central booking for a given number of hours or what does it really cost when you have to dress somebody out and send them up to housing versus keeping them down in the open seating area. And given the fact that the mandate from the commissioners courted was to go forth and see if this -- if this 24 hour magistration would assist at all in controlling either jail costs or the jail population, reducing the likelihood of sending inmates out of county to be housed in this year and coming years, weighing that against what the impact is at this point, it could be that a permanent decision to implement 24 hour magistration right now is not warranted. However, there's not any conclusion at this point from the jail overcrowding task force in that regard. Everybody is here if you want to hear from folks about that.
>> have we collected enough data to keep working on -- on it to reach completion?
>> we have collected some of the data that would be needed to reach a solid conclusion. We do not have all of the data that would be needed, no.
>> what's your recommendation? As to the data that we have and our inability to reach a conclusion at this time.
>> the recommendation is to look at it further. To gather some more data. We don't -- because of the way the data had to be collected to make this pilot happen and the time that it did happen, a lot of the data was collected manually. We can't go back and recreate the picture in some ways and so there are some things that we may not be able to tell you about the pilot. But we did the best we could in the time period that we had to get it done in.
>> questions about --
>> yes, sir. In looking at, reviewing all of the information that was presents understand the backup, it was a lot of favorable comments I guess made by the sheriff's department, the three judges, cscd and others. And I guess my concern, though, and I guess I'm kind of -- wanting to piggyback on what the judge said, is the cost benefit analysis that's going to have to be done and if -- if the judges are -- are speaking highly favorable of 24 hour magistration, how it -- how they get a lot of people moved out where they wouldn't be actually going to the morning docket because they have taken care of it during this -- during this window, I'm concerned that how long -- in other words, we have what -- we are looking at -- [inaudible], April one to look at some other things, see where we were going to be at this time dealing with the jail overcrowding situation. I guess my question is to you, looking at the favorable comments that were made from the different department heads, judges, and also the sheriff, cscd, and actually looking at the head counts and everything else, what would that have cost us? If we did not have 24 hour magistration? I guess it would all be geared in, but we only allocated so much money to look at the pilot project so certain at the time. But if we do not have collected data to make a good bona fide decision, based on relevance of -- of all of the interrelated concerns of the benefits versus the -- versus the cost, it appears to me that there has to be some way of making enough -- of getting enough data to help us make the decisions. I guess that's my point. When can we expect to have enough data available in this cost benefit analysis ratio? Can you make -- maybe just lead me in the ballpark arena as far as time constraints and concerns?
>> I think that our biggest challenge at this point is to calculate what the cost savings would be from the impact that we have measured. We have measured that there is a population reduction. That there is a shortening of the amount of time to get people out of jail, putting a dollar figure to the savings on that is our challenge right now. My expertise is not in the area of doing cost analysis, so I will need other people to support us in doing that. The auditor's office, in particularly April bacon indicated at our last meeting --
>> I'm sorry, I can't hear for you the door, sheriff.
>> April bacon of the auditor's office at our last meeting indicated that they would perhaps be able to provide some of their wonderful skills to help us in that. Because it's not only the fact that somebody is not there, it's also makes -- this may be more minutae than the court wants to hear. It makes a huge difference whether somebody is there 11 hours or 8 hours, that difference of those hours is often the dins of whether we have to take that pepper, take all of their property away from them. There she is right there. Take all of their property away from them, issue them a mattress, issue them a uniform. Then when they leave, it takes us longer to process them out because we have to dress them back in their street clothes, we have to launder the clothes even if they have been in there just a few minutes, sanitize the mattress, all of these sorts of things, there's costs associated with all of those aspects of things that just have to do with the fact that because of the length of time it was taking, particularly overnight, that we were having to take people from the sitting area and place them up in the housing area and because we had to place them up in the housing area, we had to keep an overflow unit over in t.c.j. For booking, which I always say is -- you have prime real estate out there on the commercial market, my downtown jail is my prime real estate because it's maximum security space. We need to keep that space open for the type of folks that should be there. I agree with you.
>> I need to clarify my generous offer.
>> it was generous. [ laughter ] I should have known it was too generous.
>> you know that I don't do numbers. [ laughter ] we talked about in the context of -- when we were talking about the consultant and in -- in these types of projects, my observation was, as we are going in and we are looking at process flows and the county putting various resources to find out the various steps that it takes, in context about a discussion of an outside consultant, my comments were as much as we could detail those processes, it would be helpful perhaps the consultant could help us put a dollar figure to that. Because we are doing some of that leg work. But we don't have a -- we don't have a cost accountant in our office right now that could go out and do that type of unless and would have the time and the -- and the --
>> the wherewithal to be able to do that. So it was kind of a combo that we are willing to assist in certain aspect of that, but then that might be a good place for us to get some -- some outside help to really develop a good model for that and to be used in -- in costing out the -- this type of analysis.
>> okay.
>> if you have comments to give on 24 hour mortgageation or will not be able to come back this afternoon at 1:45 this is your opportunity. The other two items are important, I think, and I know we can't get them done in one minute. Can all of you come back at 1:45 this afternoon. Okay.
>> are we going to continue on with a, judge, at 11:45 -- I would say continue with a.
>> judge mckee is the one who is probably the most particularly interested in 24 hour magistration.
>> I will [inaudible] she's a partner in this courtroom.
>> we will take it up this afternoon.
>> good morning, I'm evelyn mckee the presiding judge in municipal court. The municipal court judges worked that overnight project as temporary county employees, but they were our substitute judges. They did report that it was very busy time overnight, our judges who come in on the regular shift at 7:00 in the morning loved it, what it really did was redistribute the work flow from looking at the preliminary data that I saw, it did not seem to result in a significant reduction in the population in the jail. I guess we need to look deeper for that.
>> it did smooth out.
>> it smoothed out magistration.
>> greatly.
>> but probably did not result in --
>> it resulted in some numbers, there's a few questions in my mind as to whether or not if we had -- when we look at how the process and how the project went, for example, no calls were made by -- although personal bond was there, no calls were made by personal bond. It's my understanding after 11:00 p.m., So people's information could not be confirmed, people didn't get get out on personal bond during that time. We might -- it's hard to estimate what the difference would be, but my sense is that we would have seen more people get out on personal bond if they -- if they -- if those calls had been made in the middle of the night. Now I assume those people still got out on personal bond, but they got out on personal bond at noon the next day or they opted, when they realized they weren't going to get out on personal bond, to get a surety bond in the middle of the night.
>> there are a couple of other areas that could be look ad at for some relief -- looked at in relief. One is to allow [inaudible] releases earlier. Hobby releases. The judge is there until 1:00. But after a certain time, there's no personal bond information and no ability to run criminal history. If either the information was available or the policy was changed make might result in some further releases for appropriate people.
>> [inaudible] dwi.
>> no, sir. Hobby is a discretionary release by me. And I am very restricted about what people I let out without letting them go through the court process. So it's dwi, usually public intoxication case, release them to a peer. It's different in low level misdemeanors, non-violent offenses, no assaults. No dwi's that involve a wreck.
>> hinting that we should -- [inaudible]
>> I'm sorry?
>> well, I think quite frankly if you have 24 hour magistration, then you have the process work the way -- the hobby rule was used because of the fact of judges not being available and the fact of the -- of the sheriff wanting to -- you know, not hold somebody overnight who could be released to a responsible party. But if we had the judges available, you could --
>> what the attorneys are reporting or some attorneys are reporting is that they don't have access to the criminal history. So the judge has no information, so just being there doesn't really matter.
>> that's a pre-- that's a pretrial?
>> pretile issue. Pretrial issue.
>> I'm just saying that's an area that can be looked at to provide some relief. It is not going to solve the problem, but just allowing those hobbies, say, until 8:30, moving back from 1:00 when the judge leaves to around 8:30, might -- when the personal bond office closes to lawyers, that might have some small impact.
>> the dwi and public intoxication we will hold you how long before we presume you have sobered up.
>> usually four hours.
>> from the time of arrest or time of the arrival at central booking.
>> from the time they get to jail. That's just a -- that's just a guideline. I mean, some people it's less. Some it's a great deal more. Usually quite frankly a lot of the folks that we get picked up they are -- they are not in any shape to go anywhere for a long time. There's a difference between whether or not somebody is going to be -- if they are released to someone else who is going take responsibility for them, you feel that they are actually going to go home and go to sleep come back in the morning that's a different sort of thing than if you are just releasing someone out the door and they are going to walk off on their own and are they going to make responsible decisions. [one moment please for change in captioners] let's call back to order the voting session of the Travis County commissioners court. Prior to lunch, we had begun our discussion of item no. 24. And we are toward the tail end of a discussion of a. Involving 24 hour magistration pilot project.
>> judge, I have a series of questions if you are ready for those.
>> this is a good time.
>> I know we are trying to assess a value to the 24-hour magistration experiment. Sheriff, could you comment on what value you would place on the stress level that is ongoing in that facility under this new experimental regime.
>> that's a very good question, commissioner, because things like that are hard to quantify. What we have found is that it really improved the morale of the officers. It made booking for the first time operate the way it was designed to operate. Things flowed very smoothly. We didn't need to add any additional staff. We just moved folks around to accommodate the workload. It worked extremely well. We had very good feedback and I think the project lasted any longer we would have gotten it even more so from street officers. But because of the fact when they finished their probable cause affidavits, they knew that they would be looked at and acted on and they weren't waiting that next morning for that dreaded phone call when you are sleeping that tells you that you need to come back down because there's something wrong with the probable cause affidavit. But it was really very, very positively received. And quite frankly, I think it improved our -- our working relationship with the -- with the judges. Because one of our source s of frustration is in the morning we have literally a huge stack of probable cause affidavits, from the judges -- the same judge is supposed to look at those and also magistrate all of those people that are left over from yesterday who haven't been magistrated before. So the morning is particularly brutal.
>> related to us also trying to assign value to the magistration pilot project, how many extra beds do you have to set aside for overflow in central booking and is there at least a potential of reducing or eliminating that which would also be a value that we could reattach to putting more beds back into service for what they were originally built for, which is long-term --
>> I think quite frankly, with 24 hour magistration, we won't have to have any overflow beds. I'm going to look back here and look at emily, get major trevino, make sure she agrees, we really don't need any overflow beds. What we have found is that we can deal with that population. So that means where before, kind of depending on what the population is like, whether we were setting aside several, you know, several units set aside. Now we won't have to set aside any. Also the -- the process works a lot better as far as the stress on even the inmates, because once we dress them out, we know it's because we think they are going to be staying in jail.
>> how many set asides do we have?
>> right now -- we -- we resigned some of the members.
>> we had -- we had 85. 85 beds for overflow.
>> for the overflow?
>> yes, ma'am.
>> was that in the form of a variance with jail standards?
>> part of those beds were variance beds. And we will talk about jail standards in more detail in a few moments. But the key part of it is really is that because of the fact that we are having to use those beds for people who would get out around noon the next day, we couldn't properly house maximum security inmates in those beds, which created a bottleneck further on down the system as far as our permanent inmates.
>> because where I'm headed on this, if this is something that there is a value related to freeing up and eliminating one more variance voluntarily that we have with jail standards, that is also a good message to them that we can't appropriately use those beds for what they were intentionally built for. Gives us more leeway there.
>> commissioner, I think it has a value even beyond that because if we can eliminate having to have those beds set aside for -- for new booking prisoners, then we can utilize t.c.j. For the purpose it's supposed to and we can give up some variance beds and in giving up those variance beds, we have strategically, this kind of gets into one of our further, future subject matters, but we strategically have tried to give up beds where it also results in us being able to eliminate an officer post. So every officer post that I can eliminate has a -- probably with benefits about a quarter of a million annual basis to it.
>> I have two more areas. Another thing that I heard in terms of feedback where they think that there may be some relief factor in terms of getting people through the booking process has to do with the phones. I have heard this repeatedly, not only from the municipal court judges that worked but also the defense bar, there are not enough phones available to -- to make that one free phone call for one thing. And that apparently with the situation related to a lot of phones -- a lot of folks now no longer have a real phone, but they have a cell phone. To accept a collect call the cell phones don't accept a collect call.
>> that's right.
>> and that if we put some creative thought to more hardwire phones that we can get out so that people can make phone calls or to see how we can work around the situation with the cell phones --
>> let me tell you what we have done, commissioner. We actually have been working on that for a while. The cell phone issue has been at least partially corrected, it is true. You can't make a collect call to a cell phone. So -- and the way the system is wired, even the free phones that we had you couldn't make a cell phone call from -- for those. The first solution was, well, if they call it and then within an hour it will be -- you can get through. I was like that's crazy. You just need to wire those phones so you can make calls to cell phones. Those are -- that has been corrected on what we call the free phones.
>> okay.
>> now, if an inmate has made -- state jail standards require to let them have two free phone calls within four hours. The reality of it is if an inmate is over in another area, they can't find sib who wants to accept their call -- anybody who wants to accept their call, we want to see them get out. I would not suggest that we do away with the phone system the way it is and just have additional hard line phones because one of the good things about the jail phone system is that it provides protection, particularly to victims. And that you can't just call me, you know, it will tell me this is a call from the jail. We talked about the last jail overcrowding about changing the message somewhat to indicate that it's a free call so if somebody wants -- also to let people that it's from the booking area because right now it says "this is a call from an inmate in the county jail." Most of us would think, well, most of the general public would say I don't know any inmates in the county jail, not realizing that it's brother joe who just got picked up for shenanigans.
>> that's the distinction. We probably wouldn't take one from an inmate unless you knew that somebody close to you was there. But if you found that was a family member --
>> we are working on changing the message. But the cell phone issue has been dealt with through the free phones.
>> the final question is, a concern raised by the community court folks because they were seeing a noticeable decline in the number of community court eligible arrestees landing in their court. I encouraged them you need to say something about it. But they had a concern, at least there was an appearance that those folks were not being helped. They were being "let out the back door" defeating the whole point of somebody being detained to go specifically before to community court. But especially raised concerns about folks who had been arrested on a failure to appear or a failure to comply. And wanted the ability either to hold that person over to then go see the -- the community court judge. But that was something being raised is that they would like to have some discussions with the jail that they felt like they were found and yet they were being let loose before they were brought appropriately before a community court judge -- [multiple voices]
>> well, I this I that perhaps I need to go down the hall and talk to the other municipal court judges. When somebody is being in for some sort of failure to appear, we don't usually release them to a peer. If the jail crowding gets too bad, yes. If I have a choice between releasing a class c misdemeanorant and releasing a higher level person, the class c is going to be the first one I shove out the door. We have this tipping discussion whether or not the jail should be used to house, to keep people in jail after a judge has said that they should be let go, simply so they can appear in community court. I don't think that's appropriate or perhaps even legal.
>> I think if it were folks that rose to a certain level, we will call them the frequent fliers, it may be something that has five outstanding failure to appear or failure to apply.
>> I don't have the specifics, but I can't -- I don't see us releasing those, but I will certainly -- if they will get the information to me. I will be glad to look at it and make sure. That's a whole different sort of category.
>> it could be that the class c diverse is impacting that.
>> but they go to actually a magistrate. That's what I am saying.
>> so they are going to the judge.
>> this is not the folks that are actually during the day when you actually do have a municipal court judge on duty. This is basically at 7:00 in the morning of who is being brought over. There was like a noticeable, where did they all go kind of thing. But anyway this has been brought to the attention of kelly page who is going to have -- set up some discussions between your office.
>> certainly [multiple voices]
>> we can do some numbers to look at if we can figure out whether or not -- one of the things, to be real blunt, we saw somewhat of a reduction when we started in class c diversion, some reduction in arrests, and I think it was a little bit of the, you know, if you were picking somebody up with the idea that you were going to get them locked up for the night, you realized that wasn't going to work, it wasn't worth the hassle. We used to call it attitude arrests. I don't know whether we need to look at the numbers, one of the things where good data is important. But we will look at the numbers and figure out whether it's on the police end that they are not arresting as many. But I do recognize most of these folks, that's why I think it's for have judges there 24 hours a day, particularly for the class c's, they can go ahead and deal with the case, get it disposed of. When these people get cut loose to rerepair, they often don't reappear I have to arrest them again. I'm not interesting in dealing with them three or four times either.
>> that was simply the concern was to separate fact from fiction. [multiple voices] no one is let loose without having some kind of paperwork. They don't get like okay it's get out of jail free thing. It's making sure there aren't any unintended consequences with our pressures related to the jail overcrowding that we do not impact, with the consequences with the community court folks, they were saying they could probably help when they have their marshals go out and seek some of these frequent fliers, they do it during hours that they know when they get there they won't -- they will be able to transfer somebody over to community court, somebody on duty. There is the possibility of there being --
>> that's one of the things we asked the city marshals to do, for a while they would go and they would arrest people at a time when they were -- when there were no judges available, it kind of seems to defeat the purpose. Even if the person has the money and -- they often would stay in jail. But that time they had gotten like $100 a day, gotten jail credit. So they have been working with us as well. We will look at it and see.
>> judge, those were my questions, thank you.
>> we were told at one time that the class c diversion initiative had eliminated the need for -- for central booking overflow beds. That's not so?
>> not totally. I mean, it had impacted it, but it had not eliminated the need for those 85 beds, no, sir. It had reduced the population. It has significant effect on it. But sit hadn't eliminated them. We still have them set aside.
>> class c [inaudible] in effect?
>> yes, sir.
>> we are still using the beds with the females.
>> 24 hour magistration would cost how much.
>> the last cost estimate that I saw for a full-blown 24/7 for all of the operational departments was $450,000 a year. However, pretrial services has weighed in and said that they see limited utility in their being in the central booking facility between 2:00 a.m. And 7:00 a.m. Because there's not a whole lot they can do during those hours. So we might have a less expensive version by virtue of that. We have not -- we haven't put together the whole cost estimate based on that yet.
>> is it effective without [inaudible] services.
>> it's not as effective. I guess this is one of the areas where I somewhat disagree. I mean, I think that -- I understand it's very difficult obviously to contact most employers, most h.r.'s are not going to be available in the middle of the night to verify employment. But as far as personal resources, would your momma mind me calling her at 1:00 a.m., I think the response is you might as well, I already woke her up. So I think that there's some value to having them there. Because I think that the judges could make a decision on the -- on the person, whether they want to approve a personal bond based on what information they have. I -- I think there's value. But --
>> sheriff, when you say value, and I understand that, and I don't disagree with you at all. I can't -- I can't -- having 24 hour magistration, especially for that period that will void -- kind of clogged up the system as far as getting persons to the next level, my concern, though, is if pretrial services is suggesting between 2:00 and 7:00 is kind of a slow period for them, how many staff persons are proper trial services used for the other portion of the day other than this --
>> well, I'm going to let pretrial services come up appeared answer this question.
>> thank you, I --
>> lest I be accused of tying to manage the rest of the world.
>> right. Can you tell me what's your f.t.e.'s, the necessary things that you need to have in place during the other periods of the day other than this 2:00 to 7:00 window that appears to be down time, I guess, as far as not much activity in your shop.
>> we started looking at that back in may when we submitted a plan. My name by the way is maria guerrero, administrator of pretrial services. Back in may for the new budget, we submitted a plan. We kind of gave an overview of what we would need in case we ever did go into funding a 24 hour magistration for pretrial services. We also included an alternative plan if we are not there every hour for 24 hours, maybe a condensed plan of just being there until 2:00 every day. Current lirks right now we are staffed there until 2:00 on Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights. Commissioners court has approved the positions of two pretrial officer 2's to man those nights. And from Sunday through Wednesday, we don't have employees to man those hours.
>> so right now the snapshot --
>> right now one of the things that we are looking at is if we were to go the condensed version in terms of funding every day until 2:00, every day for those days that were not there, Sundays through Wednesday, we have submitted some numbers on that. I don't have them with me. But we have submitted some numbers.
>> do we have the numbers on Sunday through Wednesday.
>> no, that was the budget request they made in the fy '03 budget.
>> what I'm trying to say, we are looking at -- if I'm understanding the sheriff correctly, it is an integral part of the process, however what I'm hearing from pretrial services is that we are only doing this a certain portion of the day, we really don't get a full blown out -- since it is a pilot project, we are not getting a full -- necessary data if it was blown after a seven daytime frame. For that window.
>> during the project -- I'm sorry, go ahead.
>> during the project it was really hard to pull some of the data. We tried to keep data on certain things that we did. But it was for two weeks, it was as katy was mentioning, it was hard to kind of come to some conclusions. And of course we don't have the cost analysis to that, either.
>> even though you c make that many phone calls in the middle of the night in terms of confirming somebody's employment, the comments that were made by the municipal judges basically said there is still value, you have to get through an interview process so that by the time regular working hours do open up, you have already interviewed these folks and you can basically then have the 7:00 a.m. Shift start calling employers and trying to track down that stuff. But if you don't have somebody there between 2:00 and 7:00, you are going to have a huge stackup at 7:00 of people who are going to have to be interviewed, which will take a certain amount of time, will then eat up another three or four hours before you can even begin phoning employers, so it may not create more opportunities for folks to get out. But it will certainly keep the work flow going so that when business hours resume, those folks are ready to have those phone calls made as opposed to you are just starting on their stack. That's just from reading the observations from the judges.
>> I just kind of wanted to point for the court that we do call mommy or the uncle or the brother on a lot of the cases where the person got picked up on a warranty. We hold by on contacting references on a lot of the assault cases, on some of the dwi cases, and on individuals that have not gotten magistrated. And we are waiting for magistration to take place, we do call on some of those warrants because we know that little johnny has already called the relative to let them know that they are in jail. So on those cases we do make that effort even after 11:00.
>> all right. But I guess -- which is good. But I guess my point, though, going back to what the judge asked earlier, that is for a 24 hour imagination possibilities -- magistration possibilities seven days a week. What would that cost, if I heard correctly $450,000. I guess there will be some -- there's a lot of I guess costs that you can't really put an arm around. Like commissioner Sonleitner, stress level, the value that you put on that, the morale, whether an officer can go home and get some sleep at night. Not in the proper format, but with this situation it can be in the proper format and they can go ahead and get some sleep. Integral parts of there, putting an actual dollar amount on it. With the relevant dollar that we have now, in this whole area, in this $450,000 that we talk about, full blown out 24 hour magistration situation, what would that be if we weren't having to do anything, would that -- would that cost us more than the $450,000 right now? That's where I am trying to -- that's the bottom line that I'm trying to get to. I know it still may be early, but I think i've heard a lot of things -- that may lead to -- to -- these numbers -- let me ask this question. On the $450,000, then I'm going to shut up. But on this $450,000 --
>> you don't have to shut up, you're a commissioner.
>> because I need to listen to some answers to some questions that I asked. That's why I need to shut up. But on the $450,000 that we sent for 24 hour, seven days a week, magistration, does that also include the cscd pretrial services.
>> yes.
>> uh-huh.
>> Sunday through Wednesday, that --
>> filling in all of the gaps [multiple voices]
>> what I'm trying to do is put in my mind, what would that money, $450,000, seven days a week, what would be the savings to the county if we didn't have any of this.
>> that's what I was telling you that we have not arrived at even a method yet for determining what that savings would be if anyway. There would be certainly a lot of intangible benefit that could not have a dollar figure rightly put to it.
>> right, but there are a lot of tangibles, too, that I'm hearing that could also be assisting. Of course I think the person said earlier that the county, leading to something else that's on this agenda --
>> the benefit costs analysis part is the part where quite frankly, no one seems to, including me, have -- maybe bill could help us out, but really has the experience of doing and I think there are some things that you can -- that you can -- that you can stick numbers to. If you don't have some significant savings such as the fact that you are able to close down some beds and, you know, like -- which I think is a substantial one, the fact that if we know that we are not going to have to use those, that can we can convert them back to regular use, reliance on that, we can -- we can be able to close off, essentially reduce an officer post. That's -- that is a significant savings.
>> right. Well, I guess then I guess what I need to know is that in -- that's the funding, the first part of the funding project for this pilot project, of course there was a certain amount of money set aside to take care of what we are doing now. However, I would like to know where we are as far as the amount of money that we have already expended for the pilot project, how much more time do we have left before we exhaust all of that funding to -- that's the urgency of what I'm trying to get to.
>> the pilot project ended up costing about $9,000. Which was under what we had budgeted for it at about 14,000. The commissioners court allocated -- put an earmark on allocated reserves in the fy '03 budget of $200,000, of which we have spent 9,000 of that. That would leave the remaining 192,000 to be spent on 24 hour magistration this year if we implemented it. The funding has already been allocated within the budgets of the operational departments for operating central booking as -- as according to the status quo already. We are not going to run out of funding for the operation of central booking. It's just are we going to use that $192,000 to implement 24 hour magistration or are we not.
>> and I understand that. That portion. Thanks for explaining it as such to put the dollar amount on the table before us. I would like to see as soon as possible the cost benefit analysis ratio to -- to -- to suggest that -- that this $450,000 I guess would be satisfied by reductions in jail population. Not only that, but also the variance beds and a whole bunch of other stuff, tankibles that we can put our hands on.
>> that's what we are struggling with right now.
>> that's -- thank you, thank you very much.
>> I think the things that I would like to see or like to know, if in your professional opinion if two weeks -- I can see where two weeks wouldn't have been enough really to use at the barometer. Appeared I'm not real big on spending moneys to -- to -- or partial moneys only to find out that you really haven't gathered enough information to really decide whether or not this program is worth its money. In your opinion, how much time do you really need in order to be able to come back to court and say, I feel definitive or as definitive as I can feel that this has been enough time to me for quantity take it actively tell -- began tyively tell you all commissioners, that -- how much time would you say that -- 30 -- an additional 30 days.
>> are you talking about conducting another pilot? Okay.
>> what I'm hearing is two weeks really didn't give you enough information along with the fact that you are saying that you may need -- I mean, consultant, the word consultant scares me to death. I would like to think that we have enough manpower, brain power to come up with, hey, this is pretty close. You all take this number, you run with it, you get comfortable with it or not.
>> right. Commissioner, I would have to say that in a lot of respects, two weeks was enough time for the operation to be able to demonstrate what it needed to demonstrate. It was much smoother than I would have anticipated what it would have been. Partly because they were already doing those activities, going to start doing them during different hours. The two week pilot I think was long enough to see what the impact on the operation was. The hitch comes in the fact that we had set up certain protocols for gathering data manually because we didn't have -- we didn't have a way to gary some of it electronically. In order to get the full picture we to h to do some manual data collection. We didn't have the opportunity for one hundred% collection on that data. We are left with only partial data on which to make the decision. For example, I can tell you from the data that we collected that people on average got out of jail three and a half hours faster. What I can't tell you is did more people get out of jail much faster? Because of the fact that our baseline data taken in June of this past year, before the class c diversion and before the 24 hour magistration pilot, we tried to gather data for two full days on everybody that was booked in a 24 hour period and that manual data collection involved the sheriff's booking officers, a lot of the sheriff's booking officers just not one or two. The pretrial service officers and the municipal court judges all reporting things manually, which is outside of their normal duties, which they were having to sort of fit that into their regular duties. We only got full data, I would say, on about 30% of the people who were book understand a 24 hour period, so we are having to draw concludes from that. If that were a random sample of everybody that were booked, then I would feel comfortable with it. But we don't feel sure that it is a random sample. What we think is that it was a greater likelihood that full data was collected on people who got through the process faster and the people who took longer to get through the process are the one that's we were missing data on. We don't feel like we have a representative sample. So we have the same problems with the data collection when we did it during the pilot process. So since we have the same problems in both data collection, we feel -- we feel comfortable that the trend or the difference between the two is probably pretty reliable. In other words, we do feel sure on average people got out about three and a half hours faster. What we can't tell you is if we were going to try to put a cost to how many people got out three and a half hours faster, we couldn't tell you that because we didn't get anything close to a capture on 100% of the people who went through during those 24 hour period. So we can't extrapolate that out to --
>> did that not happen because -- getting the additional information? Because someone didn't do what they were supposed to be doing? Or there wasn't a mechanism set up for you to be able to gather that information?
>> I would say that the reason that we didn't get 100% data collection was because we were imposing a brain noon data collection -- brand new data collection process in on top of these pep's daily diets. If you go visit central booking a lot of time it's a very hectic place. My guess is that that couldn't be their top priority during the -- while they were operating central booking.
>> then my point is, katy, is that I'm generally not in favor of just going through the motions for something. I mean, if you are really going to set out to say "we're going to do this because we want to deduce this or we want to find out this" then I think there needs to be a complete, you know, kind of a think through if you will, say okay we need this information. In order for us to give the commissioners what they really need in order to make, you know, a good solid decision, then I think we need the information. I mean, it's not -- because as far as I'm concerned, if you have spent nine or whatever, however many thousands of dollars to this point and you really came back and said we had about 60 or 70% of the stuff we didn't have, as far as I'm concerned you might as well, just, you know, have gone to the carnival with that nine thousand dollars, really you are telling us there are some intrinsic, there are subliminal pluses in doing this, but in order to really make a conscientious call from a commissioners standpoint, I'm really -- I really need more information than what you are giving me. I realize that, you know, that -- that you are probably working through it. So I would say if there's another two weeks, if you thought that two weeks was good, it's okay, gerald, I mean I'm going to do my darnedest to make sure that I get that other 70% so whenever I do come to you, I can go I feel real comfortable about this. You all make the call. [one moment please for change in captioners]
>> and honestly, I think that what it would take would be to station several research staff down in central booking with the various operational folks to have the research staff gather the data as the operations are occurring so that we're not imposing those data collection responsibilities on top of these people's already full-time jobs. I don't have enough research staff to do that. It's possible that if we combined research staff from a number of different departments within the criminal justice system and possibly maybe some assistance from pbo that we might be able to put together a team of research staff that could repeat those studies over again and have a much better data collection, but that would take a concerted effort from a in -- number of departments.
>> do you want to take a few days to brainstorm and try to figure out what the people who have been working on this can do and come up with some recommendations or whether the conclusion is we don't have a recommendation?
>> we did have a meeting yesterday, and honestly the up shot of that meeting is we don't think that we can demonstrate that there will be a tangible 450,000-dollar cost savings that will out weigh the 450,000-dollar cost. That doesn't mean we ought not try, but we did sort of come to that conclusion yesterday. And we were going to take that back to the full jail overcrowding taskforce for consideration the Thursday after thanksgiving. We can certainly do that.
>> may I suggest a column that says yes, -- a column that says either yes, maybe or no, kind of side by side for the jail overcrowding taskforce to look at.
>> a ballot? [ laughter ]
>> the full taskforce is supposed to look at this after the committee's work?
>> correct.
>> why don't we do that and see what shakes out.
>> just in terms of how we're evaluating this, I certainly never approached this, nor any of the other things on our laundry list of things that we were going to try that it necessarily had to be something that reduced the population where we can attach a dollars' savings to. That's why I was asking that question related to the stress level. There are some things related to this jail over crowding, like the visa commercial, it's priceless, you cannot attach a value to. And in terms of the moral alty that i've talked to people to that you never start the day hopelessly behind in a high stress environment is just that much less stressful for everyone involved knowing that it's just -- it's more even flowing. I can't even imagine a job where every single day y never have caught up. It's not even --
>> and the folks on the night shift, the problem they have to deal with is inmates -- if we're going to look at things and it's hard over a two-week period, but I think we need to look at things such as critical incidents that we see. What I know is that if you say to somebody, you're not going anywhere tomorrow, and they're like what can I do? You can't do anything. You're stuck. There's no judge. That person's stress level is going through the roof as opposed to sit down and you're going to be going for see the judge soon and they're making progress through the process.
>> but that level has been there forever, hasn't it? I never thought we would not do a cost benefit analysis? [multiple voices]
>> because the cost benefit analysis made no sense. It didn't make sense to invest the amount of money invested for the outcome that had been projected. And on the 24-hour magistration, I always thought we would look at what impact it would have on jail overcrowding and then what it would cost. The less it costs, the less impact that you look for. If this were a 25,000-dollar matter, then we would expect a whole lot less than you would for 250,000. I'm not saying we ought to make the call now, but with the mixed reviews, I don't know if we're getting enough benefit to make -- to spend a substantial amount of money saying hey, we can spend the amount we're talking about doing something else. Now, pretrial services made clear from the beginning that they would need additional personnel to cover these six or seven hours early in the morning. And other folks said they would need additional personnel too. That's why we put it in for two weeks and not two months. We weren't expecting miracles, but we were trying to take a quick look-see and draw some conclusions. What I'm hearing is that so far the conclusions are kind of mixed and kind of depending on your perspective. So I think the taskforce ought to look at it, but if it comes back with mixed reviews, I don't see us getting around doing -- [ inaudible ]
>> we didn't have a 24 hour magistration. [multiple voices]
>> the stress level has been there forever. There isn't anything new about it. What it ought to be is this is a lot better from a stress perspective than it was a year ago just based on the numbers. And last year and the year before based on the numbers you've given us. So -- [multiple voices]
>> I'm not opposed at all, but I think that we need to try and -- we need to recognize some things that are intangible and we need to look at -- I think there are effects that -- the simple answer is not what's the jail population and booking at 7:00 o'clock in the morning. That's an oversimplified answer to the question of what is actually saved as far as a cost benefit analysis. That's way too simple of an answer. The other thing I think we have to do is --
>> but stress is too simple list tick.
>> I'm talking about the fact that you don't dress that guy out and therefore you don't -- you don't have to --
>> if I were in the jail six hours and I would have a chance to get out in four, I would take four hours.
>> I bet you would.
>> but for some it's 24 hours instead of six. It's not like I'm going through central booking at all. Let's take it to the taskforce and see what they consider. [multiple voices]
>> judge, I want to be clear. I'm not arguing against making a cost analysis. I just say it's more complicated than simply the number of folks. On the tangible side. The other point i'd like to make is I think we need to look at as far as what the cost is what we know is it takes judge and it takes an interpreter, that those are things that didn't exist before, and then perhaps work with pretrial about what does it mean when you spread that work load over -- it doesn't mean it's the same answer for them. I'm not insinuating that it is. I think we need to look at that issue and have some altern like if they're not there between two and seven, what does that cost?
>> i'll give it my best effort, judge.
>> you have a good point there in terms of asking the taskforce what kind of things do you think ought to be in a cost benefit analysis, both the tangible and on the intangible side. I think that's a thoroughly reasonable suggestion to throw to them about what kind of things we should focus on and what kinds of things are --
>> those are the factors that ought to be considered. What should the court consider to make this determination.
>> one thing we do know is we're going to need someone to dedicate some resources in terms of a financial analyst or cost accountant to help us do this because right now no one's anteing up that resource. And I can't do it.
>> should we make sure a is dead before we move on to b?
>> absolutely. [ laughter ]
>> b, review draft plan addressing state variance beds as requested -- [ inaudible ] as requested by the Texas commission on jail standards and take appropriate action. By wait, we have a draft to look at. This will be on the agenda next week. The meeting with the commission on jail standards is December 12th. A couple of us will be out of town that day on county business. In my view it would be nice to have one or two members of the court sit in with the sheriff. That is not by design, right? They've all been in Austin. Do you move them around?
>> last time it was --
>> abilene?
>> it was amarillo. I can tell you about being in amarillo right after 9-11 next to the pan tex tank farm.
>> it's really -- one of the things -- sorry, judge. One of the things that is extremely apparent when we go to jail commission, you don't have to do it every time, but the fact that judge Biscoe has made appearances with me from the commissioners' stance is that we're working together. Because they spend a lot of time settling scwawblz between sheriffs and commissioners courts, believe it or not. And this is I think an important enough meeting that it certainly would be beneficial to at least have a representative of the court down there in houston. It won't take very long. We'll even give you a ride.
>> [ inaudible ]
>> I have that problem myself sometimes. Just to kind of remind everyone, last year we went before the jail commission, annually the jail commission reviews variances, variance beds came into being when the state was cramming prisoners in our jails and they gave us some variance beds to -- it's like okay, here's where you can double bunk to deal with overcrowding that was created by the state. The state took the prisons away and lo and be hold counties still had some crowding issues that were attributable to our own prisoners. So gradually over the years we reduced our variance beds. The last year we went before the jail commission, they didn't give us their standard approval for a year to go away. Instead they told us we had to come back in April and we had to have staffing and in compliance with jail standards. So we're going back now. Currently we have 739 variance beds. There are 2,275 design beds for a total of 3,014. What my opinion is from conversations with the jail standards staff and members of the commission is they expect to see us give up a significant number of beds and also kind of lay out for them what our plan is is to eventually do away with these bids dz beds because they were never intended to be there forever. We obviously can't operate with 2,275 beds because despite the best efforts, I think your population this morning was 2348. So congratulations go out to all members of the criminal justice system because it hasn't been below 2400 in about three or four years. But obviously we would be in noncompliance right off the bat. But what they do expect us to do is give up some of these. Particularly because we won't be saying we have these, but we will have a facility that's done in x number of months. So we have come up -- we have gone through our beds and we have a proposal to offer up 167 beds, variance beds, some being in the Travis County jail, a total of 45 beds, which eliminates -- which will actually eliminate two officer posts so folks can be reallocated in the system. And at building one, which is really a building they would probably like to see us eliminate even more, eliminating 54 beds, another building eliminating 32, which eliminates another officer post, isd, inmate sanctions departments, and another 24 that does not affect staffing. That would give us a system total, which unfortunately we're not like a hotel, we can't necessarily stick somebody in every room. It would give us a system total of 2847 beds, which means we can operate the system as long as everybody keeps doing what they've been doing to keep the total low.
>> can you translate when you say we can eliminate a post here or a post there, what does that equate into fte's, which could assist us in in terms of any kind of overtime things that are moving on in your department and any other kinds of issues related to staffing.
>> well, it's what, five positions roughly? It's equivalent to roughly one post, which, of course, is about $200,000. I mean, it's --
>> there's -- you recall for commissioner daugherty's enlightenment, when we had our budget discussions we talked about what the staffing was required and we said if instead we eliminated -- we got the jail population down it would create some staff that we could actually move to those places. So it really is. It's a total of about four -- it's four posts, which is essentially 20 fte's, right at 20 fte's to be able to be moved to other places so as to deal with the overtime issue and also not to have to hire new f.t.e.'s. I think that the -- bill those those numbers by heart.
>> I think $370,000 is what it would cost.
>> that's real money.
>> this is, of course, assuming that the population stays in the levels that we've seen.
>> but one of those cost containment areas where we've had true difficulty had to do with overtime, and I was trying to get that down to a level of of course you need to have some amount, small amount, but we basically were scheduling overtime as being planned --
>> staffing posts through overtime.
>> exactly. Which was not the best way to handle that. So I would want to get some kind of analysis from pbo related to what that would really mean if indeed these numbers stay where they're going to stay. We don't have any range spikes. Would that be a population -- are we up to full staffing in terms of what was authorized during --
>> we had 31 positions authorized, and we have 19 that are presently coming on board, and we expect the rest to be done by end of January.
>> but we also had some conversion slots in addition to that, so it was quite a few more than just the 31.
>> it was 10 positions.
>> those are filled.
>> those were filled. Those, though, were absorbable at the end of the existing appropriations.
>> 47 out of 49 we filled.
>> and with that 20 the -- would the 20 be taken from that or was that figured into where we were during the budget process of what was going to be needed.
>> figured into what we came up with.
>> the idea was we had a number that we needed in the court, 68. So what we did was we looked at the issue of, okay, the court said this is how many we're going to authorize, with the idea being that we could make up for some of that number by the fact as we were able to close -- reduce the staffing on a post to reallocate those people to the buildings where they would be needed and be able to eliminate overtime issues.
>> so basically what you're saying is the assumptions that we made in terms of how many slots we did authorize, although it was a big number, the 41, which includes the conversion slots and the new slots, basic lly you're saying that those presumptions are proving to be accurate.
>> coming true.
>> and we may have actually right sized the number of new posts to be authorized and so we shouldn't be thinking we could free up things, these were things built into our assumption that we were that we made in terms of how many slots we did authorize, although it was a big number, the 41, which includes the conversion slots and the new slots, basically you're saying that those presumptions are proving to be accurate.
>> coming true.
>> and we may have actually right sized the number of new posts to be authorized and so we shouldn't be thinking we could free up things, these were things built into our assumption that we were crossing our fingers hoping would indeed be accurate.
>> correct.
>> it would also have impact related to overtime.
>> you would hope so, yes.
>> assumptions that we made related to what we could do to control the overtime budget.
>> I should point out that the overtime budget for the whole department for this year is about 750,000, which is a great deal larger than it has been in the past, but we spent last year $2.5 million in overtime. So there was -- there's a big difference in what was spent last year versus that amount. We will be working with the sheriff's office on a report on the critical kinds of issues, and indicators for medical services over time. Staffing and that sort of thing, along with we have prepared a template that will probably be a matter of routine to the court in the next month or so. We are only three pay periods into this thing, and we've only had one big -- because of the way corrections overtime works -- pay period to actually look at so far for sh department. Because they only get overtime every --
>> we're on a 28-day pay schedule.
>> so if we go through this process and we continue to see reductions as far as the jail population, that would indicate that there may be more resignments, I guess, if the trend holds true. And we hope it holds true, and I think we're all hoping that, get some kind of control on the jail overcrowding. I know that the past three years the levels haven't been that low; however, in my mind they need to be a bona fide trend that we can have some kind of control. It appears that we are getting some control over it. I still need to see more to make me feel a lot more comfortable and the reassignments are your responsibility to deal with as well as offsetting some of the other costs. So I'm really looking forward to those future endeavors. Thanks.
>> for the commissioners' benefit, my name is bill derry berry and I'm with planning and budget.
>> he's a number nerd.
>> good day, good guy.
>> we had prepared a letter that was going to be signed by the judge and sheriff to the jail commission. Judge, were you going to sign that today or were we going to talk about this some more?
>> talk about it next week.
>> that's fine.
>> I want to do that between now and next Tuesday. Now, item c.
>> I have the original. The last three pages of your backup is the actual letter that we're proposing go to the jail commission. And everything else you see would be their backup, so we kind of -- I did it backyards. It's your backup and then there would be your back up.
>> it would be the cover letter, then this documentation.
>> yes, sir. That's how we plan on doing it.
>> that outlines the efforts that Travis County has made to reduce its population and also the issue regarding the consultants.
>> just a lot of historical background.
>> is anybody discussing this with the jail commission staff prior to the December 12th meeting?
>> there's extreme value in that. And although I don't certainly need a letter that's signed by you, judge, nod to do that, I would -- in order to do that, I would like to get a feel from the court as to whether or not everyone feels we're headed in the right direction. I don't want to have a discussion with jail commission and then come back and say oh, everything hoos changed. But definitely we've been in commission with them all along, but our conversation is to try and work with jail commission staff so that they would recommend this to the jail commission.
>> would you plan to have that meeting before next week?
>> probably not before next Tuesday, no.
>> this is a short week anyway.
>> no, we can wait until after next Tuesday.
>> do you want to do that back on next week? And between now and then if we have any specific ideas, let the sheriff know. Try to have the document next Tuesday. With the judge's signature be fine?
>> I think the county judge's signature is always fine, but I do think that it has a bit of a psychological advantage on the commission if each and every member of the commission signs it. > why don't we have all the commissioners of the court sign under my name?
>> that would be great.
>> because I know everybody over there personally, but the other four members of the court can sign it too. That way if we have -- and we'll have one or two things and -- what meeting is that?
>> at 9:00 o'clock. It means you either have to catch an early southwest flight or go down the night before. The meeting itself will probably be over by noon, if that long.
>> they have multiple counties represented at the meetings that i've attended.
>> oh, yeah. We're not the favorite ones they talk about right now.
>> c is to discuss scope of work on county jail overcruding issues for potential outside consultants and take appropriate action.
>> judge, commissioners, we have discussed pursuant to the commissioners court action the '03 process and placing an earmark on the allocated reserves in the amount of $250,000 for potentially hiring a consultant to assist the county in our continued efforts to both reduce our jail population and to control jail costs through any means legal. We've discussed that briefly at jail overcrowding taskforce meeting and we had a more lengthy taskforce subcommittee meeting about that yesterday. We have plans to develop a scope of work that is bifurcated in some ways to deal with two separate areas, separate by related areas that can be studied. It would be an operational analysis. Jail itself, including things like what beds are getting to a point where they might need to be replaced due to building conditions and such and also financial analysis type things, what are the benefits of using the new f.t.e.'s versus overtime and those sorts of things. The second aspect of that is a consultant that would study court processes, essentially to tell us how we can move cases faster and reduce our pretrial population, which is over 60% of the jail population. We felt like there was probably a good likelihood we would need two different consultants to do those things because the areas of expertise are somewhat different, but that those consultants would have to work with each other and communicate regularly and make sure that they weren't going off in either diverge ent directions or duplicating each other's work. So fld be a scope of work that would include both parts of that study. And to bring that to the taskforce next Thursday for review and discussion. That's where we are on that.
>> and if the commissioners court has any ideas about either a third broad category or specific area, it should be brought to your attention?
>> yes, we would like to know that as early as possible. We also had some discussion about what aspects of the work we could do ourselves internally versus having a consultant and do it. And we think that we're going to do a substantial amount of the work ourselves, especially with regard to doing work flows of our court processes. And so we need to have further discussion, what the roles and responsibility of the county staff versus the consultant's staff would be.
>> does that need to be one of the categories that we include in the scope?
>> I think I believe in the scope of work we do need to include a discussion of what the county staff would be able to do versus what the consultant would need to contribute.
>> a consensus of the taskforce seemed to think, as I do, that county people would end up doing a whole lot of the work anyway, but it may be helpful if you bring in a consultant for an outside perspective, especially somebody with expertise and experience in dealing with matters such as this. The other things that if you're dealing with elected officials who have had their way of doing things for years, sometimes it helps to bring in a broader experience that has worked in other jurisdictions and hopefully some of which have had better practices in place much longer than we have. So I think there are a lot of advantages in bringing a consultant in to help some, but if we're going to end up doing a whole lot of the work anyway, we need to make sure that we can set out for the consultant specifically what's expected and pay for those services. Rather than paying for a lot of services that we provide ourselves. The other thing is it seems to me in these systems when you have to do a lot of the grunt work you hand to the consultant anyway, so you may as well carry it as far as you can and you make sure you can handle the point so he or she can start invoicing for services at that point.
>> I do want to see someone come in from the outside to be able to tell us what we're doing wrong so that we're not telling each other what's wrong. And we're -- internally we want to accept our colleagues' recommendation, whereas maybe we might listen to someone from the outside who has the expertise who has a record of -- or making implementing in other parts of the country where when the recommendations were accepted the whole system improved. And so I would be for looking at that. But I know that we're probably the ones who would have to do a lot of the work so they'll know what we want them to look at specifically.
>> commissioner, there's a value in having the consultants involved early because they can help you determine when you're going through the process this is what you need to be collecting. And then we can do the collection part ourselves at a much -- at a cost savings. We can collect the data. And my other point I was going to say is I think you're correct. When you've done something the same old way, the discussion I often have in my office. Someone will tell me I need more staff for that. And I say well, if you keep doing it the same way you're doing it, I agree. What says you have to keep doing it the same way you're doing it? And we often -- all parts of the system become extremely vested in what is comfortable and familiar to us, and I think that it doesn't change if you just -- if you just review it yourself. So I think there is great value in having somebody come in.
>> the other thing is I think we have to guard against another set of recommendations that we file away. So if we're willing to accept them, then I think the chance of really cease you'rely attempting to -- seriously attempting to implement the recommendations is a whole lot greater than if we let the consultant go out and do all the work and then we read aiz report and pick and choose from the recommendations.
>> the r and p is going to be critical. I think our experience of us going through the fluor daniel recommendation and to be quite specific about what our requirements were, about what the deliverables are, and that was where we we had some immediate short-term and long-term deliverables, and it would possibly tell us what they were going to pay pai to finish that building, and i'll be darned if to almost the penny they were able to get us to a place of this is what it's going to take to get closure. And we shouldn't feel bad about the fact of asking others what's working elsewhere and what's not working elsewhere? And again, if we're going to have to go out to the public and float a bond issue or have to build something, i'd like to say with a straight face, we've looked at this from every single angle and we have drawn these conclusions about what is necessary and what is unnecessary. And sometimes you need to have somebody step back and talk about best practices. Because you're really running a city over there related to a health -- a hospital. You're run a food service, you're running transportation. There's so many different things of that, that we can't possibly say that we know how to do everything in terms of best practices because clearly we're not. And we shouldn't be afraid to say how can we improve? And to be able to say to the public, we can account for every single dollar and there is not one more dime we could squeeze out of this and these are the conclusions we've drawn related to staffing, efficiencies, and that includes number of beds that we're going to need and right size everything from top to bottom. And to me that's not something that we can do internally. I think the public would wouldn't feel confidence in terms of us saying, oh, 88 yeah, we've taken a look at it.
>> I graded my own paper and I got an a.
>> sheriff, with all due respect, I think there is a credibility gap that needs to be met with this commissioners court related to the sheriff's office and what happened during the last budget cycle and I would say even the previous budget cycles. We need to have confidence that the numbers that --
>> we've done that.
>> it's not like you did it intentionally. It just -- we need to all have confidence in the numbers that we're landing on because there were impacts to every other department that we've got here that there are folks who lost out on raises from day one because we had to have a safety gap there, a safety net because of what happened didn't. And we need to be able to land on numbers that we can count o it's not just your department. It was other departments that fit into the same category related to rebuilding credibility with this court so that we can count on the information that we get and so that we can then make the appropriate right sizing of that budget and every other budget. Because every dime we have to give to you is a dime that doesn't go to another department or doesn't get collected from the taxpayers to begin with.
>> I agree with you, commissioner. That's why in our budget process last year I recommended -- I'm extremely comfortable with having somebody come in and look at the process. And I think it's critical when they come in and they look at and they can look at any aspect of the operation of the sheriff's office, but when they do this they also look at the court process because otherwise you will have the consultant come back and say the size of the jail population, and the reason the jail population as we have seen so amply demonstrated by the implementation of things like this rocket docket through the da's office and the short period of time we had the super jail call, the jail population is directly related to the court operation.
>> and I think one of the other things that we discussed -- and we didn't have an answer -- was how many certified corrections officers do we need in there? Because there is truly a tremendous budget impact. We know that the answer is not zero and we know the answer is not every single one of them. We need to land and to get some advice about what that ought to be. And begin, it ought not be from from all of us who can take a stab in the dark about what it ought to be, but it also should not be folks who have a vested interest in terms of that number as well. So I think, again, --
>> I can look at it.
>> some other input about what is the right sizing of a very strategic initiative related to employment.
>> any ideas, you should get them to you by --? > we're trying to get a draft of the scope of work done in time for the Thursday meeting of the jail overcrowding taskforce, the week after thanksgiving. So if y'all have anything, we would like to have it by Wednesday, a week from tomorrow.
>> Wednesday.
>> have we looked at any other r.f.p.'s that may be at there that other cities, counties, states, etcetera, have done similar to what we're seeking? Because obviously we're not alone in this.
>> the planning and budget office has done work on that and they passed on to me an r.f.p. For a jail planner which has some similarities to what we might b looking at in terms of the operational analysis of the sheriff's office, but not so much the court process. They had some additional materials that I haven't gotten together with them on yet, but I know they have it, so we'll be working with pbo on that.
>> and I need to make sure -- I apologize, we're trying to get our subcommittee, making sure we have all moving parts in the milghtdz of our meeting here. Is this focusing on jail overcrowding issues or are we blending this in with what was already anticipated to be related to a performance review of the sheriff's office top to bottom?
>> I think it's going to be both. The consensus that we came to was that it needed to be both. You have to go on at it from both directions.
>> anything further on c? Thank y'all very much.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:25 AM