Travis County Commssioners Court
February 18, 2003
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Item 33
Number 33 to examine space needs for [inaudible] district court and take appropriate action.
>> judge, in terms of scheduling, do we think this is going to take us into the lunch hour -- [inaudible]
>> it would depend on your questions, but our presentation will be about five to seven minutes.
>> okay.
>> just asking.
>> then we will be responsive to your questions. 33. Receive report on space needs for civil district courts and take appropriate action.
>> thanks, judge. If I can, I would like to introduce a couple of people who have accompanied me here. It's david walters who is the present president of the Travis County bar and laura sharp, who is the president elect of the Travis County bar. And I believe that you all have been provided with a booklet and I will go through the booklet. But I have a very short videotape which media services said they would run if I asked them to. It's about one minute or two minutes of length.
>> are you asking them to right now.
>> I'm asking media services to the run the tape. [laughter] basically what you are seeing is judge muir's docket call c.p.s. One morning, we just went upstairs and videotaped. Videotaped it. (sounds of crowd talking).
>> this is in the hallway outside the courtroom, this occurs twice a week with generally the Monday docket, although today was a substitute Monday docket. Friday docket and I think in just a minute, you will also see the prisoners as they are escorted past.
>> element, can I have your attention, please? -- ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention, please? I'm going to have to ask everybody to go down to the first floor, I will come down and get you one at a time. Move down the hallway, please, keep it down, I appreciate it very much.
>> I believe that's the sheriff that's associated with judge hataway's court, right next to judge muir's court. And every Monday and Friday, as this is going on, we generally have to bring at least a few prisoners back and forth to attend the hearings. If I can, I would like to do just a little bit of history 7. The capital facilities strategic plan, which you all adopted in January of 2000, has some interesting figures in it. In 1984, this was the last time that a civil district court was created. Since 1984, at that time, the district judges had 33 employees. Since that time, with the grace of the commissioners court, you all have added on three associated judges, we have added on nine staff attorneys, and additional staff. We have added additionally 26 employees within the same space that we had in 1984. This report is somewhat back in the appendix. It says that the president courthouse has 158,000 square feet. It's somewhat misleading because what's included in there is 5, 6, 7 of the jail. The actual usable space of the courthouse is 101,000 square feet. Your projections that you all adopted say that in 17 years, we will have to increase that space by 150% to 250,000 square feet. Also within this report, which is include understand your booklet, included in your booklet, it says that the Travis County courthouse has been overoccupied for a number of years. This means that sufficient space to accommodated the functions within a department in a matter that meet the Travis County space allocation standards can no longer be provided. Quite simply, judge and commissioners, as we look at the future, our best guess as to when the county will be able to build and open a courthouse is at least seven years away. And it doesn't look like it's getting or it's coming. And we are absolutely out of space. We have no place, we have asked for three legislative sessions in a row for an additional judge. We have no space to put an additional judge. If you look at 17 years back to 1986 and 17 years forward to 2030 our population growth in the last 17 years is what we are expecting to occur within the next 17. We have used up our space as we are presently allocated, our busiest floors are the fifth floor and the fourth floor. And we have studied this along with the facilities with roger and his people in facilities. And we believe that we need approximately 15,000 additional square feet. I believe that each floor of the courthouse, and roger would know this better, I believe that each floor of the courthouse is approximately 25,000 square feet and so basically what we are saying is that we need 60% of a -- of an additional floor to accommodate our needs. In the back of the packet, is the district judges studied this for four months, we met with building facilities. We just happen to have a layout on the first floor. But that's -- that's not what we are suggesting. We understand that the allocation of space within the courthouse is totally within the commissioners court discretion and we just did this as a -- as an example. It very well could be on the third floor, second floor, whatever if you all grace us with the proper decision, wherever you want to put us, but -- but what we are asking for is -- we desperately need space to accommodate these kinds of crowds. The children, we have no waiting room for the children that are the subject of c.p.s. Hearings and who accompany them on other types of hearings. We have no place to house or persons if we run a -- a protective order docket where we have battered women, we have no place where they can sit and in studying this, working with facilities, I think we came up with a figure that our present needs and what would accommodate us for at least seven more years would be approximately 14,000 square feet. As I look here, within the booklet that we provided you, we only did this for comparison, but if you look at the 12 criminal courts, that when you built the new c.j.c. The 12 criminal courts are given about 60,000 square feet of space and I believe that's exclusive of the core common areas. And right now, the 12 civil courts are housed in about 27,000 square feet or a little bit less than half of what you all recognize the courts needed in the c.j.c. I've mentioned that we've added on 26 employees and put them in the same space that we had in 1984. On one page you will see the number of dprs hearings from -- on comparison from 1998 into the present. And judge muir and along with judge hataway are now running about 3,000 hearings a year just on the c.p.s. Docket. Where we felt the most pressure is within our family law docket. The general civil has remained fairly stable over the last couple of years. But the family law docket, where -- where people are obtaining a divorce, getting the temporary orders, getting the hearings on child custody, that type of thing, have continued to grow as Travis County's population has grown over the last 17 years much. Then finally, we give you sort of a breakdown. The civil family law courts we are now keeping statistics are running about 4,000 hearings per year, and there's about 24 hearings per year just been the civil district courts. I think all of that adds up, I'm hopeful, that it adds up to a compelling case and I know this is something that can't happen overnight. But nothing is going to get started unless we ask for it. I hope that we have demonstrated our need and stand ready to answer any of your questions.
>> questions? Any comments from you all?
>> I would just make this comment, judge: the Travis County bar association obviously will offer its services to help in any way that we can. We have a very active judicial affairs committee that meets with the judges on an ongoing basis and the problems that judge dietz has indicated to you are concerns of all of the members of the bar that work in the civil part of the practice. I think it's important that we realize just how important our civil justice system is to the public. They get their impressions of it when you see that way of doing business, you kind of wonder what we are showing. So we ask any assistance that we can get from you. We are happy to work with you, we will continue to work with you judge as we work towards resolving these problems.
>> we appreciate your assistance.
>> thank you.
>> yes?
>> the one thing that occurs to me as I -- as I practice not only in this county, but in other surrounding counties, is that Travis County is unique amongst the other counties of the state because we also have so much traffic through our court system. Because of the location of the center of the state being here. While the courthouse that we have is certainly an historic building and is very interesting in its own right, it does not accommodate in the year 2003 the things that the civil courts need. In the capitol of the state of Texas. And the judges have spent quite some time trying to figure out how until we can accommodate us in a new facility, that you can -- that they can be accommodated in the current building and I would urge the court to look at any type of plan that they put before you to help with the space because it is difficult to conduct business in that courthouse with the type of crowding that you see. Thank you.
>> thank you.
>> judge dietz, is there any way that we can pull together a qualitative -- I mean, you know, what is in here is staggering, sort of the typical presentation that's kind of meant to like scare of living phooey out of you. Look up here at this thing, let me show you the numbers since 1984, all of these kinds of things. What I would like to know is it's always best to deal with me with gerald, look at this number, look at this number. If you had this, then we could extrapolate this. There's bound to be some sort of a numerical set or page that the efficiencies cost us this. Am I making sense? Is there some sort of qualitative fact sheet that you can give me that I can kind of pinto? Pinto -- pin to. The exponential growth that we've had, just looking that the thing you are right, luckily 99% of the people in the community don't even know what goes on up here. If you could trot them down there and let them see, they would probably go give these people more court space. But that's generally not what happens.
>> I don't know, commissioner. I mean, it's in part because when we went out to el paso, for instance, to study about the electronic courtrooms, and you walk into the el paso courthouse, and it's a -- it's a magnificent structure that was built in 1989, and after we had studied the electronic courtrooms, they have there, they invited us to a judge's meeting and we went to the judge's meeting and what they were discussing was the requirements were for the new courthouse that they are going to build. I guess this is being the wrong messenger at the wrong type. But I feel like I need to say this: the public needs a new courthouse. It needs it in a -- because situations like were demonstrated in the videotape, in some respect we have this notion about what courts should be. And this isn't the way the cattle calls that are now existent on almost all of the floors of the courthouse, we're overcrowded. Y'all have been from my perspective, y'all have been unjustly criticized by the newspaper for what you all did with the c.j.c. This county, Travis County, when we all got here it was a sleep third college town of -- sleepy college town of 165,000 people. It's now over 800,000, it continues to grow. As -- as having paid my tax bill just a couple of weeks ago, it's not getting any cheaper, but quite honestly we need the facilities. The public, newspaper, media, they need to understand we need these facilities. Because what you saw on the tape is not only that, but what are we going to say. When someone steps out of a crowd and shoots a prisoner or somebody hands them a gun, they shoot. When are we going to say, well, gosh we're sorry. But I mean there are no holding cells in the civil courthouse anymore. And honestly, we need a new courthouse. I understand it's going to take a while for the public to realize that and to summon the political will to do what is necessary for their own sake. But in the interim, commissioner, it's just tough doing business this way. I mean, everybody on the fourth and fifth floor, we have to send our bailiffs out all of the time saying can you all hold it down because we are having a hard time hearing within the courts. I mean, there's not -- there's not sound proofing. I kind of want to shift gears and say one other thing. There are certain people, I mean, I feel like we are in a small lifeboat now and there's only a few morris -- a few morsels of food that are left. There are other departments, the necessary consequence, were you all to grant this is that somebody would have to leave the courthouse and to go someplace else. That's not my call. That's y'all's call. I believe every department needs appropriate, good working space to carry out their mission. I have to say being in the small lifeboat that I'm not sure that's every department that's within the courthouse now is essential to court functions or is what we plan to occur within the future. I'm not in a position to say you all need to do this, you all need to do that. All I can tell you is what our need is. I think that we have been pretty bare bones because we are realists in terms of the amount of space that we really need. It's -- it's 14,000, 15,000, but quite honestly, we will take anything that we can get because of the situation that you see, the tape up on the floor and up on -- up on four and up on five. I have talked with the district clerk and -- and I would invite you all to talk with amalia. She tells me that having gotten the space over in the c.j.c., It's relieved a lot of her space. She wants if she had to move an equivalent amount of space. I know judge evans, he needs his space but I'm not sure that with respect to the other functions that are within the courthouse that they all need to be there. But I understand it's a tough call. I hope that was responsive to your question, commissioner.
>> well, not exactly. I just wants to know are there -- are there quantitative analysis that can be put in conjunction with -- because it's real obvious that I can see that you all are really squeezed for space. I mean, it would be like, you know what, I have to spend this much time on this, because I'm monkeying around over here, making sure that somebody doesn't run out of the crowd and come over here and so those are ours, maybe there's not enough there, judge dietz, if there isn't, well, them, you know, don't try to give me something and --
>> no, sir. I'm really not going to pull your wool over your eyes. If you are asking me, if you are asking me if we had more space, could we generate more revenue for the county, I'm not in a position to even represent a wit on that. It's unlike, like I said the electronic filing, which I believe and still believe will pay for itself, and therefore will result in a zero ultimately a zero cost to the county. No, sir, I -- I believe this is one of these things that are -- if it's not justified quantitatively, that is will it pay for itself, I don't believe it will. It's just what I believe what do the people of Travis County deserve when they go to court. I'm using statistics. We didn't get security until I want to say 1994, because our -- I remember we got the -- the metal detectors from the republican national convention. But I -- I remember that at that time in 1994, there were something like 35,000 visitors a month to -- to the courthouse. And I can only say that in the resulting nine years, that number has got to have increased. This is the foot that Travis County government is putting forward to the citizens and taxpayers. Quite latoiya johnsonly I think we can -- quite honestly I think we can do better. That's a better answer for me, like, no, gerald, I can monkey around give you something let you try to connect the dots, you but it really wouldn't be tell you exactly what I'm trying to tell you, look at the tape, let us tell you the story. I appreciate your willingness to be that blunts with me. Blunt with me.
>> you bring up good points about who needs to be in the courthouse, I appreciate the fact that you have reaffirm would that it's the commissioners court that going to have to make that call as to who does occupy what space. The reverse is also true in terms of we have folks in rented space nowhere near this courthouse complex who desperately would love to come back in. I am thinking in terms of the dro folks who have a direct interaction with what's going on in the civil courthouse, they are not there. But we are having ongoing talks, specifically I appreciate the efforts of the county clerk with her elections division and recording about whether there is someplace else that we could free up some very valuable space. I think we also need to have some discussions about whether we can indeed recapture any of the 6th and enfloors, which -- 7th floors, which right now 80's former jail just sitting up there unused. There's a lot of other dead space in that building that things have been haphazardly added on or subtracted. About whether that dead space can be recaptured. Consolidation of some of the mechanical areas. Again that's not my area, thank goodness we have engineers. Right sizing of crooment courtrooms. Not -- not everyone needs the same size of courtroom. I always called it flex space. You need to be able to assign a particular case or day to a courtroom based on what the needs are of that particular day. I mean, there are days just cooper needs just dietz's courtroom size and there are days that you could make do with something the size that judge cooper has, vice versa. Right sizing. The use of our magistrates and our associate judges, again right sizing everything. What will be the impact, in terms of one of the uses of that space is for storage. In terms can that stuff be reduced down to something that is much smaller, but we stale maintain the function. -- still maintain the function. Finish finally I want to make sure for the record that I am absolutely convinced that one of the components of the civil courthouse has to be our jp 5. They are a civil court. They have a direct interaction with the civil courts on the second floor in the county court system. And judge evans or whomever is in that slot has a direct interaction with judge herman related to probate. So I presume jp 5 is part of the civil courts system as we talk about what are the need for the future. But we can have other discussions about who else can be a short distance from there or can be completely removed from the courthouse complex. So those are just some -- some thoughts that I have got about the subject.
>> I appreciate the material and I nothing know having been -- I know having been around the courthouse for a number of years, I think that I understand it. I will look at it, study it and consider is very seriously.
>> so should we be left with the I am from eggs that facilities is trying to -- with the impression that facilities is trying to work with you now to creatively come up with additional space in the old courthouse?
>> yes, sir. But at some point, judge, I mean, you know, there's -- I think that we have got a -- there's a first floor plan, a third floor plan, but at some point we are going to have to take a step and I guess for my own sake I would want to know how do we do that or what do I need to do to get that step going? Because roger has been very kind to work with us advisory, but in terms of actively going out, starting to do that, I don't know that he feels like that's part of his portfolio yet.
>> are you saying that to generate significant space immediately would require the relocation of some departments now in the building?
>> it has to because we have 101,000 square feet and it's all being used. In fact we are standing on top of each other. In order to reallocate that, somebody is going to -- would have to move out of the courthouse. Now, I also want to say this: the district judges realize that this is a several year program. I don't expect ins stainous results -- instaneous results, but if I could report back to my bosses that this will be --
>> we are certainly having discussions related to how much space the county clerk needs, whether she may be vacating some space. But we have never said the 6th and 7th word, other than taking more of a cursory look. I think we need to have very serious discussions about the 6th and 7th floor. That is some of the most valuable space. Do I think that we have two floors there. No, there's a jail in there, quite frankly it's one floor. I think he will be able to recapture one floor of the two because of the way that thing was built. Unfortunately I have spent way too much time in that old facility as a reporter. But that's going to take a commitment of this court to say, yes, do it and here are the resources to do it. I appreciate that facilities has been very helpful on the very ad hoc kind of things of doing the little band-aid approaches to this problem. But this is beyond band-aid related to that building.
>> how much space is that? Roger, do you know?
>> I believe it's 58,000, approximately, roger --
>> plus or minus, I will have to get you the exact number. Judge is right about -- [multiple voices]
>> there's an old report that says for you to convert this into usable space here's how you do it, here's what it costs.
>> it's going to cost a lot. But see I need the court's direction to go ahead and start work on this kind of a project. That sure that -- make sure that -- give you a better cost, you know, because what happens is you don't have a condition system at the 6th and 7th and again just like commissioner Sonleitner said, they have a lot of steel jails, there's a lot of cost involved with that. At this time, if I could get a direction from the court, I can go ahead and start working on that. Bring it to the court, you know, some kind of an alternative on a -- on 6 and 7.
>> is there a limited report already in existence on the 6th and 7th floors.
>> yes.
>> yeah. We have to see if it's still valid.
>> if somebody has a calculator, I think the logical next step is to look at it.
>> there's only one -- right now only one elevator goes up to 6 and 7. As you know there's four elevators to the fourth, third -- third, fourth, fifth. So there's lots of renovation has to happen on that end. The commission has to be involved with that, too, because historical courthouse. Gain that other space, if we -- again, that other space, if we get go ahead, we will try to generate alternative with judge dietz and his folks, that would be grateful for facilities management.
>> in terms of who needs to be the -- to do the work, isn't there a master planning committee? [one moment please for change in captioners]
>> at the time we gave it over, we said the courthouse is over utilized, we need more space for courts. I'm not sure how much better it will get.
>> I have a meeting with consultants about implementing that, but only god knows when that dream will become a reality. But what you have brought us today is a need for more immediate action.
>> while we are waiting on god or the city of Austin, yes, sir, we do need -- we need something immediately.
>> I'm suggesting in addition to roger, seems to me that -- that there is another space planner on county staff. That person with roger and --
>> well, obviously we could. I think working with roger and the other departments like judge evans and the others, I mean, I don't think anybody is going to step up and go yeah, I would like to move from the courthouse. I think you can at least look at some of the criteria when you look at your decision that have been generated what each department says. If you gave direction to roger, I think it would allow him along with the other departments to kind of work on this as an interdisciplinarian type of effort, which I think it should be.
>> what direction do you need, roger.
>> sorry.
>> what direction do you need.
>> just to work with the judge dietz on the space allocation of the old courthouse.
>> to put together options for the court to review.
>> sure.
>> at this time there's no [inaudible] to do it on staff.
>> I'm sorry, what did you say?
>> there will be no cost involved with that, it's going to be only our staff that are going to do all of the space planning and renovation if -- if ever we have this done we will do it in house.
>> that's my motion.
>> second.
>> any more discussion?
>> judge, are we looking for --
>> we are authorizing the direction that's roger says that he needs. That is to work with judge dietz to put together space options that will deal with more immediate needs of the civil courts people.
>> thank you, judge.
>> that's it, right.
>> yes, sir.
>> uh-huh.
>> quick question, are you seeking members of the commissioners court to also be part of this interdisciplinarian team effort?
>> I don't think judge dietz wants this effort slowed down any, do you, judge? [laughter]
>> no, sir.
>> I wouldn't, but if judge dietz want a member, I certainly have no objection as long as he doesn't choose me.
>> probably a m be helpful, judge. I found it on other efforts where somebody working with somebody in the electronics area, it was helpful to have a couple of members of the court who were up speed on the issues so that it wasn't all greek when we came to court.
>> my position is that nobody is exempted. I think that you should look at all options and I think the court needs to see them.
>> okay.
>> I have an open mind, I will do what's fair and reasonable, even if it's nothing. So if there's a member of the court who can report back to all of us, who can address this issue with an open mind, then I say so be it. As long as there's not three or more.
>> that works.
>> thank you, judge.
>> thank you.
>> all in favor of that motion? That passes by unanimous vote.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:25 AM