Travis County Commssioners Court
February 18, 2003
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Item 7
Number 7 is to discuss work plan for work flow analysis recommended by the jail overcrowding task force and letter from the commissioner's court to participating departments and take appropriate action.
>> good morning, judge, commissioners, katy broadrick with public safety, your backup includes three different things to consider. The first is the work plan for us performing or leading the performance of a work flow analysis of the justice system. This, as you may recall, is recommended to be done by the jail overcrowding task force, originally we were looking at having a consultant do it, and the jail overcrowding task force came to a recommendation to have justice and public safety lead that with the assistance of the other departments. I won't go through the details of the work plan unless you wish me to. I would be happy to field any questions about I it will be six months -- a six-month long project, and it is going to take substantial staff resources in justice an public research and planning.
>> can we put an as tricks by the 6 months to clearly indicate in our view it did not take longer than that?
>> yes.
>> I do think that places us just before we really start getting serious about next year's budget.
>> right. And we were hoping to generate savings in this area if there are necessary expenditures, we need to know about them also. I did not see the role of the planning and budget office. Let me simply indicate that in my view, this is probably one of the greatest budget challenges and opportunities annually, and I see no reason why that won't be the case during next year's budget. I would look at the departments that would be covered, like the sheriff's office, and strongly encourage the pbo director to make sure that the analysts who work with those departments are heavily involved.
>> on their behalf, we've had offers of assistance from the planning and budget office and I feel sure we will call upon them to help us in costing out the recommendations that come out in the final report, as well as anything else that comes up along the way.
>> okay.
>> and katy, I would hope that, you know, in terms of preliminary things that just become blatantly obvious, we shouldn't wait until the final report is due in. Those are the kinds of things that need to be plugged in at whatever point there is consensus that something is a better way to do thing, more effective and more efficient. Let's not wait until the end to take advantage of that good thinking.
>> right, we plan to do that, where we bring those first to the jail overcrowding task force to the commissioner's court, if they require funding. If they don't require funding the jail overcrowding task force will look to implement them with existing resources.
>> thank you.
>> judge, we also -- you brought up a good point about maintaining this time line in 6 months, so because I'm not mistaken, you're leaving in six months, aren't you?
>> yes.
>> and it looks to me...
>> maybe a little bit less.
>> looks like by your name it says 90% of this thing, so I would sure hate to be the person that's got 90% responsibilities for this thing. Is there someone, katy, that you're going to be able to hand the baton to?
>> yes, in my office and i've prepared that staff member to take on that role if necessary.
>> we would hate to have to reject your letter of resignation, I don't think we've ever done that, have we?
>> there's always a first.
>> uh-huh, I would hate that too. [laughter]. The second thing I would ask you to consider with regard to this project, we have -- all the departments that sit on the jail overcrowding task force has had the opportunity to review the drafts and the final product of this work plan including the resource requirement, the staff resource requirements that will be needed from those departments. In order to kick everybody off on the same page and make sure we're getting off on the right foot with regard to commitment on the project, I'm asking the commissioner's court to send the attached letter, it's in draft right now, if you would like to wordsmith it or make changes, additions, whatever, of course please do so. And send that out to all of the elected and appointed officials who will be involved in this project.
>> consistent with commissioner son lightner's general approach, there are a few changes I would like to recommend to the letter, could I'm them to you and send them to the court too?
>> certainly.
>> you are not going to law school, are you?
>> i've been to law school, yes [laughter] been there, done that. I went to the same law school you do.
>> this letter is so lawyer-like. Now it's all been placed. All right.
>> one other thing in terms of some of the stuff especially related to central booking, are we going to be able to logically turn over some of this stuff that as we go through and center v to prepare a renewal slash update slash total reworking of the central booking interlocal that this good work becomes an automatic part of that process because part of it was we weren't really able to document what our process was, what it costs us, what it could cost us, what it should cost us, and to provide more detail and specificity to the city of Austin in terms of why it is that we charge what it is that we charge.
>> I believe that this project will get you part way there. It will give you the how do we do things and will identify for you any inefficiencies or snags -- I call them clogs in the pipeline of how we do things. It will not place costs upon those things we would need assistance from financial staff in order to do that and even that in the past has even been a huge challenge for financial staff. And the other thing is that I think we'll have to wait for the legislature to complete its work with regard to the bill that judge denton is developing before we could go forth with any real overhaul of the interlocal agreement. The auditor's office is going to be kind of an ex officio as well. Their name listed here as well?
>> right. Right. So can I -- I can expect edits on the letter from judge Biscoe?
>> and copy to the court if we... Hopefully, we'll try to get those to you today.
>> will I need to come back here next week for the approval of the letter or can you approve it with his edits.
>> I recommend we a approve it with the... My goal is to make it sound more like a letter from the commissioner's court than one of the lawyers for the commissioner's court.
>> sorry.
>> if I fail in that, the other members of the court will catch me. Now...
>> excuse me. If you're going to send that out as a letter from the commissioner's court you will either need to approve it later this afternoon or the court needs to vote to authorize you to change the letter an send the letter out as a letter from the court, or you'll need to approve it next week.
>> I move that we authorize the judge to send out the letter with the changes that he feels are sufficient for that letter.
>> second.
>> well, thank you very much. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Now, the stats that you give and your backup are give. We have substantially reduced the number of inmates in our custody on a daily basis and we think we can do even better and we have been able to achieve these good results because of the high level of collaboration among, by numerous elected officials without whose assistance this could not have been done. The sheriff, the district attorney, the county attorney, the district clerk, the county clerk, pre-trial services, probation department has been active, the auditor's office, planning and budget worked in there, you and your colleagues and justice in public safety, apd, municipal judges, county court at law judge, district judges, many, many others...
>> defense bar.
>> right, and historic level of cooperation. Unfortunately, though, we will not be able to achieve additional good results unless we sustain this level of cooperation, keep moving ahead, and I anti pace we will be able to do that. I want to strongly encourage them to keep working with us. And we have to reach the point at some point of determining for a county how many beds we think we need, and that point we have to basically authorize the appropriate action. So we're moving in that direction. That is also consistent with the commitment that we made to the Texas commission on jail standards. And I guess we ought though to thank them because they were more than cooperative last time we appeared before them and showed them what we had done. They authorized us to return some variance beds that they authorized us to use. We still have some and hopefully we can show that we need the ones remaining or reduce them further, or if we need additional beds then we will have to do that. But there's a whole lot to be done before we reach that point.
>> there's one other item that I would like to draw the court's attention to and that is the shift in priorities that are going to occur by virtue of this project. I listed starting on the bottom of the first page of the cover memo and running on to the second page the specific major projects that we will have to delay for the next six months in order to do this work flow analysis. I wanted to make sure that that shift in workload priorities was okay with the commissioner's court. That includes -- and I didn't put this in the memo but I would like to make a note, it occurred to me last week, the -- the limitations on our staff resources will include not being able to take on any new substantial assignments from the jail overcrowding task force for that 6 months period beyond the basic facilitation of that group which we do on a regular basis. Developing the agendas, doing meeting notices and that sort of thing. And that hadn't previously -- I hadn't previously stated that so I wanted to get that out there. But we are going to be locked up for the next six months between the legislature and this project pretty much all of our staff are going to be locked up full time.
>> you will need to prioritize this project is what you're saying?
>> yes.
>> at the same time we will retain the flexibility to drop parts of the project and add others of this project.
>> uh-huh.
>> as we're out there working, I think we may well determine that some of the things that we're looking at will not be as productive as others.
>> right.
>> in which case we have to decide do we move out to the more productive ones or are these less productive ones really critical to the overall success, long-term success, so I see us having to make that call along with the other members of the task force as the project unfolds. We're together on that?
>> right, my intention, it may not be stated clearly enough in the work plan, but our intention is to go after the inefficiencies that will have a substantial pay off in terms of saving of jail bed days. We may identify other inefficiencies along the way that would make the system work better but wouldn't have a direct impact on jail beds. We will probably document those off to the side somewhere and report them along with our report, but we're going to focus our time an our energy on the things that will have a pay off in terms of jail population, because in a six month period we can't do everything.
>> and for those watching, if we add the sheriff's budget to the clerk's budgets, the da's budget, the county attorney's criminal budget, all of those together will exceed $100 million so it's a kind of big budget issue for Travis County. And so that's why this is so important and why we put other projects on the back burner to try to get this done. So... Anything further today? Katy, we really want to thank you for your help. We understand the memo here and no objections. We appreciate the work that you've done on this, giving it in your priority and attention, and as your plans become more definite, if you will just keep us posted and give us as much advance notice as possible, we have never bribed an employee, we have never guaranteed we would not, but our hope is that we don't have to. So keep us posted.
>> it would take a lot of money, judge. [laughter]
>> judge, do you want to approve the work plan itself, approve the letter, but you have not taken a vote to approve the work plan.
>> there's not really a work plan here, I think it's approval of the reshifting with priorities in --...
>> there is a work plan document.
>> we approve the work plan, the shifting of the priority, the other guideline, recommendations contained, in our backup.
>> that works.
>> how is that?
>> great. Anymore discussion? That passes by unanimous vote. We appreciate all of the task force members.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:25 AM