Travis County Commssioners Court
July 29, 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.
Item 8
8 is to discuss and take appropriate action on remodel of first floor lobby vending area in the blackwell-thurman criminal justice center to provide office space for the tax office collections division. As I mentioned earlier, the judges in the building called up and said this recommendation was new to them and they needed an opportunity to study it further and also to chat with the facilities. And I said that we would try to accommodate them on that. The other thing is that I think the sole issue is simply collections needs a little bit of additional work. The problem it leaves for us are two people that you have already and some recommendations in the preliminary budget for additional folks to do collections work. So the question is if we delay consideration of this item, where do you plan to take them, right? You don't want to take them to the airport with you?
>> there's no space. It's not been allocated to the airport for any additional programs at the airport at this time.
>> okay. This is two people and computers and desks and chairs?
>> we came to -- well, there was an agenda item back in June to where y'all had agreed for us to go ahead and hire two additional people, so we're talking about four that would be moving into for next fiscal year. We need the four people because currently we have other people in the tax office that are being support for the two original people. Once we move away, they're not going to have the support. They'll be by themselves, whether it be in the parking lot or wherever it end up to be, so we need the four people to be able to make this program continue to work. So we're looking at space once we move which will be within the next month, month and a half when we move to airport, we're looking for space for those four people. And if you move ahead with the collections program, it was a total of eight if y'all decide to do that.
>> okay. So if they don't go to cjc, they have to go somewhere. And should we then take two or three weeks to try and figure out the best alternate space?
>> I'm jim barns with facilities management. We believe we could do that, judge. I believe we could probably find space possibly in usb. We would have to look at that. I'm assuming that once the decision is made we can proceed possibly with this criminal justice vend earg that we've been talking about which we could provide more permanent space for them. So I feel confident we can locate a spot to accommodate them in a short-term.
>> if not on the first floor, somewhere else.
>> yes.
>> and even in cjc itself?
>> that's possible.
>> why don't we try to to that then. That will give us a little bit more breathing room. That space on the first floor is apparently more near and deer to the judges than facilities thought. But you've got -- your thing is you've got to put four to eight people somewhere.
>> we need to put them somewhere and it would certainly -- I don't think ms. Spears would agree to putting them in the basement of the usb because that's kind of a dead end space to be dealing with these individuals and. And it the tax office, the rest of the troops would no longer be there to help support, so ms. Spears would not agree with the basement to do this for these people.
>> and I think we also want to think in terms of the clients. The whole point here is to make it beyond easy for you to swing by and get financial arrangements to pay what you truly do owe. And so in terms of logistically -- and i'd like to figure out a space where it's one time move, not two-time move, and whether it's four people or eight people, that there's flexibility so that if we stick with four it's a space that works, but if we have to go to eight it's a space that works. So we don't over or underfill any particular thing because there is a cost to moving people and redoing it lines and phone lines, blah, blah, blah. We've got to figure out some place to stick these folks.
>> so you want us when we look, it's four, and the area to be expandable to eight. Before we could always look at a conference room, but if we're talking about a possibility of going to eight, then it pushes us to a different -- looking at a different area.
>> the other four are in the preliminary budget. The first four are approved larnd budgeted. The other four are in the preliminary budget. We think you need to do that, even if you don't collect the csc did? Say you collect for the jp's, etcetera, we think we still need eight people?
>> this is going to be just the jp's. Don't know yet. I would think it would not be the eight people, but I don't know. We haven't studied that yet.
>> would you think it would be more than four?
>> not to start with.
>> so we need at least space for four. It would help for that to be expandable to eight, but we request -- the motion is to request that facilities get with the judges to see what their take is on it. Also to look at other component of the cs -- cjc building to see if there's something there and check out other available county space where we can -- in a cost neutral manner where we can accommodate this space need and maybe try to report back to the court -- is two weeks too long? Is that all right?
>> I know that roger would like to go as quickly as possible because the systems furniture that we're requiring has approximately an eight-week order lead time.
>> you talked me into it. We'll have it back on next week. Next week is better than two weeks?
>> the only thing is that we need to meet with the judges.
>> I think a lot of them have been on some kind of conference.
>> two weeks?
>> I'm easy, but I need a number.
>> two-week.
>> could you please remind us when ms. Spears and the rest of the gang will be moving over to airport?
>> September 20th.
>> okay.
>> I would like clarification on two things, if I might. The two staff that we have currently came from the tax office and so we have vacated two slots and we've held them open for the entire year in case this didn't work, we didn't have a place to move them back. We wanted to be loyal to those employees. This is hampering some of the things we're fixing to do, which you know are going to be having remote locations. I need to go ahead and put people in these slots, which I have not done because we didn't know where centralized collections were going. That's one. Do you feel it's okay to go ahead and hire these positions because I don't want to turn around and rif someone October the 1st. Secondly, you approved hiring two more people, which we've talked with the taskforce and I really need to get because once again, I don't want someone take agriculture job with us and that gets rived in 90 days or whatever. I need some feedback from y'all as to --
>> we will not only be prepared to give you feedback on Tuesday, but we'll have an item that legally authorizes us to do so.
>> thank you, sir.
>> how's that? We may need a little information from you between now and then and maybe we ought to get you a few questions so we'll have appropriate background either before Tuesday or by Tuesday? We'll have an item that allows us to address that issue for you. We'll have the space part back on in two weeks.
>> this is actually coinciding with our work session actually. Is that that same week?
>> it will be the 13th.
>> yes, sir.
>> unless I'm missing something, and this is moving pretty quickly, I guess my biggest concern is that we continue to talk about who is -- how do you get this information and this information and how do you, you know, interface it with apparently a system that we don't have? Which is the reason I'm glad that we're holding off on it a couple of weeks before we start moving people and walls and this and that. I mean, unless I'm missing something out of my office with regards to a very clear plan as to -- and these people being predicated on something other than if you add more people, you collect more money. I mean, if that were the case, well, then, I say let's go out and hire a thousand people because we've got mega millions of dollars that we can't collect in this community. So I'm -- I don't know whether that comes from you or it comes from alicia or whoever it comes from, but I certainly would like to have a real succinct, plausible reading of some sort that I can say okay, I can tell you why somebody has eight on a page. I can tell you why somebody has four on a page. Because I'm a little concerned that before we know what we're really doing, we're going to get out and add people. I agree, before you get out here and you add folks and you have to rif people and do whatever, you don't need to be there. None of us want any of those people in that situation either. And maybe you say, Gerald, you have that, let me come up to your office and help you find it. I don't think that it's there, so i'd like to see something.
>> we have a plan in budget for eight people total. That would be -- rough breakdown, four for the county courts, which we're doing now, three if you were to add the district courts, one to do a pilot for the jp's. That's the request that we've got in for our side. I believe that also there's a couple -- there's one in the clerk's -- one in each of the clerk's on office anz part of this whole thing is what it comes up with do centralized collections. That is only new cases. It does not deal with a bigger issue y'all have is there are a lot of older cases at cscd. You now have two, one group collecting old stuff, one group collecting new stuff. That's part of the things that the taskforce needs to discuss. We could stop today and make it just quit doing anything and let it go revert back to cscd while we did the 90-day plan. That could be a plan buvment as it is, we're continuing on with just our county courts at law, haven't branched into the district court because we're not going to move further until we get to the fact system. We plan on going in and using the fact system whenever that becomes available so that the financials are kept on the fact's side. There would be some double entry. There would be some issues that we would be missing that have been pointed out by susan and mike that would be important for us also, the feedback of the person that I'm trying to get to pay money has been put back in jail again and we don't know it because there's no integration there. So there are integration sishz that we're concerned about also. The two people that I have today, the two additional list is because I'm moving away and I can't support them any more, so I was wanting to get two more of the eight, four of the eight for next year, and stop until you made some kind of decision.
>> I made that specific question.
>> I think in terms of a comparison, while I have the county attorney's office here in terms of information to be brought back, I have no idea of how to compare that with the office that is already doing something very similar, but related to property taxes in terms of elliott's operation. How many folks are in elliott's? How do these things compare in terms of the amounts of money we're trying to collect, how much it cost to try and collect it? And there's got to be some number and I think that's what you're alluding to is at some point it's worth the investment to get this amount of money back, but it doesn't mean you throw a thousand people at it to try and get just a little bit more.
>> we have addressed that in our office. One more person collecting property tax for your average -- where your average delinquency is $4,000 versus over on this part where the average delinquently may be $600 and you're spending the same amount of effort, it gets down to doing part of the centralized collections to have justice be served. That's what the judges want, so that's what you're chasing. It's not necessarily the best economical decision because we could do better by getting more people to elliott and to our collections staff and collecting the bigger bucks that are out there. There are a lot of millions of dollars on the property tax rolls that are still delinquent.
>> let me say and I'm sure some of the judges are listening to this and I'm sure of the reason they say that, that justice needs to be served. But also is a deal that we talk with the judges and say help us do that versus having all of these changes and all of the -- i'll let you do this, i'll let you do this, i'll let you do this. I mean, I think part of our problem -- this really could get into a major discussion -- I know we don't have time, but that is an issue. I mean, given that if you don't collect something from somebody when you have them in front of you, I mean, then we really find it -- we end up not really collecting the monies that are due us. So i'd love to have that conversation where the judges say we're willing to do exactly what you want and justice does need to be served, otherwise why do you even give fines and fees if you really have no intentions of going out -- except for the low hanging fruit. Some people just go right back and write a check and say I don't want any part of the system. But that's -- that's something that I do think we need to work on.
>> yes, sir.
>> thank you.
>> we will have the personnel issue on next week and the other on in two weeks.
>> thank you, sir.
Last Modified:
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 12:31 PM