Travis County Commssioners Court
May 27, 2003
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Item 34
Number 34, approve budget amend amendments and transfers.
>> good morning, Commissioners court. I'm going to start going through the budget amendments and transfers. If you have any questions, please let me know. A-1 through a-2 is a budget adjustment totaling $80,000. This is to provide funding for some deficiencies that have been identified by the department. The first one is $60,000 to add a separate 250-ton cooling tower to the cjc and $20,000 for additional -- for permanent radio frequency listening devices in the 12 courtrooms of the cjc due to the same devices installed in the courthouse. What we've done with those is instead of requesting additional funding from the general fund, pbo has worked with the department to go back and also with the county attorney's office and auditor's office to look at old co funds where an allocated reserve was available and we're recommending funding from that. It is $80,000 and it's a-1 and a-2.
>> it was established in fiscal year '03 to go to the employee insurance fund. There was also a transfer from risk management fund, $490,900 to help alleviate the expected definite in the employee health insurance. Deficit in the employee health insurance.
>> b-1 through b-11 is really more of an administrative budgeted amendment to transfer. What we're doing here is taking out available funding from 0701 of, that's a salary line item. In previous years I don't believe the court would have seen this. This is a new budget rule that says that all salary line items and all funds need to come to court. It really is administrative. It's so that the department can use these funds to the full extent. These are '97 park bond funds and our recommendation is that we concur with it, but we recommend that all expenditures comply with the legal parameters of the '97 bond program.
>> so the salary line item is no longer needed, which would free it up for direct expenditures in those exact same accounts in all those parks. So if there's some other little capital project, it can go toward the park as opposed to park personnel, work planning.
>> exact livment and it's just to use the resources up for those projects as approved by the voters.
>> c season 1 is a request from facilities manage: they're requesting to move five thousand dollars from the capital acquisition resources account for elevator number will in the criminal justice center. There is in information on what the exact problem is on page 18. We concur with the request for the five thousand dollars. Our only recommendation is that it be funded from within the department. This is in line with what pbo recommends on most budget adjustments that come to court. We look for the department to internally fund these requests first and come back to court later in the year if it appears that it's not going to be able to be done that way. I'll let roger talk if there's anything that he would like to say on it.
>> good morning, roger el khoury, management director. We at facility, we do have other things internally from our funds, so if we have another project we can take from other projects and do fund if something comes like this request, you know, like emergency or anything to that nature. I do request at this time to get from the court reserve because I'm not sure if my reserve will hold until the end of this fiscal year. It's just a request to get from the core reserve. I'm not sure yet at this time what the savings will have to meet the -- I think my 76,000, I believe it's my -- so I would like to meet my summer saving at this time if we can't fund this from the core reserve, that would be great.
>> we're not hearing jessica say, fund it internally. And if for any reason you can't meet the other kinds of projections that you've got, that's the time to come back to the court, and the court will cover it. I think the idea is the county is going to cover this. The question now is whether we just do it internally and then see how the budget year plays out, or make the transfer up front. And I think in terms of being consistent with how we've done everybody else, we've been asking everybody to internally fund with the idea that you are cord ally nighted to come back if it proves to be not a successful strategy. We're not going to strand whoever is out there.
>> I would also like to add that our latest end of year projections do know show that they should be meeting salary savings target now. Obviously things can change and there might be circumstances that would not allow them to meet salary savings at a later date, but at this time we are projecting that they should be meeting them.
>> the good news is that if pbo has miscalculated, they'll be getting with you in August. [ laughter ]
>> a little bit more about 214?
>> 214, these are the -- 214 are the two transfers fund, $490,500,rom the risk and the second is from the comp reserve that was established in fiscal year '03. That's 2,275,444. Both of those, it's a bottle of $2.8 million, will go to the -- be transferred to the employee health insurance fund to take care of the deficit projected for this fiscal year.
>> the transfer in and transfer out of accounts, these are accounting mechanisms -- these entries were prepared by the auditor's office. That's how we move between individual funds, from the general fund or from the risk management fund into the hospitalization fund. So I don't think you see that terminology ever before.
>> but I was trying to reconcile 8 a-3 and a-14. Is the reason that a-3 is a transfer from the comp reserve?
>> that's right.
>> we have three different funds.
>> it's the same money.
>> that is the same money in t-14.
>> any more questions on this?
>> judge, I have just a couple of questions. And it's certaining those type type of things that you just referred to in c- 14. Of course, we were trying to capture as much experience and data that was readily available, and we kind of were -- kind of wrestling with this issue as far as how much money did we look to expect as far as withdrawing from our reserve to satisfy the compensation benefits for a -- health coverage for our employees of Travis County. Of course, there was still in am ba giew di in my mind from that work session because we were not able to land on any firm numbers. And my question to you is since we have become self-insured, one of the reasons we did that is because we would have a lot more control over the data that's made available for us to make decisions when it comes to taking care of the benefits -- compensation bin fits for our employees. But my concern is whether or not if the data that's readily available now is adequate enough to look at these particular transfers and add both these figures up, we're talking about right at $2.8 million. And I want to make sure that that is adequate based on the data that we have available or will we have to revis it this issue again to look for additional revenue?
>> the actuary that Travis County hrmd utilizes on the health fund has indicated that he believes these amounts would be sufficient to get through fy '03. And you're scheduled to hear the fy '04 financial impact this Thursday at the work session, so based upon the actuary, he's confident that these amounts will get us to there.
>> it's a whole different situation for '04?
>> right.
>> I want to make sure we don't have to revisit this again and dip back into the reserve since we do have powerful funding mandates ahead of us in '04. Thanks for the answer.
>> who moves for the bument amendment and transfers?
>> [ inaudible ].
>> roger, you may answer this. Tell me what on the ds-1, what exactly does it mean to correct an open violation on elevator number 8? Is that -- as knew as that building and everything over there is, what is that exactly? Is that faulty construction. It doesn't seem like an elevator issue. What is an open violation?
>> all the elevators in the county, they are expected every year and reported to Texas licensing and regulation for their performance and everything. So what happened on the elevator number 8, it goes from central booking to the third floor, there's some groundwater seepage all the time since the time it's been constructed. And what we've been doing so far, we pump that water out. And then late in December and January, I'm sorry, 2003, an inspector came in and looked at this area and saw the water standing. And he reported to tdlr. They gave us a call in late February and said we need to fix this problem so we can get back the certificate of operation. So really it's -- it is not a severe issue, but something we need to comply with, and that's what we said. Usually t dwvment lr give us a violation. They did not even say so, but any violation from tdlr needs about 90 days to complete. And so that's what we're trying to do by end of may, we should finish this. It takes only one week to fix a problem by drilling around the shaft and inject some grout in there and stop the groundwater from coming into the pit.
>> so the $5,000 will correct the problem?
>> that's correct.
>> thank you.
>> you're welcome.
>> could I add on the ds-1, the court had indicated they were going with salary line item for the transfer. The first line item there should be substituted with account number 00114015 # 50701.
>> can you repeat that?
>> it was just the facility salary line item is where the transfer would come from, so that first 019800 would be modified to read 00114015250701.
>> thank you.
>> my question to the maker of the motion and the second would be going with the pbo recommendation, which is internally fund with an open invitation to come back and revisit us if it proves not to be a successful strategy.
>> that's the motion.
>> just make sure the clerk has that correction. Any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
Last Modified: Wednesday, May 27, 2003 7:52 PM