Travis County Commssioners Court
March 11, 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.
Citizens Communication
Now, going back to citizens communication. We do appreciate the patience of those who have waited. There's no way for us to know how long the public hearings will take. Most of them don't have anybody showing up, but every now and then we do have numerous residents coming. Susan, number one.
>> I'm here for recognition week, and I wanted to take the opportunity to recognize the staff of Travis County that are in my office that work on this rather difficult job weekly. So if y'all would come up. This is our disbursements auditing division. It's the largest line division in our office. Jose is the chief assistant in charge of that office. Most of you know jose, but many of you do not know the people behind the desks that are doing the the work on a daily basis. And this division, a as do all our line divisions, report to die nan in a -- diana warner. One of the differences in accounts payable and disbursents may the public sector is that there are many, many laws that need to be complied with. You can't really issue checks until that happens. So accounts payable in the public sector really takes on a whole different type of nature than in the private sector. The prime goal of the county auditor in general is to make sure that all laws regarding county finance are strictly enforced. And these people do that on the disbursement side. They look and make sure that it's something we can spend money on. The next thing is that they make sure that the procurement laws were complied with, that there were funds that were appropriated for the particular expenditure. That there was an appropriate encumbrance that set that money aside and should give the vendor that money is set aside for that. They need to make sure the w 99's have been filed so we can pay vendors according to the regulations. They match the invoices with the contracts you approve and they read those contracts to make sure that what we are paying is in compliance with what you intended, and importantly they have to pay it within the time frame that the law requires. Then they have to make sure that those entries are -- the checks are cut and are appropriately put on our books. And they have to do that over and over every week. So it's a time pressure and an accuracy type of division. And let me just very briefly introduce the people. Just kind of raise your hand back there. In the actual accounts payable area, we've got two associate auditors, christine lego and larry reyna. Those are our associate auditor 2's. We have five associate auditor one's. Only four of those are filled, but we have an offer out that's been accepted for the fifth, so hopefully that will be done soon. Barbara, sheila, [ inaudible ]
>> chris, and then we have a vacant position, as I said. These people, just to give you a feeling for the volume, we process and audit roughly 118,000 invoices a year, so each of these people are handling roughly 1400 a month. It's a huge volume. When we benchmark to other agencies, and that's when we are fully staff. And unfortunately, sometimes we're not. In the financial analysts, we have financial analysts that work with the dirs bursments as well as they have an area of expertise. Shaun works with bonds, arbitrage and investments as well as disbursements. Maryio is our contracts person. He's making sure he has money for contracts before they come to court. Yolanda works on the revenue accounting coming in from the treasurer's office. And sandy does the cash reconciliation. We reconcile online cash everyday with the bank and then do a major reconciliation at the end. And of course, all these papers have to go somewhere. And our records analyst do a very nice job of that. She's not here today. Linda, she's back there. She's too shy. Andy. And then also these are -- who used to work in payroll is now nice enough to help us in her retirement. They comes in and helps us and we're always glad to see here. So I would like to see her. The jobs this that they do are really behind the scenes and taxpayers should be rest assured that they're doing our best to make sure that taxpayer interest as well as the business of the county are balanced out. I'd like to thank all of them. [ applause ]
>> thank you very much. Good to see you. Jule strimler? Lauren white?
>> he was also here.
>> joyce stewardson?
>> my name is joyce thorson, I live in walnut place. This does have to do with landfills, but I would specifically like you to remember it when you address item number 46 in the executive session. I want to take this opportunity to state for the public record that walnut place has experienced various landfill stenches during the last weekend. Last night was the worst, with the number of people reporting odors. Many of us believe this is affecting our health. One of my neighbors put it this way: if we kept animals caged in these conditions, we would be charged with crimes. Why do weem not have as much protection? Thank you.
>> thank you. Marie englem? And nelda spears is the last speaker.
>> judge Biscoe and other commissioners, ladies and gentlemen of the court, today my son and my grandson are defending the freedoms of our country, and I am here exercising one of my freedoms as a citizen. I'm here to speak out about the landfill operation that resulted in odor events in my neighborhood. And as a frustrated citizen experiencing physical body symptoms following an odor offense. This awareness has come by being guided about what it -- about what to look for by professionals, epidemiologists, physicians. I experienced an inhalation event in April of 2002, and now can identify a certain set of symptoms that I experienced following an odor event. These symptoms are: the onset of a very severe headache, severe swelling of my eyes, a cough that produces a thick, cloudy, mucus, jello substance. I have a feeling of pressure and congestion that is present, but only red blood is produced. Not dry blood, but red-colored, clear, sometimes it's just kind of transparent, I guess would be the word. This was reported to barry kalda of the tceq in February of 2003 as a part of my odor report. He had responded to those by telling me these symptoms that you allege, I did not allege symptoms, i've been observing myself with the help of professionals for almost a year. It's pretty insulting. You can tell him ooim not experience -- I'm not experienced at this, but I do have strong feelings and I have enough courage to be here. I'm making myself vulnerable enough to tell you my observed and repeated symptoms. I have seen my physician several times since experiencing the inhalation experience on the road adjacent to bfi. In the three days following that event, the landfill changed dramatically from some piping, some concrete structures and some other things along the road in just three days. They complain that we do not come to their meetings on Thursday evening. Why should we go for a snow job when they do not give us any really substantive future information? They paint themselves as a good organization by contributing $17,000 to the bluebonnet elementary schools. Bluebonnet elementary school is in the southeast predominant wind. They get that wind everyday that it blows from the southeast, and we know that there are several diseases that are caused by a non-odor us gas which is emitted by the landfills. They put those children in harm's way everyday. And it was laughable to me that they would put that in their newsletter. They bragged about it by putting it there and they appeared to have no conscience about that. They -- and the school board took the money, thinking of what fw things they could do. That's naive to me. It is sometimes the way of bad politics, however. I as a 65-year-old woman may be the canary in the cage. I'm sensitive to odors and have been since childhood, but these are predominant. They are overbearing. And I am having physical body responses. I have seen others in meetings who try to express their physical body symptoms, and they were treated with disrespect. I promised myself I would not do that. This landfill complex has problems like no other in Texas. According to officials, what action do you take when a company official turns away the inspectors of the tceq and denying them access to their property? Do they have more power than the licensing agency, tceq? Can companies in our country behave like saddam hussein and do these companies or their agency or your court care? It has been long enough. They are lined up in a row. They affect us like wine. They are wanting expansions. And do you give them to them? Some time, at some point, you are going to have to deal with some very strong issues, and your conscience and your responsibility.
>> thank you. Ms. Spears? [ applause ]
>> morning, judge, commissioners. -- nelda wells spears. This past week I had my annual press conference with regard to the annual property delinquent tax list. Our current tax year collection is up three-fourth of one percent over the same time last year. We are now at 96.27% collected versus 95.51% last year.
>> say that again?
>> 96.27% collected for 2002 property taxes versus 95.51% this time last year.
>> okay.
>> we've collected $278 million for Travis County. And $1.39 billion for all jurisdictions. The three-fourths of one percent represents $2.2 million. With the increase in the tax levee, we have collected $31.5 million more than last year. Delinquent collections are doing well also. Last year at this time we had collected $840,000 in delinquent property taxes and this year we've collected $1.6 million in delinquent property taxes, which is an increase of $780,000. Penalty and interest collected is up $180,000 from last year, and the turn fees are up $230,000. My office started filing lawsuits from last week's press conference, and we hope to keep our collections in these categories ahead of budget, of what the budget is. And i'd like to take this opportunity to thank the commissioners court for funding the three additional property tax f.t.e.'s last year, and I want to -- I'm pleased to report that this is the result of those three f.t.e.'s. In motor vehicles, the revenue remains steady and there's -- except that there has been a slight downturn in title transfer fees and road and bridge revenues on sales tax due to lower new car sales. This is a concern because over the past 10 years, these revenues increased from #- million dollars to 12 -- $8 million to $12 million, but the decrease in new car sales is out of our control. We're doing also everything we can to maximize the interest earnings for the county from a high of over a million dollars several years ago, this year we expect to barely earn $400,000 in interest. And this is just due to lower interest rates across the board. Last Friday marked two months of collections of court fees and fines, and we've seen 348 cases, and as of this morning only 22 defendants are not in compliance with our payment agreement. This is a 93% compliance rate. We've collected and disbursed $191,000 to the county treasurer in court fees and fines. And we're currently seeing casesxd from four out of five county courts at law and we hope to add the fifth court before the end of this month. We are trying to control the growth and expansion of this pilot program so that we don't get overextended. We'll have a full report for you as promised on the first of April, on collections of court fees and fines. And again, i'd just like to thank the court for your support and hope that this is good news for you.
>> thank you.
>> thank you very much. We appreciate it.
>> ms. Spears, could I ask a question, judge? Is it true that Travis County collects about 98% of its outstanding taxes? Is that about --
>> you mean annually?
>> yes, ma'am. Annually.
>> it's 98, 99 percen. Twean 98 and 99%.
>> what would the dollar amount be with the one and a half or two percent or whatever it is, what would that total dollar be that's not collected? I mean, 98% is a very staggering -- a very impressive number. What would the dollar be if you said there's two percent that is not collected, what would that total amount be?
>> I don't have that figure off the top of my head, sir, but i'll be glad to get it to you this afternoon when I go back across the street.
>> i'd love to see that. Thank you.
>> I did what I could. I bought a new vehicle two weeks ago. [ laughter ]
>> an suv, by the way. [ laughter ]
>> I was so influenced by my neighbors and my parking spot.
>> thank you very much.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:25 AM