Travis County Commssioners Court
April 29, 2003
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Item 21
Number 21 is to approve budget amendments and transfers. I have one question there. The $2,000 that the justice is short of, the j.p., The recommendation is taking it from allocated reserve. That's absolutely the last resort?
>> what happens in this case is that when you have small departments and when someone retires and have ha significant accumulated vacation and sick leave to be paid for, essentially what would happen that the payments will go out in the form of termination pay, they get booked to -- to j.p. 3's account and there's not sufficient time or other vacancies in the department to allow for the -- for the salary savings to cover that. The --
>> I assume-- assume I read the backup in full.
>> the answer is yes.
>> my second question is what harm is done if we make until August to make this change but we assure the j.p. That at the appropriate time the $2,000 will be made available?
>> I don't care there's any harm done if you wait. What they wanted to do is make sure that they notify you in as far in advance as possible, to no bombs drop at the end of the year.
>> here's the only difference I’m trying to get out of the habit of hitting allocated reserve. I know that we have hit it already, 64, $66,000, small compared to where we were last year. My recommendation what would be -- let's assume the j.p. -- let's assure the j.p. We will cover this $2,000 one way or the other, in a timely manner, around the first of August. That's the only question that I had, otherwise it would have been consent. I didn't want to cut you off, I did understand the explanation. Should we hit allocated reserve for this real small amount now or should we wait until August when we may have other options available? By then we may have hit it so much that $2,000 won't matter anyway. But so far we have been owe good.
>> very, very limited in what we hit.
>> in doing this we are making assurances that the j.p. Can make her replacement hire immediately. She's not going to have to like wait it out so that all of those dollars, she's not going to have to help contribute to that --
>> she needs temporary help that's explain understand the background. Actually a person that's retiring --
>> I second that motion to make it real, real clear.
>> right.
>> [indiscernible] until we go forward how can this be prevented? Any measures anybody can do, [indiscernible] department or whatever, can be in place where this can be prevented in the future as far as even looking at the allocated reserve. How can small departments look at this? Because we don't know who is going to retire next. We may be looking at this next week.
>> right. What happens at the end of each fiscal year, the auditor's office does a calculation called compensated balance, they book that liability to the balance sheet as a liability. And then they adjust that each year. And if -- if the total accumulated for Travis County for the general fund exceeds what they have as a liability, then they have to take fund balance and make it up. That's where they clean out all of these termination pay negatives. So to speak. So -- so it happens probably once a year. And it is really very long-term employees that have significant amounts of accumulated leave, and they normally retire for some reason at the end of the fiscal year. If it happens at the beginning of a fiscal year, they normally keep the position open to recover it.
>> okay.
>> so --
>> well, tell folks [indiscernible]
>> wait until October 1.
>> in this particular case, the justice was hoping to contribute towards a solution because she was going to underfill that position. She was going to meet a good portion of the gap but there was a little bit of gap she does not have enough time to worry about.
>> right.
>> we appreciate her efforts.
>> okay. Any more discussion of the motion?
>> no. Clarifying motion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 1:52 PM