Travis County Commssioners Court
September 2, 2003
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Item 30
On item no. 30, there is a -- a letter that we got from the sheriff as well as a memo from the county judge and that memo basically I set forth the recommendation that it looked like the t ofsupportive of reducing the cell phone total of about $200,000 by 25%, I said roughly $50,000. I do think that we ought to ask the cell phone committee. You all may have a more sophisticated name from that to help us determine how to appropriate the remaining $150,000. In any memo, did you get a copy of it -- -- I know that you will want to see this before taking action, but I suggest here in determining how we ought to appropriate the -- if we look at this year's -- by department, this year's department budget, how the department compares to cell phone budgets of similar departments. So we compare our jp's to jp's, county court at law, constable to constable, approximately how much of the '03 budget will be used, looked like a lot of them had quite a bit, pretty much all of it, some had a modest amount, not even using that, how critical cell phone services to meetings of the [indiscernible] department submission and carrying out its work, recent action taken to reduce cell phone use, I know a couple of big departments have been already gone in and reduced the number of cell phones and unless I have an evaluation of each department head's justification for a requested cell phone budget. And then I said court members and manager be encouraged to add evaluation criteria from this list. I got this from conversations that we had, made sense to me. Nothing magical about them. If there are other reasonable objective criteria that awlght to be considered I think the court ought to look at them.
>> I have one. It's kind of 3 a. That is that we look at five years worth of historical expenditures not just simply what did they spend this last year. See if we can see a trend line in terms of what they are needing. With speaker attention given to election year needs because sometimes there's a spike because of things that the sheriff's office or the constables office has to do related to elections. So it's just a matter of please see if there are special needs related to election that gets palmed off to the election expenditures. I know we've had rebates back related to cell phone use.
>> I don't have your letter as yet. When do you want this back?
>> this afternoon. [laughter]
>> that's why I'm here. I was going to suggest if you were going to -- if you were going to perhaps make a -- make a motion and a vote here, given the importance of citing the proper appropriation -- establishing the proper appropriation of the total -- perhaps it would be worthwhile to pull all of the dollars out because we are talking about elected officials salaries, elected officials budgets as well as appear point officials, pull $150,000 out and allow this cell phone committee to do its work in October and come back then with a -- with a set of recommendations on how to appropriate the 75% remaining so that you don't get into a situation of either rushing to judgment within the next couple of weeks or or getting into the awkwardness of pulling the money out of an elected official salary. I want talked to dean I was thinking --
>> when this come up before, the question came up, how are we going to pay the bills between, you know, in October then. If you pull the money out, they still have to pay their bills in October.
>> and out of the reserve.
>> yeah.
>> see my -- rather than asking the committee to do its work, taking forever to do it, I would say come back in two weeks and let us know your best recommendation. If the committee cannot --
>> if they can do it, I just see -- having gone through this before, in other circumstances, I just was thinking that they may need some more time to do it real tightly. But -- if they can do it, god bless them.
>> maybe there's some middle ground. That is if there were agreements that the dollar amount ought to be $150,000, we can get there in terms of planning purposes the reality is because we are dealing with elected officials' budgets, couldn't this be as part of our budget order in terms of how these things get outdated this would give them almost a full month and I think a month is plenty of time. It doesn't hold up anything. We basically say it is 150,000. Now in terms of pulling things out of budgets, we wouldn't be pulling 150,000 out of budgets. You would be pulling almost 200,000 out of budgets. With the intent that only 150 max would go back in.
>> I think that if I were doing it I won't take two weeks. I think that the most time consuming part would be getting with different department heads and saying your '03 budget for a cell phone was x amount, the committee is thinking about recommending this amount, what's your response to that and seeing basically how they respond. In my view, if you absolutely cannot get this done by mid September or about two weeks, you let us know, we will take that amount, put it in reserve, pay the invoices when they are presented. It's the kind of work I think that you can get done in two weeks, but if you are not careful it will be four or five months which I would try to avoid. It's not like the amounts are increasing multi-multiple. Today's agenda was not only to get out the word that $150,000 is available for cell phone service. And ask the committee would you please do this for us, we would like to get it done before we adopt the budget. We really have until the last day of September. September is probably a whole lot better because we planned to ask the cell phone committee to take a real good look at a whole lot of over stuff next year, how many contracts, what's the best way to do this, should the county basically own these cell phones and not employees. How do we enforce the prohibition against using these cell phones for personal use except under certain circumstances. Or limited, you see what I'm saying. And --
>> it works.
>> the sheriff has already said I have already knocked off 25%.
>> juvenile court doing the same thing.
>> and t.n.r. And facilities have already started to talk about [indiscernible] so I think the big users have already come forward.
>> that's fine. The committee can finish this work by --
>> two weeks.
>> let us know.
>> so the motion basically is to reduce the annual allocation by 25% or roughly $50,000 for budgeting purposes. And to ask the committee to do that. I apologize for not getting you a copy of this. In fact I will give you my copy. That's even better than getting a copy before.
>> second.
>> getting the judge's copy. Any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> thank you for accepting this assignment so enenthusiastically. [laughter]
>> call everybody on the phone and tell them about it.
Last Modified: Wednesday, September 3, 2003 7:52 AM