Travis County Commssioners Court
September 16, 2003
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Item 38
Now, number 38 consider and take appropriate action on the annual written plan for funding the preservation and restoration of the county clerk's records archive as required by 118.025 of the local government code.
>> thank you, judge. Okay. Thank you very much. Pursuant to the law we're here to consider the plan for 028 and 057. What is in your packet is the written plan for 057. That is the more restrictive fund that requires a plan be filed with the county plan. Here is the revised plan. A couple of weeks or so ago the court asked us to take a look at some additional projects about $250,000 in additional projects, could the records management fund or the archive c fund take on, and there was a list of about 16 of those projects. And the court had asked the county attorney's office to give them a sort of a legal opinion about that list. They took a look at it and they said, well, you know, and certainly they could speak for themselves, but 8 of them are not within the realm of the law on the -- on these particular funds. The other 8 I basically took and so what you have before you is a spreadsheet that is right behind your cover page. This shows that we got $262,000 worth of projects that -- and I want to be careful about this because I will never want to indicate to the court that I'm in any way making any kind of a transfer between these funds. However, if we look at a combination between 028 and 057 records management funds, we can come up with $262,000 worth of expenditures that used to be taken care of by the agenda fund and are appropriate and legal to be cover bid the records management funds. There's one little caveat that pbo is going to help me explain about the $262,000 and I also want to be very clear in our language about how we describe the particular project that is involved in that. One of the things that i've looked at was was it possible to provide assistance to the district clerk. Per se the answer to that question is no. I don't -- this is records management fund to be used for the records within the office of the county clerk. Rather, I have a gain system that I have also shared with our records management department, the county records management department w. The district attorney, with a couple of other offices that has been used countywide. The district clerk could make use of the county clerk's gain fund and would hire an additional person to implement the county clerk's gain proposal and under that scenario, that would also be of benefit of the district clerk some of the with that proposal, you're going to see on your list where it says district clerk personnel, because I would not want to direct that kind of a project, I mean it needs to be directed by the people that it's going to be serving, sort of the concept would be the same withism ts, you know, when you're working for a department you have say so over what those people are doing so we would want to do that. So the proposal is to transfer a person who would be in your need budget under the county court 028, I believe, 028 fund for use by the district clerk's office to implement gain and that is worth approximately $73,800 in salaries and benefits for that individual. The -- so basically what we've got here is 133, is that the number? $133,000 of the indexing maintenance which I think was the biggest ticket item which was on the list that the court asked me to look at. I'm not real thrilled with it, but in the spirit of us trying to agree on what the records management plan should be, i'll go ahead and accept responsibility for doing the maintenance agreement for equipment that the records management fund has purchased. Okay? And that would be the indexing system. So with that in mind, you may want to ask questions from pbo about this fund, but what I would ask the court to do today is to adopt the plan and adopt the fund and we're going to be finished with this part of it? So questions and -- you're going to want to hear from pbo about '03 money, '04 money, whether it's been double counted, any of that.
>> wanted to clarify trk , the spreadsheet that was prepared by pbo was the longer version. We wanted to bring it out by fund on that side and what was the preliminary budget what you've already approved, what went browk markup which basically includes all the changes to compensation benefits such as health insurance, retirement, the fica cap that was move and then the rebudgeted of capital 1, $50,000 fund for recanning. That is basically all the things that Commissioner's court had already voted on and where they belonged, and then the next column is additional requests or changes, and those are moving projects around and adding new projects based on the county clerk's archival fee fund being established in the fourth revenue estimate with $1.2 million in there, and then the proposed total would show you how much would be in each one, and the proposed totals for the two special revenue funds balance to the fourth revenue estimate. What we show here under the general fund, the top two items is that under the proposed plan that the county clerk has presented to you today, there would be $188,000 in decreases to general fund expenditure, that is for the director half salary and benefit and then the maintenance agreements that are currently budgeted in itst difference of the fte at the district clerk, the gain -- district clerk's use of the gain system, that hasn't previously been budgeted, so, you know, what we were trying to look at and highlight is exactly what kinds of decreases you could see in the general fund budget. That comes out to 188,527 and everything else was putting everything in the right fund bucket according to the county clerk's wishes.
>> we faced a challenge this year, steve roberg and I worked to try to maximize our dollars between this new fund t new fund is more restrictive and it only can carries a five year time frame on it. There's a lot that we have to accomplish between five year, but between the two fund, since one is more restrictive than the other, what we tried to do is get the most we could out of both of these funds and once again my attitude of trying to also help other attitudes in county government when it can be piggy backed on the county government.
>> those add up to the 262 you were talking about?
>> yes, sir.
>> all right.
>> judge, I would move approval of the laying out of the spending of the records archives monies for -- what do we have, departments 028 and 057, and we accept the reductions to the general fund and kicking them over to the county clerk's records budgets, and that we find that the 188,527 does satisfy the court's previous instructions related to meet the 250, and that christian would need to find a minor adjustment of $61,473, and whatever... [multiple voices]
>> the allocated resource to offset because we recognize this new thing the district clerk absolutely meant the spirit of what we had intended all along.
>> the law requires that we approve a plan?
>> yes, sir.
>> the first part of the motion is to approve the plan?
>> approve the plan as submitted by the county clerk and verified by pbo and meet the spirit of the 250 and balance the...
>> okay. Second it?
>> yes.
>> anymore discussion if.
>> yes.
>> yes, sir?
>> explain to me where the $61,000 or whatever comes from...
>> we will reduce the allocated reserve and show that as a correction.
>> yeah, correction.
>> so it will come out of allocated reserve versus coming out of the additional money that was generated out of new legislation this year with a 1.2, roughly?
>> that's what that motion means.
>> so we really will be short $60,000? I mean given what we want, given what the court wanted $250,000...
>> the glass is not $250,000 full, it's $61,000 short.
>> I understand.
>> depends on how you view it.
>> if we were standing here next year at this time, that $73,833 addition to the office would be part of what could have been coming out of our general fund and therefore she would not have been at the $250,000 mark, she would be at the $262,000 mark. So I'm looking ahead to '05 has met the spirit and has gone beyond that.
>> well, I guess the only issue that I have with all of this is that, boy, this has hit a nerve with some people. I mean I -- I mean the e-mails flying around with not liking this, and what about this, and what about that, you know, I -- I'm learning. Even though this is all Travis County, everybody has got their own little deal where this is my deal, this is what I want, and I want it all, and I -- I would hope that whenever we are looking for ways to cut or maximize or not spend on certain things that it wouldn't be so cumbersome, and so difficult to try to find a way to say, you know what, we really are all in this together, and I'm -- and I feel the tension and I don't -- I mean, you know, it's not particularly something that I care for, I'm sure everybody feels differently about that. But if that's -- if that's where we can get with this, I guess we -- I guess we will live with that. I -- I thought that we were honestly looking for out of an additional somewhere between 900,000, I guess if you were going to start collecting it in January, or a million two, you're going to start collecting it October 1, that we would have an opportunity to identify $250,000 less spending or, you know, I guess from general fund and paying for things, you know, out of your -- out of your area to include risk management and all the parts, so if everybody is happy with that, well, that's fine.
>> anymore discussion? All in favor of the motion? Show a unanimous vote. Thank you.
Last Modified: Wednesday, September 16, 2003 7:52 AM