Travis County Commssioners Court
January 28, 2003
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 25
25 to discuss recommendations from the jail overcrowding task force regarding system work flow analysis, strategy ... Related issues and take appropriate action.
[one moment please for change in captioners]
>> ... To discuss the hiring of a consultant. And that -- those discussions are really bifurcated into two separate issues. One of the things that we might have pursued this consultant for would be to assist us in conducting a comp homelessness I have work flow analysis of the entire criminal justice system, essentially how cases and people move through the court process from first arrest through sentencing and disposition and finally leaving our county jail for whatever their destination is. The aim of that study would be to see what we can find in terms of efficiencies that could be made -- or corrections that could be made in inefficiencies in the current system. Hopefully identifying the ones that would not have a large cost associated with them in recognition of the fact that we're in a limited budget situation. As the committee discussed, the scope of work for that portion of the study, we finally came to a conclusion that for several reasons we wanted to try and pursue that work flow analysis internally using county staff at this point. The recommendation from the jail overcrowding task force is that justice and public safety in partnership with the auditor's office take a lead to conduct that work flow analysis with, of course, substantial participation being required from the operational departments that would be the subject of the study. And that we would within six months time complete that study and have some recommendations that could be implemented either prior to or in conjunction with the f.y. '04 budge total help move cases and people faster from the process through first arrest through disposition and leaving our county jail. And maximize efficiencies while minimizing costs for those processes without giving up on the high quality of justice that we have in our courts at this point. The second aspect of the pursuit of a consultant had to do with examination of various things that have to do with jail operation. And those things are relatively unrelated to how cases move through the court process. The jail overcrowding task force had some opportunity at its last meeting to discuss the jail operation component of a potential consultant study, and was not able to reach a conclusion at that point about whether to pursue a consultant for that aspect of the study or not, or if a consultant were pursued, how much of the work would need to be done by the consultant and how much would need to be done internally. Where it stands right now is that the sheriff's office and planning and budget are working together to determine what aspects of that part of the scope would need to be done by a consultant versus internally. And I think probably the sheriff has something to reflect on that.
>> I'm certainly comfortable with the fact of having somebody else come in and look at whatever we want them to come in and look at. The question arose as to what sort of things we could do in-house so as not to cost the county resources to have someone figure out, for example, there's a way that you do a relief factor, whether or not you really need a consultant to come in and ask you for the numbers and plug the numbers in and give you a relief factor for staffing in the jail. So I'm comfortable with having a consultant do as much or as little, quite frankly, as we want them to do, but my concern is that we keep in the scope of what we ask someone to do, we have the master plan, which basically went out through 2005. I think that we need someone to come in and help us look at -- you know, we can do some analysis of what sort of inmates that we have, but I think that we also have to have someone help do an analysis of these are the types of classification and beds that we have and these are the type of classification and beds that we are likely to need in the future given all best efforts -- this is what you are still going to wind up with. The court will remember that we told the jail commission when we said let us keep the bulk of our variance as we said we were going to do this study, we were making efforts to try and reduce our jail population as much as we could we could a and then we were going to assess what if anything we needed to do as far as building beds and we would be back to them in December, although we have interim invitations to meet with them because of the remedial order. But we would be back to them with a plan as to what the county was going to do as far as any building, and so I think we need to make sure we include that as part of our end product.
>> the final [inaudible] scope of operations as far as jail operations, sheriff, did you get a chance to look at that?
>> yes, sir, I have.
>> and why don't you just add to that when you think -- what you think is appropriate to look at.
>> okay.
>> but at some point we need to take that and try to figure out what we can get done ourselves in-house and what we think we need to contract out for outside assistance for.
>> and I think that sometimes there's a different question there, judge. And sometimes it's not the question of what you can do in-house, but the question of whether or not you want -- whether the county wants to invest in having someone come in and look at an issue and say this is what the internal experts say is the most efficient way to do something. Now let's have somebody else come in and say yes or no or yes, but. You know, I mean there's that issue to things. Obviously we feel that, for example, in the assigning of officers to post in our staffing pattern she obviously we within the sheriff's office feel that we have the most efficient and effective staffing pattern or else that wouldn't be our staffing pattern. We would change it. We would do staffing in a different way. I'm comfortable with having either p.b.o. Come in and look at that issue and see if they have any suggestions or having an outside consultant tcome in and look at it also to essentially kind of grade our work, I'm fine with that. I recognize that a huge portion of the county budget goes towards jail operations and I'm quite fine with having somebody come in and look at the issue. But obviously we think we're doing it the right way or we wouldn't be doing it that way.
>> sheriff?
>> yes, sir.
>> I'm sorry, judge. At some point, though, even if looking at your additional input into the scope of work features that we have here, at some point we'll have to know a cost figure as far as what this will actually cost us, and I guess especially into the budget cycle and where we're kind of governed by the clock as far as trying to make sure we have some forecast on the impact on the budget.
>> well, clearly the more you ask a consultant to do, you know, for example --
>> right.
>> looking at cost benefit of outsourcing, when you ask them to do more, they are going to charge you more. They don't work free.
>> exactly. So my intent in that question was having some type of preparation to, of course, have something prepared as far as what we can do in-house, as the judge stated. And, of course, maybe offset some of this with maybe something that has to be done that's absolutely deemed necessary to do outside of what we have available to us now within the -- our own resources. But at any rate, my concern is that during the budget cycle we have some number that we can be looking at as we get ready to prepare ourselves for the next budget cycle. So that's my concern. Is the timeliness of whatever that number is. [inaudible]. Thanks.
>> I think my other concern is when this is originally approved in the budget process in terms of a dollar amount to set aside for the potential of outside consultants being called in, it was not with the point of view of what's going on with us, determining how many beds we might need for the future, a new facility, et cetera. It was really put aside for some very legitimate issues related to management. And I am seeing the pieces of this that are related to the management, and that's where I'm really going to focus on. And I still don't see where, you know, the driving force on this has to do with meeting jail standards and not what are we doing in excess of jail standards. That may be lovely and wonderful, but it's not what the intention of how do we best take our resources and meet the requirements of state of Texas. It still seems to be about us trying to justify things that we may be doing beyond that. That in the current economic climate we may want to revisit whether exceeding the requirements of the state of Texas is where we want to be or whether the standards set by the stacks about what you need to be doing inside your jail and running your operations is where we want to be. Because if you put it out there that, you know, it's -- if everything we're already doing there is not a reexamination of what are we doing to make the state of Texas happy, and perhaps some of those resources might be going elsewhere or potentially reinvested within the same department but in a different way. To me it was always about you are running what is basically the equivalent of a small city out there.
>> yes.
>> and that the management of this small city was quite different 20 years ago than it is now. I mean, you are running a health care system that rivals brackenridge hospital. You are running a food service that would make lubys plush. And it was to get you the help related to the management of this thing that has just exploded and it's -- are there better ways to do it. I still see this written in a way that basically says we are not questioning the base in terms of where we are out here and not getting down to, whoa, you know, the little square corners that I want to put around this, the fence is jail standards. That's truly in this economic environment where I have to start. And then to see what falls outside of that box, and this court can make appropriate choices about whether we want to be there related to the allocation of those resources or not. But given what we know about our economic condition and given the unknowns of the state of Texas perhaps sending down our way some more mandates, I need to be able to to be in a position to make some choices, and I don't see this written in a way that will get me that information. It really has to do with more justifying what we're already doing, which may well be well and good, but perhaps needs to be revisited in the economic [inaudible].
>> okay. Well, I it sounds to me like then there's some more work that p.b.o. And we probably along with katie need to do on the proposal. The part as commissioner -- I understand in our original discussions had to do with basically a performance review situation with the idea of jail standards being one of our measurements, but during the course of discussions we had the situation -- the kind of collateral issue of what are we going to do about this jail population, that when the consultant comes back and says, yep, this is what -- you know, it takes x amount of staff or whatever it may be to operate a system according to jail standards that is this large, but we had two other issues we want to know is then how do we go about reducing that number. And we've done some wonderful things, I mean I have -- if you had told me we would manage to meet the judge's goal of 300 that he set during the budget hearing, I would have asked the judge what kind of things he was drinking in the afternoon, you know. But --
>> coffee.
>> that's right. Late afternoon. But, you know, we have as a partnership managed to do that. But the next question becomes, okay, we have kind of reached this 300 mark and we have become stagnant and it's not going anywhere. Maybe that's as good as it gets, but we need to figure out how good it will get if we maximize the process things and then once we figure out what that -- you know, how low can you go sort of thing, once you come up with that number, then we have to make an assessment of if that number is still three, four, five, six hundred over the number of beds we're going to need in the future, what do we do then. And I think that's an integral part of what we promised the jail standards we would do this year. And I think that that is a part that we lack, the expertise, either justice of public safety or within the sheriff's office to do that projection part and the assessment part. I think there are people that can do that better than us. And I would think we might want them to do that if we're going to have to ask the voters for a bond issue.
>> sheriff, I don't disagree with you, it's just that may need to be a separate discussion, an allocation. I don't want it to take away from what was always the intent of that -- of those moneys. Basically maximize our resources.
>> I think that what happened was was that we had the money set aside and then it got over in the jail overcrowding task force and it kind of ballooned and now it's been pared down and I agree with you there was kind of the basic mission. It wasn't even just on the corrections side of things. It was also to look at the law enforcement end of things to try and figure out exactly how we can most product I feel use our staff there because, as all of you know from calls from your constituents, there was always a greater, you know, nobody may want to be in jail, but there's always a call for more law enforcement presence in the community.
>> so as a sort of recap, one, we would keep working on the pilot programs. And I understand three of those we are actively working on one of them really sort of -- I wouldn't say we drop it in limbo, and that's the class cs, right?
>> yes, it's sort of mor rphed into a lesser form. But we also have the new initiative with the video pleas.
>> that's second. The four number one. Then secondly, second initiatives, video pleas and conferencing and reliable data and other stuff we hope to keep working on. The third thing would be the work flow analysis for the court system.
>> right and we have a draft work plan of that circulating for comment right now. We'll bring that back to the commissioners court for approval if you all want to see it.
>> okay. And on that one we really need to know who in the various departments will be working. And so you are putting together that also?
>> yes.
>> okay. Then there is basically jail operations that we talked about last today and we will look at that, try to refine it further. You have an interest in sort of tigers what we do to jail standards requirements.
>> I think in the economic climate, judge, we have no choice but to.
>> I agree with that. I agree with that.
>> no problem. Anything else today? There are other individuals here.
>> some of our other partners in this process are here from the auditor's office and the county court at law judges.
>> [no microphone on]
>> thank you. Thank you all very much.
>> we know the fine work that's been ongoing, so let's keep on keeping on. As far as we know, the positive results that we expected will in all probability be delivered. And once we get the pilot program in place, then the challenge will be to try to expand that to the courts that wish to be part of it.
>> [no microphone on]
>> the person who ought to be describing this is nolan martin, the project manager. What we've done so far on the video pleas is last week we had a walk-through essentially a dress rehearsal. This we're we're actually appointing individuals, lawyers who have agreed to work in this and we plan to actually plead some defendants this week using the video pleas and then try to expand it.
>> let me ask you one question, especially with the attorneys that are willing to participate. I looked at some numbers before on video pleas, video conferencing, things like that. Have the numbers increased any? Are we getting much interest from the attorneys that will be dealing with this?
>> i've had several lawyers tell me they are interested. We've only just begun the pilot project as far as the pleas, so we don't have a large number. It's my understanding from other cities and counties that have used this that number goes up rather quickly once it gets set up.
>> and the goal is we get to plead via video conferencing and we don't have to transport them back and forth.
>> yes, sir.
>> exactly. Thank you. That will be good, yeah.
>> anything further? We appreciate the planning and hard work of the task force and the level of enthusiasm to me is remarkable. We still have full attendance at the meetings and the meetings still go about an hour and a half. And we're still meeting every other week. We were talking at some time about going to once a month.
>> after February 20th, we're planning to go to once a month.
>> unless the task force votes to keep meeting twice monthly.
>> or the jail population starts going up. [laughter]
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:25 AM