Travis County Commssioners Court
February 4, 2003
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Item 25
25 is to receive briefing from the sheriff's office concerning the monthly population status report. To keep county officials -- to key county officials.
>> good afternoon, david balagia, Travis County sheriff's office corrections bureau. I apologize for taking so long to get this document before the court and other key officials. Seems like every time that I was working on it, something would come up and I ended up making changes to it. In fact when you get probably by the end of this week, you will get January's report, interoffice mail that will also have changes on it. Only because the way -- the way that -- I have determined that the way that I have been trying to get the data, it hasn't been as clean as I wanted it to be. So I'm -- I'm going to be reporting some of the information a little bit differently than you see on the form that's in your backup. Real quickly I will go through what you have. What you have is the first three months of the new fiscal year. So you have October through December of 2002. On number 1 those are our average daily inmate populations for October, November, December. As you can see, December is 2295, which is extremely low. And -- and then below that is the system population, a system population [inaudible] and the like. We reported those differently because -- because one is an incarcerated population, one of course is a semi incarcerated population. So our average is 2444, which is -- which is -- is extremely low. If you compare it to the last couple of years. And each month I would -- I will give you some backup documents to look at, as an example, it -- if you go back a couple of pages, you will see the average daily populations and they take you back all the way to 1994.
Just so you can -- you know, do some monthly comparisons. You can go through there and see what is typically a -- busy months and then typically what's our slower months. This is a time right now where we -- the population is slow, but this is extremely low. Even when you go back and excuse me too the comparisons for the last couple of years. Number 3 through 7 indicate certain categories of our population that I thought the court wanted to look at. Of course this is -- I'm going to look at these -- at this document as kind of a -- a -- a living document, so if you all ever, you know, have -- have additional information that you want to see I can most certainly add it to here. Or if there's stuff on here that you don't think is very worthwhile, I will be happy to -- to take it off. But what you are looking at right there, there is an error on number 6, I apologize, that 574 is -- is -- was a total, not an average, the average is 191. So these are three month averages for October through December, pretrial misdemeanors for 21 days, state jail felon, pretrial felons, [inaudible] with a premium felony. The number that are sentenced to county, I know that was important, some of the commissioners had made the point of it seemed like it -- during the summer we were sensing it seemed like, you know, maybe more people to actually spend time in the county jail as opposed to going to prison. That trend I can absolutely tell you has changed. We are sending record numbers to prison, January when you -- if I can ever get swran's report to you, you will see that we transferred 441 people to prison in January, that's just -- that's an all-time high. Which means the d.a. Is getting them sentenced and we are getting the paperwork in real quickly, getting them on to prison.
>> parole vierlts with a pending penalty, the number ought to be 191. On the average each month we had 191. In custody. They averaged in custody 131 days. Now, if you go to the next page, the number 8 is just the number that -- that we are booking in per month and so far for the first three months, it's been 3800, which actually is -- is not necessarily low. Then number 9 just talking about the things that I attached the years, past year's population, there is a sheet in there also for central booking, how many people we release each month. Just historical data in case you look at it. On the overtime expenditures, I'm going to challenge that and what you are going to see is -- is I will -- I will pull the number off hte, just report what the balance is at the end of the month. The reason why I'm going to do that is because the overtime is -- is lagged behind from when it gets paid. In other words, if somebody had overtime in October, they are not going to see it until November. So there's a lag in time there anyway. But what you will still be able to see is where we are on a percentage of -- of what, you know, you all gave us. And so far in overtime we are -- we are okay for this time of year, except in budget 90, which is ma services, which is our nurses and counselors. We are -- for where we should be after three months, we are overspent. We are going to try to get a handle on that. But -- and all of our -- in all of other areas we seem to be doing okay, you know, for this time of year. Same thing on medical. What I will give you is each month I will -- I will just take the balance and I will give you what the starting balance was and then what the current balance is as far as expenditures. Of course we -- we had money that rolled over from the previous year, so that's why the number looks the way it does now. Then I will continue to give you the balances on the pharmaceutical line item because I know that was an issue. The -- the hospital days for the three months we had 37 inmates in the hospital, that -- that all combined were in the hospital for 108 days. I didn't really know if that would be useful to know that kind of information and -- but I will continue to provide it unless you don't want me to.
>> I think just -- you know, just hearing kind of a little capsule of why are people needing to go to the hospital. That may be something that I need to know for one month and it's like then my curiosity is satisfied because we invested a lot of mope into a clinic out at the jail with the intent that we would cut down on hospital days. So I'm trying to figure out what can't we handle? That may be just something that will satisfy me after one month.
>> you bet. What i'll do is our -- our medical section supervisor at daily valley does a great job of when people do go into the hospital, she sends me e-mail saying okay, this guy just went in, here's why he's in there. She gives me all of the medical stuff but puts it in terms where I can even understand it. I will start sharing those with you, we will share some bills with you to show why these people were in the hospital, the kind of treatment that they are receiving and why in fact we can't do that in the infirmary.
>> I don't need a long explanation. Really in terms something that's beyond us --
>> short and sweet. I will share that with you, commissioner.
>> great, thank you.
>> you bet.
>> go ahead.
>> excuse me for not having enough of the back months of this, I mean, going back to overtime expenditures, do we have $70,000 a month of overtime pay? Is that a -- I mean, that's -- thoos a two - -- that's a two-month there, I suppose, so that's about 150 grand. So is -- is $75 a month over-- $75,000 a month overtime pay typical.
>> there's about three quarters after million budgeted for overtime in the sheriff's budget right now. Last year in corrections alone just this information -- as information, there was $2 million spent on -- almost 2.5 million altogether.
>> is that --
>> that was extraordinary year.
>> I remember watching that -- on court that I thought, wow, so we -- so we budgeted three-quarters -- so we budgeted about 900,000 or $750,000 for overtime pay.
>> it's about that, I think it's a little over that actually, but I'm going to stay with 750 for --
>> maybe this is more after discussion whenever the sheriff is here, have one of these sheriff discussions, but tell me in 25 word or less why that is the case.
>> I guess the best way to do it is I will send you, if you would like commissioner, we have a monthly report that we show the hours. It doesn't equate to -- to money, but it -- it shows the hours because it would do, it would be too labor intensive to go and figure everybody's salary at time and a half, on and on and on, because we have too many employees. But we show how many hours we expend in a month as an example. Let's say out at the correctional complex we have 8,000 hours of sick leave taken. Well, of the 8 hours taken, a thousand may equate to overtime hours because of so many people calling in sick, because you then have to fill the posts, some of them, not all of them, you call people on overtime. We do that for every category conceivably that people could take off. So you see categories such as fmla, vacation, sick, personal holidays, training, military, you know, some -- some catastrophe in the jail, a riot, just a number of categories, we probably have 20 or 25 of them. We show how many hours we expend in every single category, every single month for every single employee, then the number that related to overtime. I would be happy to share that with you. It gives you an idea of how we are spending the overtime.
>> but if I'm reading this right, this is not you spent $69,000 in tcj on overtime. It says spent for the preceding month. If I'm reading the note to the right, it says total expenditures as of -- three month cumulative, right?
>> yes, ma'am.
>> okay. Because it wasn't -- I was going oh, my gosh 69,000 a month.
>> so you are -- you have taken it down to 50,000, is that what you are saying Karen.
>> what I'm saying is 69,000 is over a 3 month period.
>> yeah, that's what I mean. If all of those are three months, then it's a $50,000 versus a $75,000.
>> well -- [inaudible] [multiple voices]
>> added them all up, about 150 grand.
>> tvj --
>> times 12 -- [multiple voices]
>> budget 3735 is probably the largest, wouldn't you say -- left armest budget that we have in the sheriff's office. That's a lot of people. And that -- in that one budget right there. There's about 800 persons budget understand that budget.
>> yeah, because that's mostly the correctional folks, right?
>> right.
>> except for central booking and inmate services. They have done that historically for years. We just reported the ma services and central booking separately. I think -- I think years ago it had to do with the interlocal.
>> still does.
>> it still does. Okay.
>> thanks.
>> I remember -- [inaudible] commissioner Sonleitner brought up a good point. That was -- basically maybe not to you, but somewhere along the line the sheriff come back and talk about us, wanted to look at those things that were basically statutorily mandated, required for us to do. As far as expenses, what are we actually statutorily mandated required to do and start building up from that point. As far as recording moneys. I didn't see here, I don't don't -- also maybe something in concert with whatever the sheriff was here, a lot of this stuff came up then. Reporting we also looking at these things as far as reducing numbers, reducing moneys to show basically what we are statutorily required to do and we are going to be looking at other departments, leading to the budget cycle.
>> yes, sir. And i'll -- i'll pass that along to the sheriff, I'm sure she will come back and have a discussion --
>> I definitely would hope to have that along with other departments. I think that [inaudible] for that to see what we must pay before -- as opposed to a lot of other things. But if we need to build from that block or that foundation as far as statutorily required things must fund and then go from there.
>> well, that is a discussion that I'm sure the sheriff will have with you.
>> so if I'm doing an extraordinarily simplistic version of what I am looking here, adding up all of those numbers, to date this fiscal year of the overtime, it's about 143 thousand dollars, basically a quarter. Simplistically multi-like it times four to get a sense, granted just a sense because we understand quarters vary, summer is way different. It's about $572,000 for the full year if we were consistent in terms of that amount of overtime being over the full fiscal year, which of course is not correct. I'm just doing a way simplistic version.
>> commissioner, bill derryberry from p.b.o. We have been monitoring this very closely. This is actually five pay periods basically that you are looking at here. Because of the way the corrections overtime works, they only get once a month instead of every --
>> that's right.
>> this is a little light.
>> okay.
>> we are projecting them to be under budget this time on overtime by about 25 or 30,000 for the year as a whole.
>> three quick questions.
>> yes, sir.
>> so the medical services line item picks up the inmate medical bills, also?
>> yes, sir.
>> and the reason that the starting balance is less than the current balance or the current balance is more than the starting balance, is the starting balance is really the budgeted amount plus the year ending balance from last year?
>> there's an accrual carried over from the prior, yes, sir.
>> okay.
>> how easy is it for us to indicate how many inmates with medical -- with a mental conditions are in our custody?
>> I could --
>> mental health inmates.
>> I could report to you how many people that we have in custody every day that are on psycho tropic drugs, I don't know if that's the best indicator.
>> that's the only indicator that you have.
>> let me get with --
>> the rope that concerns me is that we have -- the reason that concerns me is that we have been chatting with judge herman and looks like every time I chat with him he says we really ought to be a lot more concerned about the shortage of mental health beds in our community, that we are having to send folk elsewhere and I --
>> yes, sir.
>> the other thing is that when we talk about a sobriety center, ultimately we talk about people with mental health problems who have been arrested in our custody. If we could get that number and get some indication of how many are misdemeanors, how many are felonies -- felons, based on the charge, it would indicate to us possible savings for another alternative is what I'm shooting for. It seems to me on some of those with misdemeanor cases, it may well be that we could take the same money and do a better job elsewhere. Felony cases probably pulls a much bigger, much more -- pose a much bigger, more serious problem.
>> > we will develop and let you know the criteria we are using to place them in that category.
>> is the pharmaceutical line item, is that 167, is that a quarter as well? For a three month period?
>> yes, sir.
>> we are spending as much on pharmaceuticals or more on pharmaceuticals than we are on overtime pay. Wow.
>> the budget is --
>> pretty amazing statistics.
>> uh-huh.
>> that is one of those I think commissioner Davis where you do get into statutorily what are you supposed to be doing, then degrees.
>> yes, I think we need to --
>> do you cure the common cold while they are in there or give them an aspirin.
>> then you get to judge Biscoe's comment about how many folks are in there with mental situations and I think that's something that's always disturbed every one of us is our jails are inappropriately being used to warehouse people who appropriately need different kind of medical care and they just wind up in our jail because that's a way to get them off the street [multiple voices]
>> our psych drugs and h.i.v. Drugs drive our pharmaceutical high.
>> okay. This is insightful. [laughter]
>> good information.
>> you should -- you should be receiving January's in the mail here by the end of the week.
>> okay.
>> [inaudible]
>> should get January's by the end of the week and you will notice that the population went down even further.
>> okay.
>> thank you.
>> thank you all.
>> thank you.
>> thank you very much.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:25 AM